But that's still a problem. Microsoft's implementation becomes the de facto standard and all others must (attempt to) conform to the behavior of that implementation or be judged defective. This is what happened when MS published the MAPI (Mail API) spec and then released an implementation alongside it. Lotus and others could never fully mimic what the MS implementation did, so they eventually languished.
I have implemented a voting system like this for a group that does periodic polls of its membership. Each vote is assigned a unique identifier (16 randomly-selected character/digits). This becomes the person's unique identifier for the vote, but maintains anonymity. All vote results can be posted, and each person can verify their vote without disclosure. It works great.
If the Life theme is desired, why not a glider gun instead of just a glider. For example, Gosper's -- seems more apprpopriate. The logo could be a depiction of a state where a new glider was just emitted.
I'm suspicious about the circa 2006 release date. Are the announcements of the schedule slippage just to lull the competitors, so MS can come out with something, perhaps an interim version, and take everyone by surprise?
A few weeks back, an article mentioned that Ray Ozzie demo'ed a very old version of Notes that supposedly proved the existence of prior art in the Eolas patent. Anyone know the status?
I've had exactly the opposite experience. Once I got rid of all MS servers and moved to Debian, life has been, comparatively, a breeze. I'll take apt-get over hfnetcheck any day! And in comparison, Linux is way, way, way simpler than Windows. Oh, yeah -- and have fun running around to every server in you site to do updates because Windows doesn't support remote admin!
The worst thing that microsoft has done for our industry is to breed a whole generation of check-box programmers and admins -- if they can't tick off some checkbox to perform a task, they don't want to be bothered! What they don't realize is that you can only get 90% of the way there, then you're stuck.
Often, when I am having trouble starting something, it is because the scope of the project is too large. For example, "do my taxes" is something I put off until the last minute, whereas "organize my reciepts" is much more likely to get done, and frequently results in a boost in enthusiasm to do more.
How does one go about boycotting the RIAA? Is there a way to determine which artists are associated with the RIAA and then boycott them? I, for one, would be more than willing to do so.
In the digital age, copy protection has a fundamental flaw in that it promotes a business model that charges money for processes that produce no value. In particular, in the case of music, producing a CD adds little value to the overall process of producing music. In fact, the distribution of CDs only arguably is of less value than electronic distribution today. Yet record companies still want to sell music as if each and every copy has its own intrinsic value, as if it were necessary to defray the cost of producing each copy. This idea harkens back to an era where goods were all tangible, like cars, and the major cost of an item was its cost of production.
Instead, digital media, e.g., software, music, video, are on par with ideas: copying and distributing them increases their value and does not diminish existing copies. With cheap storage and fast networks, the cost of production is nearly 0.
And this is where Weinberger's article resonates for me. I think we are dealing with a tension between the rules and a subconscious desire to "do the right thing". I claim that everyone, deep down, feels that they *should* share with their friends, especially when the cost of production is nil. On the other hand, such sharing is illegal. It's time to come up with a new model for the creation and funding of digital media.
In the meantime, the record companies, to give one example, are still trying to promote a model that acts like producing each and every CD is like pressing a new piece of vinyl: costly and requiring uncommon facilities and machinery.
Today, digital media contains most of its value in the "R&D" or development stage, and production is just a button-push. Of course marketing still adds value, but P2P networks are moving toward making even that segment as irrelevant and off-point and production.
.NET is just another one of Microsoft's over-engineered solutions. It looks simple on the outside, but when you get down to it the complexity is overwhelming. It's really sad to see so many open source developers being lulled by Microsoft's latest technological tactic.
Who out there remembers DDE, OLE, MAPI or DocObjects? How about MFC (.NET 0.5...)? If you do, remember how well (not very!) these "technologies" worked outside of the boxes Microsoft created them for? Has anyone out there actually tried to work with, for example, Exchange server?
Microsoft fears clonability, and to prevent it they create complex APIs with lots of hidden underspecifications. Then they get developers on board by creating pretty, easy-to-use tools and hosting big developer conferences. And they make it feel cool through shrewd marketing. But at the end of the day, you find that you've spent 90% of your time trying to work around some deficiency. And it's not because Microsoft was especially dumb when implementing this stuff, its just that the stuff is needlessly complex to begin with!
We're doing fine as we are. Don't drink from the.NET well!
(Quick aside: put a 30A 120V outlet for a large UPS)
I built a small office with a 12'x6' server room. Initially, I attempted to cool it with ducting from the main of the heating/cooling system. There were two problems: 1) inadequate cooling even during the summer/AC season, and 2) no AC in the winter.
To solve the problem, I installed a Sanyo AC unit. This unit has a 18"x5' air handler that mounts inside and a small AC compressor that mounts outside. Only a 2" diameter hole plus a smaller hole for power was necessary between the inside and outside units. It works great!
The only drawback was price: about $7000 with installation.
Any machine that has an ethernet card already has a unique ID: the ethernet address. So the new processor ID / machine ID stuff, though annoying, really does not increase the threat to privacy for a large number of our machines i.e., those with ethernet adaptors.
Usability Study == Competitive Research. But MS is not going for mere marketing fluff here. They are getting familiar with Linux. That's always their first step toward crushing a competitor. When they start to take a strong interest in your product, that's the time to start worrying. Just ask IBM or Netscape. It's always a mistake to underestimate Microsoft.
Here's how MS can win. Anyone can release Linux, including MS, because there are no licensing restrictions. So let's assume that Windows 2000 isn't living up to expectations. MS can then start (and probably already has started) a development project for something I'll call Linux+.
Step 1. Linux+ is just like Linux except that it also has an add-on Win32-like environment (probably a mass of COM objects) for which only binaries (no source code) is released.
Step 2 (the key). MS releases a development environment replete with Wizards and lots of checkboxes and the best damn debugger anyone has ever seen on Linux. Let's call this Visual LinuxDev. Interestingly enough, VLD ends up sinking lots of roots into the Win32 subsystem that ties its generated apps to MS's proprietary extensions. Pretty soon, you need Linux+ (not just Linux) to run all the latest stuff.
Step 3. MS throws a shindig in, let's say, San Francisco, and sign up about a million developers to start writing Linux+ apps. And out of that seething mass of developers comes a few kick-ass products.
Does this sound familiar to the Java fans out there? But this time, MS there is no licensing agreement to thwart its plan.
A few years down the road, Linux is just another Amiga (which I loved by the way), and Linux+ is renamed Windows 2002. And kids in elementary schools, when asked, tell you that Bill Gates invented Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
But that's still a problem. Microsoft's implementation becomes the de facto standard and all others must (attempt to) conform to the behavior of that implementation or be judged defective. This is what happened when MS published the MAPI (Mail API) spec and then released an implementation alongside it. Lotus and others could never fully mimic what the MS implementation did, so they eventually languished.
Philosophically, it's interesting what sway Mathematics now has over the Art world, when Mathematics can say whether or not Art is authentic....
I have implemented a voting system like this for a group that does periodic polls of its membership. Each vote is assigned a unique identifier (16 randomly-selected character/digits). This becomes the person's unique identifier for the vote, but maintains anonymity. All vote results can be posted, and each person can verify their vote without disclosure. It works great.
How do we know this is not just some spammer enticing people to *pay* to provide him with email addresses???
If the Life theme is desired, why not a glider gun instead of just a glider. For example, Gosper's -- seems more apprpopriate. The logo could be a depiction of a state where a new glider was just emitted.
The codename Longhorn is a codename for "Long in the Tooth".
Seriously, though, after a cursory look at the screenshots, there's not much new, except for the rip-off bushed metal OS X look.
I'm suspicious about the circa 2006 release date. Are the announcements of the schedule slippage just to lull the competitors, so MS can come out with something, perhaps an interim version, and take everyone by surprise?
A few weeks back, an article mentioned that Ray Ozzie demo'ed a very old version of Notes that supposedly proved the existence of prior art in the Eolas patent. Anyone know the status?
I've had exactly the opposite experience. Once I got rid of all MS servers and moved to Debian, life has been, comparatively, a breeze. I'll take apt-get over hfnetcheck any day! And in comparison, Linux is way, way, way simpler than Windows. Oh, yeah -- and have fun running around to every server in you site to do updates because Windows doesn't support remote admin!
The worst thing that microsoft has done for our industry is to breed a whole generation of check-box programmers and admins -- if they can't tick off some checkbox to perform a task, they don't want to be bothered! What they don't realize is that you can only get 90% of the way there, then you're stuck.
Often, when I am having trouble starting something, it is because the scope of the project is too large. For example, "do my taxes" is something I put off until the last minute, whereas "organize my reciepts" is much more likely to get done, and frequently results in a boost in enthusiasm to do more.
A little haiku:
With hacked avionics
Airplane avoids all airports
All passengers die
How does one go about boycotting the RIAA? Is there a way to determine which artists are associated with the RIAA and then boycott them? I, for one, would be more than willing to do so.
Instead, digital media, e.g., software, music, video, are on par with ideas: copying and distributing them increases their value and does not diminish existing copies. With cheap storage and fast networks, the cost of production is nearly 0.
And this is where Weinberger's article resonates for me. I think we are dealing with a tension between the rules and a subconscious desire to "do the right thing". I claim that everyone, deep down, feels that they *should* share with their friends, especially when the cost of production is nil. On the other hand, such sharing is illegal. It's time to come up with a new model for the creation and funding of digital media.
In the meantime, the record companies, to give one example, are still trying to promote a model that acts like producing each and every CD is like pressing a new piece of vinyl: costly and requiring uncommon facilities and machinery.
Today, digital media contains most of its value in the "R&D" or development stage, and production is just a button-push. Of course marketing still adds value, but P2P networks are moving toward making even that segment as irrelevant and off-point and production.
.NET is just another one of Microsoft's over-engineered solutions. It looks simple on the outside, but when you get down to it the complexity is overwhelming. It's really sad to see so many open source developers being lulled by Microsoft's latest technological tactic.
.NET well!
Who out there remembers DDE, OLE, MAPI or DocObjects? How about MFC (.NET 0.5...)? If you do, remember how well (not very!) these "technologies" worked outside of the boxes Microsoft created them for? Has anyone out there actually tried to work with, for example, Exchange server?
Microsoft fears clonability, and to prevent it they create complex APIs with lots of hidden underspecifications. Then they get developers on board by creating pretty, easy-to-use tools and hosting big developer conferences. And they make it feel cool through shrewd marketing. But at the end of the day, you find that you've spent 90% of your time trying to work around some deficiency. And it's not because Microsoft was especially dumb when implementing this stuff, its just that the stuff is needlessly complex to begin with!
We're doing fine as we are. Don't drink from the
I built a small office with a 12'x6' server room. Initially, I attempted to cool it with ducting from the main of the heating/cooling system. There were two problems: 1) inadequate cooling even during the summer/AC season, and 2) no AC in the winter.
To solve the problem, I installed a Sanyo AC unit. This unit has a 18"x5' air handler that mounts inside and a small AC compressor that mounts outside. Only a 2" diameter hole plus a smaller hole for power was necessary between the inside and outside units. It works great!
The only drawback was price: about $7000 with installation.
Any machine that has an ethernet card already has a unique ID: the ethernet address. So the new processor ID / machine ID stuff, though annoying, really does not increase the threat to privacy for a large number of our machines i.e., those with ethernet adaptors.
Here's how MS can win. Anyone can release Linux, including MS, because there are no licensing restrictions. So let's assume that Windows 2000 isn't living up to expectations. MS can then start (and probably already has started) a development project for something I'll call Linux+.
Step 1. Linux+ is just like Linux except that it also has an add-on Win32-like environment (probably a mass of COM objects) for which only binaries (no source code) is released.
Step 2 (the key). MS releases a development environment replete with Wizards and lots of checkboxes and the best damn debugger anyone has ever seen on Linux. Let's call this Visual LinuxDev. Interestingly enough, VLD ends up sinking lots of roots into the Win32 subsystem that ties its generated apps to MS's proprietary extensions. Pretty soon, you need Linux+ (not just Linux) to run all the latest stuff.
Step 3. MS throws a shindig in, let's say, San Francisco, and sign up about a million developers to start writing Linux+ apps. And out of that seething mass of developers comes a few kick-ass products.
Does this sound familiar to the Java fans out there? But this time, MS there is no licensing agreement to thwart its plan.
A few years down the road, Linux is just another Amiga (which I loved by the way), and Linux+ is renamed Windows 2002. And kids in elementary schools, when asked, tell you that Bill Gates invented Linux.