In the EU, in accordance to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive all produces of electrical and electronic devices are required by law to recycle the stuff they use - free of charge to the customer.
It doesn't matter if it's an light bulb or a missile defense system - the consumer can and is encouraged to return it to the producer. If it is not (if you dump it somewhere else), a bill for the recycling cost is sent to the producer anyway.
In Sweden we've had one for or another of a national ID card for over 100 years, so it is not a controversial issue here. It's not mandatory to carry it and basically contains one relevant piece of information: your personal ID number. While this number is used as a key in virtually every government database available we generally don't have any identity theft problems.
The ID cards themselves are pretty well made and their authenticity can be verified in a number of ways (ranging from features that appear under UV light to the ability to check the validity of the serial number of the card both electronically (stored on the chip) or simply by calling a number. The main part of the security comes from the fact that everything is centralized and few businesses are not hooked up to the verification servers. Next year they'll be uploading fingerprints and possibly some more biometric data on the chip. I have not heard of a single case of counterfeit ID cards (at least not the current generation).
The ID card is valid throughout the rest of the EU as well.
As for privacy implications, well we have constitutional protection against aggregating databases. In general one government agency can't access the databases of another. For companies the restrictions are pretty severe - they are for instance not allowed to store personal information about you, unless you give them explicit permission to do so. (with personal information they mean information that can be used to individually identify you - for instance storing IP numbers is generally not allowed). In many cases even a permission is not enough - for instance the rules for storing the personal ID number are very restrictive.
So, if you trust the system then you can assume that your privacy is well-protected. Of course the centralized infrastructure makes it easy for all privacy to go away should the laws change.
Incidentally, that has been partially happening in the last year, since the London tube attacks.
Basically, national IDs and other such centralized data control/gathering schemes are based on the assumption that you can trust your government. In Sweden people do that - to a fault. But that's the consequence of having 200 years of not-terrible governments. Since we have not been seriously screwed over by a government in modern history, people become complacent.
So for now it's just very convenient. Centralization allows me to use the same national digital ID to declare my taxes, pay my bills and buy stuff. E-government is a breeze and the bureaucracy is basically non-existent. However, should we one day get a terrible government, then we're thoroughly screwed.
The major broadband provider in Sweden, Bredbandsbolaget is so upset with people downloading large amounts of data that they upgraded the standard 10 Mbit connection to 100 Mbit.
The reason why they did this is of course not altruistic, but they have a number of online services like video rental that they wish to promote. 10 Mbit is acceptable for a standard divx compressed movie, but when you upgrade to DVD quality (as they have done), it's simply too slow. So the 100 Mbit upgrade was basically a necessity.
And no, they are not complaining against the P2P traffic and have made no attempts at reducing it or blocking it.
When you have a real fiber optics connection you not only expect, but demand to have unrestricted bandwith. Otherwise, what's the point of it?
Nearly a decade ago (1997) in my last year of gymnasium I wrote a "chatbot" called Bob as a school project. It had two basic operating principles: a keyword database and a grammar engine. If the user triggered a keyword, a pre-defined response would be given. If no keyword was found, it would use the grammar engine to reverse the user's question into a statement or a counter-question.
It's pretty sad to see that field hasn't progressed much since then. Sure, they have larger keyword databases and their grammar engines are somewhat better, but it still remains pretty much an empty shell.
To my amusement I managed to dig up (desktop search is a blessing) a "conversation" that Bob had with one of Robby Garner's early creations, "Fred Synthetica". Here is an excerpt of their mindless talk (two chatbots):
--- B:Hello
F:Greetings. Who am I speaking with?
B: Glad to have that overwith.
F: It is horrible.
B: If it is horrible, that's your probelm. Don't mix me into that mess.
F: Oh god I hope so. El barfo No!
B: Great. You understand. That makes me sooooo happy... NOT!
F: Super. Are you offended by my strong language? Yes, perhaps we have something in common here. The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten. What a coincidence - I know nothing about that either! Right.
B: Right.
F: Yeah.
B: It's good that you are such a mindless optimist.
F:I think you're right.
B:Ok.
F:Okay.
B: It is very nice that we agree.
F:Thanks, same to you.
B:My pleasure.
F:That's a good point.
B:Well, thanks.
F:You're welcome.
B:Who are you to tell me that I'm welcome ?
F:I am Fred Synthetica. Need I say more?
B:I never wanted to know that you are Fred Synthetica. It doesn't matter now.
F:Okay, what is your name?
B:My name is Bob, but you can call me Bob if you like...
F:Hello Bob, but you can call me Bob if you like glad to meet you. What kind of music are you into?
B: I like Bach, Mozart, Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Händel....
The real problem isn't government agencies tracking you. In that respect you can choose not to enable the tracking service. Privacy in that area is at least to some degree protected by law.
The real implications to privacy are because there are probably people who you can't say no to. How do you explain to your girlfriend that you won't let her track your position? Of course, kids can forget about any privacy if the parents want to track them.
Still, this technology is bound to succeed big time as it is very convenient. In the end most people probably won't mind friends and family to be able to see where they are.
I am saying that the 6th revision of any software product, will have taken a lot longer to get to market, or have relatively smaller changes, than, say, the second or third revision. You seem to be arguing that releases will become more frequent or have increasingly larger changes. I cannot think of any software product which has exhibited such a pattern.
Had that been the case, the software industry would have stagnated in the 60's and we'd see the first 8 bit OS sometime late 2090. Had that been the case there would have been no hardware development because there would have been not much use for the software.
I'm not entirely clear we're talking about measuring the same things here.
In absolute terms I think that you are talking about a product cycle while I'm talking about the technology in general. I'd like to argue however that Microsoft's near-monopoly in the OS field and its vast resources makes those two things de facto equal.
I'm talking about the Horse->Carriage->Train-->Car-->Plane process while you are talking about the Volkswagen Passat 2003->Volkswagen Passat 2004.
Yes it does, but the new technology *replaces* the older technology, it doesn't come into place alongside it like software code does. There's still code from Windows 3.1 kicking around inside Windows Vista (albeit well contained into compatibility layers and modules). I'd expect the materials, tools and processes used in making today's hard disks and CPUs are quite different from those used in 1990. And while, say, a P4 is still compatible on an instruction-set level with a 386, there's little to no similarly in their respective implementations.
Not quite, the basic design of a modern CPU has remained the same for decades. They have branched off in different directions, new features have been added etc, but it's still very much the same foundation. Reuse of circuit patterns is one of the corner stones of VLSI. If you have a working ALU, you don't make a new one from scratch, you just integrate the one that you had. Yes there are breaking changes for some things on occasion (like 64 bit -> 128 bit), but that goes for software as well.
The big difference is that hardware development has a meta layer that software lacks. Dependency verification, operation, EM interference etc can all be simulated and automatically verified. The circuit layout is done automatically etc Software development today lacks this and requires humans to go through the painful complexities of a system. If Microsoft with all its resources can't handle it, then it's a very good sign that a paradigm shift is needed.
Yes, but again the old "technology" is (often) discarded.
Not exactly - in evolution crappy new "technology" is discarded (sort of the equivalent of the market). Good technology evolves - i.e it gets built upon to make new versions. We humans use the same original code base as the first single-celled organisms were based on. We've just got some cool features added to that code base over the years.;)
I'm struggling to think of any advancement (at least in recorded history) that *doesn't* build on prior advancements.
Indeed, and that is why you won't really find any advancements that don't progress exponentially. Moore's law is just a very special case of a general rule that basically covers most non-periodic accumulative processes. See the law of accelerating returns
If you agree that new advancements (even in software engineering) build on old advances then the progress is exponential by the mathematical definition of it.
Right. But that doesn't mean the 6th revision of that compiler will be as quick to develop as the second.
Of course it won't - it will (for the equivalent progress) be far quicker. In the time frame from the second to the sixth revision development environments will have evolved as well which will speed up the process. Not to mention that after five revisions the developers will be pretty experienced when it comes to writing compilers, so that should speed things up. In addition they have an existing code base to work from.
The point here is that software development is not a field where advancement is anything close to "exponetial". If anything, it's the exact opposite - the more mature a codebase gets, the *slower* releases become. The "software development" curve looks more like a bell, than anything linear or exponential.
The only time when a bell curve can be seen if the development of a certain technology has become obsolete and a paradigm shift is needed. In software it boils down to rather lame excuses for a field that desperately needs to make a leap forward. Complexity of the code base as an argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Do you really think that computer hardware doesn't get more complex over time? How about the natural evolution, don't you think that organisms grew in complexity as they evolved?
Mind you, we're talking about absolute levels here, not about the specifics of one project. If you claim that software development progress has a bell curve, when did we peak? And do you really suggest that software development progress is exponentially slowing down?
Hardware, maybe - but this is software. Software "engineering" is a field where on-time delivery is the exception, not the rule and advancement is rarely "exponential" in anything except brand new products.
Software most certainly falls into the category as well. Any process where an advancement is used to produce further advancements gets an exponential nature. In software it couldn't be more clearer. After you write your first compiler in machine code, writing your next compiler will be much easier as you base it on the previous step. When they started the development of Vista, they had already an operating system to build on and a variety of advanced development tools. With that as a starting point it should have been an order of magnitude faster than the previous step.
It is a wider problem: technological development is supposed to progress exponentially. Vista took them five years to make, longer than any other release - and it certainly isn't a monumental release in terms of technology.
Vista should have been either released much sooner or it should have been a revolutionary change as far as operating systems go.
It's an unofficially official policy, so to say. You won't find it expressly written on our website or in a press release or something like that, but it is the policy we follow.
It is however not an altruistic policy - on the contrary it's entirely business oriented. If you are confident that the market segment that actually buys your software won't use pirated, cracked versions of your software then there are two possible ways at looking at the rest. You can either try to go after them with legal means and get nothing out of it, as they most likely wouldn't have bought the software anyway - or you can see it as a long-term investment. Just the fact that more people use your software is beneficial for the company. Non-paying customers strengthen the reputation of the software as well - which in turn leads to more paying customers. If nothing else, it promotes the technology. In addition, if the non-paying user (like a student) comes to a point where he actually can buy some software, chances are he'll pick yours as he already knows how to use it.
I work for a Swedish software development company, and we have no issues with PirateBay and similar sites. Our software is used basically by three categories of people - academic researchers, students and industry. Only the latter can afford it anyway and they generally don't get their stuff from warez sites. The other two, especially students can't afford it anyway, so there is no loss of profit if they use 'illegal' copies of our software. On the contrary, they get to know our product so when they start working there's a good chance that they'll buy software they are used to working with.
So why don't we give out the software with a non-commercial use restriction? We tried that for a while and it was a disaster - the commercial users ignored the license restriction and used the free version instead of buying it.
As it is now, we do provide a free student version, but only through their universities - which is a load of extra work for us and inconvenient for the students. So it's actually much less of a hassle for us if they obtain the software in other ways.
However, this is not good enough, especially when it comes to academic research licenses. We provide them at a lower price, but would in reality like much more control over that. A European or US university can afford our software for research use (discounted), while a university in a third-world country can't. We'd like to charge the former and give it for free to the latter (again, we may as well give it to people who wouldn't buy it anyway). This is fairly impossible today without lots of manual work on our part.
Ideally, the system should be socialized and automated. Our goals are that we 1) Get as much money as possible (duh!) 2) Get as many people as possible to use (and benefit) from our product. The old Karl Marx quote "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." fits quite well in that context. Basically the ideal solution is that people pay for the product relative to their income. (Even more ideally, the return-on-investment should be factored in, but that's nearly impossible to measure.) Although unrealistic, the automated part would be possible with verifiable global digital IDs and verifiable income statistics. Some form of market regulation of that type of pricing would have to be invented as well.
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It doesn't matter if it's an light bulb or a missile defense system - the consumer can and is encouraged to return it to the producer. If it is not (if you dump it somewhere else), a bill for the recycling cost is sent to the producer anyway.
In Sweden we've had one for or another of a national ID card for over 100 years, so it is not a controversial issue here. It's not mandatory to carry it and basically contains one relevant piece of information: your personal ID number. While this number is used as a key in virtually every government database available we generally don't have any identity theft problems.
The ID cards themselves are pretty well made and their authenticity can be verified in a number of ways (ranging from features that appear under UV light to the ability to check the validity of the serial number of the card both electronically (stored on the chip) or simply by calling a number. The main part of the security comes from the fact that everything is centralized and few businesses are not hooked up to the verification servers. Next year they'll be uploading fingerprints and possibly some more biometric data on the chip. I have not heard of a single case of counterfeit ID cards (at least not the current generation).
The ID card is valid throughout the rest of the EU as well.
As for privacy implications, well we have constitutional protection against aggregating databases. In general one government agency can't access the databases of another. For companies the restrictions are pretty severe - they are for instance not allowed to store personal information about you, unless you give them explicit permission to do so. (with personal information they mean information that can be used to individually identify you - for instance storing IP numbers is generally not allowed). In many cases even a permission is not enough - for instance the rules for storing the personal ID number are very restrictive.
So, if you trust the system then you can assume that your privacy is well-protected. Of course the centralized infrastructure makes it easy for all privacy to go away should the laws change.
Incidentally, that has been partially happening in the last year, since the London tube attacks.
Basically, national IDs and other such centralized data control/gathering schemes are based on the assumption that you can trust your government. In Sweden people do that - to a fault. But that's the consequence of having 200 years of not-terrible governments. Since we have not been seriously screwed over by a government in modern history, people become complacent.
So for now it's just very convenient. Centralization allows me to use the same national digital ID to declare my taxes, pay my bills and buy stuff. E-government is a breeze and the bureaucracy is basically non-existent. However, should we one day get a terrible government, then we're thoroughly screwed.
The major broadband provider in Sweden, Bredbandsbolaget is so upset with people downloading large amounts of data that they upgraded the standard 10 Mbit connection to 100 Mbit.
The reason why they did this is of course not altruistic, but they have a number of online services like video rental that they wish to promote. 10 Mbit is acceptable for a standard divx compressed movie, but when you upgrade to DVD quality (as they have done), it's simply too slow. So the 100 Mbit upgrade was basically a necessity.
And no, they are not complaining against the P2P traffic and have made no attempts at reducing it or blocking it.
When you have a real fiber optics connection you not only expect, but demand to have unrestricted bandwith. Otherwise, what's the point of it?
Nearly a decade ago (1997) in my last year of gymnasium I wrote a "chatbot" called Bob as a school project. It had two basic operating principles: a keyword database and a grammar engine. If the user triggered a keyword, a pre-defined response would be given. If no keyword was found, it would use the grammar engine to reverse the user's question into a statement or a counter-question.
...
It's pretty sad to see that field hasn't progressed much since then. Sure, they have larger keyword databases and their grammar engines are somewhat better, but it still remains pretty much an empty shell.
To my amusement I managed to dig up (desktop search is a blessing) a "conversation" that Bob had with one of Robby Garner's early creations, "Fred Synthetica". Here is an excerpt of their mindless talk (two chatbots):
---
B:Hello
F:Greetings. Who am I speaking with?
B: Glad to have that overwith.
F: It is horrible.
B: If it is horrible, that's your probelm. Don't mix me into that mess.
F: Oh god I hope so. El barfo No!
B: Great. You understand. That makes me sooooo happy... NOT!
F: Super. Are you offended by my strong language?
Yes, perhaps we have something in common here.
The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten.
What a coincidence - I know nothing about that either! Right.
B: Right.
F: Yeah.
B: It's good that you are such a mindless optimist.
F:I think you're right.
B:Ok.
F:Okay.
B: It is very nice that we agree.
F:Thanks, same to you.
B:My pleasure.
F:That's a good point.
B:Well, thanks.
F:You're welcome.
B:Who are you to tell me that I'm welcome ?
F:I am Fred Synthetica. Need I say more?
B:I never wanted to know that you are Fred Synthetica. It doesn't matter
now.
F:Okay, what is your name?
B:My name is Bob, but you can call me Bob if you like...
F:Hello Bob, but you can call me Bob if you like glad to meet you.
What kind of music are you into?
B: I like Bach, Mozart, Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Händel.
The real problem isn't government agencies tracking you. In that respect you can choose not to enable the tracking service. Privacy in that area is at least to some degree protected by law.
The real implications to privacy are because there are probably people who you can't say no to. How do you explain to your girlfriend that you won't let her track your position? Of course, kids can forget about any privacy if the parents want to track them.
Still, this technology is bound to succeed big time as it is very convenient. In the end most people probably won't mind friends and family to be able to see where they are.
It was just a calculated win on his part. Pro-math has become so phony.
Had that been the case, the software industry would have stagnated in the 60's and we'd see the first 8 bit OS sometime late 2090. Had that been the case there would have been no hardware development because there would have been not much use for the software.
I'm not entirely clear we're talking about measuring the same things here.
In absolute terms I think that you are talking about a product cycle while I'm talking about the technology in general. I'd like to argue however that Microsoft's near-monopoly in the OS field and its vast resources makes those two things de facto equal.
I'm talking about the Horse->Carriage->Train-->Car-->Plane process while you are talking about the Volkswagen Passat 2003->Volkswagen Passat 2004.
Yes it does, but the new technology *replaces* the older technology, it doesn't come into place alongside it like software code does. There's still code from Windows 3.1 kicking around inside Windows Vista (albeit well contained into compatibility layers and modules). I'd expect the materials, tools and processes used in making today's hard disks and CPUs are quite different from those used in 1990. And while, say, a P4 is still compatible on an instruction-set level with a 386, there's little to no similarly in their respective implementations.
Not quite, the basic design of a modern CPU has remained the same for decades. They have branched off in different directions, new features have been added etc, but it's still very much the same foundation. Reuse of circuit patterns is one of the corner stones of VLSI. If you have a working ALU, you don't make a new one from scratch, you just integrate the one that you had. Yes there are breaking changes for some things on occasion (like 64 bit -> 128 bit), but that goes for software as well.
The big difference is that hardware development has a meta layer that software lacks. Dependency verification, operation, EM interference etc can all be simulated and automatically verified. The circuit layout is done automatically etc
Software development today lacks this and requires humans to go through the painful complexities of a system. If Microsoft with all its resources can't handle it, then it's a very good sign that a paradigm shift is needed.
Yes, but again the old "technology" is (often) discarded.
Not exactly - in evolution crappy new "technology" is discarded (sort of the equivalent of the market). Good technology evolves - i.e it gets built upon to make new versions. We humans use the same original code base as the first single-celled organisms were based on. We've just got some cool features added to that code base over the years. ;)
Indeed, and that is why you won't really find any advancements that don't progress exponentially. Moore's law is just a very special case of a general rule that basically covers most non-periodic accumulative processes. See the law of accelerating returns
If you agree that new advancements (even in software engineering) build on old advances then the progress is exponential by the mathematical definition of it.
Right. But that doesn't mean the 6th revision of that compiler will be as quick to develop as the second.
Of course it won't - it will (for the equivalent progress) be far quicker. In the time frame from the second to the sixth revision development environments will have evolved as well which will speed up the process. Not to mention that after five revisions the developers will be pretty experienced when it comes to writing compilers, so that should speed things up. In addition they have an existing code base to work from.
The point here is that software development is not a field where advancement is anything close to "exponetial". If anything, it's the exact opposite - the more mature a codebase gets, the *slower* releases become. The "software development" curve looks more like a bell, than anything linear or exponential.
The only time when a bell curve can be seen if the development of a certain technology has become obsolete and a paradigm shift is needed. In software it boils down to rather lame excuses for a field that desperately needs to make a leap forward. Complexity of the code base as an argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Do you really think that computer hardware doesn't get more complex over time? How about the natural evolution, don't you think that organisms grew in complexity as they evolved?
Mind you, we're talking about absolute levels here, not about the specifics of one project. If you claim that software development progress has a bell curve, when did we peak? And do you really suggest that software development progress is exponentially slowing down?
Software most certainly falls into the category as well. Any process where an advancement is used to produce further advancements gets an exponential nature. In software it couldn't be more clearer. After you write your first compiler in machine code, writing your next compiler will be much easier as you base it on the previous step. When they started the development of Vista, they had already an operating system to build on and a variety of advanced development tools. With that as a starting point it should have been an order of magnitude faster than the previous step.
It is a wider problem: technological development is supposed to progress exponentially. Vista took them five years to make, longer than any other release - and it certainly isn't a monumental release in terms of technology.
Vista should have been either released much sooner or it should have been a revolutionary change as far as operating systems go.
It's an unofficially official policy, so to say. You won't find it expressly written on our website or in a press release or something like that, but it is the policy we follow.
It is however not an altruistic policy - on the contrary it's entirely business oriented. If you are confident that the market segment that actually buys your software won't use pirated, cracked versions of your software then there are two possible ways at looking at the rest. You can either try to go after them with legal means and get nothing out of it, as they most likely wouldn't have bought the software anyway - or you can see it as a long-term investment. Just the fact that more people use your software is beneficial for the company. Non-paying customers strengthen the reputation of the software as well - which in turn leads to more paying customers. If nothing else, it promotes the technology. In addition, if the non-paying user (like a student) comes to a point where he actually can buy some software, chances are he'll pick yours as he already knows how to use it.
I work for a Swedish software development company, and we have no issues with PirateBay and similar sites. Our software is used basically by three categories of people - academic researchers, students and industry. Only the latter can afford it anyway and they generally don't get their stuff from warez sites. The other two, especially students can't afford it anyway, so there is no loss of profit if they use 'illegal' copies of our software. On the contrary, they get to know our product so when they start working there's a good chance that they'll buy software they are used to working with.
;)
So why don't we give out the software with a non-commercial use restriction? We tried that for a while and it was a disaster - the commercial users ignored the license restriction and used the free version instead of buying it.
As it is now, we do provide a free student version, but only through their universities - which is a load of extra work for us and inconvenient for the students. So it's actually much less of a hassle for us if they obtain the software in other ways.
However, this is not good enough, especially when it comes to academic research licenses. We provide them at a lower price, but would in reality like much more control over that. A European or US university can afford our software for research use (discounted), while a university in a third-world country can't. We'd like to charge the former and give it for free to the latter (again, we may as well give it to people who wouldn't buy it anyway). This is fairly impossible today without lots of manual work on our part.
Ideally, the system should be socialized and automated. Our goals are that we 1) Get as much money as possible (duh!) 2) Get as many people as possible to use (and benefit) from our product. The old Karl Marx quote "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." fits quite well in that context. Basically the ideal solution is that people pay for the product relative to their income. (Even more ideally, the return-on-investment should be factored in, but that's nearly impossible to measure.) Although unrealistic, the automated part would be possible with verifiable global digital IDs and verifiable income statistics. Some form of market regulation of that type of pricing would have to be invented as well.
Utopian ineed, but one can dream.