If you read your history books, it becomes clear that current events are derived from past events. There are multiple causes of the current impasse, and it is more than a little naive to simply claim that Iran started it.
You are right that the region has historically been very violent, but does that give Iran a free pass to pay people to kidnap soldiers or give them missles to launch at innocent civilians? Does that give them a free pass to blow up our marine baracks? Does that give them a free pass to disobey UN resolutions and build a nuclear program while at the same time stating that their goal is to wipe Israel off the map? Does that give them a right to kill their own citizens because they have a disagreement with the government officials? Does that give them a pass on all human rights abuses that they engage in?
Simple Bush-esque solutions are not going to work.
Ok, then what do you propose?
True, but most of the Arab states in the region openly claim to have the same goal. Even the ones who have made peace with Israel are very unfriendly neighbours. It is strange that we do not criticize the Saudis for having similar views...
The difference is that Iran is funding Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations, building nuclear capabilities, and their rhetoric is the most vitriolic. No one else in the region is doing all of this, but if they did I would criticize them as well.
When soldiers wearing Iranian military uniforms attack the United States, you will be entirely justified in launching your counter-attack.
What difference does it make if they wear uniforms? Hezbollah has killed hundreds of our marines based in Lebanon. They are funded, and continue to be funded by Iran. Do you not consider that an attack? They also started a war with a key ally (through Hezbollah) by kidnapping Israli soldiers. Iran calls the US "the great Satan" and they are defying UN resolutions with regards to nuclear capabilities. Should we wait until they have nuclear weapons or should we promote democracy there now?
You are the one who suggested that we support terrorists in Iran to destabilize the government there, not me. How can you do that and claim the moral high ground against Iran?
I suggested that we fund organizations that are trying to fight for a democratic government in Iran so that it's people have the same freedoms that you and I have. Many of the people in Iran are fed up with the violent regime that has taken over the government in that country and would like to ellect their own goverment. This regime is guilty of many humanitarian abuses and I find it amazing that people are willing to sit by and do nothing about it. If these people (who you call terrorists) are successful, they will win many freedoms for their people. This is similar to the way our own country was founded and I think helping win the same rights for Iranians is a noble pursuit. The price of Freedom is always paid in blood, but once the people have it and cherish it, it's very difficult for it to be taken away from them.
Would it not be considered hypocracy for us to condemn Iran for supporting terrorists in another country, yet advocate supporting terrorists in Iran to overthrow the government there?
The difference lies in the fact that Iran is the aggressor here. They have attacked us and our allies first through terrorist organizations. They have also stated that their goal is to destroy Israel (a key ally in the region). When Japan attacked us in WWII did were we hypocrits for fighting back?
Dude, you need to get a handle on this. Saudi Arabia support Hamas (Sunni) and Iran supports Hezbollah (Shiite). If you dropped both groups into downtown Baghdad, they would be at each other's throats.
Just because they are both Islamic does not imply that they share the same goals and principles.
This is irrelevant to the point I was making. My point was that Iran funded these groups.
Could you explain the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters?
There's not a significant difference. My point is that if Iran is funding organizations that kill our millitary and other foriegn interests in the region, they have chosen to be the aggressor. We then have the right to defend ourselves.
Even if these groups actually are "terrorists" (Hezbollah appears to be more of a "militia") they have never attacked either Europe or North America.
Hezbollah attacked and killed hundreds of US Marines in 1983: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_ bombing
They, or various leadership members, or parts of the organization are classified as a terrorist organization by the majority of western countries.
Plenty of countries, including the US, support plenty of terrorists.
Reading this reminds of Bush's Axis of Evil speech. Convenient, simple-minded, defined by a narrow-enough perspective that appeals to voters, and effective in removing the complexities of the situation so as to allow everyone to move forward without thinking. A few bullet point for thought.
What's your point? What part of the axis of evil speach do you think was simplistic and narrow minded? Saying this is just like saying your post is simplistic but not saying why it's simplistic. The good thing about the axis of evil speach is that it clearly outlined the policy that the US would follow and named our enemies. I believe that Iran and North Korea are the biggest threats to peace in the world today and so I agree with the administrations policy set out in the speach you mentioned.
Iran sits on a lot of oil. Our economy depends on that oil continuing to flow. The bluster about taking direct action, or hinting to Israel that they direct action on our behalf may work for the voters, but balancing "national security" concerns includes ensuring the US economy continues to grow.
If Iran stops pumping Oil, there is no doubt that it would cause a huge interruption in the economy, but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as Iran developing nuclear weapons. Iran has consistantly supported terrorists including Hezbollah and Hamas, allowing things to proceed due to our dependance on their Oil is irresponsible.
To my mind, the only possible outcome is for the US, and by extension, its allies, is to move toward acccepting the eventuality that Iran will in due time have nuclear weapons and nothing anyone says or does is going to change that. Once the US learns live with that, maybe the Iranians will get over their hatred of the US and it's involvement in their own country, and its continuing involvement in the countries that surround it.
There are other possible outcomes. There are even some outcomes that don't involve the US or Israel engaging in a war with Iran. One example is: There are a number of groups within Iran that hate the dictators that are in charge. They hate the due to their murderous, oppressive ways. Some of these groups have a presence inside and outside of Iran. We could very easily fund these groups and support their efforts to overthrow the government. After all, Iran funds Hezbollah who's stated mission is to destroy Israel.
This is the same point I was focussed on as well. There are countless examples of this in the tech world. Someone with a lot of money buys a company, cuts back the research and development spending, many engineers are laid off and the good ones leave to other companies. Then, after a year or two, the new management wonders why their product is losing market share. Then they realize that they probably shouldn't have bought a company that they really didn't understand and make decisions about cutting back on R&D just by looking at the income statement.
I don't know the precise details of the law, but if any law requires you to keep data in a particular physical media format (i.e. cds, dvds, etc), the law is poorly written. What if it's a 10 year old law? They might require you to store data on floppies? There should be no difference between storing media on a hard drive or a cd except for the fact that it's a lot easier to store on a hard drive.
I would even go so far as to say that the two [science and religion] really have nothing to do with each other.
Science and religion are both belief systems. Science bases all beliefs on knowledge and has rigorous ways of determining fact from fiction. If science cannot answer a particular question it doesn't attempt to guess. If it does guess, the guess is based on available evidence and is called a theory. Religion on the other hand bases beliefs on faith and (typically ancient) teachings.
But science, if anyone's noticed, doesn't try to intrude on religion.
That's not true. Some people like to point out clear evidence that some religious beliefs are false. The whole evolution debate is one such example. I'm not critizing people for pointing out evidence, but to say that science doen't try to instrude on religion is not true. The science belief system (like all other belief systems) would not survive if it didn't not make some sort of an attempt to say that it's the only valid belief system.
As far as I know, there hasn't been a single court case in the U.S. where a group of scientists have tried to dictate what can be taught in any church.
This is an invalid comparison because the church is a private institution. It is funded by people who choose to take part in it and therefore they get the right to decide what's taught. The public school system is funded by the tax payers. Many tax payers have religious beliefs and feel they should have some say in what is taught there.
Why do these questions always get resolved in the way that will benefit the party who stands to make billions on it?
I don't begrudge anyone from making moneym, in particular when there will be a benefit to society.
BFD -- how is this different from anything else in the US or the UK. Ever heard of "pollution credits"? The practice is already institutionalized.
I suppose you support "pollution credits"? If not why use it to argue against something that you otherwise agree with?
Why is it OK for the pharma outfits to go to the rain forests to collwect knowledge of medicinal plants from natives, then stiff the natives when the profits start rolling in?
You're kidding right? Don't you think Pharma companies have better things to do than stiff natives? Do you really believe that when you look at the good and the bad of pharmas, that they are bad for society? There are cases of patent abuse, but overall the benefit far outweights the abuses. It's very easy to point out a few cases of abuse in any industry. Should doctors be banned from practicing medicine because some of their patients die?
Believe it or not, I prefer that they do not make a cash payment to volunteers in medical experiments. The reason is that by paying out money to do this, you're encouraging the poor to participate more than the rich. I suppose in this case the treatment is not very invasive so it's ok. But, just recently, I read about the Chinese study of HIV. They are paying Chinese citizens $300 to participate. Now, who do you think would take them up on this offer? The poor. It just sort of gives me the image of the guy on Nightcourt that used to get his blood taken to the point of nearly fainting every day because they paid him money. Paying out money for these types of studies could bring on professional volunteers for medical procedures and they might put money before their health. This is a slippery slope so I believe this study follows a better model. The volunteers probably wish to benefit society, but they probably also have their own health in mind when they volunteer. This is as it should be.
In any forum, cannot turn a dud into a blockbuster. Also, I wonder what would have happened if the movie had been available on something like Google Video or Youtube to watch at the time of release. I'm more likely to fork out the cash to watch "Snakes on a Plane" if I could watch it comfortably from my own home right after seeing an ad on the internet. For Star Wars, I'm willing to go to the theater, but "Snakes on the Plane" is the kind of movie you see on dvd.
You're crazy. Here's what Netscape had when they were bought by AOL for $4.2 billion...
First of all, I never said Netscape was worth $4.2 billion or that AOL got a great deal. I just said it was a great business at that time. Since it was bought it has been severly mismanged by AOL. $4.2 billion was an outrageous price, but that's what things were selling for at the time. It did have clear assets that would be highly profitable today if they had been managed properly.
A browser that was mostly given away for free, and was rapidly losing market share to Internet Explorer
It still had about 40% market share in 1999. Now, if they had actually updated the browser (into something like Firefox) they could pretty easily have maintained that 40%+ market share. Even Firefox has 15% market share today and that's growing very fast. No one had heard of Firefox a few years ago. They could have made money off of paid search like Opera does.
A www server that was well on its way to oblivion, courtesy of Apache
Don't forget directory server, messanging server, and application server and others. Sun bought these and is making money off of them now. If they continued to develop them, they could have been a real competitor to BEA, IBM, and Oracle. Apache is popoular, but there's still a big market for Enterprise application suites.
A popular portal site which would almost certainly decline once the browser no longer dominated the market
Interesting that you say that. Do you know where many of the top Netscape employees went after the AOL buy out? Google. Maybe that's why netcenter was never successful after the AOL purchase. Unfortunatly, AOL's big contribution to netcenter was to add popups. In this case, again, if the site was managed properly, it could have been a big asset.
By 1999, most people had a clear idea that these insane dotcom stock valuations couldn't continue. But the massively inflated price AOL paid for Netscape was a high-water mark for me.
There are countless people that claim they knew that things were over valued in 1999. Maybe you were one of the few who actually did believe that prices were inflated, but most people seemed to think the opposite.
I wonder about the $4.2 billion figure, though. Was most of that in AOL stock? Were they swapping massively inflated dotcom stock for massively inflated dotcom stock, so it was really just Monopoly(tm) money after all?
Yes, it was a stock swap. Of course, you can sell the shares if you want.
Actually, I'm sure he'd like it to become another netscape; netscape was the final word in browsing back in the day (before msie was standard). The problem was it fell behind it's competitors and sort of lost focus.
Netscape was a great business (and had a great browser) when it was sold to AOL for $4.2 billion in 1999. Most of the issues with the browser started after that.
I'd love to see a wireless mesh card that could be plugged into laptops and desktops easily. The proposed card would have two functions:
1.) Work as a standard 802.11 card that can connect to multiple acess points at the same time.
2.) Broadcast it's own 802.11 Access point connection so that other laptops/desktops in the area can share the connection.
In addition to this card, I'd like to have a setting on my wireless router that allows me to create a bandwidth limited open access point that anyone in range can use and a separate WPA encrypted access point that I can connect to. I'd probably dedicate about 1 mbps of my 4-5 mbps connection to the open access point so that I'm guaranteed a 3 mbps+ connection for my systems.
If everyone had a similar setup, and some simple software was written to connect to multiple access points and route requests, we'd have a wireless mesh network without requiring everyone to switch to a new protocol.
This might all be possible now, in some way that I'm not aware of, but this is just my idea of how to make something like this happen using protocols that are already out there.
This statement could have multiple meanings. I took it to mean, that in 18 months from now (Aug '06), Youtube will have made arrangements to host every video ever made.
I'm more likely to buy a pc based on features that relate to esthetics. Also, being quiet is a big plus for me. That's why I like liquid cooling on my desktop. Also, Micro atx cases are cool because they're so small and don't take up a lot of room on my "real" desktop. The problem with all this is: WHAT THE HECK DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH AN OPERATING SYSTEM? Maybe Microsoft should focus on implementing nice features in their OS instead of worrying about what their box making partners do? Just a thought.
So there should have been competing big dig projects, with a prize for the winner?
Obviously, it wouldn't be a competition in the exact same way the DARPA challenge was, but I believe there are surely ways to introduce more competition in a way that was better than what was done.
Right. Good luck getting a union based contractor to do anything before they get paid, or at least a guarantee.
Well, the idea of a union is completely counter to the idea of competition that I was talking about. As you may have noticed there were very few Union workers in the DARPA grand challenge. On top of that there is a way to have Union workers involved. That's if some investor is willing to take the risk and hire a union worker to do work with the intent on winning the competition and thus getting the government funds.
that goverment officials are not spending their own money. That is why these big projects fail. They are more concerned with giving out the contracts to their campaign contributors and getting jobs for their union buddies than actually making things work. I think the model to follow is that of the DARPA grand challenge. The prize was $10 million as opposed to billions and the good to humanity (in the form of huge advancements in AI) were far greater in my opinion. Our government really needs to modernize the way they do business it is now the 21st century.
Given the war in Lebanon and the stuff going on in North Korea, etc, should the Congress be voting on library rules? What's the next the bathroom pass allocation bill? I don't understand why the librarians can't make up their own rules for this stuff that take into consideration of the local issues involved.
It assumes that Germany was beaten by the US, which is not exactly what happened. When was D-day? When was Stalingrad?
Yes, Stalingrad is considered the turning point in the war, not the end of the war by any means. But remember they were still in the Soviet Union at that point, not even back to the German border. The fact that the US was attacking meant they had a more significant fight on their hands on the western front.
Actually, in a way, I think you guys are right. But, what will happen is that in the next 10 years, the desktop computer will be completely dead. Once the average person has a 10 mbps + connection and low latency like 10 ms or less, there will be no purpose for any computing to be done on the desktop. This is because you could have your local display and do all computing on the net and it would be no different from doing it locally. The advantages are enormous: sharing cpu cycles with a large group of people so that you get access way cheaper and have faster processing power available to you and having sessions that remain running no matter which device you access them from, ultra reliable redundant storage, and more. This means that all that's left is server side systems. On the server side, (which runs application servers, databases, web servers, mail servers, etc) throughput computing is king. If you have a 1000 core system, you can process 1000 users at the same time. So, basically, this guy's market will be completely gone and the server market will be what's important. So, I guess I think you're prediction "Normal users and many parallel users are not going to be running many jobs, solving man problems, that are parallelable" is a little off. Everything will be massively paralel. Also, there are some types of software that are coming that use massively paralel computing. Some examples are: neural nets and genetic algorithems. Maybe you think only a few people will be using this type of computing in the future, but 15 - 20 years ago, people would have thought you were crazy if you told them that Joe Six Pack in 2006 will be chatting with his girlfriend who lives over seas while ripping a cd and watching a moving on Google Video. On and by the way, they'd think you were really crazy if you told them he'd be doing all this on a machine that costs less than $500.
For those extremely rare apps and jobs that are highly parallelable 8 and above will be useful. However this will be very rare and this is why the comparisons to the infamous 640K quote are misguided.
Couldn't Bill have said the same thing way back when? If it did, it would go something like this: For those extremely rare apps and jobs that are highly memory intensive, 640K of RAM will be useful, however this will be very rare...
The point is you (and the Intel exec) are only looking at the apps that are out there today. Venture to guess what kind of apps we'll be running 10 - 20 years from now? Who knows? One thing I can tell you is that a web server/application server fits the Intel exec's description of a very rare app even today. Web/App servers have many threads that don't need to communicate with each other very much. For this "rare" application, I would say that a 1000 core server would be useful. I suppose you could say that no one wants to run an app server on their desktop, but I do for one. Also, 10 - 20 years ago people would have said that no one wants to write their own webpages. They would have said that people want to view other webpages. With all the blogs and social networks out there, that has turned out to be pretty bogus.
Russia was one of the allies, not "on the side of the allies".
Of course Russia was one of the allies. That's what I meant. They were on the side of the alies, they were one of the allies, same thing.
The answer is that France would be occupied by the USSR when it defeated Germany.
Your assumption is that the USSR would have been able to defeat Germany without US involvement in the war. I've never heard someone say "they'd be speaking Russian" if the US didn't get involved until you said it. Typically, I've heard people say, "they'd be speaking German". That's why I asked you if you meant German. But it's really impossible to know who would have won in this hypothetical situation. Either way, it would not have been good for France if the US had not entered WWII. That was my main point in the original post.
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If you read your history books, it becomes clear that current events are derived from past events. There are multiple causes of the current impasse, and it is more than a little naive to simply claim that Iran started it.
You are right that the region has historically been very violent, but does that give Iran a free pass to pay people to kidnap soldiers or give them missles to launch at innocent civilians? Does that give them a free pass to blow up our marine baracks? Does that give them a free pass to disobey UN resolutions and build a nuclear program while at the same time stating that their goal is to wipe Israel off the map? Does that give them a right to kill their own citizens because they have a disagreement with the government officials? Does that give them a pass on all human rights abuses that they engage in?
Simple Bush-esque solutions are not going to work.
Ok, then what do you propose?
True, but most of the Arab states in the region openly claim to have the same goal. Even the ones who have made peace with Israel are very unfriendly neighbours. It is strange that we do not criticize the Saudis for having similar views...
The difference is that Iran is funding Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations, building nuclear capabilities, and their rhetoric is the most vitriolic. No one else in the region is doing all of this, but if they did I would criticize them as well. When soldiers wearing Iranian military uniforms attack the United States, you will be entirely justified in launching your counter-attack.
What difference does it make if they wear uniforms? Hezbollah has killed hundreds of our marines based in Lebanon. They are funded, and continue to be funded by Iran. Do you not consider that an attack? They also started a war with a key ally (through Hezbollah) by kidnapping Israli soldiers. Iran calls the US "the great Satan" and they are defying UN resolutions with regards to nuclear capabilities. Should we wait until they have nuclear weapons or should we promote democracy there now?
You are the one who suggested that we support terrorists in Iran to destabilize the government there, not me. How can you do that and claim the moral high ground against Iran?
I suggested that we fund organizations that are trying to fight for a democratic government in Iran so that it's people have the same freedoms that you and I have. Many of the people in Iran are fed up with the violent regime that has taken over the government in that country and would like to ellect their own goverment. This regime is guilty of many humanitarian abuses and I find it amazing that people are willing to sit by and do nothing about it. If these people (who you call terrorists) are successful, they will win many freedoms for their people. This is similar to the way our own country was founded and I think helping win the same rights for Iranians is a noble pursuit. The price of Freedom is always paid in blood, but once the people have it and cherish it, it's very difficult for it to be taken away from them.
It is entirely relevant. You claimed that Iran has funded Hamas, and that simply is not the case. Please get your facts straight.
Hamas IS funded by Iran: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas
Would it not be considered hypocracy for us to condemn Iran for supporting terrorists in another country, yet advocate supporting terrorists in Iran to overthrow the government there?
The difference lies in the fact that Iran is the aggressor here. They have attacked us and our allies first through terrorist organizations. They have also stated that their goal is to destroy Israel (a key ally in the region). When Japan attacked us in WWII did were we hypocrits for fighting back?
Dude, you need to get a handle on this. Saudi Arabia support Hamas (Sunni) and Iran supports Hezbollah (Shiite). If you dropped both groups into downtown Baghdad, they would be at each other's throats. Just because they are both Islamic does not imply that they share the same goals and principles.
This is irrelevant to the point I was making. My point was that Iran funded these groups.
Could you explain the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters?
There's not a significant difference. My point is that if Iran is funding organizations that kill our millitary and other foriegn interests in the region, they have chosen to be the aggressor. We then have the right to defend ourselves.
Even if these groups actually are "terrorists" (Hezbollah appears to be more of a "militia") they have never attacked either Europe or North America.
_ bombing
They, or various leadership members, or parts of the organization are classified as a terrorist organization by the majority of western countries.
Hezbollah attacked and killed hundreds of US Marines in 1983: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks
Plenty of countries, including the US, support plenty of terrorists.
What terrorist organizations does the US support?
Reading this reminds of Bush's Axis of Evil speech. Convenient, simple-minded, defined by a narrow-enough perspective that appeals to voters, and effective in removing the complexities of the situation so as to allow everyone to move forward without thinking. A few bullet point for thought.
What's your point? What part of the axis of evil speach do you think was simplistic and narrow minded? Saying this is just like saying your post is simplistic but not saying why it's simplistic. The good thing about the axis of evil speach is that it clearly outlined the policy that the US would follow and named our enemies. I believe that Iran and North Korea are the biggest threats to peace in the world today and so I agree with the administrations policy set out in the speach you mentioned.
Iran sits on a lot of oil. Our economy depends on that oil continuing to flow. The bluster about taking direct action, or hinting to Israel that they direct action on our behalf may work for the voters, but balancing "national security" concerns includes ensuring the US economy continues to grow.
If Iran stops pumping Oil, there is no doubt that it would cause a huge interruption in the economy, but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as Iran developing nuclear weapons. Iran has consistantly supported terrorists including Hezbollah and Hamas, allowing things to proceed due to our dependance on their Oil is irresponsible.
To my mind, the only possible outcome is for the US, and by extension, its allies, is to move toward acccepting the eventuality that Iran will in due time have nuclear weapons and nothing anyone says or does is going to change that. Once the US learns live with that, maybe the Iranians will get over their hatred of the US and it's involvement in their own country, and its continuing involvement in the countries that surround it.
There are other possible outcomes. There are even some outcomes that don't involve the US or Israel engaging in a war with Iran. One example is: There are a number of groups within Iran that hate the dictators that are in charge. They hate the due to their murderous, oppressive ways. Some of these groups have a presence inside and outside of Iran. We could very easily fund these groups and support their efforts to overthrow the government. After all, Iran funds Hezbollah who's stated mission is to destroy Israel.
This is the same point I was focussed on as well. There are countless examples of this in the tech world. Someone with a lot of money buys a company, cuts back the research and development spending, many engineers are laid off and the good ones leave to other companies. Then, after a year or two, the new management wonders why their product is losing market share. Then they realize that they probably shouldn't have bought a company that they really didn't understand and make decisions about cutting back on R&D just by looking at the income statement.
I don't know the precise details of the law, but if any law requires you to keep data in a particular physical media format (i.e. cds, dvds, etc), the law is poorly written. What if it's a 10 year old law? They might require you to store data on floppies? There should be no difference between storing media on a hard drive or a cd except for the fact that it's a lot easier to store on a hard drive.
I would even go so far as to say that the two [science and religion] really have nothing to do with each other.
Science and religion are both belief systems. Science bases all beliefs on knowledge and has rigorous ways of determining fact from fiction. If science cannot answer a particular question it doesn't attempt to guess. If it does guess, the guess is based on available evidence and is called a theory. Religion on the other hand bases beliefs on faith and (typically ancient) teachings.
But science, if anyone's noticed, doesn't try to intrude on religion.
That's not true. Some people like to point out clear evidence that some religious beliefs are false. The whole evolution debate is one such example. I'm not critizing people for pointing out evidence, but to say that science doen't try to instrude on religion is not true. The science belief system (like all other belief systems) would not survive if it didn't not make some sort of an attempt to say that it's the only valid belief system. As far as I know, there hasn't been a single court case in the U.S. where a group of scientists have tried to dictate what can be taught in any church.
This is an invalid comparison because the church is a private institution. It is funded by people who choose to take part in it and therefore they get the right to decide what's taught. The public school system is funded by the tax payers. Many tax payers have religious beliefs and feel they should have some say in what is taught there.
Why do these questions always get resolved in the way that will benefit the party who stands to make billions on it?
I don't begrudge anyone from making moneym, in particular when there will be a benefit to society.
BFD -- how is this different from anything else in the US or the UK. Ever heard of "pollution credits"? The practice is already institutionalized.
I suppose you support "pollution credits"? If not why use it to argue against something that you otherwise agree with?
Why is it OK for the pharma outfits to go to the rain forests to collwect knowledge of medicinal plants from natives, then stiff the natives when the profits start rolling in?
You're kidding right? Don't you think Pharma companies have better things to do than stiff natives? Do you really believe that when you look at the good and the bad of pharmas, that they are bad for society? There are cases of patent abuse, but overall the benefit far outweights the abuses. It's very easy to point out a few cases of abuse in any industry. Should doctors be banned from practicing medicine because some of their patients die?
Believe it or not, I prefer that they do not make a cash payment to volunteers in medical experiments. The reason is that by paying out money to do this, you're encouraging the poor to participate more than the rich. I suppose in this case the treatment is not very invasive so it's ok. But, just recently, I read about the Chinese study of HIV. They are paying Chinese citizens $300 to participate. Now, who do you think would take them up on this offer? The poor. It just sort of gives me the image of the guy on Nightcourt that used to get his blood taken to the point of nearly fainting every day because they paid him money. Paying out money for these types of studies could bring on professional volunteers for medical procedures and they might put money before their health. This is a slippery slope so I believe this study follows a better model. The volunteers probably wish to benefit society, but they probably also have their own health in mind when they volunteer. This is as it should be.
In any forum, cannot turn a dud into a blockbuster. Also, I wonder what would have happened if the movie had been available on something like Google Video or Youtube to watch at the time of release. I'm more likely to fork out the cash to watch "Snakes on a Plane" if I could watch it comfortably from my own home right after seeing an ad on the internet. For Star Wars, I'm willing to go to the theater, but "Snakes on the Plane" is the kind of movie you see on dvd.
You're crazy. Here's what Netscape had when they were bought by AOL for $4.2 billion...
First of all, I never said Netscape was worth $4.2 billion or that AOL got a great deal. I just said it was a great business at that time. Since it was bought it has been severly mismanged by AOL. $4.2 billion was an outrageous price, but that's what things were selling for at the time. It did have clear assets that would be highly profitable today if they had been managed properly.
A browser that was mostly given away for free, and was rapidly losing market share to Internet Explorer
It still had about 40% market share in 1999. Now, if they had actually updated the browser (into something like Firefox) they could pretty easily have maintained that 40%+ market share. Even Firefox has 15% market share today and that's growing very fast. No one had heard of Firefox a few years ago. They could have made money off of paid search like Opera does.
A www server that was well on its way to oblivion, courtesy of Apache
Don't forget directory server, messanging server, and application server and others. Sun bought these and is making money off of them now. If they continued to develop them, they could have been a real competitor to BEA, IBM, and Oracle. Apache is popoular, but there's still a big market for Enterprise application suites.
A popular portal site which would almost certainly decline once the browser no longer dominated the market
Interesting that you say that. Do you know where many of the top Netscape employees went after the AOL buy out? Google. Maybe that's why netcenter was never successful after the AOL purchase. Unfortunatly, AOL's big contribution to netcenter was to add popups. In this case, again, if the site was managed properly, it could have been a big asset.
By 1999, most people had a clear idea that these insane dotcom stock valuations couldn't continue. But the massively inflated price AOL paid for Netscape was a high-water mark for me.
There are countless people that claim they knew that things were over valued in 1999. Maybe you were one of the few who actually did believe that prices were inflated, but most people seemed to think the opposite.
I wonder about the $4.2 billion figure, though. Was most of that in AOL stock? Were they swapping massively inflated dotcom stock for massively inflated dotcom stock, so it was really just Monopoly(tm) money after all?
Yes, it was a stock swap. Of course, you can sell the shares if you want.
Actually, I'm sure he'd like it to become another netscape; netscape was the final word in browsing back in the day (before msie was standard). The problem was it fell behind it's competitors and sort of lost focus.
Netscape was a great business (and had a great browser) when it was sold to AOL for $4.2 billion in 1999. Most of the issues with the browser started after that.
I'd love to see a wireless mesh card that could be plugged into laptops and desktops easily. The proposed card would have two functions:
1.) Work as a standard 802.11 card that can connect to multiple acess points at the same time.
2.) Broadcast it's own 802.11 Access point connection so that other laptops/desktops in the area can share the connection.
In addition to this card, I'd like to have a setting on my wireless router that allows me to create a bandwidth limited open access point that anyone in range can use and a separate WPA encrypted access point that I can connect to. I'd probably dedicate about 1 mbps of my 4-5 mbps connection to the open access point so that I'm guaranteed a 3 mbps+ connection for my systems.
If everyone had a similar setup, and some simple software was written to connect to multiple access points and route requests, we'd have a wireless mesh network without requiring everyone to switch to a new protocol.
This might all be possible now, in some way that I'm not aware of, but this is just my idea of how to make something like this happen using protocols that are already out there.
On the black market for these laptops that will be cropping up shortly in Thailand.
"every music video ever created within 18 months"
This statement could have multiple meanings. I took it to mean, that in 18 months from now (Aug '06), Youtube will have made arrangements to host every video ever made.
# tar cvf wikipedia.tar /wikipediapath
# bzip2 wikipedia.tar
I'm more likely to buy a pc based on features that relate to esthetics. Also, being quiet is a big plus for me. That's why I like liquid cooling on my desktop. Also, Micro atx cases are cool because they're so small and don't take up a lot of room on my "real" desktop. The problem with all this is: WHAT THE HECK DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH AN OPERATING SYSTEM? Maybe Microsoft should focus on implementing nice features in their OS instead of worrying about what their box making partners do? Just a thought.
So there should have been competing big dig projects, with a prize for the winner?
Obviously, it wouldn't be a competition in the exact same way the DARPA challenge was, but I believe there are surely ways to introduce more competition in a way that was better than what was done.
Right. Good luck getting a union based contractor to do anything before they get paid, or at least a guarantee.
Well, the idea of a union is completely counter to the idea of competition that I was talking about. As you may have noticed there were very few Union workers in the DARPA grand challenge. On top of that there is a way to have Union workers involved. That's if some investor is willing to take the risk and hire a union worker to do work with the intent on winning the competition and thus getting the government funds.
that goverment officials are not spending their own money. That is why these big projects fail. They are more concerned with giving out the contracts to their campaign contributors and getting jobs for their union buddies than actually making things work. I think the model to follow is that of the DARPA grand challenge. The prize was $10 million as opposed to billions and the good to humanity (in the form of huge advancements in AI) were far greater in my opinion. Our government really needs to modernize the way they do business it is now the 21st century.
Given the war in Lebanon and the stuff going on in North Korea, etc, should the Congress be voting on library rules? What's the next the bathroom pass allocation bill? I don't understand why the librarians can't make up their own rules for this stuff that take into consideration of the local issues involved.
It assumes that Germany was beaten by the US, which is not exactly what happened. When was D-day? When was Stalingrad?
Yes, Stalingrad is considered the turning point in the war, not the end of the war by any means. But remember they were still in the Soviet Union at that point, not even back to the German border. The fact that the US was attacking meant they had a more significant fight on their hands on the western front.
Actually, in a way, I think you guys are right. But, what will happen is that in the next 10 years, the desktop computer will be completely dead. Once the average person has a 10 mbps + connection and low latency like 10 ms or less, there will be no purpose for any computing to be done on the desktop. This is because you could have your local display and do all computing on the net and it would be no different from doing it locally. The advantages are enormous: sharing cpu cycles with a large group of people so that you get access way cheaper and have faster processing power available to you and having sessions that remain running no matter which device you access them from, ultra reliable redundant storage, and more. This means that all that's left is server side systems. On the server side, (which runs application servers, databases, web servers, mail servers, etc) throughput computing is king. If you have a 1000 core system, you can process 1000 users at the same time. So, basically, this guy's market will be completely gone and the server market will be what's important. So, I guess I think you're prediction "Normal users and many parallel users are not going to be running many jobs, solving man problems, that are parallelable" is a little off. Everything will be massively paralel. Also, there are some types of software that are coming that use massively paralel computing. Some examples are: neural nets and genetic algorithems. Maybe you think only a few people will be using this type of computing in the future, but 15 - 20 years ago, people would have thought you were crazy if you told them that Joe Six Pack in 2006 will be chatting with his girlfriend who lives over seas while ripping a cd and watching a moving on Google Video. On and by the way, they'd think you were really crazy if you told them he'd be doing all this on a machine that costs less than $500.
For those extremely rare apps and jobs that are highly parallelable 8 and above will be useful. However this will be very rare and this is why the comparisons to the infamous 640K quote are misguided.
Couldn't Bill have said the same thing way back when? If it did, it would go something like this: For those extremely rare apps and jobs that are highly memory intensive, 640K of RAM will be useful, however this will be very rare...
The point is you (and the Intel exec) are only looking at the apps that are out there today. Venture to guess what kind of apps we'll be running 10 - 20 years from now? Who knows? One thing I can tell you is that a web server/application server fits the Intel exec's description of a very rare app even today. Web/App servers have many threads that don't need to communicate with each other very much. For this "rare" application, I would say that a 1000 core server would be useful. I suppose you could say that no one wants to run an app server on their desktop, but I do for one. Also, 10 - 20 years ago people would have said that no one wants to write their own webpages. They would have said that people want to view other webpages. With all the blogs and social networks out there, that has turned out to be pretty bogus.
Russia was one of the allies, not "on the side of the allies".
Of course Russia was one of the allies. That's what I meant. They were on the side of the alies, they were one of the allies, same thing.
The answer is that France would be occupied by the USSR when it defeated Germany.
Your assumption is that the USSR would have been able to defeat Germany without US involvement in the war. I've never heard someone say "they'd be speaking Russian" if the US didn't get involved until you said it. Typically, I've heard people say, "they'd be speaking German". That's why I asked you if you meant German. But it's really impossible to know who would have won in this hypothetical situation. Either way, it would not have been good for France if the US had not entered WWII. That was my main point in the original post.