Standard Oil - broken up by the courts in 1911 AT&T - broken up by the courts in 1984 IBM - hounded by the Justice Dept in the 70s to become paranoid about antitrust concerns, giving breathing room to a tiny company called Microsoft Microsoft - ummmm, okay, so they don't have the same thread
I think Microsoft is on the wrong side of history and is at the beginning of a 20-year decline, but 20 years is a long time, and a new leader may emerge there who can effectively leverage their (still) overwhemling dominance on the desktop into whatever comes next (after mobile and Google).
Yesterday I was at the doctor's office and noticed that their patient management software runs on DOS. Even in the the world of super fast computers, change takes time. And time favors the monoply.
Heck, we share an office with a small record label (another dinosaur) and all their computers are pre-OS X iMacs.
In China, people don't search for the English phrase "tiananmen square," they search on one of two things:
1. For information about the location in Beijing we know of as Tiananmen Square, they search for , the simplified Chinese characters.
2. When searching for info about the crackdown in 1989, they search for the phrase , pronounced liu si, which translates to 6-4, as in June 4, 1989, when the crackdown began.
> Because it allows users to heavily modify their pages
Sounds a lot like OSS, right? How many average people could stand to use Linux in its first five years? Only techies who were really into it. Now it's been flipped on its head. The techies (and most adults) hate MySpace, but teens and 20-somethings love it. Kind of like Frank Sinatr, Elvis, The Beatles, Eminmem etc etc ad infinitum.
OSS principles like you mention are part of the reason, though I doubt the average MySpacer has ever even heard of open source any more than Napster users knew about DRM.
> Sure, today the software's too difficult to install and lacks some features. But if that ever changes i
Substitute "Linux" for "the software" and it's easy to see why interoperability is a loooong way off. MySpace users are not early adopters. They're laggards, as is MySpace. Why the heck would they ever bother to make their network more open?
Any activitiy that requires the consumption or transmission of information is a single-tasking activity. If more people single-tasked those, we would have much better interpersonal communications overall. How many times has someone said RTFA on Slashdot? The problem isn't that they didn't RTFA, it's that they simultaneously tried to do other things while browsing the article.
I'm a drummer. One of the first things a decent drummer learns is that it's impossible to do two things at one time. The illusion of a drummer doing a lot of things at once - creating multiple overlapping patterns on the ride cymbal, the bass drum and the snare drum - is called independence. But it's only an illusion. S/he is doing just one thing in a very focused way.
But that doesn't matter. The bottom line for me is that I *want* Safari to maximize to fill the screen, and I bet the vast majority of other users do to. No amount of twisted psychobabble is going to change that fundamental desire. The fact that there is even a discussion of this and other problematic UI elements indicates that that they are, in fact, problems.
There is no discussion about, say, the mouse pointer because everyone agrees Apple made good decisions there.
I have a Mac as my primary computer (using itto write this) and I generally love it, but sometimes I'd rather fill the screen so that there's nothing else on it but the task at hand, just like I regularly remove all distractions from my physical desktop.
Fortunately I found Stoplight. The very fact of its existence AND the fact that there's not an equivalent product for Windows ought to tell you something.
Exactly. Unforunately most people take the "fit" in "survival of the fittest" to mean physical fitness i.e. that humans are in some sense stronger than extinct or "lower" species.
But "fit" should be understood in the sense that a round peg fits in a round hole, and a square one doesn't. There's nothing weak about the square peg, it just doesn't fit.
I wonder if this same duality is present in other languages?
The road to a balanced budget in the 90s started before 94. Clinton raised taxes in '92, listening to Greenspan's advice that deficit reduction was more important than stimulus. (His original economic stimulus package - a $16 billion spending program - was rejected by the Democrat-controlled House in 92.)
Republicans claimed the tax increase would be the nail in the coffin for an already weak economy. They were wrong.
Also, Clinton risked a lot of political capital getting NAFTA passed. NAFTA would never have made it through the then-Democrat-controlled House & Senate under Bush I.
Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)
on
When Wikipedia Fails
·
· Score: 1
Correlation does not imply causation.
Heh heh, you're right. So which is it - Does Fox News make people stupid, or do a disproportionate number of stupid people watch Fox News?
Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)
on
When Wikipedia Fails
·
· Score: 1
Just to clarify, the notion that China is full of "forced abortions" is overblown. Excess births in China are controlled via taxation. You have to pay a large fine if you have a second child, so there's a strong incentive to avoid a second pregnancy. But a party official doesn't come into your house and drag you to the abortionist.
My wife is from China (Zhengzhou, Henan) and I've spent a lot of time there.
In the hinterlands it's true that life is pretty boring and meaningless and the prospects for improving your situation are low. It's similar in a way to the really poor parts of the US a generation ago. (Remember, the War on Poverty was as much a response to the situation in Appalachia as in the inner city.) In that environment, it wouldn't suprise me to learn that a lot of kids are addicted to games. Like in South Carolina, where a lot of poor adults are addicted to video poker.
However, my guess is that the vast majority of gamers are still in the big cities, simply because there are just more absolute seats at computers available. I've used two Internet cafes in Zhengzhou. One of them, similar to a lot of the ones I passed while walking around the city, has over 200 computers. The other one, which I used more often, is kind of like the neighborhood dive (it's basically a poorly lit, cinderblock building), and has about 15 computers. I didn't see any out in the country, but I would guess they're similar to the neighborhood dive.
I never have much problem accessing the sites I need outside of China. Blogspot was blocked last time I was there, but all the major news, search engines and email sites worked fine. A friend of mine in Shanghai occasionally has problems getting his Gmail, but not so often that he's willing to switch providers.
My point is that "freedom of speech" is not a binary thing, but a continuum. China has more freedom of speech now than five years ago, and I'll wager it has even more five years from now. Chinese citizens protest many, many things there -- including asking for the impeachment of local officials -- but the dominant issues tend to be property rights, the environement and workplace safety. Also, the press has become more agressive in China since SARS, whicn most people in the US don't realize had a year-long, terribly negative effect on China's economy.
Once upon a time books like James Joyce's "Ulysses" were regularly banned in the USA, to say nothing of porn. Our society has evolved considerably since then (though many would like to put the toothpaste back in the tube).
I support elections and democracy in China. I also support them in Singapore, but everyone seems to be more obsessed with China than Singapore. I've seen China up close and I can tell you it's now a lot closer to Western ideas about freedom than Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and other US "allies" who generally don't get as much scrutiny about Net issues.
Heck, less than 20 years ago Taiwan and South Korea were both dictatorships.
FWIW Chinese people don't refer to the events in Tianenmen Square in 1989 by the name "Tianenmen Square." They call it "6-4", as in June 4, 1989.
Also, Tianenmen was hardly the "last organized opposition protest." Every year there are literally tens of thousands of protests in China.
Last Fall in Beijing I watched a small one against the military, which pretty much completely ignored the protest. The Chinese may not be completely free, but they are freeer than even ten years ago, and complaining about the government is a very popular pasttime.
Because of the lack of free speech, the Soviet study of genetics were set back a generation by Lysenkosim, which even led to executions because scientists didn't embrace the official orthodoxy. Sickening.
Slashdot Mirror
> "Girls Gone Wild"
aka the preacher's daughter.
Standard Oil - broken up by the courts in 1911
AT&T - broken up by the courts in 1984
IBM - hounded by the Justice Dept in the 70s to become paranoid about antitrust concerns, giving breathing room to a tiny company called Microsoft
Microsoft - ummmm, okay, so they don't have the same thread
I think Microsoft is on the wrong side of history and is at the beginning of a 20-year decline, but 20 years is a long time, and a new leader may emerge there who can effectively leverage their (still) overwhemling dominance on the desktop into whatever comes next (after mobile and Google).
Yesterday I was at the doctor's office and noticed that their patient management software runs on DOS. Even in the the world of super fast computers, change takes time. And time favors the monoply.
Heck, we share an office with a small record label (another dinosaur) and all their computers are pre-OS X iMacs.
Color me stupid. I'm a B of A customer and it took me several tries to figure out how it worked. Plus, it's a PITA to use with Roboform.
> http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen+s quare
And this means... what?
In China, people don't search for the English phrase "tiananmen square," they search on one of two things:
1. For information about the location in Beijing we know of as Tiananmen Square, they search for , the simplified Chinese characters.
2. When searching for info about the crackdown in 1989, they search for the phrase , pronounced liu si, which translates to 6-4, as in June 4, 1989, when the crackdown began.
> It still amazes me how many people there are out there that apparently need this explained to them.
The entire health supplements industry is built on this reality
> Because it allows users to heavily modify their pages
Sounds a lot like OSS, right? How many average people could stand to use Linux in its first five years? Only techies who were really into it. Now it's been flipped on its head. The techies (and most adults) hate MySpace, but teens and 20-somethings love it. Kind of like Frank Sinatr, Elvis, The Beatles, Eminmem etc etc ad infinitum.
OSS principles like you mention are part of the reason, though I doubt the average MySpacer has ever even heard of open source any more than Napster users knew about DRM.
> Self-referential statements are always difficult to understand
I myself have no idea what you mean.
> Sure, today the software's too difficult to install and lacks some features. But if that ever changes i
Substitute "Linux" for "the software" and it's easy to see why interoperability is a loooong way off. MySpace users are not early adopters. They're laggards, as is MySpace. Why the heck would they ever bother to make their network more open?
> can't see that there IS ONLY ONE PARTY?
No there's not. Ask Nader voters in 2000 if they'd prefer Bush over Gore now.
Any activitiy that requires the consumption or transmission of information is a single-tasking activity. If more people single-tasked those, we would have much better interpersonal communications overall. How many times has someone said RTFA on Slashdot? The problem isn't that they didn't RTFA, it's that they simultaneously tried to do other things while browsing the article. I'm a drummer. One of the first things a decent drummer learns is that it's impossible to do two things at one time. The illusion of a drummer doing a lot of things at once - creating multiple overlapping patterns on the ride cymbal, the bass drum and the snare drum - is called independence. But it's only an illusion. S/he is doing just one thing in a very focused way. But that doesn't matter. The bottom line for me is that I *want* Safari to maximize to fill the screen, and I bet the vast majority of other users do to. No amount of twisted psychobabble is going to change that fundamental desire. The fact that there is even a discussion of this and other problematic UI elements indicates that that they are, in fact, problems. There is no discussion about, say, the mouse pointer because everyone agrees Apple made good decisions there.
"take up the whole fucking screen with this window" stems partly from being stuck in the Windows singletasking frame of mind
It's not a "frame of mind." Single-tasking is what humans are optimized for. There's a reason IQ goes down when you try to do more than one thing at a time.
I have a Mac as my primary computer (using itto write this) and I generally love it, but sometimes I'd rather fill the screen so that there's nothing else on it but the task at hand, just like I regularly remove all distractions from my physical desktop.
Fortunately I found Stoplight. The very fact of its existence AND the fact that there's not an equivalent product for Windows ought to tell you something.
"He hasn't hacked much new code in a decade or more."
Neither has Bill Gates. Has Steve Jobs ever written even a single line of code? What does Forbes think of them?
Exactly. Unforunately most people take the "fit" in "survival of the fittest" to mean physical fitness i.e. that humans are in some sense stronger than extinct or "lower" species.
But "fit" should be understood in the sense that a round peg fits in a round hole, and a square one doesn't. There's nothing weak about the square peg, it just doesn't fit.
I wonder if this same duality is present in other languages?
The road to a balanced budget in the 90s started before 94. Clinton raised taxes in '92, listening to Greenspan's advice that deficit reduction was more important than stimulus. (His original economic stimulus package - a $16 billion spending program - was rejected by the Democrat-controlled House in 92.)
Republicans claimed the tax increase would be the nail in the coffin for an already weak economy. They were wrong.
Also, Clinton risked a lot of political capital getting NAFTA passed. NAFTA would never have made it through the then-Democrat-controlled House & Senate under Bush I.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Heh heh, you're right. So which is it - Does Fox News make people stupid, or do a disproportionate number of stupid people watch Fox News?
A year after the invasion, none other than Colin Powell said the link was tenuous at best.
A few months later, the 9/11 commission, along with the FBI and the CIA found that there were no substantive links.
This, of course, is not surprising given that the administration's own point man on WMD found that Iraq had no WMD, which 33% of Fox News viewers incorrectly believe.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! That's a good one.
What distinguishes Fox News is that, on average, people who watch it are roughly twice as likely to not know the actual facts, not partisan facts, but really basic stuff like the fact that Sadaam Hussein did not have a meaningful relationship with Al Quaeda.
Bank on the children.
I'll bet on my children, but not my children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex.
Just to clarify, the notion that China is full of "forced abortions" is overblown. Excess births in China are controlled via taxation. You have to pay a large fine if you have a second child, so there's a strong incentive to avoid a second pregnancy. But a party official doesn't come into your house and drag you to the abortionist.
My wife is from China (Zhengzhou, Henan) and I've spent a lot of time there.
In the hinterlands it's true that life is pretty boring and meaningless and the prospects for improving your situation are low. It's similar in a way to the really poor parts of the US a generation ago. (Remember, the War on Poverty was as much a response to the situation in Appalachia as in the inner city.) In that environment, it wouldn't suprise me to learn that a lot of kids are addicted to games. Like in South Carolina, where a lot of poor adults are addicted to video poker.
However, my guess is that the vast majority of gamers are still in the big cities, simply because there are just more absolute seats at computers available. I've used two Internet cafes in Zhengzhou. One of them, similar to a lot of the ones I passed while walking around the city, has over 200 computers. The other one, which I used more often, is kind of like the neighborhood dive (it's basically a poorly lit, cinderblock building), and has about 15 computers. I didn't see any out in the country, but I would guess they're similar to the neighborhood dive.
I never have much problem accessing the sites I need outside of China. Blogspot was blocked last time I was there, but all the major news, search engines and email sites worked fine. A friend of mine in Shanghai occasionally has problems getting his Gmail, but not so often that he's willing to switch providers.
My point is that "freedom of speech" is not a binary thing, but a continuum. China has more freedom of speech now than five years ago, and I'll wager it has even more five years from now. Chinese citizens protest many, many things there -- including asking for the impeachment of local officials -- but the dominant issues tend to be property rights, the environement and workplace safety. Also, the press has become more agressive in China since SARS, whicn most people in the US don't realize had a year-long, terribly negative effect on China's economy.
Once upon a time books like James Joyce's "Ulysses" were regularly banned in the USA, to say nothing of porn. Our society has evolved considerably since then (though many would like to put the toothpaste back in the tube).
I support elections and democracy in China. I also support them in Singapore, but everyone seems to be more obsessed with China than Singapore. I've seen China up close and I can tell you it's now a lot closer to Western ideas about freedom than Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and other US "allies" who generally don't get as much scrutiny about Net issues.
Heck, less than 20 years ago Taiwan and South Korea were both dictatorships.
> How many open protests and calls for a change of government... in China since Tienanmen square?
China has tens of thousands of opposition protests every year. How many are there in the US?
No, their society is not perfect and they could use more freedom. And I prefer life in the US (though Shanghai totally rocks).
You obviously don't have the facts. Spend some time there and talk to some actual Chinese citizens before spouting off.
FWIW Chinese people don't refer to the events in Tianenmen Square in 1989 by the name "Tianenmen Square." They call it "6-4", as in June 4, 1989. Also, Tianenmen was hardly the "last organized opposition protest." Every year there are literally tens of thousands of protests in China. Last Fall in Beijing I watched a small one against the military, which pretty much completely ignored the protest. The Chinese may not be completely free, but they are freeer than even ten years ago, and complaining about the government is a very popular pasttime.
Because of the lack of free speech, the Soviet study of genetics were set back a generation by Lysenkosim, which even led to executions because scientists didn't embrace the official orthodoxy. Sickening.
Think of it this way.
Google, eBay and Yahoo's most talented employees are engineers.
Comcast, Cox and SBC's most talented employees are lobbyists.
Which organization do you think is more likely to improve the internet for the most users?
Not the likes of Cox.