Well it isn't really all that clear to me that anyone has to make money off of desktop Linux distributions. At least at the moment, Linux distros seem to be making pretty good progress as it is.
But also I think the summary may be misleading. From the article, it seems like he's pointing out the problems with switching to Linux on the desktop right now, and then going on to say that he isn't very interested in trying to push Linux on the desktop because he's questioning the relevance of desktop computing *at all*.
But then the summary makes it sound like he's just ceding the desktop OS business to Apple/Microsoft, which would be somewhat different.
Letting individual copyright holders opt-out makes the proposal useless. The entire point was that, for a small monthly tax, people wouldn't have to worry about copyrights so far as non-commercial, personal use was concerned.
It seems to me like a small monthly tax just to not have to worry about copyrights for personal non-commercial use is already useless.
It's not just what GPS stands for, either. Not every positioning system that works globally is GPS. Yeah, I'm being pedantic, but "GPS" really is supposed to indicate the particular system, not just any system.
So saying chimps have built-in GPS because they can navigate is a little like saying they have built-in Canon Powershot cameras because they can see.
What if they name it Colbert 100 years after his death, and then evidence surfaces claiming that he was a serial killer? Or what if some other person becomes a serial killer, and also happens to be named "Colbert"?
Or what if Obama snaps and becomes a serial killer in 10 years? Then we'll have to live with the shame of having at one point elected him president.
Hell, sometimes you just have to do things in spite of the danger that something bad might happen later.
As I understand it, The Colbert Report is "the coal bear rapport"
Did it strike you as funny that you used a word with a silent "T" in order to clarify the pronunciation of a word that's being pronounced with a silent "T" even though it's not supposed to be pronounced that way?
I've read (though I don't know for sure and can't find backup at the moment) that Microsoft's GUI design is much more of a trial & error approach than Apple's. They throw stuff in, put it in front of users, ask users what they think, and study the users' reactions in a scientific sort of way. If it make test users' workflows more efficient by Microsoft's measures and causes positive reactions in test users, then the design is used. There exact process may be much more complicated than that, but from what I've heard, that's the general idea.
I've read that Apple's process, on the other hand, has a little more emphasis on the opinions and views of GUI designers and experts, as well as the personal opinion of Steve Jobs. (again, supposedly)
It wouldn't be clear to me at the outset which approach would give better results.
Preventing vendor lock in. Ensuring privacy of sensitive data. Neither of these is possible with any cloud computing product available.
I'm decidedly not saying that any "cloud" service currently available is perfect. I'm saying many of the problems are not inherent, but rather could be solved. For example, having fast and reliable ubiquitous Internet access isn't something that Amazon or Google could simply fix. It's an infrastructure problem, and that infrastructure can be improved greatly from its current state.
Even a watered down version of the cloud, say for storage has inherent security issues. How do you control what data goes where, who accesses it, how do you secure it, etc.
Some of that can be helped with proper implementation of encryption, if anyone actually got around to dealing with this problem in a thorough manner.
If I'm counting on some server to hold all of my data outside of my computer, then god save me if I lose my network connection
That wouldn't be so frequent if people took data infrastructure seriously, but also it can be helped by proper use of caching/syncing.
or if their servers are compromised.
That's what backups are for.
I'm not really dismissing your points, but rather trying to point out that none of these things are insurmountable. It's just that people have done a poor job of addressing your concerns up to this point.
They didn't do enough testing of thalidomide. The proper response to mistakes is not to stop doing new things...
Yes, which is why I said, "Now, I'm not saying that something horrible will go wrong, but I am in favor of extensive testing and forethought into consequences..."
I'm seriously asking, what do you think could actually go wrong?
Sometimes the worst side-effects of our actions are those that we hadn't even imagined before it happened. Thalidomide is one example from the medical field-- as far as I know, nobody had an indication that it was dangerous when they first started using it.
Now, I'm not saying that something horrible will go wrong, but I am in favor of extensive testing and forethought into consequences of our medical technologies, particularly when dealing with genetics. Some of the dangers may be overblown by Hollywood, but that doesn't mean there are no dangers.
My favorite anecdote was a fresh look at the Tortoise and the Hare. The common moral one associates with this fable is "Slow and steady wins the race." But the story isn't a condemnation on speed, rather against stupidity. The Hare lost simply because he was dumb enough to take a nap in the middle of the race, in no way did his speed work against him.
The lesson here wasn't "speed is bad" or that "the hare lost simply because he was dumb enough to take a nap." I've always read it more like: you can't let yourself get overly-confident in one of your particular strengths to the point where you take your superiority for granted and stop trying your hardest.
You see it often enough that someone is good at doing something quickly, but they're sloppy about it. Or they're smart, but they don't think things through thoroughly. Being smart and fast are great additions to being a disciplined hard worker-- but they aren't good replacements.
The only thing I wonder is, is it caused by inexperience or simply that they made some bad judgement calls? It seems entirely possible to me that Microsoft had the expertise necessary to build a decent machine, but the desire to rush it out the door before Nintendo or Sony, and then the desire to cut costs, have lead to a substandard product.
That's been my impression up to this point, but I don't claim to have any kind of inside knowledge. But I think Microsoft is relying to some extent on our disposable culture for success across their product line.
Yeah, well... I think that was a bad decision on his part. The "family unit" could have been Baltar, Caprica, and Hera, but I guess that wouldn't have been such a happy ending. I would have been more willing to accept an unhappy ending that made sense and fit with the rest of the show rather what what we got, but I admit that's just my opinion.
are more likely to be found near a tv instead of in the pocket of the owner
That seems to me to be a very important issue that might not occur to people quickly. What if someone else is in my house and wants to watch TV? Do I have to leave my cell phone with them? Or do they have to reprogram their phones?
It's very convenient to have a simple, cheap, dedicated device to serve a single purpose. It can just sit there, ready to fulfill its duty.
Oh, and also, the role that Hera plays that makes her so important is a little bit strange to me. To have her be the genetic Eve of our race kind of puts a strange importance on her. What does it mean-- being half cylon gives her the superpower of having lots of sex with various different men, having diverse offspring, I guess.
I guess I'm really asking, what does her being half-cylon half-human have to do with anything? Couldn't you make the argument that Athena is the actual genetic Eve? Is Hera actually important?
The only true way of breaking the cycle is for society to acknowledge that artificial lifeforms are not of lesser status.
Either that, or just make sure they're under very strict control.
But yes, I agree, losing the knowledge definitely doesn't seem a like a solution. Keeping the technology in check, no over-relying on it, etc. may be great ideas, but destroying the knowledge isn't.
The two sides would create a pact to keep separate from each other, the small minority of technology-loving people going to live on a small continent off the west coast of Africa... Said continent, of course, to have been destroyed at some future point in time by natural disaster and essentially all technology along with it.
That's a great idea, although it'd be better if they were destroyed by another civil war-- or something that ties into the whole "this has happened before, and will happen again" idea.
Yeah, what I found kind of disappointing was that, even knowing it was coming to an end, they seemed to falter. If the last episode had seemed cobbled together last-minute because they were informed a couple months before that the series was being cancelled, it would have been more understandable. But they knew for years, and basically had a whole extra year to prepare after the writer's strike.
I enjoyed the plot of the mutiny and some of the other things that happened near the end, but given that those plots didn't go very far, it seems like a bit of a waste when they could have spent that time wrapping things up.
To me, probably the most disappointing thing was how they wrapped up the opera house dream. What? All those dreams and all that worry about them, and it was just that Caprica and Baltar were supposed to carry Hera 20 feet down a hall? That's retarded. At the very least, I think they should have killed of Helo and Athena and had Baltar and Caprica end up rescuing and then raising Hera. It would have explained them ending up with Hera at the end of the dream, as well as the Head-Caprica telling Baltar that Hera was their daughter.
In general, I've been impressed with the writing on BSG, but the finale is yet more evidence that writers should have an endgame roughly planned from the beginning. The ending wasn't bad so much as it felt unplanned and inelegant, tacked on and not fitting to the rest of the series. Worse yet, the message of the finale seemed to be that God has a very elegant plan for us all, so having that message come in an inelegant and unplanned form makes for a bad kind of irony.
My original point stands - MS will not sue you for installing their OS on whatever hardware you want
AFIAK, Apple hasn't sued anyone for simply installing their OS on whatever hardware they wanted, but only for distributing copies in violation of licensing agreements. If I started installing the volume licensed version of XP on people's computers without buying enough licenses, I bet Microsoft would sue me. Hell, if Best Buy started selling OEM copies of Windows on the shelves as retail copies, I bet Microsoft would sue them.
It is the same reason that makes the advanced degree in Philosophy to be a "Master of Arts", and not "Master of Science".
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by equating philosophy with creationism, since natural philosophy is in many ways the grounding without which science can't exist.
I think the real issue here is that a Bachelor of Science or a Masters of Science should include some scientific investigation and preparation for further scientific work. And this is where the whole "creationism is not science" comes from: there's no scientific work to do in the field of creationism. It's a done deal. You know the answer. God did it.
Even if you believe in Creationism, studying life after creation would just be biology. There is no scientific study into the miraculous instantaneous creation of everything by God. In fact, I would think that expecting to put such a miracle into the realm of "human knowledge" would be considered blasphemous by those who believed those things.
On the other hand, if you don't believe in Creationism, then wouldn't it be nice to say that a bachelor's degree in Creationism is BS?
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Well it isn't really all that clear to me that anyone has to make money off of desktop Linux distributions. At least at the moment, Linux distros seem to be making pretty good progress as it is.
But also I think the summary may be misleading. From the article, it seems like he's pointing out the problems with switching to Linux on the desktop right now, and then going on to say that he isn't very interested in trying to push Linux on the desktop because he's questioning the relevance of desktop computing *at all*.
But then the summary makes it sound like he's just ceding the desktop OS business to Apple/Microsoft, which would be somewhat different.
Letting individual copyright holders opt-out makes the proposal useless. The entire point was that, for a small monthly tax, people wouldn't have to worry about copyrights so far as non-commercial, personal use was concerned.
It seems to me like a small monthly tax just to not have to worry about copyrights for personal non-commercial use is already useless.
The only use case can see is if you own a mp3 player with large storage that doesn't support playback of a proper lossless format.
Yeah, but that seems like a fairly rare use case. Even then, developing this format seems like a lot of work just to avoid transcoding.
It's not an entirely meaningless distinction, since there has been another system and there are additional systems being planned.
It's not just what GPS stands for, either. Not every positioning system that works globally is GPS. Yeah, I'm being pedantic, but "GPS" really is supposed to indicate the particular system, not just any system.
So saying chimps have built-in GPS because they can navigate is a little like saying they have built-in Canon Powershot cameras because they can see.
What if they name it Colbert 100 years after his death, and then evidence surfaces claiming that he was a serial killer? Or what if some other person becomes a serial killer, and also happens to be named "Colbert"?
Or what if Obama snaps and becomes a serial killer in 10 years? Then we'll have to live with the shame of having at one point elected him president.
Hell, sometimes you just have to do things in spite of the danger that something bad might happen later.
As I understand it, The Colbert Report is "the coal bear rapport"
Did it strike you as funny that you used a word with a silent "T" in order to clarify the pronunciation of a word that's being pronounced with a silent "T" even though it's not supposed to be pronounced that way?
I've read (though I don't know for sure and can't find backup at the moment) that Microsoft's GUI design is much more of a trial & error approach than Apple's. They throw stuff in, put it in front of users, ask users what they think, and study the users' reactions in a scientific sort of way. If it make test users' workflows more efficient by Microsoft's measures and causes positive reactions in test users, then the design is used. There exact process may be much more complicated than that, but from what I've heard, that's the general idea.
I've read that Apple's process, on the other hand, has a little more emphasis on the opinions and views of GUI designers and experts, as well as the personal opinion of Steve Jobs. (again, supposedly)
It wouldn't be clear to me at the outset which approach would give better results.
Preventing vendor lock in. Ensuring privacy of sensitive data. Neither of these is possible with any cloud computing product available.
I'm decidedly not saying that any "cloud" service currently available is perfect. I'm saying many of the problems are not inherent, but rather could be solved. For example, having fast and reliable ubiquitous Internet access isn't something that Amazon or Google could simply fix. It's an infrastructure problem, and that infrastructure can be improved greatly from its current state.
Even a watered down version of the cloud, say for storage has inherent security issues. How do you control what data goes where, who accesses it, how do you secure it, etc.
Some of that can be helped with proper implementation of encryption, if anyone actually got around to dealing with this problem in a thorough manner.
If I'm counting on some server to hold all of my data outside of my computer, then god save me if I lose my network connection
That wouldn't be so frequent if people took data infrastructure seriously, but also it can be helped by proper use of caching/syncing.
or if their servers are compromised.
That's what backups are for.
I'm not really dismissing your points, but rather trying to point out that none of these things are insurmountable. It's just that people have done a poor job of addressing your concerns up to this point.
I don't see why they wouldn't name it "Colbert". I mean, yeah, it's a joke, but it's also good publicity, and what harm does it do?
I think if they don't, it's showing that the people running NASA are sticks in the mud and take themselves too seriously.
I've never heard of the tale of the jet and the bottle rocket, but I've heard of the tortoise and the hare. I suspect I'm not alone there.
Also, I suspect "the tortoise and the hare" is a better story.
They didn't do enough testing of thalidomide. The proper response to mistakes is not to stop doing new things...
Yes, which is why I said, "Now, I'm not saying that something horrible will go wrong, but I am in favor of extensive testing and forethought into consequences..."
I'm seriously asking, what do you think could actually go wrong?
Sometimes the worst side-effects of our actions are those that we hadn't even imagined before it happened. Thalidomide is one example from the medical field-- as far as I know, nobody had an indication that it was dangerous when they first started using it.
Now, I'm not saying that something horrible will go wrong, but I am in favor of extensive testing and forethought into consequences of our medical technologies, particularly when dealing with genetics. Some of the dangers may be overblown by Hollywood, but that doesn't mean there are no dangers.
My favorite anecdote was a fresh look at the Tortoise and the Hare. The common moral one associates with this fable is "Slow and steady wins the race." But the story isn't a condemnation on speed, rather against stupidity. The Hare lost simply because he was dumb enough to take a nap in the middle of the race, in no way did his speed work against him.
The lesson here wasn't "speed is bad" or that "the hare lost simply because he was dumb enough to take a nap." I've always read it more like: you can't let yourself get overly-confident in one of your particular strengths to the point where you take your superiority for granted and stop trying your hardest.
You see it often enough that someone is good at doing something quickly, but they're sloppy about it. Or they're smart, but they don't think things through thoroughly. Being smart and fast are great additions to being a disciplined hard worker-- but they aren't good replacements.
The only thing I wonder is, is it caused by inexperience or simply that they made some bad judgement calls? It seems entirely possible to me that Microsoft had the expertise necessary to build a decent machine, but the desire to rush it out the door before Nintendo or Sony, and then the desire to cut costs, have lead to a substandard product.
That's been my impression up to this point, but I don't claim to have any kind of inside knowledge. But I think Microsoft is relying to some extent on our disposable culture for success across their product line.
Yeah, well... I think that was a bad decision on his part. The "family unit" could have been Baltar, Caprica, and Hera, but I guess that wouldn't have been such a happy ending. I would have been more willing to accept an unhappy ending that made sense and fit with the rest of the show rather what what we got, but I admit that's just my opinion.
are more likely to be found near a tv instead of in the pocket of the owner
That seems to me to be a very important issue that might not occur to people quickly. What if someone else is in my house and wants to watch TV? Do I have to leave my cell phone with them? Or do they have to reprogram their phones?
It's very convenient to have a simple, cheap, dedicated device to serve a single purpose. It can just sit there, ready to fulfill its duty.
Oh, and also, the role that Hera plays that makes her so important is a little bit strange to me. To have her be the genetic Eve of our race kind of puts a strange importance on her. What does it mean-- being half cylon gives her the superpower of having lots of sex with various different men, having diverse offspring, I guess.
I guess I'm really asking, what does her being half-cylon half-human have to do with anything? Couldn't you make the argument that Athena is the actual genetic Eve? Is Hera actually important?
The only true way of breaking the cycle is for society to acknowledge that artificial lifeforms are not of lesser status.
Either that, or just make sure they're under very strict control.
But yes, I agree, losing the knowledge definitely doesn't seem a like a solution. Keeping the technology in check, no over-relying on it, etc. may be great ideas, but destroying the knowledge isn't.
I thought it was said at some point that she would lead humanity to their death. But either way, she didn't really kill off the Cylons either.
The two sides would create a pact to keep separate from each other, the small minority of technology-loving people going to live on a small continent off the west coast of Africa... Said continent, of course, to have been destroyed at some future point in time by natural disaster and essentially all technology along with it.
That's a great idea, although it'd be better if they were destroyed by another civil war-- or something that ties into the whole "this has happened before, and will happen again" idea.
Yeah, what I found kind of disappointing was that, even knowing it was coming to an end, they seemed to falter. If the last episode had seemed cobbled together last-minute because they were informed a couple months before that the series was being cancelled, it would have been more understandable. But they knew for years, and basically had a whole extra year to prepare after the writer's strike.
I enjoyed the plot of the mutiny and some of the other things that happened near the end, but given that those plots didn't go very far, it seems like a bit of a waste when they could have spent that time wrapping things up.
To me, probably the most disappointing thing was how they wrapped up the opera house dream. What? All those dreams and all that worry about them, and it was just that Caprica and Baltar were supposed to carry Hera 20 feet down a hall? That's retarded. At the very least, I think they should have killed of Helo and Athena and had Baltar and Caprica end up rescuing and then raising Hera. It would have explained them ending up with Hera at the end of the dream, as well as the Head-Caprica telling Baltar that Hera was their daughter.
In general, I've been impressed with the writing on BSG, but the finale is yet more evidence that writers should have an endgame roughly planned from the beginning. The ending wasn't bad so much as it felt unplanned and inelegant, tacked on and not fitting to the rest of the series. Worse yet, the message of the finale seemed to be that God has a very elegant plan for us all, so having that message come in an inelegant and unplanned form makes for a bad kind of irony.
My original point stands - MS will not sue you for installing their OS on whatever hardware you want
AFIAK, Apple hasn't sued anyone for simply installing their OS on whatever hardware they wanted, but only for distributing copies in violation of licensing agreements. If I started installing the volume licensed version of XP on people's computers without buying enough licenses, I bet Microsoft would sue me. Hell, if Best Buy started selling OEM copies of Windows on the shelves as retail copies, I bet Microsoft would sue them.
It is the same reason that makes the advanced degree in Philosophy to be a "Master of Arts", and not "Master of Science".
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by equating philosophy with creationism, since natural philosophy is in many ways the grounding without which science can't exist.
I think the real issue here is that a Bachelor of Science or a Masters of Science should include some scientific investigation and preparation for further scientific work. And this is where the whole "creationism is not science" comes from: there's no scientific work to do in the field of creationism. It's a done deal. You know the answer. God did it.
Even if you believe in Creationism, studying life after creation would just be biology. There is no scientific study into the miraculous instantaneous creation of everything by God. In fact, I would think that expecting to put such a miracle into the realm of "human knowledge" would be considered blasphemous by those who believed those things.
On the other hand, if you don't believe in Creationism, then wouldn't it be nice to say that a bachelor's degree in Creationism is BS?