I know there have already been a large number of comments on this one but giving corporations ANY of the rights of individuals is a very bad idea (look @ copyright law and the lameness with which corporations utilize it).
It's already scary enough that our insane judicial system has granted them the rights of Freedom of Speech...
Beautifully said.
Emotions are valuable, in my opinion, when understood by the person feeling them within a logical framework, i.e. Valuable emotions are based on valuable ideas/concepts...
You're ruining the fun now the stupid paranoids will actually know what was said... (because it's unlikely with the level of intelligence they have shown previously they would figure it out)
So, I will pass on what I have discussed with my brother-in-law who is an Electrical Engineer that writes software to test flash memory:
1. Flash memory is built with additional fail over storage (so a 1GB SD card actually has a certain % more memory than 1GB). When a section of memory fails it is marked bad by the flash controller and some of the fail over memory comes into service (marked bad much like failures on standard hard drives... although I get the impression the flash controller may be the thing remembering it's bad... wasn't clear on this now I have something else to ask him)
2. Flash memory will fail... it can only be written to so many times before it will no longer be able to be written to... and the number of times is definitely not as high as a standard hard drive So it's likely that you can extend the life of a flash device by writing to it less often.
And, not from my brother-in-law discussions, I personally had a flash drive fail (I was using it as the master copy of documents as I moved data between my work machine and home machine while working toward an online degree). When it failed there was no warning previously. It simply stopped working... wouldn't be read and wouldn't write. I suspect my batch file that performed the backups to it must have written to it too many times (it was a smaller 128MB drive so, considering the above discussion about fail-over memory a smaller drive SHOULD fail faster...)
Interesting...
Are these webapps IE specific (Active X etc...) by any chance.
Or maybe they are ASP.NET apps?
Or maybe what you are experiencing is poor application design. Which would be present in any app. I think what you might be misunderstanding is that web enabled applications are still just applications. If done properly the specifics of the front end can be separated from the logic that drives the application.
Some interesting points. However I do not see having a fairly standard platform for nearly any OS that supports a GUI as a minimal advantage. Java is not as prevalent as browsers. And (although you don't mention it).NET is definitely not as prevalent as browsers.
I suppose PHP, Perl, Python, etc... can be considered cross platform as well but still not as prevalent...
For instance, nearly any new phone has a browser, regardless of the OS. Game consoles generally (these days) have a browser, again regardless of OS. Most *nix systems have a GUI which sports a browser. If the logic is on the server (and no you DON'T have to use JS), then ALL of these platforms can inherently run your app (and really JS is a REAL language even though you might not like it's platform).
Finally in your Google example: if they did use QT, how many platforms would suddenly lose the ability to provide their users access to gmail?
Summary: Browsers as a development platform are far more ubiquitous than any other development platform including Java.
Relating to the original story: remember back before M$ established their empire and there were many OSs to write programs for? Consider the cost of writing a program that supported: Atari, Amiga, DOS, OS2, Mac (actually can't remember when the first Macs appeared...), etc...
That was a considerably more 'hostile' environment for independent developers... and, depending on what language you are using that hasn't changed a lot (with scripting languages and JIT compiled languages, as well as cross platform libraries such as SDL making things easier...). Anyone volunteering to write a C/C++ app for phone OSs, & Linux, & Windows, & Mac, & Solaris, & Unix, & PS3, & Wii??
In the end I still suggest that the browser is the most abundantly available platform to develop on.
I entirely agree... I saw Black & White but was not excited enough about it to buy it. Or spend my time on it.
I still yearn to play Dungeon Keeper on occasion.
I think it's funny that he decided that he had made a mistake with it. To paraphrase 'The problem with Dungeon Keeper was that I put too many controls in the user interface...' interesting that I had never thought that or heard that from other players of the game...
Having children in that age range, and having looked to some degree I haven't found any GPL educational games that really got my kids interest (Tux paint held the 6 year olds attention for an afternoon).
They bought a company... That's what they know about virtualization. And it's taken them about 5 to 6 years to re-work it into something they can really market.
My main concern is that, right now, Microsoft is making their virtualization software very cheap and easy to get for Microsoft shops. In the company I work for VMware is out, for that one simple reason.
Even though we will get limited benefit from M$s version and VMWare is a much better solution...
Marketing wins every time. That's the one thing M$ does well....
You said " When your income goes down either you cut spending or you go into debt. Not only has the US federal government cut income, taxes, but it has also ballooned spending. When Bush was sworn into office in 2001 there was a budget surplus of, if I recall right, $300B. Now under Bush the USA has the highest budget deficit it has ever had.
What's so hard to understand about that? "
I think if you will read my entire previous post you will agree that I am not stating that spending more when there is less is fiscally sound. I am also not suggesting that it does not increase debt. What I am suggesting is simply that tax cuts do not equal debt....
I also specifically did not refer to Bush or his administration as I don't believe the problem is specifically the administrations (Regan, Bush, Clinton, Bush: debt increased throughout all administrations[a budget surplus is great but when it's not applied to debt it obviously will not decrease it]). The current administration is always the easiest to blame. And while I believe the current one is to blame in a greater way perhaps than the others I mentioned I believe the full blame is the general attitude and structure of the US political machine.
It also doesn't help that we, the citizens of the United States, actually do little to resolve this problem. The truth is, when enough people decide these issues are important and express our opinions to our representatives change is inevitable.
Wow the statements about a temporary tax cut impress me.
Unless there is some aspect regarding the tax cut with which I am unaware (such as we will have to pay it back next year) it is so much unlike using a credit card that I suspect your consideration of the topic has been limited to quick impressions.
While I understand that you are making a reference to the fact that the government of our country is in debt and borrows constantly, to the best of my understanding there it is a stretch to say that there is a direct correlation between paying less taxes and creating more national debt. The alternative in this case is paying the same amount of taxes which will be likely to produce the following train of events: -the government will squander the taxes and therefore contribute minimally to economic growth (government consumes and does not produce) -as the economy stagnates there will be a decrease in tax revenue -a decrease in tax revenue will lead to greater debt ("Slow spending when there's less money, never!!" yell the politicians and special interest groups)
When the economy is healthier there are more funds available for paying off debt, we just choose to spend the excess instead eliminate debt. Paying more taxes does not make the economy healthier.
While my 12 years in business related IT may not qualify my opinion above your opinion I strongly disagree that people lose value when their job duties are known.
I agree that a large part of documenting job duties and work processes is to make people more easily interchangeable. However doing something does not equal doing it well. What it does accomplish is return the focus of the work force toward quality of work.
If you know what processes someone is following to accomplish the documented duties it is much easier for you, or that person to see flaws in the processes and fix them. It is also much easier to recognize when someone is going beyond the call of duty to bring value to the company. Of course it is also easier to see when that employee is not doing a good job.
I suspect that corporations who don't value their employees will not get value out of such an effort regardless of how well it is done. Turn over & layoffs will be more likely with this company. On the other hand determining processes and procedures is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to bring success to a company that DOES appreciate it's employees. Turn over & layoffs will be less likely with this company.
I see the attempts of networks to limit our ability to DVR their shows as a more mild form of the same type of stupidity that the RIAA uses when they try to limit our ability to download music. It's a new opportunity for you to make money, idiots!
Here's a little proof of intelligence showing through the idiocy: ahref=http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060407/17 20246.shtml/rel=url2html-29223http://www.techdirt. com/articles/20060407/1720246.shtml/>
(please read the second comment down... someone who says they are an advertiser...)
I hope your right. Not currently using MythTV but planning on building a box in the next few months. I will do it without a service to support the movement but that would really suck.
For some reason this reminds me of many incorrect scientific conclusions of the past: spontaneous generation, flat earth, perfect geometry, etc... They all seemed to suffer from the same problem, bad methodology.
Spontaneous generation, to detail one, was based on the extremely valuable scientific principle of observation. Unfortunately the lack of rigorous methods to perform a useful study meant that further understanding of life was not forthcoming for centuries.
Ummm, I guess it would be a good idea to read the original article huh? heh
The recent advance of creating stem cells from skin cells (using embryonic stem cells cultured in the lab from previously collected stem cells) suggests to me that there are a potentially large number of other methods to obtain/generate these cells that does not involve the destruction of viable human embryos.
I have also found it interesting that embryonic stem cells, apparently, can be taken from umbilical cords and placental cells. Why is this ignored in research (or is it a case of a percentage of researchers focusing on it but media coverage not being made)?
Using monkey stem cells, if the potential problems can be resolved relating to genome differences, seems like a good approach.
For those few (one or two if I'm lucky) who are interested in my reasoning: It's my opinion that treating potential human lives as a commodity leads the human race to a morally incorrect conclusion: sentient life is only as important as it's medical value to any other sentient life who stand to benefit from said medical value. I do not see the use of monkey embryos as a moral affront when used appropriately because monkeys are not sentient. While I believe all life should be revered to a greater or lesser degree I see this reverence being measured by the potential of the individual. Sentient beings have an infinitely greater potential than non-sentient beings.
My basis for this conclusion/opinion is the universally accepted moral code against the taking of human life. Well universally accepted in non-self destructive cultures.
Lets not base this belief on religious text or arguments as I do not believe such sources lend themselves well to scientific analysis (although they may have their place as historically being the method of enforcement of moral standards in cultures). From a purely evolutionary perspective I think history provides us decent proof that lack of reverence for the rights, specifically the right of life of human/sentient beings is not a constructive cultural tendency. I'm not going to attempt to detail these tendencies but according to what I've read, effectively, cultures tend to become increasingly flippant regarding life prior to that cultures disintegration. In fact this can be expanded to include other rights as well. It is my understanding that one of the chief reasons there was not more invention & technological advancement during the golden age of philosophy was the cultural tendency to rely on slaves to perform tasks that required physical labor. Because of this cultural weakness those who developed hypotheses failed to carry out experiments because hands on physical labor was required, which, culturally, was a slaves job.
So my point is: Cloning/growing new cells to replace defective, damaged, or missing cells is an excellent end goal. Flippant use of human embryos for this purpose is, in my opinion, a degenerative attitude. Targeted use of human embryos under predefined moral rules for this purpose is acceptable and generation of stem cells from other sources is greatly desirable.
Research seems to be moving away from flippant use and more toward targeted use under predefined moral rules and toward generation of stem cells from other sources. Therefore I am becoming decreasingly less concerned about stem cell research as an issue.
I upgraded my mothers new Dell computer that came with Vista to Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn). The amazing thing was that she, of her own accord, learned to hate Vista (she is not very computer savvy). I diplomatically asked her questions to determine the source of her scorn, (because I secretly believed she hated it because it 's different than her previous OS Windows 2000). Upon realizing that she wasn't answering as I expected, I did a little analysis of my own. I found her new, 3Ghz+, 1GB DDR2, was actually slower, Than her AMD K6 266Mhz, 128MB system, WITH SPYWARE (she insisted on using IE, the Great Spyware Magnet).
In nearly all of the companies I have worked for the affect of an IT executive/managers decision based wholly or partly on ego has had a negative impact on what software, hardware, consultant, and employee options were selected.
However none of my experience has been as clearly devestating as the amazingly inept antics of the former CEO of a company formerly known as Candesa*.
Short version: My brother in law was the development manager, was one of the founders of the company, and usually produced profit from the projects he worked on. Regardless of performance the CEO, in his arrogance, was sure that there were better and more qualified people to listen to out in the wide business world (who at their own humble admission, were worthy of much higher salaries). After a chain of profit losing efforts and associated expensive and inept executives (who all ignored the suggestions of my profit making brother-in-law as a general rule), the CEO simply gave up, dissolved the company, and gave back the million dollars worth of angel investment money with which they had started.
*(at one point they were a rising star, with contacts at and contracts with Dreamworks, Novell, ZDNET and a string of medium to large companies... There was even an appearence on TechTV for one of their projects. Oh, and for those of you who notice that Candesa is still around, your right, some of the people who were left in the lurch put up their own money and have been able to keep some of the momentum of the original company).
Are we now assuming they didn't design their percentage of failures into the program? I mean, after all, they have to justify to the public their offensive licensing and 'anti-pirating' DRM don't they?
Some one far from qualified to define reality (a talk show host who deals with political issues, regardless of political bent, is well... dealing with spin therefore not reality)
To be blunt (but hopefully not offensive) your comment appears to be based on an emotional reaction that is short circuiting your ability to think logically in this area. Blaming religious beliefs for lack of school participation is a thin argument at best IMHO. Worse it distracts from finding a solution.
I suspect the problems are more likely a set of cultural problems that are being ignored. Here is a little conjecture: -If parents were more involved with the education of their children their children would see more success in academic efforts. This success would be more likely to lead to academic interest. (Cultural change: 'the teachers are supposed to teach my kids') -If high school were designed to give children a boost into the areas of their interest we would see less wasted talent and a higher number of experts coming from our colleges. (Cultural change: 'worked for me') -If teachers were paid better and given more resources the job of teacher would be more sought after and a higher degree of competent teachers would be the likely result (if at the very least because higher competition would allow administrators more choices therefore weeding out those who are poor teachers). (Cultural change: 'sports stars deserve a 50 million dollar contract teachers should be happy enough just teaching my kids') -If research into improved teaching methods were well funded and the higher levels of academia were willing to teach the new methods we would see a greater number of kids 'getting it' in a given subject, which would be very likely to heavily cut down on dropouts.(Cultural change: 'it worked for me')
Those are my thoughts based on observation, problem solving and logic. I would honestly like to hear yours.
(I apologize if the beginning is offensive to you, however I think/. is a place were most participants can be reasoned with and asked to use reason. I get a bit tired of seeing emotional and non-logical responses to actual problems Thanks for your understanding.)
Slashdot Mirror
I know there have already been a large number of comments on this one but giving corporations ANY of the rights of individuals is a very bad idea (look @ copyright law and the lameness with which corporations utilize it). It's already scary enough that our insane judicial system has granted them the rights of Freedom of Speech...
Beautifully said. Emotions are valuable, in my opinion, when understood by the person feeling them within a logical framework, i.e. Valuable emotions are based on valuable ideas/concepts...
You're ruining the fun now the stupid paranoids will actually know what was said... (because it's unlikely with the level of intelligence they have shown previously they would figure it out)
Exactly like
So, I will pass on what I have discussed with my brother-in-law who is an Electrical Engineer that writes software to test flash memory:
1. Flash memory is built with additional fail over storage (so a 1GB SD card actually has a certain % more memory than 1GB).
When a section of memory fails it is marked bad by the flash controller and some of the fail over memory comes into service (marked bad much like failures on standard hard drives... although I get the impression the flash controller may be the thing remembering it's bad... wasn't clear on this now I have something else to ask him)
2. Flash memory will fail... it can only be written to so many times before it will no longer be able to be written to... and the number of times is definitely not as high as a standard hard drive
So it's likely that you can extend the life of a flash device by writing to it less often.
And, not from my brother-in-law discussions, I personally had a flash drive fail (I was using it as the master copy of documents as I moved data between my work machine and home machine while working toward an online degree). When it failed there was no warning previously. It simply stopped working... wouldn't be read and wouldn't write. I suspect my batch file that performed the backups to it must have written to it too many times (it was a smaller 128MB drive so, considering the above discussion about fail-over memory a smaller drive SHOULD fail faster...)
Hope that helps
I agree, and I also suspect we (me definitely included) would be wise to put our money where our browser is and donate...
Interesting...
Are these webapps IE specific (Active X etc...) by any chance. Or maybe they are ASP.NET apps?
Or maybe what you are experiencing is poor application design. Which would be present in any app. I think what you might be misunderstanding is that web enabled applications are still just applications. If done properly the specifics of the front end can be separated from the logic that drives the application.
Hmmm
.NET is definitely not as prevalent as browsers.
I suppose PHP, Perl, Python, etc... can be considered cross platform as well but still not as prevalent...
Some interesting points. However I do not see having a fairly standard platform for nearly any OS that supports a GUI as a minimal advantage. Java is not as prevalent as browsers. And (although you don't mention it)
For instance, nearly any new phone has a browser, regardless of the OS. Game consoles generally (these days) have a browser, again regardless of OS. Most *nix systems have a GUI which sports a browser. If the logic is on the server (and no you DON'T have to use JS), then ALL of these platforms can inherently run your app (and really JS is a REAL language even though you might not like it's platform).
Finally in your Google example: if they did use QT, how many platforms would suddenly lose the ability to provide their users access to gmail?
Summary: Browsers as a development platform are far more ubiquitous than any other development platform including Java. Relating to the original story: remember back before M$ established their empire and there were many OSs to write programs for? Consider the cost of writing a program that supported: Atari, Amiga, DOS, OS2, Mac (actually can't remember when the first Macs appeared...), etc... That was a considerably more 'hostile' environment for independent developers... and, depending on what language you are using that hasn't changed a lot (with scripting languages and JIT compiled languages, as well as cross platform libraries such as SDL making things easier...). Anyone volunteering to write a C/C++ app for phone OSs, & Linux, & Windows, & Mac, & Solaris, & Unix, & PS3, & Wii??
In the end I still suggest that the browser is the most abundantly available platform to develop on.
I entirely agree... I saw Black & White but was not excited enough about it to buy it. Or spend my time on it.
I still yearn to play Dungeon Keeper on occasion.
I think it's funny that he decided that he had made a mistake with it. To paraphrase 'The problem with Dungeon Keeper was that I put too many controls in the user interface...' interesting that I had never thought that or heard that from other players of the game...
Hello
Having children in that age range, and having looked to some degree I haven't found any GPL educational games that really got my kids interest (Tux paint held the 6 year olds attention for an afternoon).
What has held my children's interest are games on the following websites:
http://www.pbskids.org/
http://funschool.kaboose.com/
http://www.starfall.com/
http://kids.discovery.com/
Hey mwilliamson
They bought a company... That's what they know about virtualization. And it's taken them about 5 to 6 years to re-work it into something they can really market.
My main concern is that, right now, Microsoft is making their virtualization software very cheap and easy to get for Microsoft shops. In the company I work for VMware is out, for that one simple reason.
Even though we will get limited benefit from M$s version and VMWare is a much better solution...
Marketing wins every time. That's the one thing M$ does well....
Hey Falcon
...
You said
"
When your income goes down either you cut spending or you go into debt. Not only has the US federal government cut income, taxes, but it has also ballooned spending. When Bush was sworn into office in 2001 there was a budget surplus of, if I recall right, $300B. Now under Bush the USA has the highest budget deficit it has ever had.
What's so hard to understand about that?
"
I think if you will read my entire previous post you will agree that I am not stating that spending more when there is less is fiscally sound. I am also not suggesting that it does not increase debt. What I am suggesting is simply that tax cuts do not equal debt.
I also specifically did not refer to Bush or his administration as I don't believe the problem is specifically the administrations (Regan, Bush, Clinton, Bush: debt increased throughout all administrations[a budget surplus is great but when it's not applied to debt it obviously will not decrease it]). The current administration is always the easiest to blame. And while I believe the current one is to blame in a greater way perhaps than the others I mentioned I believe the full blame is the general attitude and structure of the US political machine.
It also doesn't help that we, the citizens of the United States, actually do little to resolve this problem.
The truth is, when enough people decide these issues are important and express our opinions to our representatives change is inevitable.
Wow the statements about a temporary tax cut impress me.
Unless there is some aspect regarding the tax cut with which I am unaware (such as we will have to pay it back next year) it is so much unlike using a credit card that I suspect your consideration of the topic has been limited to quick impressions.
While I understand that you are making a reference to the fact that the government of our country is in debt and borrows constantly, to the best of my understanding there it is a stretch to say that there is a direct correlation between paying less taxes and creating more national debt.
The alternative in this case is paying the same amount of taxes which will be likely to produce the following train of events:
-the government will squander the taxes and therefore contribute minimally to economic growth (government consumes and does not produce)
-as the economy stagnates there will be a decrease in tax revenue
-a decrease in tax revenue will lead to greater debt ("Slow spending when there's less money, never!!" yell the politicians and special interest groups)
When the economy is healthier there are more funds available for paying off debt, we just choose to spend the excess instead eliminate debt.
Paying more taxes does not make the economy healthier.
While my 12 years in business related IT may not qualify my opinion above your opinion I strongly disagree that people lose value when their job duties are known.
I agree that a large part of documenting job duties and work processes is to make people more easily interchangeable. However doing something does not equal doing it well. What it does accomplish is return the focus of the work force toward quality of work.
If you know what processes someone is following to accomplish the documented duties it is much easier for you, or that person to see flaws in the processes and fix them. It is also much easier to recognize when someone is going beyond the call of duty to bring value to the company. Of course it is also easier to see when that employee is not doing a good job.
I suspect that corporations who don't value their employees will not get value out of such an effort regardless of how well it is done. Turn over & layoffs will be more likely with this company.
On the other hand determining processes and procedures is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to bring success to a company that DOES appreciate it's employees. Turn over & layoffs will be less likely with this company.
I see the attempts of networks to limit our ability to DVR their shows as a more mild form of the same type of stupidity that the RIAA uses when they try to limit our ability to download music.7 20246.shtml/rel=url2html-29223http://www.techdirt. com/articles/20060407/1720246.shtml/>
It's a new opportunity for you to make money, idiots!
Here's a little proof of intelligence showing through the idiocy: ahref=http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060407/1
(please read the second comment down... someone who says they are an advertiser...)
Yes, I agree. You're right.
It's interesting how many problems can be resolved by a distributed approach.
To both your pick of #3 and your statement
Good point.
I hope your right. Not currently using MythTV but planning on building a box in the next few months. I will do it without a service to support the movement but that would really suck.
That's an eye opener.
For some reason this reminds me of many incorrect scientific conclusions of the past: spontaneous generation, flat earth, perfect geometry, etc...
They all seemed to suffer from the same problem, bad methodology.
Spontaneous generation, to detail one, was based on the extremely valuable scientific principle of observation. Unfortunately the lack of rigorous methods to perform a useful study meant that further understanding of life was not forthcoming for centuries.
Ummm, I guess it would be a good idea to read the original article huh?
heh
The recent advance of creating stem cells from skin cells (using embryonic stem cells cultured in the lab from previously collected stem cells) suggests to me that there are a potentially large number of other methods to obtain/generate these cells that does not involve the destruction of viable human embryos.
I have also found it interesting that embryonic stem cells, apparently, can be taken from umbilical cords and placental cells. Why is this ignored in research (or is it a case of a percentage of researchers focusing on it but media coverage not being made)?
Using monkey stem cells, if the potential problems can be resolved relating to genome differences, seems like a good approach.
For those few (one or two if I'm lucky) who are interested in my reasoning:
It's my opinion that treating potential human lives as a commodity leads the human race to a morally incorrect conclusion: sentient life is only as important as it's medical value to any other sentient life who stand to benefit from said medical value.
I do not see the use of monkey embryos as a moral affront when used appropriately because monkeys are not sentient. While I believe all life should be revered to a greater or lesser degree I see this reverence being measured by the potential of the individual. Sentient beings have an infinitely greater potential than non-sentient beings.
My basis for this conclusion/opinion is the universally accepted moral code against the taking of human life. Well universally accepted in non-self destructive cultures.
Lets not base this belief on religious text or arguments as I do not believe such sources lend themselves well to scientific analysis (although they may have their place as historically being the method of enforcement of moral standards in cultures). From a purely evolutionary perspective I think history provides us decent proof that lack of reverence for the rights, specifically the right of life of human/sentient beings is not a constructive cultural tendency.
I'm not going to attempt to detail these tendencies but according to what I've read, effectively, cultures tend to become increasingly flippant regarding life prior to that cultures disintegration.
In fact this can be expanded to include other rights as well. It is my understanding that one of the chief reasons there was not more invention & technological advancement during the golden age of philosophy was the cultural tendency to rely on slaves to perform tasks that required physical labor.
Because of this cultural weakness those who developed hypotheses failed to carry out experiments because hands on physical labor was required, which, culturally, was a slaves job.
So my point is:
Cloning/growing new cells to replace defective, damaged, or missing cells is an excellent end goal. Flippant use of human embryos for this purpose is, in my opinion, a degenerative attitude. Targeted use of human embryos under predefined moral rules for this purpose is acceptable and generation of stem cells from other sources is greatly desirable.
Research seems to be moving away from flippant use and more toward targeted use under predefined moral rules and toward generation of stem cells from other sources.
Therefore I am becoming decreasingly less concerned about stem cell research as an issue.
Along those lines...
I upgraded my mothers new Dell computer that came with Vista to Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn).
The amazing thing was that she, of her own accord, learned to hate Vista (she is not very computer savvy).
I diplomatically asked her questions to determine the source of her scorn, (because I secretly believed she hated it because it 's different than her previous OS Windows 2000). Upon realizing that she wasn't answering as I expected, I did a little analysis of my own. I found her new, 3Ghz+, 1GB DDR2, was actually slower, Than her AMD K6 266Mhz, 128MB system, WITH SPYWARE (she insisted on using IE, the Great Spyware Magnet).
Amazing. The depths of incompetence
In nearly all of the companies I have worked for the affect of an IT executive/managers decision based wholly or partly on ego has had a negative impact on what software, hardware, consultant, and employee options were selected.
However none of my experience has been as clearly devestating as the amazingly inept antics of the former CEO of a company formerly known as Candesa*.
Short version: My brother in law was the development manager, was one of the founders of the company, and usually produced profit from the projects he worked on.
Regardless of performance the CEO, in his arrogance, was sure that there were better and more qualified people to listen to out in the wide business world (who at their own humble admission, were worthy of much higher salaries). After a chain of profit losing efforts and associated expensive and inept executives (who all ignored the suggestions of my profit making brother-in-law as a general rule), the CEO simply gave up, dissolved the company, and gave back the million dollars worth of angel investment money with which they had started.
*(at one point they were a rising star, with contacts at and contracts with Dreamworks, Novell, ZDNET and a string of medium to large companies... There was even an appearence on TechTV for one of their projects. Oh, and for those of you who notice that Candesa is still around, your right, some of the people who were left in the lurch put up their own money and have been able to keep some of the momentum of the original company).
Are we now assuming they didn't design their percentage of failures into the program?
I mean, after all, they have to justify to the public their offensive licensing and 'anti-pirating' DRM don't they?
lol
Some one far from qualified to define reality (a talk show host who deals with political issues, regardless of political bent, is well... dealing with spin therefore not reality)
Hello Enoent
/. is a place were most participants can be reasoned with and asked to use reason. I get a bit tired of seeing emotional and non-logical responses to actual problems
To be blunt (but hopefully not offensive) your comment appears to be based on an emotional reaction that is short circuiting your ability to think logically in this area.
Blaming religious beliefs for lack of school participation is a thin argument at best IMHO. Worse it distracts from finding a solution.
I suspect the problems are more likely a set of cultural problems that are being ignored.
Here is a little conjecture:
-If parents were more involved with the education of their children their children would see more success in academic efforts. This success would be more likely to lead to academic interest. (Cultural change: 'the teachers are supposed to teach my kids')
-If high school were designed to give children a boost into the areas of their interest we would see less wasted talent and a higher number of experts coming from our colleges. (Cultural change: 'worked for me')
-If teachers were paid better and given more resources the job of teacher would be more sought after and a higher degree of competent teachers would be the likely result (if at the very least because higher competition would allow administrators more choices therefore weeding out those who are poor teachers). (Cultural change: 'sports stars deserve a 50 million dollar contract teachers should be happy enough just teaching my kids')
-If research into improved teaching methods were well funded and the higher levels of academia were willing to teach the new methods we would see a greater number of kids 'getting it' in a given subject, which would be very likely to heavily cut down on dropouts.(Cultural change: 'it worked for me')
Those are my thoughts based on observation, problem solving and logic.
I would honestly like to hear yours.
(I apologize if the beginning is offensive to you, however I think
Thanks for your understanding.)