I agree with the idea that if money was poured into open source software development it would be closer to Microsoft's software (in ease of use) - but it wouldn't get there without something else:
A Clear, unified vision.
Count just how many different mechanisms Microsoft has created for interprocess communications in the last ten years, then try to say that again with a straight face.
Good design? Drive letters are still a fundamentally visible part of every Windows OS. They try to hide it a little more each time, but they fail. This despite having the pre-existing Unix file system as a model, which is generally just about right.
The problem with Microsoft is that it has great developers (consider the size of Windows XP); it's actually the deisngers who are crap, and make those developers follow a spec that is crufty. The developers follow that spec, and implement it as well as possible; but let's face it, a perfectly built Yugo would still be a Yugo.
Also, the whole cost issue makes compatibility problems so much worse. Linux 2.0 is still maintained. See that for Windows 98? Mac OS 9? And if the new version is free, most everyone will upgrade, or at least have a copy of the upgrade. So the issue of having to buy the new version because it fixes the bugs in the old version disappears.
First, the results, the open source software, would not be free as in beer. They would have been paid for with money seized from taxpayers, so if you have a job, you're paying for the software anyway, whether you want to use it or not.
Currently the government already spends many millions, perhaps billions, on proprietary software; and you don't get to use it at all. So this is a red herring.
It would, after all, be much more efficient to hire only those people who actually improve the product (designers, programmers, QA), and not marketers, salespeople, and grossly overpaid executives, and to employ them doing those things that most improve the product, not the things that look best on marketing materials.
All the pages I see look fine. Can you find a significant number of pages that look bad with Mozilla but not IE?
Go to http://www.lenstolerlexus.com and do a pre-owned vehicle search. I'm not web-savvy enough to know exactly how the table display is done, and thus what to bugzilla as an error. (I have bugzilla'ed a few other things.)
You aren't very clever then. Raise an antenna over the top of the trees somewhere, either a small one bolted to a high limb somewhere, or if the trees aren't so tall, put up a 30' pole or so. Run a line down from it, and buy some conduit to put it inside the house.
Isn't that going to bring 1.1 gigawatts into your house during thunderstorms? Handy for running flux capacitors, perhaps, but not so good for electronics.
[CDs provide] random access, along with much-improved quality and durability.
The qualiy is pretty similar on first playing. D-VHS (presumably) provides a dramatically better picture on the right equipment, and no equally high-quality alternative is close to adoption. Is that enough to get it adopted? Probably not, but with projection digital TVs selling for the same price standard projection TVs were just a few years ago, there are more and more people with HD sets and nothing that really takes advantage of them.
But I'm still annoyed HD sets rarely work well as computer monitors...
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
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Data Quality Act
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Are you really suggesting that as the economy moved from coal-burning to oil-burning, and from coal-fired mills to electrical grids, this had a negative effect?
In the meantime we were making Love Canal, PCBs, et al. The Amerinds lived a pretty much zero pollution life, everything since has been worse than that. Technological changes go both ways.
Fundamentally, it's up to the provider of the materials to verify that they have the proper licensing, not the consumer. However, if you definitively know that the provider does not have the appropriate permissions, this may not apply.
As always, IANALAIHWAMcB*
(*Although I Have Watched Ally McBeal)
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
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Data Quality Act
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You assert that Honda only builds SULEVs because of environmental regulations
No I didn't, I asserted the existence of a cleaner technology doesn't mean everyone uses it for efficiency's sake.
it appears that manufacturing had been evolving toward cleaner more efficient techologies long before [the 60's]
That's an assertion without support at all. No nitpicking on mine until you provide at least some of your own.
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
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Data Quality Act
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Nobody else is paying attention now, and I'm not interested in just trying to convince one person. But basically I'm countering your assertion that economic forces and technology improve the environment, not environmental laws. The SULEVs? They exist and can be mass-produced and used with cars of reasonable size and performance, yet they don't dominate. (And it took CAFE and environmental regs to get carmakers to start cleaning up their act. No, not technology, because Europeans had less clean cars at the same time and tech level.)
I brought up the Cuyuhoga as an example of how bad things were prior to the environmental emphasis that started in the early 70's, largely triggered by that fire. " is it not true that pollution levels had already begun to drop long before that?" Not in the Cuyuhoga, the late 60's seems to have been the nadir for clean water in this country.
2) What breakfast cereal does Raymond eat, anyway?
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
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Data Quality Act
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Why would we assume that it is okay to suddenly require all consumers to foot the bill for cars which are currently less safe to operate and more expensive to buy or own?
The standard Honda Accord is a SULEV.
Is 6 pounds per barrel high?
It's higher than 1.65, that's for sure.
Are the methods required in these two locales the same?
No, New Jersey requires a cleaner standard -- which is exactly the point.
Are they producing the same product? From the same input? Don't we need the answers to these questions before those numbers mean anything?
You would require a far lower standard from anything that agrees with your position.
most of the encouraging trends in pollution levels predate even the earliest environmental regulations
Neither the United States government nor any serious company can afford to deal with implementing an operating system that greets you with a $ prompt or some weirdo word processor that looks like Word, but can't handle basic tables.
If the gov't/users invested a fraction of what it spends on proprietary software on programmers for open source, they would have better software than they have now, and it would be open source to boot.
on top of that, why should M$ make [its] patented technologies avail[a]ble to the public?
What's patented? Nader certainly didn't mention patents, just file formats. And making your source code available doesn't mean anyone's free to copy it. Heck, since everyone else's code should be available then too, it might make it easier to detect actual code theft.
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
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Data Quality Act
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Actually, for which we can thank the fact that more advanced production techniques tend to pollute less -- the trend goes back much farther than environmental legislation does.
Then why does industry have to be dragged kicking and screaming every time a new environmental law is proposed? Why isn't every new vehicle sold a SULEV? Why is this the case: "In New Jersey, which has strict reporting requirements on pollution, refineries accounted for 1.65 pounds of toxic release inventory pollutants per barrel per day, while Texas refineries were emitting 6.17 pounds per barrel per day." (http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?Arti cleID=238)
Efficiency isn't always a strict cost benefit. That's why people dump barrels of toxic waste instead of disposing of it safely.
I'll grant you that some environmentalists ignore the facts in favor of a preconceived agenda, and that some environmental law is dreadfully inefficient at achieving its goals. But claiming that industry should receive most of the credit for environmental clean-up is specious.
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
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Data Quality Act
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Which is all very well, but the fact remains that even the data coming from the green groups acknowledges that the amount of pollution produced by the US has been dropping for decades [...]
...for which I think we can thank laws passed under pressure from those green groups. It's true that a number of pollution numbers are way down; unfortunately, CO2 production isn't among them, and that's what is the current concern.
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
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Indeed. Every assertion that supports my position is the absolute truth; all that disagree with me are outright lies and fabrication.
Right - heavens forbid that we change or delete the questionable conclusions from correct data (which among other examples already listed would put most of the anthropogenic global warming banter away for good).
Yep, I mean look at the news on one crazy environmental report: "The report released by the Environmental Protection Agency was [an] endorsement of what many scientists and weather experts have long argued -- that human activities such as oil refining, power plants and automobile emissions are important causes of global warming.
"Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing global mean surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise," the administration said in its report.
---
That report was released today by that damned tree-hugging Bush administration.
Here is one huge difference between the MPAA and the RIAA. The RIAA is kind of shooting in the dark when they release CDs, at least in theory.
...which is exactly why they should embrace MP3s.
Don't know if people will love or hate a group? Use lower production values to create their album, and don't do a full hour of music. Then sell and distribute it electronically. Costs are lower, if people buy you've got a market for their upcoming CD, if not you haven't lost as much in determining that no one likes Humongous Wombats. Much less guesswork, fewer unsold CDs, perhaps less payola needed, no paying for that key shelf space at Target and Wal-Mart.
Home DVD Players do not come with recorders... that is still down the road somewhere (maybe).
Panasonic's DVD recorder is less than $800 at Best Buy.
But for the forseeable future, the net just isn't going to be able to provide bandwidth to send files as high a quality as DVD, and people will pay a reasonable amount for that extra quality, not to mention keeping legal. The MPAA is definitely full of it.
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This is interesting, approximately 111% of the U.S. population is employed in the software sector.
I think they took the number of hours we worked and divided by 40.
I agree with the idea that if money was poured into open source software development it would be closer to Microsoft's software (in ease of use) - but it wouldn't get there without something else:
A Clear, unified vision.
Count just how many different mechanisms Microsoft has created for interprocess communications in the last ten years, then try to say that again with a straight face.
Good design? Drive letters are still a fundamentally visible part of every Windows OS. They try to hide it a little more each time, but they fail. This despite having the pre-existing Unix file system as a model, which is generally just about right.
The problem with Microsoft is that it has great developers (consider the size of Windows XP); it's actually the deisngers who are crap, and make those developers follow a spec that is crufty. The developers follow that spec, and implement it as well as possible; but let's face it, a perfectly built Yugo would still be a Yugo.
Also, the whole cost issue makes compatibility problems so much worse. Linux 2.0 is still maintained. See that for Windows 98? Mac OS 9? And if the new version is free, most everyone will upgrade, or at least have a copy of the upgrade. So the issue of having to buy the new version because it fixes the bugs in the old version disappears.
First, the results, the open source software, would not be free as in beer. They would have been paid for with money seized from taxpayers, so if you have a job, you're paying for the software anyway, whether you want to use it or not.
Currently the government already spends many millions, perhaps billions, on proprietary software; and you don't get to use it at all. So this is a red herring.
It would, after all, be much more efficient to hire only those people who actually improve the product (designers, programmers, QA), and not marketers, salespeople, and grossly overpaid executives, and to employ them doing those things that most improve the product, not the things that look best on marketing materials.
1) Bad guy dresses as monster to do something nefarious
2) Good guy dresses as monster to scare away bad guy
...or an airplane. Very good, sir.
All the pages I see look fine. Can you find a significant number of pages that look bad with Mozilla but not IE?
Go to http://www.lenstolerlexus.com and do a pre-owned vehicle search. I'm not web-savvy enough to know exactly how the table display is done, and thus what to bugzilla as an error. (I have bugzilla'ed a few other things.)
Does this mean the Hubble can now take pictures of people that see through their clothes?
Honestly, you would think those NASA guys would have better things to do with their time...
You aren't very clever then. Raise an antenna over the top of the trees somewhere, either a small one bolted to a high limb somewhere, or if the trees aren't so tall, put up a 30' pole or so. Run a line down from it, and buy some conduit to put it inside the house.
Isn't that going to bring 1.1 gigawatts into your house during thunderstorms? Handy for running flux capacitors, perhaps, but not so good for electronics.
. Any time. Starting this Friday of course, along with SG1.
You're not anywhere near central Maryland, are you?
[CDs provide] random access, along with much-improved quality and durability.
The qualiy is pretty similar on first playing. D-VHS (presumably) provides a dramatically better picture on the right equipment, and no equally high-quality alternative is close to adoption. Is that enough to get it adopted? Probably not, but with projection digital TVs selling for the same price standard projection TVs were just a few years ago, there are more and more people with HD sets and nothing that really takes advantage of them.
But I'm still annoyed HD sets rarely work well as computer monitors...
Are you really suggesting that as the economy moved from coal-burning to oil-burning, and from coal-fired mills to electrical grids, this had a negative effect?
In the meantime we were making Love Canal, PCBs, et al. The Amerinds lived a pretty much zero pollution life, everything since has been worse than that. Technological changes go both ways.
Fundamentally, it's up to the provider of the materials to verify that they have the proper licensing, not the consumer. However, if you definitively know that the provider does not have the appropriate permissions, this may not apply.
As always, IANALAIHWAMcB*
(*Although I Have Watched Ally McBeal)
You assert that Honda only builds SULEVs because of environmental regulations
No I didn't, I asserted the existence of a cleaner technology doesn't mean everyone uses it for efficiency's sake.
it appears that manufacturing had been evolving toward cleaner more efficient techologies long before [the 60's]
That's an assertion without support at all. No nitpicking on mine until you provide at least some of your own.
Nobody else is paying attention now, and I'm not interested in just trying to convince one person. But basically I'm countering your assertion that economic forces and technology improve the environment, not environmental laws. The SULEVs? They exist and can be mass-produced and used with cars of reasonable size and performance, yet they don't dominate. (And it took CAFE and environmental regs to get carmakers to start cleaning up their act. No, not technology, because Europeans had less clean cars at the same time and tech level.)
I brought up the Cuyuhoga as an example of how bad things were prior to the environmental emphasis that started in the early 70's, largely triggered by that fire. " is it not true that pollution levels had already begun to drop long before that?" Not in the Cuyuhoga, the late 60's seems to have been the nadir for clean water in this country.
Two questions:
1) Can I come over and watch Farscape?
2) What breakfast cereal does Raymond eat, anyway?
Why would we assume that it is okay to suddenly require all consumers to foot the bill for cars which are currently less safe to operate and more expensive to buy or own?
The standard Honda Accord is a SULEV.
Is 6 pounds per barrel high?
It's higher than 1.65, that's for sure.
Are the methods required in these two locales the same?
No, New Jersey requires a cleaner standard -- which is exactly the point.
Are they producing the same product? From the same input? Don't we need the answers to these questions before those numbers mean anything?
You would require a far lower standard from anything that agrees with your position.
most of the encouraging trends in pollution levels predate even the earliest environmental regulations
What, like the Cuyuhoga catching fire in the 70s?
Neither the United States government nor any serious company can afford to deal with implementing an operating system that greets you with a $ prompt or some weirdo word processor that looks like Word, but can't handle basic tables.
If the gov't/users invested a fraction of what it spends on proprietary software on programmers for open source, they would have better software than they have now, and it would be open source to boot.
on top of that, why should M$ make [its] patented technologies avail[a]ble to the public?
What's patented? Nader certainly didn't mention patents, just file formats. And making your source code available doesn't mean anyone's free to copy it. Heck, since everyone else's code should be available then too, it might make it easier to detect actual code theft.
Actually, for which we can thank the fact that more advanced production techniques tend to pollute less -- the trend goes back much farther than environmental legislation does.
i cleID=238)
Then why does industry have to be dragged kicking and screaming every time a new environmental law is proposed? Why isn't every new vehicle sold a SULEV? Why is this the case: "In New Jersey, which has strict reporting requirements on pollution, refineries accounted for 1.65 pounds of toxic release inventory pollutants per barrel per day, while Texas refineries were emitting 6.17 pounds per barrel per day." (http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?Art
Efficiency isn't always a strict cost benefit. That's why people dump barrels of toxic waste instead of disposing of it safely.
I'll grant you that some environmentalists ignore the facts in favor of a preconceived agenda, and that some environmental law is dreadfully inefficient at achieving its goals. But claiming that industry should receive most of the credit for environmental clean-up is specious.
Which is all very well, but the fact remains that even the data coming from the green groups acknowledges that the amount of pollution produced by the US has been dropping for decades [...]
...for which I think we can thank laws passed under pressure from those green groups. It's true that a number of pollution numbers are way down; unfortunately, CO2 production isn't among them, and that's what is the current concern.
Indeed. Every assertion that supports my position is the absolute truth; all that disagree with me are outright lies and fabrication.
Right - heavens forbid that we change or delete the questionable conclusions from correct data (which among other examples already listed would put most of the anthropogenic global warming banter away for good).
Yep, I mean look at the news on one crazy environmental report:
"The report released by the Environmental Protection Agency was [an] endorsement of what many scientists and weather experts have long argued -- that human activities such as oil refining, power plants and automobile emissions are important causes of global warming.
"Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing global mean surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise," the administration said in its report.
---
That report was released today by that damned tree-hugging Bush administration.
...and that is what I had in mind when I said that it "takes it away".
That's like complaining after I give you $10 that I took away $90, because I could have given you $100....
Here is one huge difference between the MPAA and the RIAA. The RIAA is kind of shooting in the dark when they release CDs, at least in theory.
...which is exactly why they should embrace MP3s.
Don't know if people will love or hate a group? Use lower production values to create their album, and don't do a full hour of music. Then sell and distribute it electronically. Costs are lower, if people buy you've got a market for their upcoming CD, if not you haven't lost as much in determining that no one likes Humongous Wombats. Much less guesswork, fewer unsold CDs, perhaps less payola needed, no paying for that key shelf space at Target and Wal-Mart.
Home DVD Players do not come with recorders... that is still down the road somewhere (maybe).
Panasonic's DVD recorder is less than $800 at Best Buy.
But for the forseeable future, the net just isn't going to be able to provide bandwidth to send files as high a quality as DVD, and people will pay a reasonable amount for that extra quality, not to mention keeping legal. The MPAA is definitely full of it.