It will be interesting to see which, if any, of these offerings the Mass. ITD decides to utilize
Having lived in MA most of my life, let me describe the selection process that will be used. First, which of the companies has significant ownership by MA pols or relatives or friends of MA pols? Since MA is a one-party state there is non-existent oversight on these matters. If that does not determine a clear winner, we move on to the next most important criteria... which of the submitters is most willing to be shaken down -- you know, concessions paid for considerations given. Campaign contributions, promises of jobs to relatives, donations to "favorite charities" etc. The next most important attribute to consider is the perceived evils of the submitters. Clearly Microsoft will be dismissed outright on general principals. Consideration must be given to the affirmative action record of the submitters. What is the ratio of the CEO's salary to the workers' salaries? What is their record as regards unions. Which political party do they support? Finally, only after all of these important questions have been answered will consideration be given to technical merit, cost, likelihood of success and proven track records. With any luck it won't have to come down to those nasty tiebreakers, because those are much harder to determine. If it did however, they would then hire some well-connected, very expensive consultants (i.e. friends/relatives of the ruling class) to sort through the technical issues.
Actually, it's a good thing for him he is a sex offender. That way the ACLU (and others of the same ilk - ie "defenders of our freedoms") will rush to his defense. If he had just been a regular guy he would be crucified, and there would be nobody to help him.
I see lots of comments here about MS being an also-ran in the cluster market. And there are lots more comments about how MS will "leverage their monopoloy" or their huge cash hoard to ultimately succeed in clusters. What I think everyone is missing is the role tools will play in this market. In my opinion, whichever cluster OS has the best development tools that make it easy to develop cluster-based applications will be the hands-down winner. And in that space I think you have to bet on MS enjoying a serious advantage. Picture a "drop-down" box in Visual Studio under the Code Generation tab of project properties that says something like: "Optimize for Cluster" -- if developers could get cluster-optimized code with very little additional effort they will flock to it.
This only works if people already have accounts and passwords on their PCs. Of course today the vast majority don't; they turn on their PC and they begin using it. I suppose they have been conditioned now by email and various web sites into entering a password, so they will be more accepting of same when installing software. As I understand it, that is a big part of Vista's security improvements -- I guess we'll see how well accepted it is.
The point of my original post was to suggest that *maybe* one of the reasons Windows was so successful was because of the very lack of security that we now criticize it for. Finally a computer that didn't behave like a computer -- turn it on and use it -- no "accounts", no "passwords", no "privileges". It was simply less intimidating to the common user.
This is all an evolutionary process. I really doubt MS could have started with a locked down system before the internet, and before broadband, etc, and enjoyed the kind of acceptance they achieved. But, I think people now will be much more accepting of these minor inconveniences as a way to protect themselves and their privacy.
Access to sudo is configured with the configuration file/etc/sudoers which lists each user who can run sudo, along with the programs they can run. Configurable defaults and options for the program also appear in/etc/sudoers. Be aware that sudo is very picky about correct syntax in its configuration file and will refuse to work if you make the slightest mistake. (Considering that sudo can grant root privileges, this is not an entirely bad idea, as user-unfriendly as it seems.) Therefore, you should use visudo tool to edit the file, rather than opening it directly. visudo will check your changes for correctness after saving them, and will inform you of any errors, in which case it will offer to reject the changes or re-edit the file.
That is a recipe for disaster in an everyday user's hands.
Never mind that they should've built a secure OS in the first place like practically everyone else did.
Perhaps they are successful because they didn't build a "secure" OS. Seriously, who among us hasn't been frustrated when trying to do something on a "locked down" machine and being prevented by security. Who among us doesn't insist on having the admin or root password on our boxes so we can get stuff done? Sure, we know we should only use those permissions in rare cases when we really, really need to, and should just be "ordinary users" most of the time, but for the general population, expecting people to a) realize that and b) tolerate flipping back-and-forth and c) knowing when to flip back-and-forth is completely unreasonable. I think that building a wide open, "flat" system is one of the keys to Microsoft's success... of course they won't "fix it"! The very openness that causes all these problems is what has enabled the widely varying range of user-installable applications and hardware enhancements to exist.
Since I firmly believe that well north of 50% of everything government does is bad or turns out badly, I always approve of tax cuts and tax rebates, regardless of the circumstances. And on those rare times when I am able to vote on a proposed tax increase, again regardless of the "cause" (tobacco taxes for example) I always, always vote NO! My motto is "Don't feed the beast!"
how many people on these boards, the "technical elite", are buying ready-made PCs. What self-respecting nerd trusts someone else to build their PC for them (except for laptops of course where there really isn't a viable parts market)? The quality of the machine you can build yourself is so much better for the money. And the time you spend ripping out all the pre-installed crap, oftentimes leaving you with an unstable machine, can be more than the time spent building and installing exactly what you want. True, if ultra-cheap is your goal then ready-made is the way to go (but don't expect to be able to upgrade it to be anything reasonable - cheap means cheap - power supplies, motherboards, cooling). And don't forget the side benefits of building versus buying - like the knowledge you gain, both from researching the components and knowing exactly what's inside (besides Intel).
Or maybe it is a regularly shaped sphere but our sun is not the center? Maybe the center is some other extremely dense object, like {insert your favorite whipping person here} 's head?
This implies that the heliosphere, a spherical bubble of charged low-energy particles created by our Sun's solar wind, is irregularly shaped, bulging in the northern hemisphere and pressed inward in the south
Or maybe it is a regularly shaped sphere but our sun is not the center? Maybe the center is some other extremely dense object, like 's head?
And MAYBE part of the reason Word is being infected with worms, isn't some side-effect of monoculture and the lack of software diversity, but rather a result of hackers almost solely targeting Microsoft products.
I believe you are absolutely correct. Many on these boards will argue it's because Microsoft's products are such easy targets. And many others will say it's because Microsoft has such a large installed base. However, I think the reasons Microsoft products are targeted the most have more to do with the motivations of the hackers, which, in my estimation, are envy and resentment. After all, inflating the number of machines infected or damaged does not really materially benefit the hackers. And wouldn't there be much more "prestige" in the hacker community in penetrating the "much more secure" Linux systems, rather than the soft-and-chewy Microsoft targets? And if it's true that over 50% of the servers on the net are running Linux, wouldn't hacking those systems yield more fruit in terms of data and access? So how then to explain the lopsided statistics? We all know how big a factor motivation plays in productivity. The same thing applies to hacking.
Yeah! Microsoft is so evil! Hey, BTW, could some helpful soul out there please point me to the sources for Gmail, Google Desktop, the Google Toolbar, Google Maps, and the Google search engine?
This is true, which is why the current techniques for benchmarking seem to be better. Reporting the framerate on Quake or Oblivion is pretty hard to cheat on. What I am thinking of is a collection of existing applications - with a composite score assembled from performance on those applications. For example, how long does it take Word 2003 XP to open a very complicated document. How long does it take to DIVX encode a standard movie file. What is the frame rate at such-and-such a resolution for Oblivion? Combine all those scores with some sort of weighted average (maybe one set of weights for gamers, a different set of weights for media types and third set of weights for office types).
I hate having to read a spec chart to figure out exactly whats in a god damn cpu.
So by your logic I didn't buy a Honda Odyssey... I bought a Honda Minivan, 7 passenger, power sliding doors, V6, AM/FM/CD, power seats, hideaway rear seat, AC, automatic, TCS, ABS, side airbags,....
Yeah, that'll work.
CPUs are way too complicated to ever fully identify them with their name. Get use to reading the specs, it's only going to get worse.
I for one actually really like the AMD approach. I periodically check the benchmarks to verify that their numbers correlate at least somewhat with real application-level performance. This allows me to fairly easily price-compare different CPUs, knowing "roughly" the relative performance difference between them. For example, an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ will be *about* 10% slower (your mileage may vary) than an Athlon 64 X2 4200+. This is extremely helpful to me, and tells me alot more than comparing the specs and noticing one has 512KB L2 cache while the other has 256KB.
I would love for there to be a standard benchmark suite, and have the weighted average of the benchmark scores go right into the product names. that way I could compare across product architectures rather than only within a specific architecture. Unfortunately that will never happen because one or the other vendor (intel, AMD) will be far enough behind that they will have to come up with their own naming convention to obfuscate the truth.
You have an uncanny ability to completely miss my point. And you have also given me zero examples of Google's "innovation" -- just examples of good execution. To me the innovation is being the first company or person to actually turn the idea into reality. As anybody who has actually designed and produced a product knows, coming up with the "idea" is the easy part.
Here's something for you to ponder. You are an engineer in a room "brainstorming" with marketing over new product ideas. Suddenly the marketing guy blurts out "Hey, we should come up with a bunch of web services since the world is going in that direction. We could have a service that notifies people when their car needs routine maintenance!" The engineering team goes off, pounds out this new product over a couple of years, many false starts and flawed prototypes, etc. until they finally get it right -- an it's a big hit in the market. Now, who was the innovator? By your definition it is the marketing guy who probably spent those 2 years drinking mint julips and "innovating" more wonderful products, rather than the engineering team that did all the hard work to bring the thing into existence. In my mind, real innovation is taking an abstract idea (or re-engineering a poorly implemented product) and perfecting it such that it is usable and marketable.
So, by that definition of innovation, I shall now enumerate a list of Microsoft innovations:
- an operating system that is hardware independent (I know, you can name others that came before, but you tell me the name of another software company that sold operating systems to consumers without selling the hardware that goes with it before Microsoft)
- an integrated development environment (yeah, Turbo Pascal was first, but they lost their way)
- an integrated office suite (this one was a horserace - Ashton Tate and Lotus were in the mix)
- an integrated email/calendar/contacts application (Outlook)
- soup-to-nuts digital media delivery platform (audio, video, DRM, codecs)
- the premier, high-performance gaming platform (the DirectX collection of APIs)
- mice with scroll wheels
- automatic web-based software updates and patch distribution
Uh, Yahoo came long before Google in the search engine business. And many more came before Yahoo (ever heard of Web Ferret?). As for a successful advertising network --- you call this innovation? In my book it's more of the same... just good execution. Many people before Google had the "idea" to target advertising to the particular consumer's tastes. Google just did it better.
I have to say, you very nicely added support to my statement that "innovation" is not something to necessarily be honored. Rather, we should laud the hard work that successfully brings those "innovations" to fruition. And on that count Google deserves many accolades. Oh, and so does Microsoft, or any other company, organization or individual that takes these "great ideas" and turns them into reality.
This sentiment drives me crazy. Frankly it has been my experience that almost nothing is a new idea! It is remarkable how often somebody comes forward to claim credit for some "innovation" after a company like Microsoft (or Apple, or Sun, or HP, or Google...) does all the hard work and successfully brings the idea to the marketplace. The world is full of blue-sky types who sit around and pontificate, and then sit back and wait for someone else to do all the work, and then grab the credit. For my money, the hard part is the doing, not the original inspiration. And you certainly can't claim Microsoft hasn't brought to life many, many good ideas, be they their original ideas, or those of someone else.
As Edison said, Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Hmmm, to answer your question off the top of my head... future changes to the document format could potentially need to be "approved" by the government. Or, more likely, the government might choose to remain at a particular revision rather than incur the cost of upgrading every system. Imagine if all submissions to the government had to be in Word 1.0 DOC format. How painful would that be today? I suppose it could stimulate the economy by creating make-work type services (a government specialty) to convert modern documents into old Word 1.0 format so they could be submitted to the government. Would publishing the Word 1.0 DOC format prevent this from happening?
Frankly I don't think any of us can really predict what the unintended consequences might be... that is why we call them "unintended." I just know from experience that there will be consequences that surprise us, and usually the surprise is not a positive one.
In the end it is wise to remember that government is an extremely blunt instrument. The fewer policies the better. There is no end of problems we can point to that resulted from "things that seemed like a good idea at the time".
Whenever the government implements sweeping policies such as those discussed in this article there are unintended consequences which, in the end, oftentimes dwarf the predicted benefits of the policy. The classic example of this of course is when FDR implemented a wage freeze during WWII. Clever companies, in order to keep and attract good employees, began to offer to pay for their employees' health insurance. Fast forward 60 years and look at the mess that helped to create.
So, what sort of unintended consequences would a mandate to use OSS/standards-based software bring about? Well, armed with the sourcecode, it is easy to envision government IT people customizing the application in order to "better integrate with their work procedures" or "enhance the security". Play this out over 10 years and what you wind up with is chaos, with the very thing you were hoping to achieve (interoperability) lost in a myriad of incompatible, "enhanced" applications.
"Embrace and extend" is human nature, it is not just a Microsoft failing.
Media and technology companies warned Tuesday that new European Union broadcasting rules could restrict the growth of emerging media formats such as video broadcasts through the internet and mobile phones.
This discussion is somewhat reminiscent of the development and standardization of GSM cell phones in Europe back in the 80's and early 90's. I'm sure many of the same arguments were made on both sides of the issue. Of course in the US it was decided to let the market sort out the best cell phone technology. Now here we are in the US with multiple competing mobile formats. It is a complicated undertaking for a consumer to decide which mobile operator to choose -- there are coverage maps, different network capabilities, non-overlapping phone models. Add to that the fact that despite all this "competition" the cost to the consumer is fairly high compared to Europe.
So, which is the best way to go? Mandate these sorts of things early on, or let the market evolve? As a died-in-the-wool capitalist I like the idea of letting the market choose the winner. Unfortunately sometimes you end up with what we have in today's US cell phone market - no clear winner and confusion for the consumers.
it's yet another poorly conceived, badly implemented device from Nokia - a company that has proven time and time again that they make good phones, but haven't got a clue when it comes to making anything else. Seriously, in a former life I wrote applications for cell phones, and the Nokia devices were THE WORST. Everything was non-standard; every model had a unique twist. They touted their Symbian operating system as an "open and standardized" platform, but our sourcecode was riddled with #ifdef NOKIA3650, #ifdef NOKIA6600, #ifdef NOKIAinsertmodelnumberhere... blah blah blah. Nothing they do surprises me anymore and I wouldn't carry anything with a Nokia name on it other than a cheapo bottom-of-the-line phone (which they do a pretty good job on).
Slashdot Mirror
It will be interesting to see which, if any, of these offerings the Mass. ITD decides to utilize
... which of the submitters is most willing to be shaken down -- you know, concessions paid for considerations given. Campaign contributions, promises of jobs to relatives, donations to "favorite charities" etc. The next most important attribute to consider is the perceived evils of the submitters. Clearly Microsoft will be dismissed outright on general principals. Consideration must be given to the affirmative action record of the submitters. What is the ratio of the CEO's salary to the workers' salaries? What is their record as regards unions. Which political party do they support? Finally, only after all of these important questions have been answered will consideration be given to technical merit, cost, likelihood of success and proven track records. With any luck it won't have to come down to those nasty tiebreakers, because those are much harder to determine. If it did however, they would then hire some well-connected, very expensive consultants (i.e. friends/relatives of the ruling class) to sort through the technical issues.
Having lived in MA most of my life, let me describe the selection process that will be used. First, which of the companies has significant ownership by MA pols or relatives or friends of MA pols? Since MA is a one-party state there is non-existent oversight on these matters. If that does not determine a clear winner, we move on to the next most important criteria
Actually, it's a good thing for him he is a sex offender. That way the ACLU (and others of the same ilk - ie "defenders of our freedoms") will rush to his defense. If he had just been a regular guy he would be crucified, and there would be nobody to help him.
I see lots of comments here about MS being an also-ran in the cluster market. And there are lots more comments about how MS will "leverage their monopoloy" or their huge cash hoard to ultimately succeed in clusters. What I think everyone is missing is the role tools will play in this market. In my opinion, whichever cluster OS has the best development tools that make it easy to develop cluster-based applications will be the hands-down winner. And in that space I think you have to bet on MS enjoying a serious advantage. Picture a "drop-down" box in Visual Studio under the Code Generation tab of project properties that says something like: "Optimize for Cluster" -- if developers could get cluster-optimized code with very little additional effort they will flock to it.
This only works if people already have accounts and passwords on their PCs. Of course today the vast majority don't; they turn on their PC and they begin using it. I suppose they have been conditioned now by email and various web sites into entering a password, so they will be more accepting of same when installing software. As I understand it, that is a big part of Vista's security improvements -- I guess we'll see how well accepted it is.
The point of my original post was to suggest that *maybe* one of the reasons Windows was so successful was because of the very lack of security that we now criticize it for. Finally a computer that didn't behave like a computer -- turn it on and use it -- no "accounts", no "passwords", no "privileges". It was simply less intimidating to the common user.
This is all an evolutionary process. I really doubt MS could have started with a locked down system before the internet, and before broadband, etc, and enjoyed the kind of acceptance they achieved. But, I think people now will be much more accepting of these minor inconveniences as a way to protect themselves and their privacy.
Yeah right ... from your linked article:
/etc/sudoers which lists each user who can run sudo, along with the programs they can run. Configurable defaults and options for the program also appear in /etc/sudoers. Be aware that sudo is very picky about correct syntax in its configuration file and will refuse to work if you make the slightest mistake. (Considering that sudo can grant root privileges, this is not an entirely bad idea, as user-unfriendly as it seems.) Therefore, you should use visudo tool to edit the file, rather than opening it directly. visudo will check your changes for correctness after saving them, and will inform you of any errors, in which case it will offer to reject the changes or re-edit the file.
Access to sudo is configured with the configuration file
That is a recipe for disaster in an everyday user's hands.
Never mind that they should've built a secure OS in the first place like practically everyone else did.
... of course they won't "fix it"! The very openness that causes all these problems is what has enabled the widely varying range of user-installable applications and hardware enhancements to exist.
Perhaps they are successful because they didn't build a "secure" OS. Seriously, who among us hasn't been frustrated when trying to do something on a "locked down" machine and being prevented by security. Who among us doesn't insist on having the admin or root password on our boxes so we can get stuff done? Sure, we know we should only use those permissions in rare cases when we really, really need to, and should just be "ordinary users" most of the time, but for the general population, expecting people to a) realize that and b) tolerate flipping back-and-forth and c) knowing when to flip back-and-forth is completely unreasonable. I think that building a wide open, "flat" system is one of the keys to Microsoft's success
Since I firmly believe that well north of 50% of everything government does is bad or turns out badly, I always approve of tax cuts and tax rebates, regardless of the circumstances. And on those rare times when I am able to vote on a proposed tax increase, again regardless of the "cause" (tobacco taxes for example) I always, always vote NO! My motto is "Don't feed the beast!"
how many people on these boards, the "technical elite", are buying ready-made PCs. What self-respecting nerd trusts someone else to build their PC for them (except for laptops of course where there really isn't a viable parts market)? The quality of the machine you can build yourself is so much better for the money. And the time you spend ripping out all the pre-installed crap, oftentimes leaving you with an unstable machine, can be more than the time spent building and installing exactly what you want. True, if ultra-cheap is your goal then ready-made is the way to go (but don't expect to be able to upgrade it to be anything reasonable - cheap means cheap - power supplies, motherboards, cooling). And don't forget the side benefits of building versus buying - like the knowledge you gain, both from researching the components and knowing exactly what's inside (besides Intel).
Always preview your posts!
Or maybe it is a regularly shaped sphere but our sun is not the center? Maybe the center is some other extremely dense object, like {insert your favorite whipping person here} 's head?
This implies that the heliosphere, a spherical bubble of charged low-energy particles created by our Sun's solar wind, is irregularly shaped, bulging in the northern hemisphere and pressed inward in the south
Or maybe it is a regularly shaped sphere but our sun is not the center? Maybe the center is some other extremely dense object, like 's head?
And MAYBE part of the reason Word is being infected with worms, isn't some side-effect of monoculture and the lack of software diversity, but rather a result of hackers almost solely targeting Microsoft products.
I believe you are absolutely correct. Many on these boards will argue it's because Microsoft's products are such easy targets. And many others will say it's because Microsoft has such a large installed base. However, I think the reasons Microsoft products are targeted the most have more to do with the motivations of the hackers, which, in my estimation, are envy and resentment. After all, inflating the number of machines infected or damaged does not really materially benefit the hackers. And wouldn't there be much more "prestige" in the hacker community in penetrating the "much more secure" Linux systems, rather than the soft-and-chewy Microsoft targets? And if it's true that over 50% of the servers on the net are running Linux, wouldn't hacking those systems yield more fruit in terms of data and access? So how then to explain the lopsided statistics? We all know how big a factor motivation plays in productivity. The same thing applies to hacking.
Yeah! Microsoft is so evil! Hey, BTW, could some helpful soul out there please point me to the sources for Gmail, Google Desktop, the Google Toolbar, Google Maps, and the Google search engine?
Not me. I've had an "Intel Outside" sticker on my front door for over 2 years now!
So I go to read the article, and I notice my browser window title bar reads:
Security Absurdity.com > Security Absurdity; The Complete, Unquestionable, And Total Failure of - Microsoft Internet Explorer"
Now was this an accident or did the authors deliberately lengthen their article title to make this happen?
This is true, which is why the current techniques for benchmarking seem to be better. Reporting the framerate on Quake or Oblivion is pretty hard to cheat on. What I am thinking of is a collection of existing applications - with a composite score assembled from performance on those applications. For example, how long does it take Word 2003 XP to open a very complicated document. How long does it take to DIVX encode a standard movie file. What is the frame rate at such-and-such a resolution for Oblivion? Combine all those scores with some sort of weighted average (maybe one set of weights for gamers, a different set of weights for media types and third set of weights for office types).
I hate having to read a spec chart to figure out exactly whats in a god damn cpu.
... I bought a Honda Minivan, 7 passenger, power sliding doors, V6, AM/FM/CD, power seats, hideaway rear seat, AC, automatic, TCS, ABS, side airbags, ....
So by your logic I didn't buy a Honda Odyssey
Yeah, that'll work.
CPUs are way too complicated to ever fully identify them with their name. Get use to reading the specs, it's only going to get worse.
I for one actually really like the AMD approach. I periodically check the benchmarks to verify that their numbers correlate at least somewhat with real application-level performance. This allows me to fairly easily price-compare different CPUs, knowing "roughly" the relative performance difference between them. For example, an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ will be *about* 10% slower (your mileage may vary) than an Athlon 64 X2 4200+. This is extremely helpful to me, and tells me alot more than comparing the specs and noticing one has 512KB L2 cache while the other has 256KB.
I would love for there to be a standard benchmark suite, and have the weighted average of the benchmark scores go right into the product names. that way I could compare across product architectures rather than only within a specific architecture. Unfortunately that will never happen because one or the other vendor (intel, AMD) will be far enough behind that they will have to come up with their own naming convention to obfuscate the truth.
You have an uncanny ability to completely miss my point. And you have also given me zero examples of Google's "innovation" -- just examples of good execution. To me the innovation is being the first company or person to actually turn the idea into reality. As anybody who has actually designed and produced a product knows, coming up with the "idea" is the easy part.
Here's something for you to ponder. You are an engineer in a room "brainstorming" with marketing over new product ideas. Suddenly the marketing guy blurts out "Hey, we should come up with a bunch of web services since the world is going in that direction. We could have a service that notifies people when their car needs routine maintenance!" The engineering team goes off, pounds out this new product over a couple of years, many false starts and flawed prototypes, etc. until they finally get it right -- an it's a big hit in the market. Now, who was the innovator? By your definition it is the marketing guy who probably spent those 2 years drinking mint julips and "innovating" more wonderful products, rather than the engineering team that did all the hard work to bring the thing into existence. In my mind, real innovation is taking an abstract idea (or re-engineering a poorly implemented product) and perfecting it such that it is usable and marketable.
So, by that definition of innovation, I shall now enumerate a list of Microsoft innovations:
- an operating system that is hardware independent (I know, you can name others that came before, but you tell me the name of another software company that sold operating systems to consumers without selling the hardware that goes with it before Microsoft)
- an integrated development environment (yeah, Turbo Pascal was first, but they lost their way)
- an integrated office suite (this one was a horserace - Ashton Tate and Lotus were in the mix)
- an integrated email/calendar/contacts application (Outlook)
- soup-to-nuts digital media delivery platform (audio, video, DRM, codecs)
- the premier, high-performance gaming platform (the DirectX collection of APIs)
- mice with scroll wheels
- automatic web-based software updates and patch distribution
Uh, Yahoo came long before Google in the search engine business. And many more came before Yahoo (ever heard of Web Ferret?). As for a successful advertising network --- you call this innovation? In my book it's more of the same ... just good execution. Many people before Google had the "idea" to target advertising to the particular consumer's tastes. Google just did it better.
I have to say, you very nicely added support to my statement that "innovation" is not something to necessarily be honored. Rather, we should laud the hard work that successfully brings those "innovations" to fruition. And on that count Google deserves many accolades. Oh, and so does Microsoft, or any other company, organization or individual that takes these "great ideas" and turns them into reality.
Oops ... Mr Tolback is a Democrat. How inconventient.
I have yet to see a NEW idea come from Microsoft
...) does all the hard work and successfully brings the idea to the marketplace. The world is full of blue-sky types who sit around and pontificate, and then sit back and wait for someone else to do all the work, and then grab the credit. For my money, the hard part is the doing, not the original inspiration. And you certainly can't claim Microsoft hasn't brought to life many, many good ideas, be they their original ideas, or those of someone else.
This sentiment drives me crazy. Frankly it has been my experience that almost nothing is a new idea! It is remarkable how often somebody comes forward to claim credit for some "innovation" after a company like Microsoft (or Apple, or Sun, or HP, or Google
As Edison said, Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Hmmm, to answer your question off the top of my head ... future changes to the document format could potentially need to be "approved" by the government. Or, more likely, the government might choose to remain at a particular revision rather than incur the cost of upgrading every system. Imagine if all submissions to the government had to be in Word 1.0 DOC format. How painful would that be today? I suppose it could stimulate the economy by creating make-work type services (a government specialty) to convert modern documents into old Word 1.0 format so they could be submitted to the government. Would publishing the Word 1.0 DOC format prevent this from happening?
... that is why we call them "unintended." I just know from experience that there will be consequences that surprise us, and usually the surprise is not a positive one.
Frankly I don't think any of us can really predict what the unintended consequences might be
In the end it is wise to remember that government is an extremely blunt instrument. The fewer policies the better. There is no end of problems we can point to that resulted from "things that seemed like a good idea at the time".
Whenever the government implements sweeping policies such as those discussed in this article there are unintended consequences which, in the end, oftentimes dwarf the predicted benefits of the policy. The classic example of this of course is when FDR implemented a wage freeze during WWII. Clever companies, in order to keep and attract good employees, began to offer to pay for their employees' health insurance. Fast forward 60 years and look at the mess that helped to create.
So, what sort of unintended consequences would a mandate to use OSS/standards-based software bring about? Well, armed with the sourcecode, it is easy to envision government IT people customizing the application in order to "better integrate with their work procedures" or "enhance the security". Play this out over 10 years and what you wind up with is chaos, with the very thing you were hoping to achieve (interoperability) lost in a myriad of incompatible, "enhanced" applications.
"Embrace and extend" is human nature, it is not just a Microsoft failing.
Media and technology companies warned Tuesday that new European Union broadcasting rules could restrict the growth of emerging media formats such as video broadcasts through the internet and mobile phones.
This discussion is somewhat reminiscent of the development and standardization of GSM cell phones in Europe back in the 80's and early 90's. I'm sure many of the same arguments were made on both sides of the issue. Of course in the US it was decided to let the market sort out the best cell phone technology. Now here we are in the US with multiple competing mobile formats. It is a complicated undertaking for a consumer to decide which mobile operator to choose -- there are coverage maps, different network capabilities, non-overlapping phone models. Add to that the fact that despite all this "competition" the cost to the consumer is fairly high compared to Europe.
So, which is the best way to go? Mandate these sorts of things early on, or let the market evolve? As a died-in-the-wool capitalist I like the idea of letting the market choose the winner. Unfortunately sometimes you end up with what we have in today's US cell phone market - no clear winner and confusion for the consumers.
At some point you just have to wonder what the real point of these suits is ...
Hmmm, Microsoft has a big pile of money. Everybody wants it. That would be the real point.
it's yet another poorly conceived, badly implemented device from Nokia - a company that has proven time and time again that they make good phones, but haven't got a clue when it comes to making anything else. Seriously, in a former life I wrote applications for cell phones, and the Nokia devices were THE WORST. Everything was non-standard; every model had a unique twist. They touted their Symbian operating system as an "open and standardized" platform, but our sourcecode was riddled with #ifdef NOKIA3650, #ifdef NOKIA6600, #ifdef NOKIAinsertmodelnumberhere ... blah blah blah. Nothing they do surprises me anymore and I wouldn't carry anything with a Nokia name on it other than a cheapo bottom-of-the-line phone (which they do a pretty good job on).