This is a pretty vague article, with hardly any specifics. It doesn't state which OS these companies might be using:
"The makers are taking a variety of approaches, the paper said. Gateway Inc (GTW) is building a line with no Microsoft software whatsoever, and may jointly market it with America Online, Inc (AOL), which recently invested $800 million in Gateway, people familiar with the plans were quoted as saying."
While I wish I could say linux would be the obvious choice, I don't think that would be the case with these two companies. They're not going to go for an open-source OS just because they don't like microsoft. I think they'd rather give themselves a better cut of profits while keeping prices low, which means they'll probably go for some proprietary OS that they control. For all I know AOL may have made it's own proprietary OS. Somehow that idea doesn't impress me much, even if it is cheaper. I don't know if companies like Dell and gateway "mark-up" the windows OS at all, but given the low margins on computers, I doubt it matters anyway. Sure, you can make money selling a linux OS as well, but how much will it bring you when you are selling low end machines? By using their own proprietary OS they can remove a factor of control from microsoft and increase their profit margins while they're at it. Linux would only remove the microsoft factor. They'll just have to hope microsoft doesn't threaten them for this, which I wouldn't count on. Of course I could be totally wrong. I hope I am:)
ignore my other dumb post, I misread a 4 sentance article somehow...
So basically this page that should be a service is more of a self-promoting marketing device. Suprising? No. Unethical? Probably.
*sigh* I suppose you could say that they have to make money, blah blah blah...but hasn't lowest-common-denomonator-carpet-bombing marketing gone far enough? Crap like this gets drilled into your head every day. I can hardly watch TV without my mind going numb. The web has become almost the same. Fortunatly I know where to go on the web where crap like this doesn't exist. Thats a Good Thing. The web can't be totally controlled with marketing like most other media outlets.
This guy really, really, really pisses me off. If the article is correct, he really is trying to patent the actual "source code" of human DNA. Patenting naturally occuring information should be illegal, (if it isn't already). I beleive it is, but don't think that will stop the patent office from giving it to him unless we fight against it.
Look at the patents they've been giving out recently, the amazon 1 click patent is absurd. I also read an article a few months back (can't remember the source, I'll post it if I find it) about an American medical company that was patenting herbal remedies discovered by indigenous tribes in South America. Just as absurd as the amazon patent, this one gives the medical company the rights to these remedies in America even though someone else discovered them.
It is obvious that the patent office needs an overhaul, but I see a bigger issue here. Our level of technology is becoming increasingly incompatible with our eceonomic system, political system, and cultural values. I'm referring here to the potential harm we can do to ourselves.
We're only opening the door right now to world of biotechnology (or is it pandora's box), but being able to "design" your children to DNA "fixes" for certain diseases, is in the near future, definetly the next century.
So what features do we see in our political and economic system? Greed, and a lack of accountability. Cultural values? Materialism, sefishness, worship of physical attributes (like beauty, etc). I'm not saying that the world is totally focused on these things, but lets face it, it's not that far from it.
So how have these functions of our society affected our world when you look at the technology we have? I could name off dozens, but I'll list a few examples. Take Agricultural technology. Somewhere during this century, we basically had the ability to feed everyone in the world enough food to keep them healthy, but of course this doesn't happen. Some farmers' fields aren't planted to keep the prices up (gov't subsidies....you get paid to not plant your fields, now thats efficiency for you). Or you can't send food to countries that are official enemies of the united states. In Russia, which now has a somewhat capitalist economic system, food is widely available, but of course the problem now is that no one has enough money to buy it, except the rich. I can apply similar arguments to housing, clothing, and medicine. The book 1984 has a few pages on this same idea, that we have the technology to end all the worlds problems right now, yet we haven't achieved it for some reason. This is in a book that the main character Winston reads, which he beleives was written by a "leader of the underground" movement (can't remember his name, shame on me). Anyway, if you haven't read 1984, you should. It's a good remedy for political apathy.
How many technologies are used to simply harm humanity (guns)? Or have had side affects that weren't known because they weren't tested enough, over covered up when they were learned (cigarettes)? Or technologies that were tested on the general population, by an unaccountable entity (nuclear radiation)?
So when we have the ability in the near future to manipulate the fabric of life, what are we going to do with it? Fix humanity's problems, or exasperate them? If we follow the road we're on now, I think you know the answer. Playing with the fabric of life is simply too powerful and important to view it simply as a source of money. If you think the gap between the rich and poor is bad enough now, it can get a whole lot worse. We could have a whole elite class of people who are superior physically and mentally to the underclass who can't afford genetic treatments and modificaltions. Basically we could have a slave class and an elite class, with some absurd ratio of like 200:1. On top of that, the greed factor can play another role: unproven treatments being sold to the public. The reprecussions of this could be monsterous, from infertility, horribly mutated people, to death. This probably sounds like every sci-fi book you've ever read, but lets face it, is it really that improbable?
Speak out against this potential patent. The scenerio I spoke of above needs to be stopped before it gets started. Don't let individuals control the fate of humanity.
Usually I'm against anything the government does to "regulate" content of any medium, but this doesn't look like a content filter. However the article doesn't really state exactly what they are targeting...if the site requires you to enter demographic info before you can look at the site, then it does amount to content filtering. Personally I wouldn't want to look at any page that requires a lot of personal / demographic information up front, however.
But lets face it, most kids aren't smart enough to know any better until they reach a certain age. If I had kids I wouldn't want them giving away our address, email addresses, household income, etc. This age is different for everyone, which makes it important for parents to have the FINAL word on what their kids can or can't see, or what information to give out as is the case here. If a site falls into the category outlined in this bill, it could prompt the kid to have his parents enter a password, or some similar security measure. Hopefully parents would be able to disable a security measure like this, if they don't want to deal with it every 5 minutes and/or when the kid reaches an age where the parents think the kid is ready to decide for him/herself.
Somehow I doubt the gov't will allow this level of personal control, however. This bill is also vague, as are most bills related to technology, particularly relating to the internet. Thus if they try to sue a company over this, the bill probably won't stand up very well in court. It's too vague as to what specifically requires controls and how to go about implementing them, and what passes as a decent implementation.
you're right about that, something I overlooked (I don't keep up on console games nearly as much as I did when I was your age). That relates to what I said about the importance of software over hardware.
point 2)
you've got a point here as well. I did spend a lot of time playing 4 player mario kart and it was a lot of fun. The thing i don't like about it though is the TV res isnt that great to begin with, so when you have the screen divided into 4 its even worse, and small. Plus you can see wher everyone else is, which is a big drawback in certain games.
My "quake experiences" were on a t1 through a LAN. I didnt mention this because my post was getting way too long. Thus I had myself and my 4 friends on different computers, either beating each other or working together to beat some hapless fools online. It was HUGE fun, and still is. Half the time when we get together we'll start off talking about quake..."hey remember when I killed 10 guys with 1% health and still capped the flag?" etc. Of course a t1 through a LAN isn't common except in a college environment (maybe business if you can get away with it) but more and more people are getting braodband access in their house, and often have more than 1 computer around.
This article did a semi-decent job of analyzing the current and upcoming console offerings, I'm going to elaborate on a few points, and talk about the long term prospects for console systems, and how microsoft could become a big player.
Quality of Games vs. Hardware power of the system
Never, ever underestimate the power of the quality of available games for how far a system will go. The N64 is clearly superior to the playstation in terms of what it can do. But how many games were available for the nintendo when it came out? Only 2, and it took a long time for the better games the N64 had to come out. The article points this out, saying the intalled base of playstations shut out the N64. I'd take that to be about half the reason the playstation did so well. The other half was the fact that it had so many good games. Specifically, final fantasy 7. Square has to put out games to survive, and since the N64 took so long to come to the market, they had no choice but to develop for the playstation. That was a big loss for nintendo. FF7 by itself moved millions of units of playstations, even when the game came out a few years after the systems' initial release. Hardware is irrelevant compared to the actual game play quality of games. This is the real meat of the gaming industry. The fact that N64 used cartriges was also a big problem, which I'd say is also related to hardware. They understand this now, hopefully. It's too bad they never released that disk drive device (I can't remember its name), because I think it really could have helped them.
Financial resources of the companies involved, and experience in the video game industry.
Nintendo pretty much gets all it's revenue from it's current system in release. If they screw up the dolphin, they're just about done. The same goes for sega. They also have some revenue from arcade games, but that side of the gaming industry is a shadow of what it used to be. I'm not sure if sega does much else in other industries, but if they do it doesn't amount to much. Sony and Microsoft are another story. Microsoft basically has unlimited resources. Sony almost does. I know sony gets a huge amount of it's revenue off the playstation now, but even if they left the video game market all together, they'd still be one f'in huge company. In some ways this might work for nintendo and sega. With their backs against the wall, they might be able to use the pressure to put out really good systems. They both have a lot of experience in the industry as well. Sega already released their system, and they've done a much better job than they did on the saturn, in all respects. I don't think nintendo will make the same mistakes either. Microsoft doesn't know much of anything about console systems, but long term I don't think that matters, as I'll discuss a bit later.
Online gaming.
The article brushes this off, saying it is yet to be proven that consumers want this. This is true for console systems, because it isn't yet available, but will be shortly with the dreamcast. It has been thriving on the PC side however, ever since Quake was released. When I first played quake online, it was the biggest rush I've ever had from a video game. My desire to play 1 or 2 player console games went to 0 in a month. You just can't beat the social interaction, blowing off the head of someone's character who exisits in reality somewhere else, and playing against human intelligence. The future of video games IS TOTALLY IN ONLINE GAMING, in my opinion. Even with RPG's, with ultima online. It's just about as addicting as drugs. Every trend I see points twords this. Whichever company recognizes this first will win. Period.
Convergance of the PC and console systems.
This is where microsoft really comes into play. Console systems and PC's are converging faster than most people seem to realize. PC's have made great strides in graphics with 3d cards, and console systems have had huge increases in raw processing power. In 5 or 10 years, I see most video game systems running on a TV as the current cheap-PC with a high end grapahics card. Another post said micrsoft will flop on this front with the "x-box", any PC based system they come up with will cost too much, over the $200 price point you need to move a lot of units. But really, this limitation and the fact that TV resolutions are low are the only hurdles microsoft has to overcome, and this is only a matter of time. Plus these problems will go away without micrsoft having to put money into it itself. For one, the price points of the current high end and low end PC's have been decreasing steadily for several years, and in 5 to 7 years (maybe less) that low end PC with a good graphicas card will probably BE at that $200 price point. As far as resolution, once HDTV has a good market penetration (80% or so, that might be 10 or more years off, however), the problem is solved. PC systems can take over as the only video game system, sega, nintendo, and sony's proprietary architechure is no longer needed, and in comes microsoft with their proprietary OS, since most PC games are developed for windows. Yikes.
I think microsoft can sense this, hence we start hearing rumors about this "x-box". Good name, since right now it's a mystery and might as well be nothing more than some FUD tactic or marketing BS. But say it comes to market in the next year. It will probably flop, they have no experience in this area, and no one would play PC games on a low res TV anyway. But even if it does flop, it will give microsoft valueable experience in this industry, and once the other problems I mentioned are solved, the door will be wide open for them to come in and take over. DO NOT underestimate microsoft here. This a number of years down the road, but the more I think about this the more I see this scenario occuring.
"To compound the silliness of all this, the courts have held that no one but a patent attorney can really know what the scope of coverage of a patent claim is. Therefore, even the theoretical justification for absolute liability in patent law is not applicable to individuals who cannot afford to keep a small army of patent attorneys on retainer."
Straight from the lawyers mouth, here he basically admits (the way I see it anyway) that money is more important than the truth. I suppose everyone knows that anyway. It's fun to see a lawyer actually point that out, however:)
The patent system needs a total overhaul. Some of the patents that I see companies receiving actually scare me, for different reasons. I can think of a few.
One is the patent discussed here just a few days ago, amazon.com's one-click ordering. This process is so obvious (and seems like a natural evolution) that I could have written it up myself. If I ever order from some other company that uses a similar technique, I sure don't want to pay the royalties to amazon that filter down to me in the form of higher prices, for a process that is hardly novel.
Another involves the mapping of the human genome. The last time I heard anything about this it hadn't yet been patented, and I can't remember which companies were trying for it. Just the fact that this was even being considered scared the hell out of me. Information that is contained in nature should NEVER be patentable, and I don't care how much the investors are spending to map out our DNA. The potential misuse of this patent is staggering. This has no direct relation to OSS, I'm simply trying to point out how bad the patent system is.
This leads me to a question, actually. The idea of patents AFAIK is to promote ingenuity. However, this assumes that the main motivation of inventors is money. Are all people that shallow? Has any OSS been patented? Maybe it's obvious that the answer is no, because of the nature of OSS liscensing. On the other hand, if no OSS software has been patented, and some other company, say microsoft, comes along, and adopts some chunks of code for its own use....would this generally upset people in the OSS community? Or is any improvment in microsoft's software viewed as a Good Thing?
Just when I was starting to have some respect for apple...
Making decent computer products for the average person who doesn't know much about computers is A Good Thing. Then something like this happens, and you come back down to earth and realize they're just another corporation out to make boatloads of money:( Silly me for ever thinking otherwise...
This was probably said in the inital cancellation article, but isn't this false advertising? If I was a lawyer I'd be writing up some documents for a class action suit right now.
Personally I'd rank this twords the top of the dumbest marketing moves in the computer industry's history. If I were to rank all computer companies on some scale measuring "morals", this would shoot apple down twords hell right along with our other favorite company.
Maybe that view isn't fair though. If any other company had the clout of apple or microsoft, they'd be doing the same type of things that say "f#@% you" to the consumer (Indeed, quite a few do). It's the fault of society for allowing things to be run like they are. So when I see companies like netscape working on the gov't side in the anti-trust case, I don't have any more respect for them. If the roles were reversed, netscape would be no different than microsoft.
"two wrongs don't make a right"
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One for the Kids
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Of ourse this is true, no one argues with this, usually. My problem with the government, having committed more crimes than I can ever imagine, has NO CREDABILITY.
Our leaders in this country should be the most moral and intelligent people in the country, and the most commited to improving the lives of the average population. But no, they're commited to the most childlike philosophy of all...money. Token concern for the poor and the environment, education, the list goes on.
"Mommy, I want some candy right now or I'm gunna kick and scream!" So EXCUSE ME if I have no respect for the government who isn't much more mature than a child.
Don't get me wrong, there are some great things about this country. We have more freedom than people in most countries. What most people don't realize, is that this is because of the common man DEMANDING our basic rights as laid out in the constitution. Those in power never made a difference for social justice compared to the average citizens who tried to make a difference. Our government tries to make a stable society, but stable for who? The elite.
When slavery ended, it wasn't because Abraham Lincoln wanted it to, it was because people wrote anti-slavery papers/newsletters, educated the poulation, and DEMANDED it.
We don't have 40 hour work weeks and safe work conditions because rich company owners wanted it, it's because people unionized in the early 1900's and DEMANDED it.
When women were finally allowed to vote, it wasn't bacause the men in power wanted to share that power, it's because average women organized and DEMANDED it.
When civil rights bills were passed, it wasn't because Kennedy/LBJ/other presidents wanted it, it's because the civil rights movement DEMANDED it.
Many people who have been forgotten by history died for these causes, these are the people I have respect for, not the power elite.
So when the department of justice spouts off to kids about not causing trouble, this is what I think. When the government uses technology to subvert and control the population, I won't apologize for having no respect for them. Their track record gives them no moral authority to tell me whats right and wrong. No one has that authority because no is perfect. The government's track record just gives them a whole lot less that everyone else.
hahaha thats awesome....I didn't realize it was him who asked Kissinger that question. I wish we had people like that in the United States. I'll definatly try to find a transcript of this if I can...I hope slashdot posts a link to it.
A decent article, the old railroad companies was a good example. However there are some differences when comparing this to the linux/open source vs. microsoft/software companies.
Small, competitive companies with new ideas that are superior and cheaper aren't always able to topple the giant (actually I'd say it's uncommon). There are several ways to defeat it. One is FUD tactics, which is a marketing technique, and understood by everyone who reads slashdot.
The other techniques, however, linux seems to be immune to.
Cost of entry is minimal in the software industry. If I come up with a car thats runs on water, I can't simply build them in my garage and make a dent in car companies bottom line. I need big, big, cashola, more than what any venture capitalist could give me. Car companies know this, and will never develop this product either, why waste money on R&D when you can make just as much money off the public with the cars you sell now? Oil companies might make sure your operation never gets off the ground either, they might buy you out and run the company into the ground. It's different for software, however. You don't need a big manufacturing plant or fancy test equipment to write good code. You just need a computer for coding and an internet connection for distribution. Market exposure can be a problem, but word of mouth can be just as powerful. This is similar to what is happening to the record industry with mp3s, and will soon happen to the movie industry and publishing industry (to varying degrees, I won't get into that). Code is basically just a form of information, like movies and music. With the internet information can be reproduced and transmitted at an almost negligable price per copy. The means of production are taken away form the big companies, into the hands of everyone.
So maybe I'll just sell my idea to the car companies and make millions off it, or get bought out if I got enough money to make my manufacturing plant and make a dent in the car companies bottom line. This is something microsoft does as we all know.
We also know that linux can't be bought. This is point number two. I suppose microsoft could buy RedHat, but redhat doesn't own the rights to linux. It will always be available for free (or at least much cheaper than windows for some sort of "user friendly" version) because of this. Even if Linus sold the rights to the kernel to microsoft (does he actually own them? I'm not sure about that) linux is much more than the kernel, its the "loose" network of people around the world who contribute to it. These people can't and won't be formed into a capitalist corporation.
These are the reasons I consider linux, open source software, and the internet as such a huge threat to software companies, or any company that deals strictly with "information".
As usual, I am seeing the negative downside to this type of project. Anytime corporations do anything,
I notice they didn't explain what they meant by interactive content. I imagine this as watching Monday Night Football and being able to pull up stats on the players of the teams playing, etc. Well, hopefully it would go beyond that.
Anyway, I think corporations view this as just an e-commerce vehicle. Think about it...you're sitting there on your couch, you see a commecial for the product of the week, and on your screen you see a window that says "push button x on your remote to purchase". The company you purchase this "interactive service" from already has your credit card number and address, similar to setting up one-click purchasing on amazon.com. Think about it: THIS IS THE ULTIMATE IMPUSLE BUYING SYSTEM! YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO LEAVE YOUR COUCH TO WASTE YOUR MONEY! I'm sure marketers at corporations around the globe are sitting there in their little Dilbert style work cubes having orgasms just thinking about this. Same goes for credit card company executives as well.
I hope I'm wrong about this, but this country is built on greed and materialism, so this seems like the natural progression of this product.
It's interesting that netowrk solutions would directly apply the pacifica case directly to internet domains. Actually it doesn't suprise me. They're more interested with not offending anyone (if they allowed the words) because they could lead to lawsuits, loss of sales, etc (are they really a not-for-profit organization? I find that hard to beleive). Of course on the other hand this brought on the lawsuit in the other direction anyway.
The "George Carlin" case was 26 years ago. I think it's time to reexamine how important it is to censor these words. When you can see sex and murder on TV, how important is it to ban the word "piss"?
The fact that the Central District of California US District Court owns some of these domains is also interesting. How did the court get to register fuck.com? Did they threaten network solutions? I don't understand it. Are they taking away our right of free speech? I'm not sure, but doesn't this suggest that the court has its own political agenda? I thought courts were only for applying law...
Sometimes I wonder if certain people/organizations shouldn't be able to register certain domains, but that amounts to censorship as well, exactly what I'd like to avoid.
Someone else said that this territory was covered by Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock", basically discussing the question of whether we can handle "information overload". This book was written about 30 years ago, and while it's a bit dated, it still applies today. It doesn't have a doomish alarmist feel to it either.
This article wasn't too bad. Advertising saturation is a key point. The cliche goes "its not the technology, it's how you use it." I agree with that to a point but the technologies that are developed are not deveolped just for technology's sake. Lately the net has seen a lot of e-commerce growth.
The do everything but say that a lot of the problems present are due to our economic system itself. But that doesn't suprise me, you generally can't get mainstream approval by questioning capitalism our our government. Communication technology is a great thing. It's a bad thing when it is turned into a one-way marketing and impulse buying system. I think that outcome is a ppredictable one, just look at how companies work. I say this in every post but it applies to almost everything I write about. Companies are about money and nothing else. With all the fierce competition among net startups, and established companies looking to expand, the internet seems to be expanding into one big advertisment.
It boils down to how we allow the internet to be used. If it is simply a marketing tool, we all lose. If it is more like a forum such as slashdot, we all win. Do we want dumb consumers or informed citizens?
The books reviewed here didn't look like they had much to say. I think a lot of these writers just ride the current wave of fear or euphoria to sell books.
This is nothing new really. Universities have been doing this for a number of years. It's a good way to get money for your school, especially if it is a public school facing budget cuts. As people have mentioned, sponsoring companies always want something in return. Companies are not philanthropists. The shareholders wouldn't tolerate it. The portions of the agreement I saw sound typical to me, with MIT and microsoft sharing the rights to what is discovered, more or less.
I don't see universities turning down many deals like these. They don't often apply any moral or philosophical ideas when considering these type of things. If they do, they are considered to be "biased", "having an agenda", etc. Basically they don't want to make anyone mad. As long as money is flowing in, everything is ok. Sounds a lot like a corporation, doesn't it?
MIT has other "questionable" partnerships as well. At the most recent job fair at my school, they had a rep from their Lincon Laboratories. From the literature I read, they're basically a cutting edge technology lab for the department of defense. Now, you might argue that defense is a necessary evil. But I though universities were supposed to be a place of life, enlightenment, learning, etc, not an agent of mass destruction.
Deep down in my idealogical heart I wish the arguably best technical university in the world wouldn't participate in stuff like this.
I've seen a few good responces here about how a lot of this boils down to capitalism, or at a level lower than that, human greed. When microsoft releases a new product, they don't do it because they want to distribute an improved version to everyone, they need to make money, or they go out of business. This is no secret. Everyone knows it. Open source is a different philosophy. I'm not a linux expert, but generally it seems new linux code is released when it's truely ready, and is either something new, an improvement, etc. Not just more bells and whistles. Of course human greed it still a part of this, we can't really escape it. But I'm sure you'd agree that linux is a superior operating system. So even with human greed present, we can still improve on a lot of things. Those who say otherwise can frankly go to hell.
Capitalism pretty much dooms us to the microsoft scenario, forever. In a capitalist system, you either kill, or you are killed. Microsoft suceeded at this, by whatever means necessary. They did what they were "supposed" to do.
The software industry bears out problems with our system more than many others. I'll compare it to the auto industry. First, keep in mind that the auto industry has PLENTY of recalls on their cars. In fact, you see product recalls all the time, in every industry. Any given car probably has a few problems. But these few problems aren't necessarily going to crash the car and kill you. Plus many of the problems happen over time. With software, everything has to work just about perfectly or the system crashes. Many of the problems with cars build up over time, parts wearing out, etc. With a computer program, this time interval is going to be very short. If you have some sort of cascade error, etc, when your processor runs millions of instructions per second, its going to crash really quickly. So really I don't see the software industry as being much different as any other. They all have their problems.
As posted in other responces, short timelines and marketing play a big part of the problem. Again, I don't see much of a difference between this and any other industry. Marketing exists everywhere. The marketing department doesn't care about saftey, functionality, etc, they only want what will make them money. The only thing that holds them back is the threat of lawsuits and bad publicity.
Any economic system that puts money before anything else is bound to have these problems across the board. There is no escape while you're stuck in the box of capitalism.
Think I'm just some anti-social communist who hates society? If so, ask yourself why you had that reaction. You're taught from birth not to challenge the way things are, or be different. Those that do are labeled outcasts, troublemakers, etc. There were a lot of good posts on this coming out of the littleton colorado tradgedy here on slashdot, so I won't expand on that any further.
By our culture's standards, Bill Gates really is the ideal man. He's sucessful. He has a lot of money. He has more money than the total GDP of the 50 poorest countries in the world (give or a take a few, I can't remember the exact number I read). Does he deserve that? I don't think so, and I don't think you do either.
The level of technology we have achieved has given us the power to give everyone the necessities, food, water, shelter, etc. Yet we can't even achieve that. Black people are lazy and violent, 3rd world countries are run by corrupt governments, so if they go hungry, its their own damn fault, right?
An economic system is basically just a way to distribute scarce goods. We don't have to convert to communism, socialism, or any other -ism to improve the average person's life, materially and mentally. We just need to find a better distribution method, and a better model for what should be produced, and how to go about it. Easier said than done of course, I don't have any simple solutions, because there aren't any.
So instead of just asking yourself "why does bill gates suck so bad?" ask yourself "what forces in this world made him what he is, and allows him to continue with what he is doing now?"
We all have to be part of the solution, because the citizens of this country collectively control this country. We have simply given those "in power" the actual power. When we don't ask questions, they'll do what they want. If we ask questions and make demands, they'll do what we want.
This is the real road to solving "why software sucks" along with most other problems. It's not as easy as just getting more time to code or having power over the marketing department.
Re:Are we approaching microwave frequencies?
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700 MHz Athlon
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I'm not even sure why people think this will be an issue to begin with. Attenuation in air decreases as frequency goes up (roughly, to a point), maybe this is what he was referring to. But I'm 99.9% sure that the processor doesn't have enough power to damage anything anyway. Of the power it does use, it's going to the cpu to run commands, not to emitting RF noise. Any RF noise that gets out is considered loss, I think (not 100% efficient) so the number should be very small.
Re:Honestly, I could care less about faster Athalo
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700 MHz Athlon
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I'm not sure making the athalon good for multiprocessor use is really going to help AMD much, right now anyway. Developing that costs money, and right now thats what they need, and don't have much of. Bad. Which means they have to sell what they can make now. The audience for multiprocessor boards consists mainly of people who run servers, and the type of person who reads slashdot. Definatly not a small audience, but not as big as, say, the consumer market, and the business PC market. Those are mostly single processor boxes. I think the average dumb ass consumer and purchaser for companies likes bigger numbers anyway. Something to brag about to your friends...just like the horsepower of your car's engine, the size of your house, the size of your girlfriend's breasts, whatever.
Re:Are we approaching microwave frequencies?
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700 MHz Athlon
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there is no exact number range defined for microwave frequencies. I think general range it starts is 400mhz to 4ghz (big range I know, its there somewhere), and ends when the wavelengh goes below about 1 cm (too lazy to do the math for frequency) at which point they're called millimeter waves.
But it won't emit much as far as I know...
1) you don't exactly have 5000 watts hooked up to a transmitting antennae. The power is pretty low.
2) the cpu is totally enclosed in a metal box. Metal absorbes electromagnetic waves. Thus hardly anything escapes anyway.
Man, I really, really, really hope AMD doesn't go under. We really, really, really, need competition in the CPU sector. Competition is good, good, good. Intel has been gouging the public for long enough (not to say that k7 pricing so far isn't basically gouging).
I wonder why the gov't doesn't look into going after intel...what are the differences between m$ and intel that made the gov't go after m$ only? Technical reasons about the business? Or does the gov't just want to look like its getting something done by attacking the company everyone in the world knows of?
Something I didn't see mentioned here in questioning this was how exactly Eve is going to get into the stream of phontons without being detected. This is a POINT TO POINT transmission. It's not like a radio signal that comes off an antennae which propegates in all possible directions. A beam of photons will spread out over a certain distance (not a whole lot, a good laser won't spread out at more than maybe 1 degree), but from what I understand from this artice is that they are sending one photon at a time, thus the transmission line is almost perfectly defined. Clearly, if the photons are to hit an orbiting satellite with a photodetector 2" wide, Alice will have to know the exact position of the satellite. Thus the exact path of transmission is EXTREMELY well defined, and it is almost trivial to determine if something is in the path of transmission. Eve has no chance, even if she were able to detect, replicate, and figure out the key sequence. This looks pretty unstopable until we have airplanes with cloaking devices, not to mention getting around the heisenburg uncertainty principle.
Well, like I said (in a lot more words), I beleive the cultural reasons outweigh the biological reasons. It's the nature vs. nurture debate really, and no one knows the answer. I'd love to see more women in tech fields, because having everyone on the same level is better for everyone.
I dont know if i agree that women have lower self esteem than men. I think men just hide it better, and put up that false front of confidence.
Of course. Don't assume all men just want sex, even though that may seem to be the case. When I signed up for classes this fall, I signed up for a class taught by a women (RF/microwave engineering). I wanted to take the class, but I wanted a female instructor for once also, it makes for a different perspective. I've never had a female profesor in *any* of my technical classes, I think I've had 2 in the few liberal arts classes I had to take. With no women around, you're potentially missing out on 50% of human ideas.
Geeks might be typically lonely. But don't assume that because geeks will hit on any woman who is tech savvy. Being smart is usually a lot sexier than physical appearance (don't take that the wrong way). Most geeks don't just want a trophy, which I can't say for a lot of non-geek guys that I know.
You don't see many women hacking coding for the same reasons you don't see many women in technology related disciplines across the board. Of course there are some, as the link in one of the earlier posts shows.
This has probably been discussed here before but I'll say it again anyway. There are a few reasons I can think of, both are generalizations, I'm not suggesting that they are true of everyone.
1) Women aren't pushed to go into technology related fields. This isn't as true as it used to be. But still, at my school (U of Minnesota) the male/female ratio is about 30:1 in the EE department, and there is 1 female professor out of about 40. It's a *bit* better in a few of the other engineering departments, chemical engineering is probably 15:1, CS is probably 20:1. When I was in high school, my calc class was pretty much a 50/50 m/f ratio. But the only people who went into tech fields were guys. The women in the class would tell me they simply weren't interested. I think parents play a big part in this. My parents always suggested I go for engineering. As much as I hate to admit it, thats probably half the reason I did. I hardly know any women who's parents pushed them in that direction.
2) "Biological" differences between men and women. This is risky ground, and nothing new really, but I'll say it anyway. Men seem to be better at disciplines that require a lot of "logical" thinking, women are better at at jobs that involve more human interaction. I don't think this plays nearly as big of a role as reason 1, however.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a pretty vague article, with hardly any specifics. It doesn't state which OS these companies might be using:
:)
"The makers are taking a variety of approaches, the paper said. Gateway Inc (GTW) is building a line with no Microsoft software whatsoever, and may jointly market it with America Online, Inc (AOL), which recently invested $800 million in Gateway, people familiar with the plans were quoted as saying."
While I wish I could say linux would be the obvious choice, I don't think that would be the case with these two companies. They're not going to go for an open-source OS just because they don't like microsoft. I think they'd rather give themselves a better cut of profits while keeping prices low, which means they'll probably go for some proprietary OS that they control. For all I know AOL may have made it's own proprietary OS. Somehow that idea doesn't impress me much, even if it is cheaper. I don't know if companies like Dell and gateway "mark-up" the windows OS at all, but given the low margins on computers, I doubt it matters anyway. Sure, you can make money selling a linux OS as well, but how much will it bring you when you are selling low end machines? By using their own proprietary OS they can remove a factor of control from microsoft and increase their profit margins while they're at it. Linux would only remove the microsoft factor. They'll just have to hope microsoft doesn't threaten them for this, which I wouldn't count on. Of course I could be totally wrong. I hope I am
ignore my other dumb post, I misread a 4 sentance article somehow...
So basically this page that should be a service is more of a self-promoting marketing device. Suprising? No. Unethical? Probably.
*sigh* I suppose you could say that they have to make money, blah blah blah...but hasn't lowest-common-denomonator-carpet-bombing marketing gone far enough? Crap like this gets drilled into your head every day. I can hardly watch TV without my mind going numb. The web has become almost the same. Fortunatly I know where to go on the web where crap like this doesn't exist. Thats a Good Thing. The web can't be totally controlled with marketing like most other media outlets.
Apparently lycos didn't pay itself enough money to get search results on its own page....
This guy really, really, really pisses me off. If the article is correct, he really is trying to patent the actual "source code" of human DNA. Patenting naturally occuring information should be illegal, (if it isn't already). I beleive it is, but don't think that will stop the patent office from giving it to him unless we fight against it.
Look at the patents they've been giving out recently, the amazon 1 click patent is absurd. I also read an article a few months back (can't remember the source, I'll post it if I find it) about an American medical company that was patenting herbal remedies discovered by indigenous tribes in South America. Just as absurd as the amazon patent, this one gives the medical company the rights to these remedies in America even though someone else discovered them.
It is obvious that the patent office needs an overhaul, but I see a bigger issue here. Our level of technology is becoming increasingly incompatible with our eceonomic system, political system, and cultural values. I'm referring here to the potential harm we can do to ourselves.
We're only opening the door right now to world of biotechnology (or is it pandora's box), but being able to "design" your children to DNA "fixes" for certain diseases, is in the near future, definetly the next century.
So what features do we see in our political and economic system? Greed, and a lack of accountability. Cultural values? Materialism, sefishness, worship of physical attributes (like beauty, etc). I'm not saying that the world is totally focused on these things, but lets face it, it's not that far from it.
So how have these functions of our society affected our world when you look at the technology we have? I could name off dozens, but I'll list a few examples. Take Agricultural technology. Somewhere during this century, we basically had the ability to feed everyone in the world enough food to keep them healthy, but of course this doesn't happen. Some farmers' fields aren't planted to keep the prices up (gov't subsidies....you get paid to not plant your fields, now thats efficiency for you). Or you can't send food to countries that are official enemies of the united states. In Russia, which now has a somewhat capitalist economic system, food is widely available, but of course the problem now is that no one has enough money to buy it, except the rich. I can apply similar arguments to housing, clothing, and medicine.
The book 1984 has a few pages on this same idea, that we have the technology to end all the worlds problems right now, yet we haven't achieved it for some reason. This is in a book that the main character Winston reads, which he beleives was written by a "leader of the underground" movement (can't remember his name, shame on me). Anyway, if you haven't read 1984, you should. It's a good remedy for political apathy.
How many technologies are used to simply harm humanity (guns)? Or have had side affects that weren't known because they weren't tested enough, over covered up when they were learned (cigarettes)? Or technologies that were tested on the general population, by an unaccountable entity (nuclear radiation)?
So when we have the ability in the near future to manipulate the fabric of life, what are we going to do with it? Fix humanity's problems, or exasperate them? If we follow the road we're on now, I think you know the answer. Playing with the fabric of life is simply too powerful and important to view it simply as a source of money. If you think the gap between the rich and poor is bad enough now, it can get a whole lot worse. We could have a whole elite class of people who are superior physically and mentally to the underclass who can't afford genetic treatments and modificaltions. Basically we could have a slave class and an elite class, with some absurd ratio of like 200:1. On top of that, the greed factor can play another role: unproven treatments being sold to the public. The reprecussions of this could be monsterous, from infertility, horribly mutated people, to death. This probably sounds like every sci-fi book you've ever read, but lets face it, is it really that improbable?
Speak out against this potential patent. The scenerio I spoke of above needs to be stopped before it gets started. Don't let individuals control the fate of humanity.
Usually I'm against anything the government does to "regulate" content of any medium, but this doesn't look like a content filter. However the article doesn't really state exactly what they are targeting...if the site requires you to enter demographic info before you can look at the site, then it does amount to content filtering. Personally I wouldn't want to look at any page that requires a lot of personal / demographic information up front, however.
But lets face it, most kids aren't smart enough to know any better until they reach a certain age. If I had kids I wouldn't want them giving away our address, email addresses, household income, etc. This age is different for everyone, which makes it important for parents to have the FINAL word on what their kids can or can't see, or what information to give out as is the case here. If a site falls into the category outlined in this bill, it could prompt the kid to have his parents enter a password, or some similar security measure. Hopefully parents would be able to disable a security measure like this, if they don't want to deal with it every 5 minutes and/or when the kid reaches an age where the parents think the kid is ready to decide for him/herself.
Somehow I doubt the gov't will allow this level of personal control, however. This bill is also vague, as are most bills related to technology, particularly relating to the internet. Thus if they try to sue a company over this, the bill probably won't stand up very well in court. It's too vague as to what specifically requires controls and how to go about implementing them, and what passes as a decent implementation.
point 1)
you're right about that, something I overlooked (I don't keep up on console games nearly as much as I did when I was your age). That relates to what I said about the importance of software over hardware.
point 2)
you've got a point here as well. I did spend a lot of time playing 4 player mario kart and it was a lot of fun. The thing i don't like about it though is the TV res isnt that great to begin with, so when you have the screen divided into 4 its even worse, and small. Plus you can see wher everyone else is, which is a big drawback in certain games.
My "quake experiences" were on a t1 through a LAN. I didnt mention this because my post was getting way too long. Thus I had myself and my 4 friends on different computers, either beating each other or working together to beat some hapless fools online. It was HUGE fun, and still is. Half the time when we get together we'll start off talking about quake..."hey remember when I killed 10 guys with 1% health and still capped the flag?" etc. Of course a t1 through a LAN isn't common except in a college environment (maybe business if you can get away with it) but more and more people are getting braodband access in their house, and often have more than 1 computer around.
This article did a semi-decent job of analyzing the current and upcoming console offerings, I'm going to elaborate on a few points, and talk about the long term prospects for console systems, and how microsoft could become a big player.
Quality of Games vs. Hardware power of the system
Never, ever underestimate the power of the quality of available games for how far a system will go. The N64 is clearly superior to the playstation in terms of what it can do. But how many games were available for the nintendo when it came out? Only 2, and it took a long time for the better games the N64 had to come out. The article points this out, saying the intalled base of playstations shut out the N64. I'd take that to be about half the reason the playstation did so well. The other half was the fact that it had so many good games. Specifically, final fantasy 7. Square has to put out games to survive, and since the N64 took so long to come to the market, they had no choice but to develop for the playstation. That was a big loss for nintendo. FF7 by itself moved millions of units of playstations, even when the game came out a few years after the systems' initial release. Hardware is irrelevant compared to the actual game play quality of games. This is the real meat of the gaming industry. The fact that N64 used cartriges was also a big problem, which I'd say is also related to hardware. They understand this now, hopefully. It's too bad they never released that disk drive device (I can't remember its name), because I think it really could have helped them.
Financial resources of the companies involved, and experience in the video game industry.
Nintendo pretty much gets all it's revenue from it's current system in release. If they screw up the dolphin, they're just about done. The same goes for sega. They also have some revenue from arcade games, but that side of the gaming industry is a shadow of what it used to be. I'm not sure if sega does much else in other industries, but if they do it doesn't amount to much. Sony and Microsoft are another story. Microsoft basically has unlimited resources. Sony almost does. I know sony gets a huge amount of it's revenue off the playstation now, but even if they left the video game market all together, they'd still be one f'in huge company. In some ways this might work for nintendo and sega. With their backs against the wall, they might be able to use the pressure to put out really good systems. They both have a lot of experience in the industry as well. Sega already released their system, and they've done a much better job than they did on the saturn, in all respects. I don't think nintendo will make the same mistakes either. Microsoft doesn't know much of anything about console systems, but long term I don't think that matters, as I'll discuss a bit later.
Online gaming.
The article brushes this off, saying it is yet to be proven that consumers want this. This is true for console systems, because it isn't yet available, but will be shortly with the dreamcast. It has been thriving on the PC side however, ever since Quake was released. When I first played quake online, it was the biggest rush I've ever had from a video game. My desire to play 1 or 2 player console games went to 0 in a month. You just can't beat the social interaction, blowing off the head of someone's character who exisits in reality somewhere else, and playing against human intelligence. The future of video games IS TOTALLY IN ONLINE GAMING, in my opinion. Even with RPG's, with ultima online. It's just about as addicting as drugs. Every trend I see points twords this. Whichever company recognizes this first will win. Period.
Convergance of the PC and console systems.
This is where microsoft really comes into play. Console systems and PC's are converging faster than most people seem to realize. PC's have made great strides in graphics with 3d cards, and console systems have had huge increases in raw processing power. In 5 or 10 years, I see most video game systems running on a TV as the current cheap-PC with a high end grapahics card. Another post said micrsoft will flop on this front with the "x-box", any PC based system they come up with will cost too much, over the $200 price point you need to move a lot of units. But really, this limitation and the fact that TV resolutions are low are the only hurdles microsoft has to overcome, and this is only a matter of time. Plus these problems will go away without micrsoft having to put money into it itself. For one, the price points of the current high end and low end PC's have been decreasing steadily for several years, and in 5 to 7 years (maybe less) that low end PC with a good graphicas card will probably BE at that $200 price point. As far as resolution, once HDTV has a good market penetration (80% or so, that might be 10 or more years off, however), the problem is solved. PC systems can take over as the only video game system, sega, nintendo, and sony's proprietary architechure is no longer needed, and in comes microsoft with their proprietary OS, since most PC games are developed for windows. Yikes.
I think microsoft can sense this, hence we start hearing rumors about this "x-box". Good name, since right now it's a mystery and might as well be nothing more than some FUD tactic or marketing BS. But say it comes to market in the next year. It will probably flop, they have no experience in this area, and no one would play PC games on a low res TV anyway. But even if it does flop, it will give microsoft valueable experience in this industry, and once the other problems I mentioned are solved, the door will be wide open for them to come in and take over. DO NOT underestimate microsoft here. This a number of years down the road, but the more I think about this the more I see this scenario occuring.
"To compound the silliness of all this, the courts have held that no one but a patent attorney can really know what the scope of coverage of a patent claim is. Therefore, even the theoretical justification for absolute liability in patent law is not applicable to individuals who cannot afford to keep a small army of patent attorneys on retainer."
:)
Straight from the lawyers mouth, here he basically admits (the way I see it anyway) that money is more important than the truth. I suppose everyone knows that anyway. It's fun to see a lawyer actually point that out, however
The patent system needs a total overhaul. Some of the patents that I see companies receiving actually scare me, for different reasons. I can think of a few.
One is the patent discussed here just a few days ago, amazon.com's one-click ordering. This process is so obvious (and seems like a natural evolution) that I could have written it up myself. If I ever order from some other company that uses a similar technique, I sure don't want to pay the royalties to amazon that filter down to me in the form of higher prices, for a process that is hardly novel.
Another involves the mapping of the human genome. The last time I heard anything about this it hadn't yet been patented, and I can't remember which companies were trying for it. Just the fact that this was even being considered scared the hell out of me. Information that is contained in nature should NEVER be patentable, and I don't care how much the investors are spending to map out our DNA. The potential misuse of this patent is staggering. This has no direct relation to OSS, I'm simply trying to point out how bad the patent system is.
This leads me to a question, actually. The idea of patents AFAIK is to promote ingenuity. However, this assumes that the main motivation of inventors is money. Are all people that shallow? Has any OSS been patented? Maybe it's obvious that the answer is no, because of the nature of OSS liscensing. On the other hand, if no OSS software has been patented, and some other company, say microsoft, comes along, and adopts some chunks of code for its own use....would this generally upset people in the OSS community? Or is any improvment in microsoft's software viewed as a Good Thing?
Just when I was starting to have some respect for apple...
:( Silly me for ever thinking otherwise...
Making decent computer products for the average person who doesn't know much about computers is A Good Thing. Then something like this happens, and you come back down to earth and realize they're just another corporation out to make boatloads of money
This was probably said in the inital cancellation article, but isn't this false advertising? If I was a lawyer I'd be writing up some documents for a class action suit right now.
Personally I'd rank this twords the top of the dumbest marketing moves in the computer industry's history. If I were to rank all computer companies on some scale measuring "morals", this would shoot apple down twords hell right along with our other favorite company.
Maybe that view isn't fair though. If any other company had the clout of apple or microsoft, they'd be doing the same type of things that say "f#@% you" to the consumer (Indeed, quite a few do). It's the fault of society for allowing things to be run like they are. So when I see companies like netscape working on the gov't side in the anti-trust case, I don't have any more respect for them. If the roles were reversed, netscape would be no different than microsoft.
Of ourse this is true, no one argues with this, usually. My problem with the government, having committed more crimes than I can ever imagine, has NO CREDABILITY.
Our leaders in this country should be the most moral and intelligent people in the country, and the most commited to improving the lives of the average population. But no, they're commited to the most childlike philosophy of all...money. Token concern for the poor and the environment, education, the list goes on.
"Mommy, I want some candy right now or I'm gunna kick and scream!" So EXCUSE ME if I have no respect for the government who isn't much more mature than a child.
Don't get me wrong, there are some great things about this country. We have more freedom than people in most countries. What most people don't realize, is that this is because of the common man DEMANDING our basic rights as laid out in the constitution. Those in power never made a difference for social justice compared to the average citizens who tried to make a difference. Our government tries to make a stable society, but stable for who? The elite.
When slavery ended, it wasn't because Abraham Lincoln wanted it to, it was because people wrote anti-slavery papers/newsletters, educated the poulation, and DEMANDED it.
We don't have 40 hour work weeks and safe work conditions because rich company owners wanted it, it's because people unionized in the early 1900's and DEMANDED it.
When women were finally allowed to vote, it wasn't bacause the men in power wanted to share that power, it's because average women organized and DEMANDED it.
When civil rights bills were passed, it wasn't because Kennedy/LBJ/other presidents wanted it, it's because the civil rights movement DEMANDED it.
Many people who have been forgotten by history died for these causes, these are the people I have respect for, not the power elite.
So when the department of justice spouts off to kids about not causing trouble, this is what I think. When the government uses technology to subvert and control the population, I won't apologize for having no respect for them. Their track record gives them no moral authority to tell me whats right and wrong. No one has that authority because no is perfect. The government's track record just gives them a whole lot less that everyone else.
hahaha thats awesome....I didn't realize it was him who asked Kissinger that question. I wish we had people like that in the United States. I'll definatly try to find a transcript of this if I can...I hope slashdot posts a link to it.
A decent article, the old railroad companies was a good example. However there are some differences when comparing this to the linux/open source vs. microsoft/software companies.
Small, competitive companies with new ideas that are superior and cheaper aren't always able to topple the giant (actually I'd say it's uncommon). There are several ways to defeat it. One is FUD tactics, which is a marketing technique, and understood by everyone who reads slashdot.
The other techniques, however, linux seems to be immune to.
Cost of entry is minimal in the software industry.
If I come up with a car thats runs on water, I can't simply build them in my garage and make a dent in car companies bottom line. I need big, big, cashola, more than what any venture capitalist could give me. Car companies know this, and will never develop this product either, why waste money on R&D when you can make just as much money off the public with the cars you sell now? Oil companies might make sure your operation never gets off the ground either, they might buy you out and run the company into the ground. It's different for software, however. You don't need a big manufacturing plant or fancy test equipment to write good code. You just need a computer for coding and an internet connection for distribution. Market exposure can be a problem, but word of mouth can be just as powerful. This is similar to what is happening to the record industry with mp3s, and will soon happen to the movie industry and publishing industry (to varying degrees, I won't get into that). Code is basically just a form of information, like movies and music. With the internet information can be reproduced and transmitted at an almost negligable price per copy. The means of production are taken away form the big companies, into the hands of everyone.
So maybe I'll just sell my idea to the car companies and make millions off it, or get bought out if I got enough money to make my manufacturing plant and make a dent in the car companies bottom line. This is something microsoft does as we all know.
We also know that linux can't be bought. This is point number two. I suppose microsoft could buy RedHat, but redhat doesn't own the rights to linux. It will always be available for free (or at least much cheaper than windows for some sort of "user friendly" version) because of this. Even if Linus sold the rights to the kernel to microsoft (does he actually own them? I'm not sure about that) linux is much more than the kernel, its the "loose" network of people around the world who contribute to it. These people can't and won't be formed into a capitalist corporation.
These are the reasons I consider linux, open source software, and the internet as such a huge threat to software companies, or any company that deals strictly with "information".
As usual, I am seeing the negative downside to this type of project. Anytime corporations do anything,
I notice they didn't explain what they meant by interactive content. I imagine this as watching Monday Night Football and being able to pull up stats on the players of the teams playing, etc. Well, hopefully it would go beyond that.
Anyway, I think corporations view this as just an e-commerce vehicle. Think about it...you're sitting there on your couch, you see a commecial for the product of the week, and on your screen you see a window that says "push button x on your remote to purchase". The company you purchase this "interactive service" from already has your credit card number and address, similar to setting up one-click purchasing on amazon.com. Think about it: THIS IS THE ULTIMATE IMPUSLE BUYING SYSTEM! YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO LEAVE YOUR COUCH TO WASTE YOUR MONEY! I'm sure marketers at corporations around the globe are sitting there in their little Dilbert style work cubes having orgasms just thinking about this. Same goes for credit card company executives as well.
I hope I'm wrong about this, but this country is built on greed and materialism, so this seems like the natural progression of this product.
It's interesting that netowrk solutions would directly apply the pacifica case directly to internet domains. Actually it doesn't suprise me. They're more interested with not offending anyone (if they allowed the words) because they could lead to lawsuits, loss of sales, etc (are they really a not-for-profit organization? I find that hard to beleive). Of course on the other hand this brought on the lawsuit in the other direction anyway.
The "George Carlin" case was 26 years ago. I think it's time to reexamine how important it is to censor these words. When you can see sex and murder on TV, how important is it to ban the word "piss"?
The fact that the Central District of California US District Court owns some of these domains is also interesting. How did the court get to register fuck.com? Did they threaten network solutions? I don't understand it. Are they taking away our right of free speech? I'm not sure, but doesn't this suggest that the court has its own political agenda? I thought courts were only for applying law...
Sometimes I wonder if certain people/organizations shouldn't be able to register certain domains, but that amounts to censorship as well, exactly what I'd like to avoid.
Someone else said that this territory was covered by Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock", basically discussing the question of whether we can handle "information overload". This book was written about 30 years ago, and while it's a bit dated, it still applies today. It doesn't have a doomish alarmist feel to it either.
This article wasn't too bad. Advertising saturation is a key point. The cliche goes "its not the technology, it's how you use it." I agree with that to a point but the technologies that are developed are not deveolped just for technology's sake. Lately the net has seen a lot of e-commerce growth.
The do everything but say that a lot of the problems present are due to our economic system itself. But that doesn't suprise me, you generally can't get mainstream approval by questioning capitalism our our government.
Communication technology is a great thing. It's a bad thing when it is turned into a one-way marketing and impulse buying system. I think that outcome is a ppredictable one, just look at how companies work. I say this in every post but it applies to almost everything I write about. Companies are about money and nothing else. With all the fierce competition among net startups, and established companies looking to expand, the internet seems to be expanding into one big advertisment.
It boils down to how we allow the internet to be used. If it is simply a marketing tool, we all lose. If it is more like a forum such as slashdot, we all win. Do we want dumb consumers or informed citizens?
The books reviewed here didn't look like they had much to say. I think a lot of these writers just ride the current wave of fear or euphoria to sell books.
This is nothing new really. Universities have been doing this for a number of years. It's a good way to get money for your school, especially if it is a public school facing budget cuts. As people have mentioned, sponsoring companies always want something in return. Companies are not philanthropists. The shareholders wouldn't tolerate it. The portions of the agreement I saw sound typical to me, with MIT and microsoft sharing the rights to what is discovered, more or less.
I don't see universities turning down many deals like these. They don't often apply any moral or philosophical ideas when considering these type of things. If they do, they are considered to be "biased", "having an agenda", etc. Basically they don't want to make anyone mad. As long as money is flowing in, everything is ok. Sounds a lot like a corporation, doesn't it?
MIT has other "questionable" partnerships as well. At the most recent job fair at my school, they had a rep from their Lincon Laboratories. From the literature I read, they're basically a cutting edge technology lab for the department of defense. Now, you might argue that defense is a necessary evil. But I though universities were supposed to be a place of life, enlightenment, learning, etc, not an agent of mass destruction.
Deep down in my idealogical heart I wish the arguably best technical university in the world wouldn't participate in stuff like this.
I've seen a few good responces here about how a lot of this boils down to capitalism, or at a level lower than that, human greed. When microsoft releases a new product, they don't do it because they want to distribute an improved version to everyone, they need to make money, or they go out of business. This is no secret. Everyone knows it. Open source is a different philosophy. I'm not a linux expert, but generally it seems new linux code is released when it's truely ready, and is either something new, an improvement, etc. Not just more bells and whistles. Of course human greed it still a part of this, we can't really escape it. But I'm sure you'd agree that linux is a superior operating system. So even with human greed present, we can still improve on a lot of things. Those who say otherwise can frankly go to hell.
Capitalism pretty much dooms us to the microsoft scenario, forever. In a capitalist system, you either kill, or you are killed. Microsoft suceeded at this, by whatever means necessary. They did what they were "supposed" to do.
The software industry bears out problems with our system more than many others. I'll compare it to the auto industry. First, keep in mind that the auto industry has PLENTY of recalls on their cars. In fact, you see product recalls all the time, in every industry. Any given car probably has a few problems. But these few problems aren't necessarily going to crash the car and kill you. Plus many of the problems happen over time. With software, everything has to work just about perfectly or the system crashes. Many of the problems with cars build up over time, parts wearing out, etc. With a computer program, this time interval is going to be very short. If you have some sort of cascade error, etc, when your processor runs millions of instructions per second, its going to crash really quickly. So really I don't see the software industry as being much different as any other. They all have their problems.
As posted in other responces, short timelines and marketing play a big part of the problem. Again, I don't see much of a difference between this and any other industry. Marketing exists everywhere. The marketing department doesn't care about saftey, functionality, etc, they only want what will make them money. The only thing that holds them back is the threat of lawsuits and bad publicity.
Any economic system that puts money before anything else is bound to have these problems across the board. There is no escape while you're stuck in the box of capitalism.
Think I'm just some anti-social communist who hates society? If so, ask yourself why you had that reaction. You're taught from birth not to challenge the way things are, or be different. Those that do are labeled outcasts, troublemakers, etc. There were a lot of good posts on this coming out of the littleton colorado tradgedy here on slashdot, so I won't expand on that any further.
By our culture's standards, Bill Gates really is the ideal man. He's sucessful. He has a lot of money. He has more money than the total GDP of the 50 poorest countries in the world (give or a take a few, I can't remember the exact number I read). Does he deserve that? I don't think so, and I don't think you do either.
The level of technology we have achieved has given us the power to give everyone the necessities, food, water, shelter, etc. Yet we can't even achieve that. Black people are lazy and violent, 3rd world countries are run by corrupt governments, so if they go hungry, its their own damn fault, right?
An economic system is basically just a way to distribute scarce goods. We don't have to convert to communism, socialism, or any other -ism to improve the average person's life, materially and mentally. We just need to find a better distribution method, and a better model for what should be produced, and how to go about it. Easier said than done of course, I don't have any simple solutions, because there aren't any.
So instead of just asking yourself "why does bill gates suck so bad?" ask yourself "what forces in this world made him what he is, and allows him to continue with what he is doing now?"
We all have to be part of the solution, because the citizens of this country collectively control this country. We have simply given those "in power" the actual power. When we don't ask questions, they'll do what they want. If we ask questions and make demands, they'll do what we want.
This is the real road to solving "why software sucks" along with most other problems. It's not as easy as just getting more time to code or having power over the marketing department.
I'm not even sure why people think this will be an issue to begin with. Attenuation in air decreases as frequency goes up (roughly, to a point), maybe this is what he was referring to. But I'm 99.9% sure that the processor doesn't have enough power to damage anything anyway. Of the power it does use, it's going to the cpu to run commands, not to emitting RF noise. Any RF noise that gets out is considered loss, I think (not 100% efficient) so the number should be very small.
I'm not sure making the athalon good for multiprocessor use is really going to help AMD much, right now anyway. Developing that costs money, and right now thats what they need, and don't have much of. Bad. Which means they have to sell what they can make now. The audience for multiprocessor boards consists mainly of people who run servers, and the type of person who reads slashdot. Definatly not a small audience, but not as big as, say, the consumer market, and the business PC market. Those are mostly single processor boxes. I think the average dumb ass consumer and purchaser for companies likes bigger numbers anyway. Something to brag about to your friends...just like the horsepower of your car's engine, the size of your house, the size of your girlfriend's breasts, whatever.
there is no exact number range defined for microwave frequencies. I think general range it starts is 400mhz to 4ghz (big range I know, its there somewhere), and ends when the wavelengh goes below about 1 cm (too lazy to do the math for frequency) at which point they're called millimeter waves.
But it won't emit much as far as I know...
1) you don't exactly have 5000 watts hooked up to a transmitting antennae. The power is pretty low.
2) the cpu is totally enclosed in a metal box. Metal absorbes electromagnetic waves. Thus hardly anything escapes anyway.
Man, I really, really, really hope AMD doesn't go under. We really, really, really, need competition in the CPU sector. Competition is good, good, good. Intel has been gouging the public for long enough (not to say that k7 pricing so far isn't basically gouging).
I wonder why the gov't doesn't look into going after intel...what are the differences between m$ and intel that made the gov't go after m$ only? Technical reasons about the business? Or does the gov't just want to look like its getting something done by attacking the company everyone in the world knows of?
Something I didn't see mentioned here in questioning this was how exactly Eve is going to get into the stream of phontons without being detected. This is a POINT TO POINT transmission. It's not like a radio signal that comes off an antennae which propegates in all possible directions. A beam of photons will spread out over a certain distance (not a whole lot, a good laser won't spread out at more than maybe 1 degree), but from what I understand from this artice is that they are sending one photon at a time, thus the transmission line is almost perfectly defined. Clearly, if the photons are to hit an orbiting satellite with a photodetector 2" wide, Alice will have to know the exact position of the satellite. Thus the exact path of transmission is EXTREMELY well defined, and it is almost trivial to determine if something is in the path of transmission. Eve has no chance, even if she were able to detect, replicate, and figure out the key sequence. This looks pretty unstopable until we have airplanes with cloaking devices, not to mention getting around the heisenburg uncertainty principle.
Well, like I said (in a lot more words), I beleive the cultural reasons outweigh the biological reasons. It's the nature vs. nurture debate really, and no one knows the answer. I'd love to see more women in tech fields, because having everyone on the same level is better for everyone.
I dont know if i agree that women have lower self esteem than men. I think men just hide it better, and put up that false front of confidence.
Of course. Don't assume all men just want sex, even though that may seem to be the case. When I signed up for classes this fall, I signed up for a class taught by a women (RF/microwave engineering). I wanted to take the class, but I wanted a female instructor for once also, it makes for a different perspective. I've never had a female profesor in *any* of my technical classes, I think I've had 2 in the few liberal arts classes I had to take. With no women around, you're potentially missing out on 50% of human ideas.
Geeks might be typically lonely. But don't assume that because geeks will hit on any woman who is tech savvy. Being smart is usually a lot sexier than physical appearance (don't take that the wrong way). Most geeks don't just want a trophy, which I can't say for a lot of non-geek guys that I know.
You don't see many women hacking coding for the same reasons you don't see many women in technology related disciplines across the board. Of course there are some, as the link in one of the earlier posts shows.
This has probably been discussed here before but I'll say it again anyway. There are a few reasons I can think of, both are generalizations, I'm not suggesting that they are true of everyone.
1) Women aren't pushed to go into technology related fields. This isn't as true as it used to be. But still, at my school (U of Minnesota) the male/female ratio is about 30:1 in the EE department, and there is 1 female professor out of about 40. It's a *bit* better in a few of the other engineering departments, chemical engineering is probably 15:1, CS is probably 20:1. When I was in high school, my calc class was pretty much a 50/50 m/f ratio. But the only people who went into tech fields were guys. The women in the class would tell me they simply weren't interested. I think parents play a big part in this. My parents always suggested I go for engineering. As much as I hate to admit it, thats probably half the reason I did. I hardly know any women who's parents pushed them in that direction.
2) "Biological" differences between men and women. This is risky ground, and nothing new really, but I'll say it anyway. Men seem to be better at disciplines that require a lot of "logical" thinking, women are better at at jobs that involve more human interaction. I don't think this plays nearly as big of a role as reason 1, however.