Geeze, no, it absolutely doesn't. Shared memory is one of the possible mechanisms, but it's certainly not the only one. You can do interprocess communication between processes running on different machines, on different architectures, on different continents, ferchrissake!
Unless you call the data itself "memory", in which case I suggest you should take up plastering, since computers are clearly too complex for you (no insult to plasterers intended, wonderful people, wonderful people!)
There are various studies showing that women make less than men for the same jobs, and this is blatant discrimination
I haven't seen those studies, so I don't know what methodology they're using. I have seen numbers like 70% bandied about (women being paid 70% of the amount men get for equal work).
So my question is: if that's true, why would any businesses bother hiring men at all? If you can get the same work by hiring just women and paying them 30% less (or even 10%) you have a crushing advantage over the competition, especially in low margin businesses. I can't believe all employers (including women business owners and hiring managers) are uniformly sexist. I'd expect the market to force the equalization of pay to work. So why the contradiction?
Wouldn't they be interesting in finding out what might happen to paying customers when they buy the product and try to upgrade?
You misunderstood the article. MS is asking existing beta testers who already have installed a previous Win 7 build, not to upgrade from the old build to the new version. This is not the scenario paying customers will face: they'll upgrade from Vista or maybe XP, not from a beta Win7 build.
Yeah, there's a huge problem with the Turing Test, which is that you have to distinguish between a computer and a person drawn from the pool of humans intelligent and aware enough to have learned to speak and use a keyboard.
Unfortunately, as YouTube (and even/.) comments demonstrate, there is no lower limit to the intellectual capacity of a person who is still capable of speaking and using a keyboard.
It isn't a problem at all: the Turing test is not supposed to demonstrate that the machine is a rocket scientist. The test succeeds if the person conducting it can't reliably distinguish between the machine and the human. Just find human subjects whose intelligence is comparable to the machine being tested. For example, running it on the typical Slashbot, you can successfully prove the intelligence of toasters.
You know what? Fuck Mozilla in the ear for putting that shit in all capital letters. There is no reason to do so, unless you actively want people to not read and understand it.
Actually it's a legal requirement: under the Uniform Commercial Code, some items in a contract/license, like warranties or disclaimers, must be conspicuous. CAPITALS MAKE THEM SO.
We all know that Evolution and Gravity are just theories and there's no concrete evidence that they exist. Okay? We also need to teach "Intelligent Downward Pull".
A face or a finger are a claim of identity that still needs authentication with some form of secure credential, e.g. a password.
Yup, it's Lenovo et al.'s mistake, for using face recognition for both identification and authentication, The two functions are different, and should remain separate. Via Schneier's Cryptogram, here's a good article explaining why merging them is a bad idea
Retail takes some 50% cut. Other middlemen, another 30%. The actual cost of production is like 5-10% of the retail price. I've seen your $10 USB hubs I've bought for 3PLN (that is $1) in retail in Poland. That is including tax, shipping to Polish retailer, and a bunch of other fees after they left the hands of the manufacturer. So, yes, the margins are ENORMOUS.
But you're wrong in assuming that the x% + y% plus whatnot are just profiteering. Yes, the manufacturing cost may be relatively small compared to the retail cost, but the difference is not all due to markups. More expenses are required in order to get the manufactured product to the consumer: transport, warehousing, salespeople, the logistics of moving the things arouns, loss on damaged goods, and so on. Even if you set up Costco-style warehouses, there is still a cost that needs to be passed on to the customer.
Without those cries, nothing will get migrated. It's the way things have to be
That would be fine if the cries were targeted at OEMs and hardware manufacturers who don't get their 64 bit act together. But instead they'll be targeted at Microsoft, and slashbots, who should (no, scratch that, who do know better) will still gleefully blame Microsoft.
It seems appropriate to bash here as this is about technology and not fluff posing as technology.
Certainly not: how many of the criticisms you saw were based on the technical merits of the product? At the time I read this, there were none. The time when/. was a mainly technical forum has long passed. Now/. is just an interactive version of Wired, minus the glossy photographs - lots of noise, very little substance.
Hidden Markov models are an extremely powerful statistical modeling technique that has many uses across many domains. Why, in God's name, did they need to apply it to music, rather than something else?
Geeze, yeah, what's with this concept of expanding the use of powerful known tools to new areas and problems? What if this catches on? Won't somebody think of the children?
The "data" can be an URL, vCard or phone number (or e-mail address). I'd say it is less limited than the Microsoft approach.
OTOH, the data on the server can be updated, while the contents of the tag don't have to change; this expands the usefulness of the tags to lots of new areas - like the flight delays example in previous posts. Or imagine you generate your "business card" tag - you can give it to your contacts and won't need to worry about obsolete info if you can change your job title, address or phone number.
Apple had a viable, easy-to-use operating system at the same time. It eventually became outdated, yet it had a lot going for it including some nice killer apps (desktop publishing for one). You can't simply shrug that off as 'people just liked Windows better' unless you know what you're talking about
Well, since you mention knowing what you're talking about, you're igoring the most important factors: first, the fact that the PC platform was so open: you could buy PC compatibles from myriads of vendors, in any configuration you wanted, and with any peripherals you wanted. With the exception of a short period, Apple didn't allow cloning at all, so your choices were basically whatever models they were selling at the moment. With PCs you could update your computer yourself, with extra RAM, new hard drives, a bevy of expansion cards, and more tweaks that any geek could dream of. Apple's machines were not easily extensible, and some models lacked basic functionality (for example, the initial model had no hard drive nor the means to attach one easily. Apple machines were underpowered for business use (ignore the fans' tortured argumentation about Altivec or similar things). While the competition in the PC world pushed the PC performance and innovation, Apple kept delivering relatively low performance machines, at premium prices (which they still do, IMO): for example, the first 32 bit Apple, based on the 68020 was launched a year after the first 386 PC.
For programmers, the development on PCs was always easier (for example, many more programmers were familiar with C/C++ than wih Objective C), and the tools were more varied and generally better. This led to a wide market of third party vendors, and a profusion of PC softwre. The lack of performance, coupled with the lack of expandability also limited the growth of games on Apple machines. The ubiquity of Windows, and the importance Microsoft gave to backward compatibility also helped: if you wrote your app with a bit of care, it would run on most of this variety of computers, whatever hardware they had, and whether they were running Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95 or maybe even DOS.
So yes, I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "people liked Windows better".
Now they make money from the ads on Slashdot and related sites, and sell SourceForge Enterprise Edition software to big companies.
I think SourceForge, Inc. (previously VA Linux Systems, nee VA Research) has actually sold the rights to the software (which software, in a funny example of "do as I say, not as I do", they had switched to a proprietary license). SourceForge, Inc. also runs the sourceforge.net code repository. Given the vocal advocacy on their web properties (like Slashdot or Linux.com), I find it ironic that sourceforge.net uses another proprietary license for their rights to the contents you put there.
MSFT reorganizes every other year(at least for the past 6. Keeping track of exactly what is in each division and where that money comes from is a full time job unto itself.
Full time job? It takes all of five minutes to find the financial report on the net and read 5 numbers. Now, understanding them may indeed take longer
It doesn't matter how much you earn, it is how much you are losing.
You're confused here: the numbers I was quoting were *net* income, that is revenue minus expenses. To make it really easy for you: MSFT is *not* losing money. 4 out of 5 divisions are profitable, and the company is very profitable overall. Understand now?
looking at 3 months means nothing. Looking at a year is okay, Looking at everything is s start. MSFT doubled the price of Windows when Vista came out yet their income only partially increased. That mean less overall sales. Slower sales mans that they are losing leverage.
Geeze, you can't get it right even when you make things up, can you? First, MSFT didn't "double the price of Windows"; second, even if they did, their income would indeed only "partially increase", because their income isn't all coming from Windows. They make lots of income from Office, SQL Server and others, and you didn't hallucinate the price for *those* doubling.
From the math it sounds like you are going to the US government or Wall Street school of economics. it doesn't matter how much you lose as long as you are using big numbers.
At least I know the difference between income and loss, which seems to be a big mystery to you.
actually that is where you are wrong. For every million dollars ms spends on R&D they get something like $100 back.
And do you have any numbers actually supporting this?
Nearly every other division of MSFT is losing money with the exception of windows and office
You know, it may help to look things up before posting: it's so easy to Google for "Microsoft financial report", and it would really make you sound less stupid. Have a look here. MSFT has 5 divisions; 3 are big money makers (Client, makers of Windows, Business - owners of Office, and Server and Tools, mainly selling SQL Server), Entertainment and devices (mostly known around here for the XBox), made less money (only 178 millions in the 3 month ending Sept 30), but was still in the black, and only one division, Online Services, actually lost money (no surprise there).
If you marginalize either one of those products MSFt goes bankrupt in less than 10years.
You're so wrong it's not even funny. Look at the numbers again; in the 3 months ending September 30, the consolidated income for MSFT was $5999 million. The biggest earner was the Business division, with an operating income of $3311 million. Even if you completely remove all revenue from Office while still keeping all the related expenses (research, development, sales and so on), MSFT still ends up with an income of more than 2 billion in the three months, or 8+ billion anually. You're so far removed from reality I have to ask: doesn't it hurt to pull so much weird stuff from your nether regions?
And how is the build process for a CPAN module going to automate this if VC isn't installed?
Not a very good question: first, on Windows, most stuff is distributed as binaries. There are lots of tools and facilities for creating installers; compiling source is not a requirement. Anybody who plans to distribute his product in source format to normal Windows users, expecting them to build and install it, has already failed.
Second, if somebody needs to install perl modules, they belong to the "knowledgeable" subset of users I alluded to in another post. They know the module needs to be compiled, they know to go and download Microsoft's free express compilers, or the proper version of GCC, and they are probably capable to handle minor installation and/or compile time issues. But if you go playing with perl without knowing what a compiler is, all I can say is well, lots of luck.
There happen to be many millions more losing than winning from this game. Those many millions have voting power, regardless of the lobbies.
While I agree with your original point, I'd like to note the faulty assumption here: you assume people vote in their self-interest. I think it's very much not the case, as recent history shows us. Even a major event, like a war or the economic upheaval of the last few months won't convince some folks.
But, in my opinion, a C compiler is more important than much of the other crap they currently distribute.
Spoken like a developer:). But you have to consider that the vast majority Windows users don't know (or care about) C. The comparatively few ones knowledgeable enough to need a compiler are knowledgeable enough to download it (with the exception, apparently, of the grand-grand parent). For the others a media player, or a simple mail/news client, or a simple paint program, or even Minesweeper are more important than a C compiler.
Right, and MS never bloats installations with bundled stuff that the vast majority of users won't ever need?
Your post makes no sense. If Microsoft bundles other things they should also bundle gigabytes of C++? This doesn't follow in any logical way, would make no business sense and would inconvenience most users. Can you even name something comparable that Microsoft bundles with Windows? Most stuff they ship with Windows is very minimal, just enough to get you started; I don't believe any of the components not strictly related to the OS itself came even within an order of magnitude of the size and complexity of a Visual Studio installation. So, the question becomes: did you stop for a moment to think, or did some subcortical Microsoft bashing reflex twich, just as uncontrollable and as pointless as a knee jerk?
Slashdot Mirror
You realize that IPC implies shared memory right?
Geeze, no, it absolutely doesn't. Shared memory is one of the possible mechanisms, but it's certainly not the only one. You can do interprocess communication between processes running on different machines, on different architectures, on different continents, ferchrissake!
Unless you call the data itself "memory", in which case I suggest you should take up plastering, since computers are clearly too complex for you (no insult to plasterers intended, wonderful people, wonderful people!)
There are various studies showing that women make less than men for the same jobs, and this is blatant discrimination
I haven't seen those studies, so I don't know what methodology they're using. I have seen numbers like 70% bandied about (women being paid 70% of the amount men get for equal work).
So my question is: if that's true, why would any businesses bother hiring men at all? If you can get the same work by hiring just women and paying them 30% less (or even 10%) you have a crushing advantage over the competition, especially in low margin businesses. I can't believe all employers (including women business owners and hiring managers) are uniformly sexist. I'd expect the market to force the equalization of pay to work. So why the contradiction?
Maybe they want to buy Slashdot - but they overestimate the price, I'm sure the owners would let it go for a tenner or two...
Wouldn't they be interesting in finding out what might happen to paying customers when they buy the product and try to upgrade?
You misunderstood the article. MS is asking existing beta testers who already have installed a previous Win 7 build, not to upgrade from the old build to the new version. This is not the scenario paying customers will face: they'll upgrade from Vista or maybe XP, not from a beta Win7 build.
I remember Arthur C Clarke saying that Sci Fi is something that could happen, while fantasy is something that could never happen.
Pfft, what does he know? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Yeah, there's a huge problem with the Turing Test, which is that you have to distinguish between a computer and a person drawn from the pool of humans intelligent and aware enough to have learned to speak and use a keyboard.
Unfortunately, as YouTube (and even /.) comments demonstrate, there is no lower limit to the intellectual capacity of a person who is still capable of speaking and using a keyboard.
It isn't a problem at all: the Turing test is not supposed to demonstrate that the machine is a rocket scientist. The test succeeds if the person conducting it can't reliably distinguish between the machine and the human. Just find human subjects whose intelligence is comparable to the machine being tested. For example, running it on the typical Slashbot, you can successfully prove the intelligence of toasters.
You know what? Fuck Mozilla in the ear for putting that shit in all capital letters. There is no reason to do so, unless you actively want people to not read and understand it.
Actually it's a legal requirement: under the Uniform Commercial Code, some items in a contract/license, like warranties or disclaimers, must be conspicuous. CAPITALS MAKE THEM SO.
We all know that Evolution and Gravity are just theories and there's no concrete evidence that they exist. Okay? We also need to teach "Intelligent Downward Pull".
Already done
A face or a finger are a claim of identity that still needs authentication with some form of secure credential, e.g. a password.
Yup, it's Lenovo et al.'s mistake, for using face recognition for both identification and authentication, The two functions are different, and should remain separate. Via Schneier's Cryptogram, here's a good article explaining why merging them is a bad idea
Monty Python? Benny Hill? Blackadder? Douglas Adams? Rowan Atkinson?
Subtle innuendo has long been a staple of British humour
Benny Hill? Subtle innuendo? What are you, French?
Retail takes some 50% cut. Other middlemen, another 30%. The actual cost of production is like 5-10% of the retail price. I've seen your $10 USB hubs I've bought for 3PLN (that is $1) in retail in Poland. That is including tax, shipping to Polish retailer, and a bunch of other fees after they left the hands of the manufacturer. So, yes, the margins are ENORMOUS.
But you're wrong in assuming that the x% + y% plus whatnot are just profiteering. Yes, the manufacturing cost may be relatively small compared to the retail cost, but the difference is not all due to markups. More expenses are required in order to get the manufactured product to the consumer: transport, warehousing, salespeople, the logistics of moving the things arouns, loss on damaged goods, and so on. Even if you set up Costco-style warehouses, there is still a cost that needs to be passed on to the customer.
Without those cries, nothing will get migrated. It's the way things have to be
That would be fine if the cries were targeted at OEMs and hardware manufacturers who don't get their 64 bit act together. But instead they'll be targeted at Microsoft, and slashbots, who should (no, scratch that, who do know better) will still gleefully blame Microsoft.
It seems appropriate to bash here as this is about technology and not fluff posing as technology.
Certainly not: how many of the criticisms you saw were based on the technical merits of the product? At the time I read this, there were none. The time when /. was a mainly technical forum has long passed. Now /. is just an interactive version of Wired, minus the glossy photographs - lots of noise, very little substance.
Hidden Markov models are an extremely powerful statistical modeling technique that has many uses across many domains. Why, in God's name, did they need to apply it to music, rather than something else?
Geeze, yeah, what's with this concept of expanding the use of powerful known tools to new areas and problems? What if this catches on? Won't somebody think of the children?
The "data" can be an URL, vCard or phone number (or e-mail address). I'd say it is less limited than the Microsoft approach.
OTOH, the data on the server can be updated, while the contents of the tag don't have to change; this expands the usefulness of the tags to lots of new areas - like the flight delays example in previous posts. Or imagine you generate your "business card" tag - you can give it to your contacts and won't need to worry about obsolete info if you can change your job title, address or phone number.
Apple had a viable, easy-to-use operating system at the same time. It eventually became outdated, yet it had a lot going for it including some nice killer apps (desktop publishing for one). You can't simply shrug that off as 'people just liked Windows better' unless you know what you're talking about
Well, since you mention knowing what you're talking about, you're igoring the most important factors: first, the fact that the PC platform was so open: you could buy PC compatibles from myriads of vendors, in any configuration you wanted, and with any peripherals you wanted. With the exception of a short period, Apple didn't allow cloning at all, so your choices were basically whatever models they were selling at the moment. With PCs you could update your computer yourself, with extra RAM, new hard drives, a bevy of expansion cards, and more tweaks that any geek could dream of. Apple's machines were not easily extensible, and some models lacked basic functionality (for example, the initial model had no hard drive nor the means to attach one easily. Apple machines were underpowered for business use (ignore the fans' tortured argumentation about Altivec or similar things). While the competition in the PC world pushed the PC performance and innovation, Apple kept delivering relatively low performance machines, at premium prices (which they still do, IMO): for example, the first 32 bit Apple, based on the 68020 was launched a year after the first 386 PC.
For programmers, the development on PCs was always easier (for example, many more programmers were familiar with C/C++ than wih Objective C), and the tools were more varied and generally better. This led to a wide market of third party vendors, and a profusion of PC softwre. The lack of performance, coupled with the lack of expandability also limited the growth of games on Apple machines. The ubiquity of Windows, and the importance Microsoft gave to backward compatibility also helped: if you wrote your app with a bit of care, it would run on most of this variety of computers, whatever hardware they had, and whether they were running Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95 or maybe even DOS.
So yes, I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "people liked Windows better".
Only brain-damaged filesystems need to be defragged (FAT32, NTFS)
You, sir, are absolutely correct; and that explains why there are absolutely no Linux defrag tools.
Now they make money from the ads on Slashdot and related sites, and sell SourceForge Enterprise Edition software to big companies.
I think SourceForge, Inc. (previously VA Linux Systems, nee VA Research) has actually sold the rights to the software (which software, in a funny example of "do as I say, not as I do", they had switched to a proprietary license). SourceForge, Inc. also runs the sourceforge.net code repository. Given the vocal advocacy on their web properties (like Slashdot or Linux.com), I find it ironic that sourceforge.net uses another proprietary license for their rights to the contents you put there.
MSFT reorganizes every other year(at least for the past 6. Keeping track of exactly what is in each division and where that money comes from is a full time job unto itself.
Full time job? It takes all of five minutes to find the financial report on the net and read 5 numbers. Now, understanding them may indeed take longer
It doesn't matter how much you earn, it is how much you are losing.
You're confused here: the numbers I was quoting were *net* income, that is revenue minus expenses. To make it really easy for you: MSFT is *not* losing money. 4 out of 5 divisions are profitable, and the company is very profitable overall. Understand now?
looking at 3 months means nothing. Looking at a year is okay, Looking at everything is s start. MSFT doubled the price of Windows when Vista came out yet their income only partially increased. That mean less overall sales. Slower sales mans that they are losing leverage.
Geeze, you can't get it right even when you make things up, can you? First, MSFT didn't "double the price of Windows"; second, even if they did, their income would indeed only "partially increase", because their income isn't all coming from Windows. They make lots of income from Office, SQL Server and others, and you didn't hallucinate the price for *those* doubling.
From the math it sounds like you are going to the US government or Wall Street school of economics. it doesn't matter how much you lose as long as you are using big numbers.
At least I know the difference between income and loss, which seems to be a big mystery to you.
actually that is where you are wrong. For every million dollars ms spends on R&D they get something like $100 back.
And do you have any numbers actually supporting this?
Nearly every other division of MSFT is losing money with the exception of windows and office
You know, it may help to look things up before posting: it's so easy to Google for "Microsoft financial report", and it would really make you sound less stupid. Have a look here. MSFT has 5 divisions; 3 are big money makers (Client, makers of Windows, Business - owners of Office, and Server and Tools, mainly selling SQL Server), Entertainment and devices (mostly known around here for the XBox), made less money (only 178 millions in the 3 month ending Sept 30), but was still in the black, and only one division, Online Services, actually lost money (no surprise there).
If you marginalize either one of those products MSFt goes bankrupt in less than 10years.
You're so wrong it's not even funny. Look at the numbers again; in the 3 months ending September 30, the consolidated income for MSFT was $5999 million. The biggest earner was the Business division, with an operating income of $3311 million. Even if you completely remove all revenue from Office while still keeping all the related expenses (research, development, sales and so on), MSFT still ends up with an income of more than 2 billion in the three months, or 8+ billion anually. You're so far removed from reality I have to ask: doesn't it hurt to pull so much weird stuff from your nether regions?
And how is the build process for a CPAN module going to automate this if VC isn't installed?
Not a very good question: first, on Windows, most stuff is distributed as binaries. There are lots of tools and facilities for creating installers; compiling source is not a requirement. Anybody who plans to distribute his product in source format to normal Windows users, expecting them to build and install it, has already failed.
Second, if somebody needs to install perl modules, they belong to the "knowledgeable" subset of users I alluded to in another post. They know the module needs to be compiled, they know to go and download Microsoft's free express compilers, or the proper version of GCC, and they are probably capable to handle minor installation and/or compile time issues. But if you go playing with perl without knowing what a compiler is, all I can say is well, lots of luck.
Hmm... as sheeps, not as ships of course
It's obvious you never tried to command sheep. The damned things just won't listen!
There happen to be many millions more losing than winning from this game. Those many millions have voting power, regardless of the lobbies.
While I agree with your original point, I'd like to note the faulty assumption here: you assume people vote in their self-interest. I think it's very much not the case, as recent history shows us. Even a major event, like a war or the economic upheaval of the last few months won't convince some folks.
But, in my opinion, a C compiler is more important than much of the other crap they currently distribute.
:). But you have to consider that the vast majority Windows users don't know (or care about) C. The comparatively few ones knowledgeable enough to need a compiler are knowledgeable enough to download it (with the exception, apparently, of the grand-grand parent). For the others a media player, or a simple mail/news client, or a simple paint program, or even Minesweeper are more important than a C compiler.
Spoken like a developer
Right, and MS never bloats installations with bundled stuff that the vast majority of users won't ever need?
Your post makes no sense. If Microsoft bundles other things they should also bundle gigabytes of C++? This doesn't follow in any logical way, would make no business sense and would inconvenience most users. Can you even name something comparable that Microsoft bundles with Windows? Most stuff they ship with Windows is very minimal, just enough to get you started; I don't believe any of the components not strictly related to the OS itself came even within an order of magnitude of the size and complexity of a Visual Studio installation. So, the question becomes: did you stop for a moment to think, or did some subcortical Microsoft bashing reflex twich, just as uncontrollable and as pointless as a knee jerk?