At least said third party has explicitly stated that he's being paid by Microsoft. And at least Microsoft has not barred him and others they are paying from doing the same. How much more honesty can you ask for? If Microsoft told a bunch of PR people to edit Wikipedia, they'd probably not have told anyone, and no one would've known Microsoft was paying PR people to subtly skew articles in their favor.
Third parties are usually where corporations finds impartiality, even if the third party receives a cheque from the company on a monthly basis. Most other industries use a third party for impartiality--e.g. auditing in the financial industry, security audits, etc. are essentially asking a third party to review existing data for disrepencies. Why can't Microsoft do the same with their products and/or standards?
Unfortunately, your argument is representative of a lot of people. I'm going to present a counterargument, not directed at you individually, but for everyone who thinks this way.
We're not saving the planet when we conserve. As a species, we're saving ourselves.
Look at it this way: Have you any relatives who might be children? Have any siblings, cousins, children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or other close relatives who might still be children? Any of your friends have children? As an individual, what little inconvenience we'd experience now by doing our part will be saving our children from a whole lot more inconvenience later. Perhaps disaster won't occur in their lifetimes. Perhaps it'll be in their children's lifetimes. But that's still your grandchildren. You know how everyone says to "think of the children." If people really thought of the children, they'd be conserving and advocating conservation. I'm not saying people who don't conserve (whether actively or passively) are necessarily selfish. But perhaps this particular consequence hasn't been impressed upon them enough.
If we don't start watching what we do to the planet now, well, the sins of the father and all that...
But then again, this is/., so maybe this particular line of thought might not be the most effective motivator.
I believe this compound has been in use for a long time, albeit for other higher-level purposes. This is merely a different application of the same compound. It's almost like taking asprin for heart disease instead of pain. Since the compound already exists in a FDA approved form, why then would the researchers have to go through the same trouble again? At the very least, they'd be able to cite the previous studies done for FDA approval, and that should speed up the process considerably.
Given this, I'd think it'd be easy for companies that make generics to start selling this.
I think any funding would be going into testing to further medical knowledge rather than to attain any form of approval for use.
While external interference would be applicable for a perfectly operational satellite suddenly gone bad without an explanation, Hanlon's Razor probably applies better in this case.
Sony does the same thing for the PlayStation platform. An SDK ~is~ available, if you pay the huge fee for it, and Sony still gets to decide if your title is good enough to get their PlayStation branding. If the iPhone is going to work as a product for Apple, it really does have to work just as smoothly as its demo. Just like Sony, Apple gets to vet/check software before it goes out into the wide world.
The hacker geeks aren't going to like it, but, hey, it didn't stop Sony from owning the world with this very same model for the PSX and PS2.
First off, Sony sold the PSX (and is selling the PS2 and PS3) at a loss from a hardware perspective to attract buyers. That way, they can sell more SDK's (which are significantly marked up) to developers, who in turn would potentially generate revenue from the users who buy their games. The more units sold, the more potential customers for a game developer, so the more developers buy the SDK, and the more money Sony makes. And the more games are out there, the more people buy the unit. It's a viscious cycle.
Apple, on the other hand, is making money on the unit. They're not trying to sell a lot of units. They're trying to cater to a very specific demographic. And therein lies the problem. Developers pay $$$ for an sdk knowing they have a limited customer base, so either their products are going to be really expensive, or they'll only write the ones that most of their demographic will buy, leaving no one to develop the fringe/novelty applications. Smartphones are almost equivalent to a general purpose computer with the additional phone function (almost because they're physically limited). With computers, the greatest draw is the number of applications that exist (look at why Windows is entrenched in the PC OS market). It doesn't have to be said that fewer or more expensive applications means fewer potential customers, which means fewer developers, which means fewer units sold, and even fewer customers. And yes, that's a viscious cycle too.
Essentially, Apple isn't trying to attract as many buyers as possible, while they're trying to use Sony's business model.
What's killing the PS3, BTW, is the cost of entry from both the user and developer's perspective. You need to shell out 600 for a unit, then 60 per game. And developers need to sell half a million of each title to break even. Not a lot of people are willing to pay so much for a high-priced unit with high-priced games. And not a lot of developers have the capital to buy, much less want to spend it on, a unit that doesn't look like it's selling well. And unless the iPhone's SDK opens up, it'll be much the same thing that'll kill the iPhone.
I say let the iPhone be an iPhone -- that's what's it's going to be good at.
And what is that exactly? A really expensive regular phone, albeit nicer looking?
On the contrary, there was no scientific study of the heavens during the Middle Ages. There were old texts based on belief from which to base present (at that time) beliefs upon. But belief alone isn't science. Once scientific method came into play, it immediately invalidated the existing beliefs on the matter and caused an uproar within the existing belief-based oligarchy.
In ancient times, some things were examined scientifically, and some were not. Just because the scientific method existed in its primacy then did not mean it was always used. Some of the "scientific" conclusions like a geocentric universe were not based on continuous observation and validation though observation, but on existing cultural tenets.
That having been said, this doesn't invalidate your point that scientific conclusions does not equate to Truth and that science is merely the process through which we arrive at a pragmatic truth. That is to say, global warming exists. Our planet is getting warmer. When average annual temperatures consistently drop, global warming will cease to exist. But until then, it cannot be denied. There's a definite correlation between industrialization and global warming. As well, causation is so probable it is almost certain and definitely probable enough to be considered certainty.
But who knows, it could be that some extra terrestrial put the planet into a giant, invisible microwave and turned it on. Or it could be from the organized expelling of copious amounts of gas from hitherto unknown cow tribes in a bid to rid the planet of humans and take over the world for themselves. Hey, you never know...;)
As I've said previously, this exclusive contract reeks of Cingular having a hand in funding the iPhone. It's detrimental to Apple's sales, and Apple's gotta be getting something back for this stuff.
It's not particularly difficult to include support for a variety of networks in one phone, especially a phone as robust as this appears to be. T-Mobile and Cingular use the same technology, and a change in networks is a matter of a change in SIM. So that leaves only two other technologies to support.
All I know is, Apple, from a mindshare perspective, is at the point where they can release something as amazing as this for the mass market and recover their R&D costs several times over by Christmas. People will pay upwards of $1000 for this thing, especially if they included a HDD version that had much greater capacity (maybe based on the 1.8" form factor instead of the 2.5"?). And while they might not make a terrible amount per unit relative to the R&D costs, they'll make a killing in volume. Locking it into Cingular is effectively neutering the iPhone's entrance into the smartphone market.
Now, a bit of conspiracy theory. It's been said that Apple delayed the introduction of the iPhone because of technical hurdles. I wonder if those still exist in the form of manufacturing, and they're just trying to cover up their failure to solve their low yields by purposefully stunting the initial demand. They'd still be able to announce a new product (and thus keep investors happy and fanbois' mouths watering) even if their yields are abysmally low. And more importantly, they'd be turning all interested heads away from the Zune--not to mention every other smartphone, PDA, and mp3 player.
Then why not just forget the carrier and sell it unlocked? It's a video iPod and a half-mac. It can stand on its own, without the phone. I'm sure without the lock-in, the iPhone would sell far more than with, for the new touch screen and video features, if for nothing else. The fact that it's a phone and a smartphone at that should add to the value of the unit, not detract from it (which is exactly what's happening with Cingular).
Looking at Cingular's website, it appears that the most expensive smart phone they're offering is the Treo 750 for $400 after rebate, $650 without a plan. The 8525 is the same price after rebate, but $100 less without a plan. So the iPhone would be about $100-$200 more, considering that Apple likely won't offer rebates for it and the quoted prices are the prices with a plan.
Other than this, my prediction still stands that it's going to do well within a very limited demographic and poorly everywhere else.
I'll be willing to bet insane amounts of money that Cingular has a stake in the project too. Otherwise, there's no reason for Apple to tie the phone to one carrier.
No one's going to buy this with Cingular, especially at that price point with a contract. Most people who use blackberries--business customers, mainly--are not going to be attracted to the other features, and since this thing is two to three times the price of a high-end blackberry, there's no reason to replace the existing devices with this one.
Now, if any unlocked units come out, they might be better received. After all, it makes for an awesome PDA, video viewer, and mp3 player in one package. And, it might even work with networks other than Cingular as a basic phone. But that's still not enough for wide adoption at the current prices. And that's assuming that there will be unlocked units.
What they should've done was released a new series of video ipods with the present storage sizes of 4, 8, 30, and 80 GB (the 2GB would be too small to be useful), the fancy screen upgrades, HDD and flash, and the wireless at these prices (sans any required contract). That would've gotten people's attention. And I'm certain it would be next Christmas' big thing. The iPhone could've been released separately as it is now, even with the contract tie-in. This way, Apple can recoup their R&D losses with the iPod sales while they establish a foothold in the mobile phone market.
As it stands now, it's an awesome product and all, but only a few people will actually buy it. Lots of wow. But they're not going to see much of a return for a long time.
That's not gonna help if you're drunk. You'll be sitting there wondering why you're slowing down (despite any warning signs that the car will have) until it's too late and you get rear-ended. Or, you'll panic and swerve into somebody passing from the right. Or, there won't be a service road for you to pull onto.
The technology's been available for some time now. It's about time they started putting it into cars. Too many deaths involving cars are from drunk drivers. And it's not like darwin's performing his miracles either. Since a number of these accidents involve pedestrians, the inebriated driver is the one who walks away.
I do agree that taking control of a car while it is operating is a bad thing. The driver should always have control while the vehicle is in motion. Whether it is a good or bad thing if the driver doesn't have control while the vehicle is stationary is up for debate. But a big part of safe driving is fulfilling the expectations of other drivers. Suddenly slowing down to a stop in the middle of the road is a bad thing no matter what, even if the hazards come on and all that jazz. Besides, the chances of a person getting piss drunk while driving is a lot less than the chances of a person getting drunk in a bar or club before driving.
Instead, there are ways around the glove trick. A heat sensor on top of the alcohol sensor that measures body temperature will definitely make it harder to defeat. And well, for those who want to drive with gloves on, touching the steering wheel--heck, maybe even breathing onto it--with any exposed skin should be enough to allow the car to start.
Now, if only it was legally mandatory for all cars (the government would subsidize its installation on older cars of course)...
I allow that there are at least two facts that weigh against this theory. Red Hat stated that Microsoft offered it the same deal, and the Microsoft/Novell partnership announcement makes mention of a payment by Novell.
Actually, humans have been doing this without all the technology for many thousands of years in the form of traditional medicines. The advantage to having all this technology is to speed the discovery process up slightly and allow for more people to get at it while still keeping the prices down. Yeah, it also helps in the understanding of why certain chemicals do the things they do, but considering how much knowledge the 'why' actually gives us in terms of medical applications, that particular aspect of medicine becomes largely academic.
I'm not saying technology is necessarily bad. But in the case of finding new medicines, all the true benefits we reap from advance technology (i.e. that we otherwise would be incapable or hindered from doing in the absence of technology) are offset by consequences that, IMHO, are worse. Would I rather delay the discovery and/or propogation of the cure for all cancers by a few decades rather than see the source of that cure go extinct? Yeah, I would. And in this case, that's really all that it comes down to.
Now, when it comes to other aspects of medicine like understanding the human physiology to develop and improve life-saving techniques, and understanding what's around us at a molecular level to improve living conditions, that's a different story.
One would expect slashdot editors to know what qualifies as a fork even if PJ doesn't (didn't, as I'm almost positive she knows now). And if a slashdot editor didn't know, what was he/she (but mostly he) doing approving and putting up submissions on the topic?
What Novell is doing might or might not be a fork (this is up for debate--Novell seems to have forked the code, certainly, but it also seems that the ODF filter that's really at the heart of the debate is going to be more along the lines of a plug-in), but that doesn't excuse scuttlemonkey from putting up a sensationalist headline.
No. The same security update would also break Office's compatibility with itself. Not if MS left a few optional features out from the standard that it suddenly makes necessary, or if certain undefined behaviors suddenly become expected in the Office implementation.
I disagree. While back then, with no viable competitor, new file formats would justify an upgrade. If clients were sending you office 2003 file but you're running office 97, you're definitely going to want to move to office 2003. However, in this day and age, office is no longer the monopoly it once was. There are three factors hindering the office 2003 to office 2007 transition, and they've largely been covered by other posters here.
To reiterate, first is the completely redesigned interface, and the need for retraining. This will make companies, large and small, reluctant to upgrade. They'll hold off as long as possible. Remember, people in managerial positions and their assistants use office. And for most of these people, who have trouble with technology as it is and who'd spent the better part of the past 10-15 years getting used to office since the days of 5.0, retraining is going to be a very painful process. Add to the fact that they're the decision makers, and you've got even less chance of companies moving to office 2007.
The second is the presence of a half-decent competitor: open office. So what if microsoft stops selling office 2003? Suddenly, open office, with its familiar interface and remarkably similar feature set is going to look very lucrative. And add to the fact that it's free, and there's even greater incentive to move to it if microsoft is foolish enough to stop selling office 2003 outright. Sure, it's not as polished as office 2003. But as long as it can read and write those files, it'll do. New file formats force upgrades only when there's nothing decent available to read and process the old one. Open office isn't stunning, but it'll do for the most part.
The final, and most important factor is the same one that plagued Intel and AMD a few years back. Office 2003 is good enough. Sure, it might be lacking in a few areas compared to office 2007. But people have found ways around those shortcomings already, and having spent many years improving those workarounds, they're pretty efficient by now. Why upgrade to 2007 when the feature set of 2003 is sufficient?
And these are the same reasons people won't upgrade to vista. Sure, vista might be more secure. And at home, it'll find wide adoption because of its OEM bundling. But in the corporate world, people know that an upgrade will cost money. How much depends on the company, but if it's on par or more than the existing security budget for the current windows xp setup, there's no reason to upgrade. And by the time xp goes into extended support, well, there's still a couple of years, and like office, there's an alternative that's gaining popularity. So by the time businesses get around to deploying office 2007 and vista, they might just go, screw it, and start deploying linux instead.
More likely, anything that isn't backwards compatible will hinder the transition rather than help it. The reason why people moved to XP? Because it worked well with 2k. And it had a set of features 2k didn't have that was actually useful. Vista actually was supposed to have some of those nifty features that would encourage people to upgrade. But over the course of its development, they all were eventually canned--put off indefinitely or until a later upgrade pack.
Actually, these are all peripheral problems. These systems could be better, but there are reasons they exist--mainly so that someone doesn't check in something into the code base that causes the machine to eat itself up, and essentially halts the daily testing for a whole day or more while the sysadmins go about restoring all the test systems with the previous day's ghost.
The main problem is in this line:
Twenty-four of them were connected sorta closely to the code, and of those twenty four there were exactly zero with final say in how the feature worked. Somewhere in those other 17 was somebody who did have final say but who that was I have no idea since when I left the team -- after a year -- there was still no decision about exactly how this feature would work.
Anyone with any amount of organizational management experience will tell you that in order for things to happen efficiently, there has to be someone with final say, for better or worse. Decisions cannot efficiently be made by committees, much less the democratic-sounding process that the blog outlines. Someone somewhere has to put his foot down and say, "yes, these are the ideas that have been put forth, these are the arguments for and against those ideas, and this is what we're going to do." It doesn't have to be management. It could be one of the developers. It could be the GUI designers. It could be a tester. But it has to be one person. And the decision has to stick. If upper management doesn't like the resulting conclusion, too bad, they should've picked someone else. It's only when the early testers start to complain that it's worth a second look for redo.
The nearly as important thing to note is that there are 47 people having a say on this one thing. Why? There should be at most, five people working on the design and implementation of any particular feature. For this, it should be four: one usability person, one GUI designer, one developer from the kernel, and one developer from the start menu team. For features that span more of the OS, several lead developers and maybe a manager to take care of timetables and the likes. But always designate one person to make the final decision!
Yes, from a development perspective, the whole repository organized like a tree structure has its inefficiencies. But the crux of this particular problem is an organizational one. Having changes propagated quickly isn't going to do any good when the feature hasn't been implemented because the design isn't cemented, or the feature's implementation changes every few days. In fact, having changes propagated slowly would be better if features tend to get constantly redesigned.
All jobs are based on trade. Generally speaking, the employee trades a service (the job) for goods (money). We each have certain expectations as to the value of our service, relative to the good that we get back. Which is to say, we expect a certain amount of money for what we do. This is an oversimplification, but for this argument, it will suffice. Exploitation is when one side receives something of greater value than the other side. Get paid too little, your employer is exploiting you. Get paid too much, and you're exploiting your employer.
From this standpoint, being a porn star is like every other job. The service is sex, or nudity, etc. The goods is still money. And whether it is exploitation is still dependent on the value of the service. Some people put great value on the service. Others put little value on the service. Therein lies the true point of contention. It isn't whether people are being exploited so much as it is the value of exposing oneself, or performing sexual acts, etc.
The US, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the modern world are consumption-driven. That means, if we don't consume, our society fails. The economy revolves around consumption, and waste is the quickest way to ensure that we will continue to consume. After all, if we use and then throw away our paper cups, when next we need to drink, we'd have to use another one.
It's all about the money. In the end, the environment--our existence--is an inferior goal to wealth. Conservation, and ultimately, the long-term solution to our environmental problems begins with changing culture from one of luxury to one of necessity.
There is one fundamental problem with what you propose: Most people just want to spend fifteen to twenty minutes taking their driving test and be able to hop into a car and drive. They don't have any desire for specialized training. They view driving as an inconvenient necessity of life, not a skill that needs to be nurtured until mastery.
There are a number of things that might be able to provide the necessary incentives to foster this kind of training. For examle, insurance companies can lower rates as people become more qualified, not unlike having taken a defensive driving course. States can issue multi-tiered licenses, where certain licenses have less restrictions (like speed limit, following distance, etc.). However, all have their problems that prevent them from being practical. Insurance companies are more likely to raise rates of higher-skilled drivers, merely because those drivers are more likely to take chances, or put themselves in more dangerous situations. Tiered license systems simply don't work, as it'd be impossible for a police officer to know drivers' qualifications for what without stopping every driver not following the most restrictive set of rules.
In the end, it is up to the individual drivers to have a suitable perspective on driving.
Though, they could always put this kind of information into the handbooks and written tests. But that just gives people information, not the guarantee of experience that would be ideal. It's like saying that someone with a BAC of.1 should not drive, despite the fact that there are many people out there who can still drive well with even more alcohol in their blood. In such cases, it's not about the information, it's about the person and the situation. Sometimes, it's about luck too. Still, I guess every bit helps.
Stop ripping up the nation's rail lines, and return federal subsidies to Amtrak.
One large source of pollution is the nation's trucking industry. Just drive on a commercial freeway. Old semis from the 70's that are constantly spewing a plume of smoke are more common than the new, cleaner ones. Forcing shipping companies to replace the old models by holding them to the same emission standards as the new models, and encouraging long distance freight over rail would go a long way to reducing emissions.
Same with cars. By holding light trucks to the same emissions standards as cars, SUV's wouldn't be a problem. They'd still use gas, and foster the dependence on oil, but that can be tackled separately by raising gas taxes.
This would probably be for developers who work other jobs on the side (like college students who have high-paying campus jobs), people who develop OSS for a living (e.g. people working at the Mozilla foundation), OSS authors who accept donations, or companies who develop or contribute to OSS (e.g. Redhat, IBM, and now Sun).
That having been said, there are a lot of issues with such a tax break. For example, what are the qualification criteria? Significant contribution? Lead developer? Credited developer? Also, what are the criteria for something to constitute as OSS? Non-viral licensing? Compiled/interpreted language? What about markup languages? Or things that are not code but are released under a creative commons license? What about patented methods where the patent holder is also the lead developer? Finally, while slightly easier to define than the above since there are already precedents set, what constitutes development costs?
Quite frankly, both the US and China are not particularly good places to live for one who values civil rights. Just say certain keywords loud enough in the US (I need not say which ones) and I'm certain the men in black suits will start paying attention.
However, the US isn't quite as experienced in these matters as China. My communications might get monitored for mentioning said keywords, but that doesn't mean the FBI or NSA is going to show up at my door and disappear me right away. It's just beginning to get bad in the US, but until the federal government does away with things like due process, it's nowhere near as bad as it is in China. Having rights slowly being taken away is not the same as having no rights to begin with.
The only advantage China has over the US (and what makes what you say true) is that China is enormous. Can't monitor everybody, so they go for the outspoken ones only.
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At least said third party has explicitly stated that he's being paid by Microsoft. And at least Microsoft has not barred him and others they are paying from doing the same. How much more honesty can you ask for? If Microsoft told a bunch of PR people to edit Wikipedia, they'd probably not have told anyone, and no one would've known Microsoft was paying PR people to subtly skew articles in their favor.
Third parties are usually where corporations finds impartiality, even if the third party receives a cheque from the company on a monthly basis. Most other industries use a third party for impartiality--e.g. auditing in the financial industry, security audits, etc. are essentially asking a third party to review existing data for disrepencies. Why can't Microsoft do the same with their products and/or standards?
Unfortunately, your argument is representative of a lot of people. I'm going to present a counterargument, not directed at you individually, but for everyone who thinks this way.
/., so maybe this particular line of thought might not be the most effective motivator.
We're not saving the planet when we conserve. As a species, we're saving ourselves.
Look at it this way: Have you any relatives who might be children? Have any siblings, cousins, children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or other close relatives who might still be children? Any of your friends have children? As an individual, what little inconvenience we'd experience now by doing our part will be saving our children from a whole lot more inconvenience later. Perhaps disaster won't occur in their lifetimes. Perhaps it'll be in their children's lifetimes. But that's still your grandchildren. You know how everyone says to "think of the children." If people really thought of the children, they'd be conserving and advocating conservation. I'm not saying people who don't conserve (whether actively or passively) are necessarily selfish. But perhaps this particular consequence hasn't been impressed upon them enough.
If we don't start watching what we do to the planet now, well, the sins of the father and all that...
But then again, this is
I believe this compound has been in use for a long time, albeit for other higher-level purposes. This is merely a different application of the same compound. It's almost like taking asprin for heart disease instead of pain. Since the compound already exists in a FDA approved form, why then would the researchers have to go through the same trouble again? At the very least, they'd be able to cite the previous studies done for FDA approval, and that should speed up the process considerably.
Given this, I'd think it'd be easy for companies that make generics to start selling this.
I think any funding would be going into testing to further medical knowledge rather than to attain any form of approval for use.
While external interference would be applicable for a perfectly operational satellite suddenly gone bad without an explanation, Hanlon's Razor probably applies better in this case.
First off, Sony sold the PSX (and is selling the PS2 and PS3) at a loss from a hardware perspective to attract buyers. That way, they can sell more SDK's (which are significantly marked up) to developers, who in turn would potentially generate revenue from the users who buy their games. The more units sold, the more potential customers for a game developer, so the more developers buy the SDK, and the more money Sony makes. And the more games are out there, the more people buy the unit. It's a viscious cycle.
Apple, on the other hand, is making money on the unit. They're not trying to sell a lot of units. They're trying to cater to a very specific demographic. And therein lies the problem. Developers pay $$$ for an sdk knowing they have a limited customer base, so either their products are going to be really expensive, or they'll only write the ones that most of their demographic will buy, leaving no one to develop the fringe/novelty applications. Smartphones are almost equivalent to a general purpose computer with the additional phone function (almost because they're physically limited). With computers, the greatest draw is the number of applications that exist (look at why Windows is entrenched in the PC OS market). It doesn't have to be said that fewer or more expensive applications means fewer potential customers, which means fewer developers, which means fewer units sold, and even fewer customers. And yes, that's a viscious cycle too.
Essentially, Apple isn't trying to attract as many buyers as possible, while they're trying to use Sony's business model.
What's killing the PS3, BTW, is the cost of entry from both the user and developer's perspective. You need to shell out 600 for a unit, then 60 per game. And developers need to sell half a million of each title to break even. Not a lot of people are willing to pay so much for a high-priced unit with high-priced games. And not a lot of developers have the capital to buy, much less want to spend it on, a unit that doesn't look like it's selling well. And unless the iPhone's SDK opens up, it'll be much the same thing that'll kill the iPhone.
And what is that exactly? A really expensive regular phone, albeit nicer looking?
New York City was in the mid-70's on 1/6/2007. The high was in the 60's the day before, and it nearly hit the 60's the day before that.
On the contrary, there was no scientific study of the heavens during the Middle Ages. There were old texts based on belief from which to base present (at that time) beliefs upon. But belief alone isn't science. Once scientific method came into play, it immediately invalidated the existing beliefs on the matter and caused an uproar within the existing belief-based oligarchy.
;)
In ancient times, some things were examined scientifically, and some were not. Just because the scientific method existed in its primacy then did not mean it was always used. Some of the "scientific" conclusions like a geocentric universe were not based on continuous observation and validation though observation, but on existing cultural tenets.
That having been said, this doesn't invalidate your point that scientific conclusions does not equate to Truth and that science is merely the process through which we arrive at a pragmatic truth. That is to say, global warming exists. Our planet is getting warmer. When average annual temperatures consistently drop, global warming will cease to exist. But until then, it cannot be denied. There's a definite correlation between industrialization and global warming. As well, causation is so probable it is almost certain and definitely probable enough to be considered certainty.
But who knows, it could be that some extra terrestrial put the planet into a giant, invisible microwave and turned it on. Or it could be from the organized expelling of copious amounts of gas from hitherto unknown cow tribes in a bid to rid the planet of humans and take over the world for themselves. Hey, you never know...
As I've said previously, this exclusive contract reeks of Cingular having a hand in funding the iPhone. It's detrimental to Apple's sales, and Apple's gotta be getting something back for this stuff.
It's not particularly difficult to include support for a variety of networks in one phone, especially a phone as robust as this appears to be. T-Mobile and Cingular use the same technology, and a change in networks is a matter of a change in SIM. So that leaves only two other technologies to support.
All I know is, Apple, from a mindshare perspective, is at the point where they can release something as amazing as this for the mass market and recover their R&D costs several times over by Christmas. People will pay upwards of $1000 for this thing, especially if they included a HDD version that had much greater capacity (maybe based on the 1.8" form factor instead of the 2.5"?). And while they might not make a terrible amount per unit relative to the R&D costs, they'll make a killing in volume. Locking it into Cingular is effectively neutering the iPhone's entrance into the smartphone market.
Now, a bit of conspiracy theory. It's been said that Apple delayed the introduction of the iPhone because of technical hurdles. I wonder if those still exist in the form of manufacturing, and they're just trying to cover up their failure to solve their low yields by purposefully stunting the initial demand. They'd still be able to announce a new product (and thus keep investors happy and fanbois' mouths watering) even if their yields are abysmally low. And more importantly, they'd be turning all interested heads away from the Zune--not to mention every other smartphone, PDA, and mp3 player.
Then why not just forget the carrier and sell it unlocked? It's a video iPod and a half-mac. It can stand on its own, without the phone. I'm sure without the lock-in, the iPhone would sell far more than with, for the new touch screen and video features, if for nothing else. The fact that it's a phone and a smartphone at that should add to the value of the unit, not detract from it (which is exactly what's happening with Cingular).
Looking at Cingular's website, it appears that the most expensive smart phone they're offering is the Treo 750 for $400 after rebate, $650 without a plan. The 8525 is the same price after rebate, but $100 less without a plan. So the iPhone would be about $100-$200 more, considering that Apple likely won't offer rebates for it and the quoted prices are the prices with a plan.
Other than this, my prediction still stands that it's going to do well within a very limited demographic and poorly everywhere else.
I'll be willing to bet insane amounts of money that Cingular has a stake in the project too. Otherwise, there's no reason for Apple to tie the phone to one carrier.
No one's going to buy this with Cingular, especially at that price point with a contract. Most people who use blackberries--business customers, mainly--are not going to be attracted to the other features, and since this thing is two to three times the price of a high-end blackberry, there's no reason to replace the existing devices with this one.
Now, if any unlocked units come out, they might be better received. After all, it makes for an awesome PDA, video viewer, and mp3 player in one package. And, it might even work with networks other than Cingular as a basic phone. But that's still not enough for wide adoption at the current prices. And that's assuming that there will be unlocked units.
What they should've done was released a new series of video ipods with the present storage sizes of 4, 8, 30, and 80 GB (the 2GB would be too small to be useful), the fancy screen upgrades, HDD and flash, and the wireless at these prices (sans any required contract). That would've gotten people's attention. And I'm certain it would be next Christmas' big thing. The iPhone could've been released separately as it is now, even with the contract tie-in. This way, Apple can recoup their R&D losses with the iPod sales while they establish a foothold in the mobile phone market.
As it stands now, it's an awesome product and all, but only a few people will actually buy it. Lots of wow. But they're not going to see much of a return for a long time.
That's not gonna help if you're drunk. You'll be sitting there wondering why you're slowing down (despite any warning signs that the car will have) until it's too late and you get rear-ended. Or, you'll panic and swerve into somebody passing from the right. Or, there won't be a service road for you to pull onto.
The technology's been available for some time now. It's about time they started putting it into cars. Too many deaths involving cars are from drunk drivers. And it's not like darwin's performing his miracles either. Since a number of these accidents involve pedestrians, the inebriated driver is the one who walks away.
I do agree that taking control of a car while it is operating is a bad thing. The driver should always have control while the vehicle is in motion. Whether it is a good or bad thing if the driver doesn't have control while the vehicle is stationary is up for debate. But a big part of safe driving is fulfilling the expectations of other drivers. Suddenly slowing down to a stop in the middle of the road is a bad thing no matter what, even if the hazards come on and all that jazz. Besides, the chances of a person getting piss drunk while driving is a lot less than the chances of a person getting drunk in a bar or club before driving.
Instead, there are ways around the glove trick. A heat sensor on top of the alcohol sensor that measures body temperature will definitely make it harder to defeat. And well, for those who want to drive with gloves on, touching the steering wheel--heck, maybe even breathing onto it--with any exposed skin should be enough to allow the car to start.
Now, if only it was legally mandatory for all cars (the government would subsidize its installation on older cars of course)...
I thought it was Microsoft paying Novell $348mil, no?
Actually, humans have been doing this without all the technology for many thousands of years in the form of traditional medicines. The advantage to having all this technology is to speed the discovery process up slightly and allow for more people to get at it while still keeping the prices down. Yeah, it also helps in the understanding of why certain chemicals do the things they do, but considering how much knowledge the 'why' actually gives us in terms of medical applications, that particular aspect of medicine becomes largely academic.
I'm not saying technology is necessarily bad. But in the case of finding new medicines, all the true benefits we reap from advance technology (i.e. that we otherwise would be incapable or hindered from doing in the absence of technology) are offset by consequences that, IMHO, are worse. Would I rather delay the discovery and/or propogation of the cure for all cancers by a few decades rather than see the source of that cure go extinct? Yeah, I would. And in this case, that's really all that it comes down to.
Now, when it comes to other aspects of medicine like understanding the human physiology to develop and improve life-saving techniques, and understanding what's around us at a molecular level to improve living conditions, that's a different story.
One would expect slashdot editors to know what qualifies as a fork even if PJ doesn't (didn't, as I'm almost positive she knows now). And if a slashdot editor didn't know, what was he/she (but mostly he) doing approving and putting up submissions on the topic?
What Novell is doing might or might not be a fork (this is up for debate--Novell seems to have forked the code, certainly, but it also seems that the ODF filter that's really at the heart of the debate is going to be more along the lines of a plug-in), but that doesn't excuse scuttlemonkey from putting up a sensationalist headline.
I disagree. While back then, with no viable competitor, new file formats would justify an upgrade. If clients were sending you office 2003 file but you're running office 97, you're definitely going to want to move to office 2003. However, in this day and age, office is no longer the monopoly it once was. There are three factors hindering the office 2003 to office 2007 transition, and they've largely been covered by other posters here.
To reiterate, first is the completely redesigned interface, and the need for retraining. This will make companies, large and small, reluctant to upgrade. They'll hold off as long as possible. Remember, people in managerial positions and their assistants use office. And for most of these people, who have trouble with technology as it is and who'd spent the better part of the past 10-15 years getting used to office since the days of 5.0, retraining is going to be a very painful process. Add to the fact that they're the decision makers, and you've got even less chance of companies moving to office 2007.
The second is the presence of a half-decent competitor: open office. So what if microsoft stops selling office 2003? Suddenly, open office, with its familiar interface and remarkably similar feature set is going to look very lucrative. And add to the fact that it's free, and there's even greater incentive to move to it if microsoft is foolish enough to stop selling office 2003 outright. Sure, it's not as polished as office 2003. But as long as it can read and write those files, it'll do. New file formats force upgrades only when there's nothing decent available to read and process the old one. Open office isn't stunning, but it'll do for the most part.
The final, and most important factor is the same one that plagued Intel and AMD a few years back. Office 2003 is good enough. Sure, it might be lacking in a few areas compared to office 2007. But people have found ways around those shortcomings already, and having spent many years improving those workarounds, they're pretty efficient by now. Why upgrade to 2007 when the feature set of 2003 is sufficient?
And these are the same reasons people won't upgrade to vista. Sure, vista might be more secure. And at home, it'll find wide adoption because of its OEM bundling. But in the corporate world, people know that an upgrade will cost money. How much depends on the company, but if it's on par or more than the existing security budget for the current windows xp setup, there's no reason to upgrade. And by the time xp goes into extended support, well, there's still a couple of years, and like office, there's an alternative that's gaining popularity. So by the time businesses get around to deploying office 2007 and vista, they might just go, screw it, and start deploying linux instead.
More likely, anything that isn't backwards compatible will hinder the transition rather than help it. The reason why people moved to XP? Because it worked well with 2k. And it had a set of features 2k didn't have that was actually useful. Vista actually was supposed to have some of those nifty features that would encourage people to upgrade. But over the course of its development, they all were eventually canned--put off indefinitely or until a later upgrade pack.
The main problem is in this line:
Anyone with any amount of organizational management experience will tell you that in order for things to happen efficiently, there has to be someone with final say, for better or worse. Decisions cannot efficiently be made by committees, much less the democratic-sounding process that the blog outlines. Someone somewhere has to put his foot down and say, "yes, these are the ideas that have been put forth, these are the arguments for and against those ideas, and this is what we're going to do." It doesn't have to be management. It could be one of the developers. It could be the GUI designers. It could be a tester. But it has to be one person. And the decision has to stick. If upper management doesn't like the resulting conclusion, too bad, they should've picked someone else. It's only when the early testers start to complain that it's worth a second look for redo.
The nearly as important thing to note is that there are 47 people having a say on this one thing. Why? There should be at most, five people working on the design and implementation of any particular feature. For this, it should be four: one usability person, one GUI designer, one developer from the kernel, and one developer from the start menu team. For features that span more of the OS, several lead developers and maybe a manager to take care of timetables and the likes. But always designate one person to make the final decision!
Yes, from a development perspective, the whole repository organized like a tree structure has its inefficiencies. But the crux of this particular problem is an organizational one. Having changes propagated quickly isn't going to do any good when the feature hasn't been implemented because the design isn't cemented, or the feature's implementation changes every few days. In fact, having changes propagated slowly would be better if features tend to get constantly redesigned.
All jobs are based on trade. Generally speaking, the employee trades a service (the job) for goods (money). We each have certain expectations as to the value of our service, relative to the good that we get back. Which is to say, we expect a certain amount of money for what we do. This is an oversimplification, but for this argument, it will suffice. Exploitation is when one side receives something of greater value than the other side. Get paid too little, your employer is exploiting you. Get paid too much, and you're exploiting your employer.
From this standpoint, being a porn star is like every other job. The service is sex, or nudity, etc. The goods is still money. And whether it is exploitation is still dependent on the value of the service. Some people put great value on the service. Others put little value on the service. Therein lies the true point of contention. It isn't whether people are being exploited so much as it is the value of exposing oneself, or performing sexual acts, etc.
The US, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the modern world are consumption-driven. That means, if we don't consume, our society fails. The economy revolves around consumption, and waste is the quickest way to ensure that we will continue to consume. After all, if we use and then throw away our paper cups, when next we need to drink, we'd have to use another one.
It's all about the money. In the end, the environment--our existence--is an inferior goal to wealth. Conservation, and ultimately, the long-term solution to our environmental problems begins with changing culture from one of luxury to one of necessity.
There is one fundamental problem with what you propose: Most people just want to spend fifteen to twenty minutes taking their driving test and be able to hop into a car and drive. They don't have any desire for specialized training. They view driving as an inconvenient necessity of life, not a skill that needs to be nurtured until mastery.
.1 should not drive, despite the fact that there are many people out there who can still drive well with even more alcohol in their blood. In such cases, it's not about the information, it's about the person and the situation. Sometimes, it's about luck too. Still, I guess every bit helps.
There are a number of things that might be able to provide the necessary incentives to foster this kind of training. For examle, insurance companies can lower rates as people become more qualified, not unlike having taken a defensive driving course. States can issue multi-tiered licenses, where certain licenses have less restrictions (like speed limit, following distance, etc.). However, all have their problems that prevent them from being practical. Insurance companies are more likely to raise rates of higher-skilled drivers, merely because those drivers are more likely to take chances, or put themselves in more dangerous situations. Tiered license systems simply don't work, as it'd be impossible for a police officer to know drivers' qualifications for what without stopping every driver not following the most restrictive set of rules.
In the end, it is up to the individual drivers to have a suitable perspective on driving.
Though, they could always put this kind of information into the handbooks and written tests. But that just gives people information, not the guarantee of experience that would be ideal. It's like saying that someone with a BAC of
Here's another one:
Stop ripping up the nation's rail lines, and return federal subsidies to Amtrak.
One large source of pollution is the nation's trucking industry. Just drive on a commercial freeway. Old semis from the 70's that are constantly spewing a plume of smoke are more common than the new, cleaner ones. Forcing shipping companies to replace the old models by holding them to the same emission standards as the new models, and encouraging long distance freight over rail would go a long way to reducing emissions.
Same with cars. By holding light trucks to the same emissions standards as cars, SUV's wouldn't be a problem. They'd still use gas, and foster the dependence on oil, but that can be tackled separately by raising gas taxes.
This would probably be for developers who work other jobs on the side (like college students who have high-paying campus jobs), people who develop OSS for a living (e.g. people working at the Mozilla foundation), OSS authors who accept donations, or companies who develop or contribute to OSS (e.g. Redhat, IBM, and now Sun).
That having been said, there are a lot of issues with such a tax break. For example, what are the qualification criteria? Significant contribution? Lead developer? Credited developer? Also, what are the criteria for something to constitute as OSS? Non-viral licensing? Compiled/interpreted language? What about markup languages? Or things that are not code but are released under a creative commons license? What about patented methods where the patent holder is also the lead developer? Finally, while slightly easier to define than the above since there are already precedents set, what constitutes development costs?
Quite frankly, both the US and China are not particularly good places to live for one who values civil rights. Just say certain keywords loud enough in the US (I need not say which ones) and I'm certain the men in black suits will start paying attention.
However, the US isn't quite as experienced in these matters as China. My communications might get monitored for mentioning said keywords, but that doesn't mean the FBI or NSA is going to show up at my door and disappear me right away. It's just beginning to get bad in the US, but until the federal government does away with things like due process, it's nowhere near as bad as it is in China. Having rights slowly being taken away is not the same as having no rights to begin with.
The only advantage China has over the US (and what makes what you say true) is that China is enormous. Can't monitor everybody, so they go for the outspoken ones only.