Communist countries can form empires as well. While it's not really in line with their former propaganda, the SU exploited countries within their sphere.
If you look at the richest countries in the world some might have been empires during their history, but the benefits are long gone and they perform nevertheless. Spain for example once was a formidable empire, but when it was over they didn't do so well and at least at the end of the Franco era they were really behind compared to other western countries. IIRC they are #7 of the G8 and their success can't be attributed to colonialism or being a former empire. In my opinion terms like empire and capitalism don't have much in common.
Not that it would make much of a difference - in the end most of the instruction set won't be used by programmers and especially compilers (CISC vs. RISC anyone?). But to get back to the topic: The overhead caused by upwards compatibility isn't that big after all. Problems a normal user experiences are not caused by bad hardware design nowadays.
OOXML is exactly what we've wanted from Microsoft for years. A document spec that can be read without spending hours attempting to reverse-engineer how Word stores files internally Their new strategy obviously is to make it as hard to implement for OSS-projects as it can get. The specs are several thousand pages long!
It's a step in the right direction, but that doesn't make it a good standard. From an idealistic point of view it would be much better to reject it in favor of a clean and functional design.
So when do developers say "Screw this, DirectX 9 will suffice for the immediate future and works well, we will eschew DirectX 10 and beyond, serve our XP-using customers and use OpenGL for future development"?
They will abandon the traditional MS update path as soon as customers don't pay attention to it anymore. New versions of DX have worked quite well for all sides for quite a while (e.g. Max Payne) and I can perfectly understand why those companies actually writing the games are quite savy to make the first step. To be honest I don't know anyone buying cutting edge gaming equipment who has a clue about what is really happening inside of his box.
One guy told me recently that he's getting rid of his current SLI setup because if he plays a game and watches a video on a second screen at the same time some frames are lost on the video side. Not that anyone would care to watch a video while playing a game, but for this reason he's spending more money on upgrades this year than I invest on a new computer every ~3 years. No surprise that companies spend more time serving his needs, even though most of his investments in hardware are highly irrational...
Re:And all of a sudden....
on
SCO Loses
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it's more like a million Redmond developers are still doing what they did yesterday and the marketing department has official confirmation that their formal stategy is still very efficient since we still see it in the news.
The only thing I'm wondering about is what they are planing while we are discussing special agreements between Novell and MS for example...
I was just about to write something similar before I read your comment and though I had basically the same idea I started to wonder: Can a perfect price be determined if the product is available for free? Right now it works the other way around than how you described it: People buy music if they are not able to download it for free (because it's too rare to be on a torrent site for example). Since there's a price cap in this case it gets even more complicated.
On the other hand I quite like a pricing model in which people pay more for really popular songs. This would be an opportunity especially for open minded people interested in music. For example I often buy CD's and box sets from artists which where cool when my parents where young and it annoys me that they usually are in the higher price range just because the normal fan is older and has more money than the average student.
2000 was about the time that manufacturers really began the rush to fire all their expensive Americans and replace them with displaced chinese farmers. Since developing the next gereration of CPUs (45nm and less) is more expensive than the first moon landing (inflation taken into account and I'm too lazy to google it) and fabs getting incredibly costy I doubt that the price drop is linked to labour costs. I'd "blame" economy of scale.
To be fair online translations have gotten better over the years. I'm still smiling when I think about yahoo's translation of the clinton report. It was a totally differnt story in the German version, but quite entertaining: Monica Lewinsky performing "mouth-gender" (Mundgeschlecht - oral sex) and the involvement of a family called "Construction-Parts" (Familie Bauteile - no clue what the original said) are among the highlights I still remember. Computer translations are still full of mistakes, but it's getting better over the years. Those services really help nowadays in case nobody capable of translating is around.
I don't know where you are from, but you are obviously better at reading the beginning of a sentence than reading its end. I usually don't reply to AC's, but this time it might look like AC has a point, so let's make sure nobody will find parent reasonable anymore:
I didn't say that people with computer skills would prefer to use preinstalled apps. I was simply assuming that more people in the US install OS's even if they don't know anything about it. This isn't a bad thing at all because those people will archive more themselves in the future. It's the way noobs become experts. I simply believe that a lack of tech affinity explains why so many people in Europe tend to ask someone to set up a system for them (which leads to lots of Firefox installations).
However, I should have known that this discussion would only result in hatred from both sides of the pond. First negative mod-point in my life...
To me, this is evidence of a better educated society in Europe
Or maybe it's because people in Europe are in general less skilled on the computer / not willing to take risks, so people like me are asked to install a proper set of programs for them.
One aspect I wonder about since some time is the percentage of active users who visit SL as part of their profession. There is no doubt that most newspapers in the world covered SL in at least one story. In order to do so the editors had to get accounts. Add people working for governments, NGO's, the media in general and marketing departments of many major companies.
All those people don't have any interest in SL itself, but in the potential it offers to their respective organizations. It may be close to impossible to find numbers on this, but I'm convinced that this particular user base makes a difference which should be taken into account when looking at the stats.
So this means that those US programmers or software engineers have found positions which are more beneficial to them? If they are rare they'll get a higher wage than they "deserve" and if there are too many of them they won't get a fair share for their workforce. Is there some special reason why programmers in the US aren't paid properly? Since Canada isn't especially famous for cheap labour I start to wonder if there are some other reasons for MS's choice.
I also noticed that they did not solve the "traveling salesman" problem. Sorry to interrupt this, but if they had solved it we would have seen it on the frontage of every newspaper already, because right now it's not possible to do this on a larger scale.
To give you a (slightly) linked example: It's like criticizing a chess program for not having calculated the best way to win in any kind of situation on an entire board.
This is not circular reasoning at all: Everyone rates information based on prior experience. Do you believe the guy making up crazy stuff more than someone who is right most of the time? Traditionally we judge a lot based on the reputation of the source. It's actually a very effective way to decide...
Maybe they perceive them as good companies because they have tried all 3 of them and found out that MS' search engine doesn't deliver? MSN/live.com got better over the years, but as long as they are not as good as google they won't gain any marketshare except from those using IE and being unable to switch their default home page.
I agree that they are not the most beautiful solution for this problem. On the other hand I hate declarations such as "*/#..." even more because they are not even proprietary solutions, but plain hacks. Those Tags sometimes even solve problems which are Firefox related. I recently had to give Firefox users a link to a printable version of pictures displayed in flash - Firefox justs cuts them in half when printing, even though they are displayed correctly on screen. IMHO it's better to define two stylesheets than to just fill one with CSS code which two browsers will interpret differently...
Javashit is still a security risk, but we'll make damn sure that none of our content renders correctly unless you turn it on That's not really a problem related to css. You should rather blame those using JS to solve browser issues. If you need seperate stylesheets for Firefox and IE you can use comments:
Firefox won't load it, but it recognizes import (as opposed to IE). Of course this is not really the most beautiful way to do it, but it avoids CSS hacks and javascript. However, if Safari and Opera are in the mix, this solution won't work. On the other hand I don't know of any website using scripts for css which actually cares about those...
You're missing a vital point. Regardless of overall efficiency, an electric vehicle can be powered by any form of electricity generation. I was thinking about mentioning it, but since nuclear energy only accounts to 17% of energy production worldwide it's a non issue for those living outside France or the US. So even if efficiency wouldn't count (which is only true if energy isn't limited at all) you still have to make sure that most electrons coming out of the socket are from nuclear energy. So based on a lot of ifs and cans it's really more efficient if you live in the right location.
Another point about hybrid cars: They consume less energy on short trips in cities, but on long trips on the highway the added weight for batteries etc makes them spend more energy than the average car consuming gasoline.
Now that's a surprise - wouldn't have guessed that someone from Greece would argue like this (on the other hand the last time I was in Greece was 19 years ago and I was quite young). Nowadays I only think about traffic in Greece when I read the accident statistics (no pun intended, really!). Guess I'm full of prejudices.
Since I haven't told you where I live: It's in the western district of the center of Berlin - part of the country the Smart was designed in (which makes me expect that it suits the needs of those dealing with it in Germany). Like I said I blame marketing for promoting to park backing the curb regardless of sense.
Here's a picture of my street in a state I've never seen myself (parking lane mostly empty): Eisenacher Str. Even though most Smart drivers should see the problem they love to park on the side heading west as described...
No, I'm actually comparing the length of a Smart to the average width of cars in Europe (much less than 2 m) and the US (think Hummer)
Most streets might be wide enough. If this is the case, I don't see any reason to complain. But on some older streets (like the one I happen to live at) those 50cm sticking out really make it impossible for two opposing cars to pass along. If someone parks there backing the curb it's pretty annoying and he should be fined just like someone leaving 50cm between car and curb. Lanes in the US are generally wider, so it's not a problem there.
It may still run on gas, but can park backing up to a curb Yes you can, but you'll be in the way just like someone parking right in the second lane. At least on very narrow streets in Europe (redundant?) this is the case. Might be different if you put it between two Hummers...
If I have to park next to one, I put my car close enough so that it's not possible for the smart guy to open the driver's door anymore. Not that I'm evil - just compensating for DC's marketing division telling them that it's a good idea to park like this.
They are not going to get the car that runs on water. They are rather suggesting another battery powered design which will be mostly charged by coal and gas plants at a degree of efficiency so modest that it's not even worth hitting the calculator. Another design without exhaust which actually wastes way more energy that any car driving on gasoline or diesel. The other projects mentioned in TFA are quite optimistic IMO. The combustion engine we all know is quite efficient (at least compared to anything which delivers electrical energy over wires). Using computers to control valves isn't really a new concept. Toyota and Bosch among others developed such systems in the 80's and they are in wide use nowadays. Ironically added weight mostly made up the savings in fuel...
Because of Europe's hunger for diesel fuel, refineries are already doing everything they can to raise the percentage of diesel which leaves their facilities. There is a limit on diesel produced per unit of oil and we are already extremely close to it. Biodiesel might compensate high demand for a while, but keep in mind that higher demand for products able to form biodiesel might have severe consequences on prices in the supermarket.
Coming from Germany I like TDI engines, but IMO they won't solve any environmental problems. They are - just like diesel engines in general - cheaper in some countries if you drive a lot.
Slashdot Mirror
I see two problems here:
Communist countries can form empires as well. While it's not really in line with their former propaganda, the SU exploited countries within their sphere.
If you look at the richest countries in the world some might have been empires during their history, but the benefits are long gone and they perform nevertheless. Spain for example once was a formidable empire, but when it was over they didn't do so well and at least at the end of the Franco era they were really behind compared to other western countries. IIRC they are #7 of the G8 and their success can't be attributed to colonialism or being a former empire.
In my opinion terms like empire and capitalism don't have much in common.
Not that it would make much of a difference - in the end most of the instruction set won't be used by programmers and especially compilers (CISC vs. RISC anyone?). But to get back to the topic: The overhead caused by upwards compatibility isn't that big after all. Problems a normal user experiences are not caused by bad hardware design nowadays.
Their new strategy obviously is to make it as hard to implement for OSS-projects as it can get. The specs are several thousand pages long!
It's a step in the right direction, but that doesn't make it a good standard. From an idealistic point of view it would be much better to reject it in favor of a clean and functional design.
They will abandon the traditional MS update path as soon as customers don't pay attention to it anymore. New versions of DX have worked quite well for all sides for quite a while (e.g. Max Payne) and I can perfectly understand why those companies actually writing the games are quite savy to make the first step. To be honest I don't know anyone buying cutting edge gaming equipment who has a clue about what is really happening inside of his box.
One guy told me recently that he's getting rid of his current SLI setup because if he plays a game and watches a video on a second screen at the same time some frames are lost on the video side. Not that anyone would care to watch a video while playing a game, but for this reason he's spending more money on upgrades this year than I invest on a new computer every ~3 years. No surprise that companies spend more time serving his needs, even though most of his investments in hardware are highly irrational...
it's more like a million Redmond developers are still doing what they did yesterday and the marketing department has official confirmation that their formal stategy is still very efficient since we still see it in the news.
The only thing I'm wondering about is what they are planing while we are discussing special agreements between Novell and MS for example...
I was just about to write something similar before I read your comment and though I had basically the same idea I started to wonder: Can a perfect price be determined if the product is available for free? Right now it works the other way around than how you described it: People buy music if they are not able to download it for free (because it's too rare to be on a torrent site for example). Since there's a price cap in this case it gets even more complicated.
On the other hand I quite like a pricing model in which people pay more for really popular songs. This would be an opportunity especially for open minded people interested in music. For example I often buy CD's and box sets from artists which where cool when my parents where young and it annoys me that they usually are in the higher price range just because the normal fan is older and has more money than the average student.
To be fair online translations have gotten better over the years. I'm still smiling when I think about yahoo's translation of the clinton report. It was a totally differnt story in the German version, but quite entertaining: Monica Lewinsky performing "mouth-gender" (Mundgeschlecht - oral sex) and the involvement of a family called "Construction-Parts" (Familie Bauteile - no clue what the original said) are among the highlights I still remember.
Computer translations are still full of mistakes, but it's getting better over the years. Those services really help nowadays in case nobody capable of translating is around.
We are talking Europe here, so you'd have to move the decimal point at least 2 digits to the left regarding GWB...
I don't know where you are from, but you are obviously better at reading the beginning of a sentence than reading its end. I usually don't reply to AC's, but this time it might look like AC has a point, so let's make sure nobody will find parent reasonable anymore:
I didn't say that people with computer skills would prefer to use preinstalled apps. I was simply assuming that more people in the US install OS's even if they don't know anything about it. This isn't a bad thing at all because those people will archive more themselves in the future. It's the way noobs become experts. I simply believe that a lack of tech affinity explains why so many people in Europe tend to ask someone to set up a system for them (which leads to lots of Firefox installations).
However, I should have known that this discussion would only result in hatred from both sides of the pond. First negative mod-point in my life...
One aspect I wonder about since some time is the percentage of active users who visit SL as part of their profession. There is no doubt that most newspapers in the world covered SL in at least one story. In order to do so the editors had to get accounts. Add people working for governments, NGO's, the media in general and marketing departments of many major companies.
All those people don't have any interest in SL itself, but in the potential it offers to their respective organizations. It may be close to impossible to find numbers on this, but I'm convinced that this particular user base makes a difference which should be taken into account when looking at the stats.
So this means that those US programmers or software engineers have found positions which are more beneficial to them? If they are rare they'll get a higher wage than they "deserve" and if there are too many of them they won't get a fair share for their workforce. Is there some special reason why programmers in the US aren't paid properly? Since Canada isn't especially famous for cheap labour I start to wonder if there are some other reasons for MS's choice.
To give you a (slightly) linked example: It's like criticizing a chess program for not having calculated the best way to win in any kind of situation on an entire board.
This is not circular reasoning at all: Everyone rates information based on prior experience. Do you believe the guy making up crazy stuff more than someone who is right most of the time? Traditionally we judge a lot based on the reputation of the source. It's actually a very effective way to decide...
Maybe they perceive them as good companies because they have tried all 3 of them and found out that MS' search engine doesn't deliver? MSN/live.com got better over the years, but as long as they are not as good as google they won't gain any marketshare except from those using IE and being unable to switch their default home page.
I agree that they are not the most beautiful solution for this problem. On the other hand I hate declarations such as "*/#..." even more because they are not even proprietary solutions, but plain hacks. Those Tags sometimes even solve problems which are Firefox related. I recently had to give Firefox users a link to a printable version of pictures displayed in flash - Firefox justs cuts them in half when printing, even though they are displayed correctly on screen. IMHO it's better to define two stylesheets than to just fill one with CSS code which two browsers will interpret differently...
However, if Safari and Opera are in the mix, this solution won't work. On the other hand I don't know of any website using scripts for css which actually cares about those...
Another point about hybrid cars: They consume less energy on short trips in cities, but on long trips on the highway the added weight for batteries etc makes them spend more energy than the average car consuming gasoline.
Now that's a surprise - wouldn't have guessed that someone from Greece would argue like this (on the other hand the last time I was in Greece was 19 years ago and I was quite young). Nowadays I only think about traffic in Greece when I read the accident statistics (no pun intended, really!). Guess I'm full of prejudices.
Since I haven't told you where I live: It's in the western district of the center of Berlin - part of the country the Smart was designed in (which makes me expect that it suits the needs of those dealing with it in Germany). Like I said I blame marketing for promoting to park backing the curb regardless of sense.
Here's a picture of my street in a state I've never seen myself (parking lane mostly empty): Eisenacher Str.
Even though most Smart drivers should see the problem they love to park on the side heading west as described...
No, I'm actually comparing the length of a Smart to the average width of cars in Europe (much less than 2 m) and the US (think Hummer)
Most streets might be wide enough. If this is the case, I don't see any reason to complain. But on some older streets (like the one I happen to live at) those 50cm sticking out really make it impossible for two opposing cars to pass along. If someone parks there backing the curb it's pretty annoying and he should be fined just like someone leaving 50cm between car and curb.
Lanes in the US are generally wider, so it's not a problem there.
If I have to park next to one, I put my car close enough so that it's not possible for the smart guy to open the driver's door anymore. Not that I'm evil - just compensating for DC's marketing division telling them that it's a good idea to park like this.
They are not going to get the car that runs on water. They are rather suggesting another battery powered design which will be mostly charged by coal and gas plants at a degree of efficiency so modest that it's not even worth hitting the calculator. Another design without exhaust which actually wastes way more energy that any car driving on gasoline or diesel. The other projects mentioned in TFA are quite optimistic IMO. The combustion engine we all know is quite efficient (at least compared to anything which delivers electrical energy over wires). Using computers to control valves isn't really a new concept. Toyota and Bosch among others developed such systems in the 80's and they are in wide use nowadays. Ironically added weight mostly made up the savings in fuel...
Because of Europe's hunger for diesel fuel, refineries are already doing everything they can to raise the percentage of diesel which leaves their facilities. There is a limit on diesel produced per unit of oil and we are already extremely close to it. Biodiesel might compensate high demand for a while, but keep in mind that higher demand for products able to form biodiesel might have severe consequences on prices in the supermarket.
Coming from Germany I like TDI engines, but IMO they won't solve any environmental problems. They are - just like diesel engines in general - cheaper in some countries if you drive a lot.
you are trying to make fun of this, but It's easy to fool the untrained eye.