None of your points are relevant. The original post was discussing the difference between Google and Microsoft in acquiring companies, not building products. Can you point to any actual evidence to refute it?
When contemplating such an action one should keep in mind that anything that Microsoft does is pro-monopoly, screw the world encapsulated.
Thanks for the rational explanation of why Microsoft is doing this. I'll be sure to use those exact words when talking to my boss and writing my magazine article.
And people wonder why Linux advocates aren't taken seriously.
Instead of a hard limit of 100 per hour, or 500 per day then no more until the next period, why not use the toilet tank method to control the volume of email sent? Each user is allowed X emails in their tank, and their tank refills at a rate of Y emails/hour or whatever. Force users to use the ISP's mail host as the outbound relay for counting purposes. Run out of emails in your tank? Too bad, wait another hour. It doesn't stop the problem of home computers getting infected and sending spam, but at least it limits the amount of damage they can do.
People don't request a song on the radio because they think it's popular, they do it because they like to hear it. You don't say "oh, I'd better call up and request this song because everyone else is doing it." You say "I want to hear this song." Songs aren't "artificially vaulted to the top of the charts;" radio stations are paid to add a song to their rotation, but advertising dollars don't last forever. If a song is still in heavy rotation and still has a high chart ranking even after nobody's paying for it, there's nothing artificial about that. Somebody must want to hear it. Furthermore, some songs become popular even without the advantage of an initial advertising blitz. How many songs can you think of that weren't marked by record labels as a single, yet went on to become popular on the radio? You're also not considering college radio stations, which to the best of my knowledge do not receive much in the way of this type of record label funding. If you take a look at the current playlist for WREK (Georgia Tech's radio station), you'll see some pretty big (read: major-label) names on it.
Record labels telling people what's popular is an entirely different story, and is something which should be discouraged. Fact is though, in the end it's a station's audience which decides what's popular.
And by the way, calling people "sheep" isn't, and has never been, clever. It just makes you sound like a pompous holier-than-thou asshole.
for what it's worth, "the US Navy" isn't a homogeneous environment when it comes to computer platforms. Our product has to support RHEL and Win2k, and I've heard of XP and HP-UX boxes, Macs, and even IIRC some QNX machines at various places.
Whine. This piece of software, never before used in high schools, didn't give me the grade I thought I deserved (which is only worth 10% of the final score anyway). This "obviously" means computers are completely and forever unfit to grade student essays, even though they by nature don't get tired of grading papers, don't display favoritism, don't deviate from established criteria at all, and have the ability to be instantly and continuously refined.
Ever heard the phrase about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater? So you were ETS' guinea pigs, and you think you got shafted. That's why it was only worth a fraction of your grade. Get over it.
Thanks for an extremely informative and well thought-out reply. But wouldn't drastically reducing foreign aid like you suggest lead to a greater percentage of any remaining resources being embezzled by whoever is in charge? If government officials are as corrupt as you've wrote, I'm assuming they won't care about breaking contracts and won't pay attention to international sanctions.
In addition, won't what you suggest only help countries which already have the basic facilities to support foreign investment? IT requires quite a large infrastructure behind it, and I had assumed that the discussion here was supposed to discuss only the poorest of African countries. For example, the only country mentioned in the article (Uganda) qualified for Highly Indebted Poor Countries relief; South Africa and Nigeria (the only African countries I can think of off the top of my head with a sizable telecom base, sorry) are not in nearly as bad a shape. Admittedly I don't know a whole lot about African socioeconomics, but wouldn't basic necessities take precedence over things like Internet presence?
How will you feed, house, deliver basic utilities to, and do the hundred other things that this new workforce needs to do their jobs? What happens in five, ten, twenty years when the equipment they've invested in is hopelessly obsolete and these countries are once again on the brink of disaster? How will new handouts be paid for? And who says they're even going to be interested in doing IT in the first place? No, I think that's one of the worst ways to go about helping Africa.
The first step for Third World recovery is to write off the debts as they stand right now. Next, instead of subsidizing Midwest farmers to grow weeds instead of food, have them grow actual food and ship it overseas; the destination countries only pay transportation costs (a way to collect even just a little on the previous debts). Then take any funds earmarked for high-tech investment and put them towards basic sanitation facilities instead and you'd have a good start.
I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't really want a mouse built into my case like you're suggesting. Seems like it'd be pretty hard to roll around on my desk...
Re:Conformal change vibration and resonance analys
on
The Sound of Cells
·
· Score: 1
Kellaris said random shuffle likely appeals to the MTV generation -- kids with short attention spans who are likely "brain damaged."
"Personally, and I believe I speak for many old farts here, I appreciate listening to music, be it an opera or a pop album, in the sequence in which the artist decided to present it," he said.
"Temporal order is an important element of how a work unfolds dynamically over time, an important factor underlying the aesthetic effect. Random shuffle pretty much flushes that down the toilet."
This strongly depends on the quality and length of the album in question, IMO. Some albums need to be listened to in order (Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, Led Zeppelin I, and Hybrid's Wide Angle all come immediately to mind), but with the majority of CDs having no emotional continuity between songs, I see no reason not to skip around and only listen to what you feel like hearing. Besides, this argument doesn't address the popularity of mix CDs or the random shuffling of songs from multiple albums.
And, with music or any other form or art, what the artist intends to present in a piece of work is not always how the audience interprets it. Who's to say someone won't find more meaning in a random shuffle than in the original order of the same tracks?
The only thing she's right about is the fact that she is an old fart.
On a slightly related note, wasn't this the reason the Red Hot Chili Peppers (I believe) refuse to sell their music on iTMS? They want the CD to be appreciated as a whole, while their listeners wanted only a handful of the songs.
What is your point exactly? All I see is two quotes on music services (neither of which indicate that Real is in trouble), one on the popularity of media players dated three years ago, and one which has nothing to do with anything. Your conclusion can't be drawn from the evidence provided, and you didn't back up your statement at all about paid vs. free versions of RealPlayer (not that it makes much sense in the context of the rest of your post). Hell, anyone can google for "Glaser + Apple" and get a bunch of news articles, but you actually have to do some reading if you're trying to convince anyone that Real, with their million-plus subscribers, is really in as much trouble as you seem to think.
"To us, Janus finally provides the platform on which we can build a new type of experience for the consumer," said Zack Zalon, president of Virgin Digital, the British conglomerate's new online-music division. "We believe this is it. This is what consumers are going to want. We want to be big participant in changing consumers' attitude towards what music really is."
This is why online music purchasing is in such a sad state: it's because of people like this guy. He and others believe they can tell consumers (not "customers," not even "people," but "consumers") that the DRM widget du jour really is what they want when they look to buy music online. Screw what their customers actually ask for, and never mind that positive shopping experiences and word-of-mouth advertising are every bit as important as the profit made on any one purchase; it's obviously far better to license some new technology almost guaranteed to be broken within three months, shove it down the throats of unwilling customers, and pass on the costs.
Guess what, pal. We don't want a "new type of experience," or people "changing attitudes towards what music really is" (whatever that even means). Just offer us unencumbered MP3s at a buck a song, and watch people flock to your service. Is that so hard to understand?
So a DVD Player is better at playing DVDs and video...
An MP3 player is better at playing MP3s...
A PDA is better at being a PDA...
And I am sure all of the above have a much longer battery life and are cheaper than this unit.
I really just don't see why anybody would buy this.
Um, besides the facts that there'd be two less devices to haul around to perform the same functions and that it'll probably be cheaper than a $250 MP3 player + a $500 video player + a $200 PDA? Sure, it's not gonna be the best you've ever owned, but I know a few people who would buy one device over several for these very reasons.
And nowhere in the article does it mention that the device will play DVDs, something which is impossible anyway; there's just no place to stuff a ~4.5"-diameter disc into a PDA form factor.
Do you know how goofy you sound, dismissing my practical reasons and then spitting out stereotypical Slashbot-isms?
Interesting, I thought exactly the reverse; practical reasons to not use this software do include the presence of DRM as the original response mentioned, and I thought that your canned "Linux and open-source tools are the answer for everything" response was the Slashdot standard.
As for "dismissing your most important reason" of using a closed protocol, I'm not surprised that the other response didn't rebut it since you didn't even see fit to include as one of the "simple reasons" you don't like the product, instead burying it near the bottom of your OP. That's also ignoring the fact that there's nothing inherently wrong with using proprietary communication protocols, especially when they're being used by a for-profit company.
Ther is something wrong with charging a lot for software that does nothing I couldn't accomplish in an hour of python scripting around ssh.
Actually, there really isn't anything wrong with it. If someone wants to charge a lot of money for something you yourself said could be done in an hour, then it's a stupid idea to buy the product; go tell your boss why you shouldn't purchase it. Better yet, I would suggest that you spend the hour and code the replacement yourself and show it to whoever's making the decisions there, but with the stuck-up "[not] inclined to touch Windows programming" attitude (even though the necessary tools are freely available on that platform, and better yet aren't tied to it), maybe there's some other solution you can come up with.
a guy wearing the skeleton+power pack looks the way I do when I carry 30+ kilos and no exoskeleton! In other words, he would be much better off if he left the exoskeleton+power back behind, and carried on using natural power only.
No, in other words you would be better off like that. Not everyone has the same physique as you do, and just because you personally wouldn't find it useful doesn't mean nobody else will.
As with a lot of other cool devices, the really big problem is the need
for compact, efficient, lightweight power sources. They currently don't exist.
geez, since when did Obvious comments start getting modded as Insightful? And besides, if you RTFA you would see the following:
The UC Berkeley engineers are also developing a quieter, more powerful engine, and a faster, more intelligent controller, that will enable the exoskeleton to carry loads up to 120 pounds within the next six months. In addition, the researchers are studying what it takes to enable pilots to run and jump with the exoskeleton legs.
Please, I'm not that naive. I realize that engineers, scientists, and designers work in those fields. But losing the 100+ soldering and assembly jobs on the factory floor was a bigger problem than losing the dozen planners and designers working upstairs. This is the first time white-collar jobs exclusively are the ones being moved out of the country; nothing approaching this scale has happened before. Maybe I read something in your initial post that wasn't there, but that's what I thought you were taking issue with.
Do you really not understand what "white-collar" means? y'know, doctors, lawyers, bankers, and such? The guys who specifically DON'T work in any of the fields you mentioned?
Nobody's debating that blue-collar jobs in many industries have been shipped overseas since at least the early '70s. But that's not what the post is referring to. I don't know anyone who would consider a job in textiles, steel, or auto or consumer electronics manufacturing a white-collar job. But coding is considered by many folks to be intellectual rather than manual labor (i.e., white-collar) and for the first time America is outsourcing those types of jobs.
(Disclaimer: I'm 22, a student of history in my spare time, and didn't submit the article)
Total package compatibility would most likely lead to someone using Red Hat trying to install a debian package, and then getting frustrated, confused and pissed off with the inevitable failure due to the entirely different internals of Debian and Red Hat.
If there was "total package compatibility" between radically different distros, then wouldn't that by definition get rid of "inevitable failures" during install? This would make it easier for newbies to get comfortable with maintaining a Linux system, instead of throwing their Linux CD in the trash and going back to Windows. It might also help to show that different distros aren't so different after all, just because of what apps are packaged for it. If there was no need to spend time packaging and testing that 29th MP3 player when the other distros can do it too, maybe now we'll see improvement in the other bits in the distro that need help.
Actually, in the dream world I live in, everybody downloads source when they're setting up their system and just grabs the diffs when they need to update a component. Ever-faster processors mean quicker compile times, ridiculous amounts of hard drive space means you can keep source trees lying around so you don't have to build from scratch every time, and only distributing the source means the program is guaranteed to work on your system (well, with a little help from automake and friends).
The essence of good design is simplicity and value comes from the elimination of unnecessary features, not their addition.
Your'e right, but so what? I don't think anyone is arguing that Microsoft's products are designed well, but all features are added to a product because someone, somewhere, said they needed it. Nobody goes out of their way to add unrequested features to a product, causing more work and more testing headaches.
You would consider a door with fifteen handles and ten ways of opening to be "worth more" than a door that has one handle which works exactly as you expect? Hardly.
That's also correct, but is missing the point again. A more valid analogy would be the Microsoft door having a mail slot, while the OpenOffice door does not. Sure, maybe your 80-90% of users have mailboxes outside, so any brand of door would work for them. But the folks who live in an apartment absolutely need that particular feature and as long as it's not present in any other brand of door, they're not gonna switch.
So features do indeed equal value, if you have a legitimate use for them; you probably don't, based on your post there, but not everyone can be painted by the same broad brush.
Who out there is saying, "Oh, look, this message got past all my spam filters and contains a lot of jumbled, garbled nonsense text alongside a plug for herbal penis enlarging pills. This must be legitimate. Now, where's my credit card,"?
As difficult as this may seem to a Slashdot reader, not everyone in the entire world is using Bayesian filtering or even any sort of filtering at all. I'm not (mostly because I only give my email address to family and close friends and use AIM for everyone else), my grandmothers aren't, many of my friends aren't. I'd say that there's quite a few people on the internet who (a) don't use filtering; (b) have a history of giving their email address out basically to whoever wants it; and (c) sign up for online promotions with companies who turn around and sell their email address. Spammers rely mainly on this type of person, since they're the likliest to be suckered in to buying a product advertised through spam. I'd imagine filter avoidance is a secondary priority right now, but it'll become more important as more ISPs start using filters.
Spamming is not only irritating, it's pointless. Who is paying these people to spam us? Are people actually buying penis enlarging pills and patches, herbal viagra, mortgage refinancing, credit repair kits, or any of that stuff? Enough to put millions of dollars a month into the hands of career spammers?
The amount of spam sent out depends a lot on the current state of the economy. When your business' profits are in the toilet, spamming starts to look really attractive due to its extremely low cost given the size of the audience reached. Hopefully, if things start turning around and businesses start making money, they'll think twice about spamming; by then, consumer outrage begins to matter more than saving a smaller percentage of your advertising budget.
Slashdot Mirror
None of your points are relevant. The original post was discussing the difference between Google and Microsoft in acquiring companies, not building products. Can you point to any actual evidence to refute it?
When contemplating such an action one should keep in mind that anything that Microsoft does is pro-monopoly, screw the world encapsulated.
Thanks for the rational explanation of why Microsoft is doing this. I'll be sure to use those exact words when talking to my boss and writing my magazine article.
And people wonder why Linux advocates aren't taken seriously.
Instead of a hard limit of 100 per hour, or 500 per day then no more until the next period, why not use the toilet tank method to control the volume of email sent? Each user is allowed X emails in their tank, and their tank refills at a rate of Y emails/hour or whatever. Force users to use the ISP's mail host as the outbound relay for counting purposes. Run out of emails in your tank? Too bad, wait another hour. It doesn't stop the problem of home computers getting infected and sending spam, but at least it limits the amount of damage they can do.
People don't request a song on the radio because they think it's popular, they do it because they like to hear it. You don't say "oh, I'd better call up and request this song because everyone else is doing it." You say "I want to hear this song." Songs aren't "artificially vaulted to the top of the charts;" radio stations are paid to add a song to their rotation, but advertising dollars don't last forever. If a song is still in heavy rotation and still has a high chart ranking even after nobody's paying for it, there's nothing artificial about that. Somebody must want to hear it.
Furthermore, some songs become popular even without the advantage of an initial advertising blitz. How many songs can you think of that weren't marked by record labels as a single, yet went on to become popular on the radio?
You're also not considering college radio stations, which to the best of my knowledge do not receive much in the way of this type of record label funding. If you take a look at the current playlist for WREK (Georgia Tech's radio station), you'll see some pretty big (read: major-label) names on it.
Record labels telling people what's popular is an entirely different story, and is something which should be discouraged. Fact is though, in the end it's a station's audience which decides what's popular.
And by the way, calling people "sheep" isn't, and has never been, clever. It just makes you sound like a pompous holier-than-thou asshole.
for what it's worth, "the US Navy" isn't a homogeneous environment when it comes to computer platforms. Our product has to support RHEL and Win2k, and I've heard of XP and HP-UX boxes, Macs, and even IIRC some QNX machines at various places.
Whine. This piece of software, never before used in high schools, didn't give me the grade I thought I deserved (which is only worth 10% of the final score anyway). This "obviously" means computers are completely and forever unfit to grade student essays, even though they by nature don't get tired of grading papers, don't display favoritism, don't deviate from established criteria at all, and have the ability to be instantly and continuously refined.
Ever heard the phrase about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater? So you were ETS' guinea pigs, and you think you got shafted. That's why it was only worth a fraction of your grade. Get over it.
Thanks for an extremely informative and well thought-out reply. But wouldn't drastically reducing foreign aid like you suggest lead to a greater percentage of any remaining resources being embezzled by whoever is in charge? If government officials are as corrupt as you've wrote, I'm assuming they won't care about breaking contracts and won't pay attention to international sanctions.
In addition, won't what you suggest only help countries which already have the basic facilities to support foreign investment? IT requires quite a large infrastructure behind it, and I had assumed that the discussion here was supposed to discuss only the poorest of African countries. For example, the only country mentioned in the article (Uganda) qualified for Highly Indebted Poor Countries relief; South Africa and Nigeria (the only African countries I can think of off the top of my head with a sizable telecom base, sorry) are not in nearly as bad a shape. Admittedly I don't know a whole lot about African socioeconomics, but wouldn't basic necessities take precedence over things like Internet presence?
How will you feed, house, deliver basic utilities to, and do the hundred other things that this new workforce needs to do their jobs? What happens in five, ten, twenty years when the equipment they've invested in is hopelessly obsolete and these countries are once again on the brink of disaster? How will new handouts be paid for? And who says they're even going to be interested in doing IT in the first place? No, I think that's one of the worst ways to go about helping Africa.
The first step for Third World recovery is to write off the debts as they stand right now. Next, instead of subsidizing Midwest farmers to grow weeds instead of food, have them grow actual food and ship it overseas; the destination countries only pay transportation costs (a way to collect even just a little on the previous debts). Then take any funds earmarked for high-tech investment and put them towards basic sanitation facilities instead and you'd have a good start.
hooray. Microsoft mentioned Linux a few times in this one memo, then-- wait for it-- only mentioned it once in another memo!
Big deal. Where's the story here?
I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't really want a mouse built into my case like you're suggesting. Seems like it'd be pretty hard to roll around on my desk...
psh, big deal. everybody knows that...
Kellaris said random shuffle likely appeals to the MTV generation -- kids with short attention spans who are likely "brain damaged."
"Personally, and I believe I speak for many old farts here, I appreciate listening to music, be it an opera or a pop album, in the sequence in which the artist decided to present it," he said.
"Temporal order is an important element of how a work unfolds dynamically over time, an important factor underlying the aesthetic effect. Random shuffle pretty much flushes that down the toilet."
This strongly depends on the quality and length of the album in question, IMO. Some albums need to be listened to in order (Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, Led Zeppelin I, and Hybrid's Wide Angle all come immediately to mind), but with the majority of CDs having no emotional continuity between songs, I see no reason not to skip around and only listen to what you feel like hearing. Besides, this argument doesn't address the popularity of mix CDs or the random shuffling of songs from multiple albums.
And, with music or any other form or art, what the artist intends to present in a piece of work is not always how the audience interprets it. Who's to say someone won't find more meaning in a random shuffle than in the original order of the same tracks?
The only thing she's right about is the fact that she is an old fart.
On a slightly related note, wasn't this the reason the Red Hot Chili Peppers (I believe) refuse to sell their music on iTMS? They want the CD to be appreciated as a whole, while their listeners wanted only a handful of the songs.
What is your point exactly? All I see is two quotes on music services (neither of which indicate that Real is in trouble), one on the popularity of media players dated three years ago, and one which has nothing to do with anything. Your conclusion can't be drawn from the evidence provided, and you didn't back up your statement at all about paid vs. free versions of RealPlayer (not that it makes much sense in the context of the rest of your post). Hell, anyone can google for "Glaser + Apple" and get a bunch of news articles, but you actually have to do some reading if you're trying to convince anyone that Real, with their million-plus subscribers, is really in as much trouble as you seem to think.
"To us, Janus finally provides the platform on which we can build a new type of experience for the consumer," said Zack Zalon, president of Virgin Digital, the British conglomerate's new online-music division. "We believe this is it. This is what consumers are going to want. We want to be big participant in changing consumers' attitude towards what music really is."
This is why online music purchasing is in such a sad state: it's because of people like this guy. He and others believe they can tell consumers (not "customers," not even "people," but "consumers") that the DRM widget du jour really is what they want when they look to buy music online. Screw what their customers actually ask for, and never mind that positive shopping experiences and word-of-mouth advertising are every bit as important as the profit made on any one purchase; it's obviously far better to license some new technology almost guaranteed to be broken within three months, shove it down the throats of unwilling customers, and pass on the costs.
Guess what, pal. We don't want a "new type of experience," or people "changing attitudes towards what music really is" (whatever that even means). Just offer us unencumbered MP3s at a buck a song, and watch people flock to your service. Is that so hard to understand?
So a DVD Player is better at playing DVDs and video...
An MP3 player is better at playing MP3s...
A PDA is better at being a PDA...
And I am sure all of the above have a much longer battery life and are cheaper than this unit.
I really just don't see why anybody would buy this.
Um, besides the facts that there'd be two less devices to haul around to perform the same functions and that it'll probably be cheaper than a $250 MP3 player + a $500 video player + a $200 PDA? Sure, it's not gonna be the best you've ever owned, but I know a few people who would buy one device over several for these very reasons.
And nowhere in the article does it mention that the device will play DVDs, something which is impossible anyway; there's just no place to stuff a ~4.5"-diameter disc into a PDA form factor.
Do you know how goofy you sound, dismissing my practical reasons and then spitting out stereotypical Slashbot-isms?
Interesting, I thought exactly the reverse; practical reasons to not use this software do include the presence of DRM as the original response mentioned, and I thought that your canned "Linux and open-source tools are the answer for everything" response was the Slashdot standard.
As for "dismissing your most important reason" of using a closed protocol, I'm not surprised that the other response didn't rebut it since you didn't even see fit to include as one of the "simple reasons" you don't like the product, instead burying it near the bottom of your OP. That's also ignoring the fact that there's nothing inherently wrong with using proprietary communication protocols, especially when they're being used by a for-profit company.
Ther is something wrong with charging a lot for software that does nothing I couldn't accomplish in an hour of python scripting around ssh.
Actually, there really isn't anything wrong with it. If someone wants to charge a lot of money for something you yourself said could be done in an hour, then it's a stupid idea to buy the product; go tell your boss why you shouldn't purchase it. Better yet, I would suggest that you spend the hour and code the replacement yourself and show it to whoever's making the decisions there, but with the stuck-up "[not] inclined to touch Windows programming" attitude (even though the necessary tools are freely available on that platform, and better yet aren't tied to it), maybe there's some other solution you can come up with.
yeah, I bet that filter was real hard...
s/or$/our/g
s/^old$/olde/g;
a guy wearing the skeleton+power pack looks the way I do when I carry 30+ kilos and no exoskeleton! In other words, he would be much better off if he left the exoskeleton+power back behind, and carried on using natural power only.
No, in other words you would be better off like that. Not everyone has the same physique as you do, and just because you personally wouldn't find it useful doesn't mean nobody else will.
As with a lot of other cool devices, the really big problem is the need for compact, efficient, lightweight power sources. They currently don't exist.
geez, since when did Obvious comments start getting modded as Insightful? And besides, if you RTFA you would see the following:
The UC Berkeley engineers are also developing a quieter, more powerful engine, and a faster, more intelligent controller, that will enable the exoskeleton to carry loads up to 120 pounds within the next six months. In addition, the researchers are studying what it takes to enable pilots to run and jump with the exoskeleton legs.
Please, I'm not that naive. I realize that engineers, scientists, and designers work in those fields. But losing the 100+ soldering and assembly jobs on the factory floor was a bigger problem than losing the dozen planners and designers working upstairs. This is the first time white-collar jobs exclusively are the ones being moved out of the country; nothing approaching this scale has happened before. Maybe I read something in your initial post that wasn't there, but that's what I thought you were taking issue with.
Do you really not understand what "white-collar" means? y'know, doctors, lawyers, bankers, and such? The guys who specifically DON'T work in any of the fields you mentioned?
Nobody's debating that blue-collar jobs in many industries have been shipped overseas since at least the early '70s. But that's not what the post is referring to. I don't know anyone who would consider a job in textiles, steel, or auto or consumer electronics manufacturing a white-collar job. But coding is considered by many folks to be intellectual rather than manual labor (i.e., white-collar) and for the first time America is outsourcing those types of jobs.
(Disclaimer: I'm 22, a student of history in my spare time, and didn't submit the article)
Total package compatibility would most likely lead to someone using Red Hat trying to install a debian package, and then getting frustrated, confused and pissed off with the inevitable failure due to the entirely different internals of Debian and Red Hat.
If there was "total package compatibility" between radically different distros, then wouldn't that by definition get rid of "inevitable failures" during install? This would make it easier for newbies to get comfortable with maintaining a Linux system, instead of throwing their Linux CD in the trash and going back to Windows. It might also help to show that different distros aren't so different after all, just because of what apps are packaged for it. If there was no need to spend time packaging and testing that 29th MP3 player when the other distros can do it too, maybe now we'll see improvement in the other bits in the distro that need help.
Actually, in the dream world I live in, everybody downloads source when they're setting up their system and just grabs the diffs when they need to update a component. Ever-faster processors mean quicker compile times, ridiculous amounts of hard drive space means you can keep source trees lying around so you don't have to build from scratch every time, and only distributing the source means the program is guaranteed to work on your system (well, with a little help from automake and friends).
The essence of good design is simplicity and value comes from the elimination of unnecessary features, not their addition.
Your'e right, but so what? I don't think anyone is arguing that Microsoft's products are designed well, but all features are added to a product because someone, somewhere, said they needed it. Nobody goes out of their way to add unrequested features to a product, causing more work and more testing headaches.
You would consider a door with fifteen handles and ten ways of opening to be "worth more" than a door that has one handle which works exactly as you expect? Hardly.
That's also correct, but is missing the point again. A more valid analogy would be the Microsoft door having a mail slot, while the OpenOffice door does not. Sure, maybe your 80-90% of users have mailboxes outside, so any brand of door would work for them. But the folks who live in an apartment absolutely need that particular feature and as long as it's not present in any other brand of door, they're not gonna switch.
So features do indeed equal value, if you have a legitimate use for them; you probably don't, based on your post there, but not everyone can be painted by the same broad brush.
Who out there is saying, "Oh, look, this message got past all my spam filters and contains a lot of jumbled, garbled nonsense text alongside a plug for herbal penis enlarging pills. This must be legitimate. Now, where's my credit card,"?
As difficult as this may seem to a Slashdot reader, not everyone in the entire world is using Bayesian filtering or even any sort of filtering at all. I'm not (mostly because I only give my email address to family and close friends and use AIM for everyone else), my grandmothers aren't, many of my friends aren't. I'd say that there's quite a few people on the internet who (a) don't use filtering; (b) have a history of giving their email address out basically to whoever wants it; and (c) sign up for online promotions with companies who turn around and sell their email address. Spammers rely mainly on this type of person, since they're the likliest to be suckered in to buying a product advertised through spam. I'd imagine filter avoidance is a secondary priority right now, but it'll become more important as more ISPs start using filters.
Spamming is not only irritating, it's pointless. Who is paying these people to spam us? Are people actually buying penis enlarging pills and patches, herbal viagra, mortgage refinancing, credit repair kits, or any of that stuff? Enough to put millions of dollars a month into the hands of career spammers?
The amount of spam sent out depends a lot on the current state of the economy. When your business' profits are in the toilet, spamming starts to look really attractive due to its extremely low cost given the size of the audience reached. Hopefully, if things start turning around and businesses start making money, they'll think twice about spamming; by then, consumer outrage begins to matter more than saving a smaller percentage of your advertising budget.
MOD PARENT UP
-Joe Blow
Marketing Division
Zalman Inc.
(hehe)
It's difficult to have a principle-based movement when you ignore your principles.
It's difficult to have any movement at all in hardware-related fields without support from major players.