Well, one example of a technology that was NOT very quickly replaced by a superior one (superior in some aspects anyway) was AM radio. In the 20's and 30's a very large patent holding company named RCA had a large vested interest in both capital and experience in AM. One radio pioneer named Maj. Armstrong sought to find a solution to the problem of 'static' and invented FM. He even invented mux FM (multi channel, stereo), but had very great difficulty getting it out, particularly with the RCA problem. Eventually he just walked out a 13th floor window - and FM didn't 'catch on' untill the 60's.
I must gain objective knowledge of the origin of all space, time, matter and energy, including me, the knower himself, and no rinky-dink little backwater planet overpopulated with superstitious primitives is going to stop me! Igor, the switch!
Interestingly depressing theory that Sagan had tho, that we can't find any ETI because they(we) always end up nuking them(our)selves.
It's either that or wait 5 billion years for Sol to engulf the earth in all it's gigantic red glory.
During my collage years an English prof created a multi-disciplinary course on the effect of technology on society/culture - that was like '81 or '82, but we did read some cool books and had interesting discussions; e.g., "Zen & Motorcycle Maintenance", "Existential Pleasures of Engineering", "Mythical Man-Month", oh, BF Skinner's book, uh, Waldon Two (?), and some others.
Personally, I find techno to be enlightening, IT mind expanding, but w/ vast possiblities for BS etc if you get too lost in the upper levels of abstraction (which companies advert as 'easy to use' crap) which alienates one's mind from hard reality. Linux is like a gym where your minds gets a good workout. Another - rots your brain w/ it's zany antics.
Chuck
Little boxes running windows and they're all made of ticky-tacky and they always need rebooting
Hmmmm - I can recall the days when introducing CALCULATORS into the edu environ was cause for alarm - "How will we get kids to learn math when they can just punch a few buttons and get the answer" instructors asked. "Teecher, why do I have to learn long division now that a box can do it for me?" Ditto's when 'interactive' computers took over - instead of having to punch a stack of cards, submit the program and wait several hours to get a printout back - there was no longer an incentive to weed out bugs the FIRST time.
Like someone else mentioned, M$'s Raison d'etre and chief source of revenue is packaging complex software concepts so the uneducated layperson can utilize it - like Ford making the Model-T affordable to many people and raking in profits doing do, it didn't raise the quality of the average driver; contrarywise, it made it possible for any, ahem, idiot to become a menace to his or her fellow beings.
So, I'm fantasizing about M$ coming out with packages like "M$ TermPaper" - you pays you $95, put in the CD, it autoruns setup, it leads the 'student' thru a few generic menu selections and then spits out a 'paper' that is statistically unique but errily similar to the all other output it produces, in the way that all PowerPoint presentation kinda looks like all the canned example presentations, etc. Thus all the students are above average, dont' have to make much effort, gets a superficial idea of the process in case they'd ever have to really research something, M$ makes more, stockholders happy, alls right with the world, don't worry be happy, Ignorance is bliss.:))
since a vast majority of the universe is just a big, friggin waste of space, time, matter and energy. May as well put some of it to good use, like boosting the ol' bottom line!
you mean other than "keep an eye out for other people's successful ideas and steal them"? Like, uh, BASIC, QDOS, WIMP, DTP, Inet, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. We're still waiting for that innovation!
Contrary to what some would argue, many tasks in M$ products are not always a piece of cake either. While they talk about the ideal of plug and play, fact is we run into many features like, fer instance, someone here d/l and ran an Internet phone program, it clobbered their pc-card ethernet config and they had to call me, the Linux dude, to come bail them out (Gawd, I love M$ for the job security due to their lousy products!). M$ is particularly frustrating, to me, due to the fact that they DO try to hide all the techy details from appliance users, and all the anti-piracy tricks they have to build in to keep the same honest. Sometimes I have to spend hours, days trying to trick a semi-automatic M$ system into doing what the customers wants while I bawl about how it could have been accomplished in minutes if I had full open access. Bottom line on automatic software: when it works automatically, it's great! When it fails (like during a botched installation) , it's HELL!!
does w/ "caller id" - one person pays the company to collect possible evidence (caller ID), the suspect pays the company to keep it secret (caller ID block) - thus they can collect fee's from both parties and keep the status quo.
ha, we've heard THAT sentiment before. Personally, I feel that the typical Wintel box of today, the latest and greatest, is a horribly backwards machine compared with what could be and will be. Ford may have mass produced and made an affordable car, but they have evolved tremendously since then - and the typical wintel box is still at a very primitive stage, w/ much room for improvement. It may take a revolutionary discontinuity instead of a smooth progression, but it will happen.
I'm not even sure *plants* have feelings - perhaps machines happily malfunction in their subjective perception of eternal bliss whilst their creators curse foul matter - Deep thought! Calculate the meaning and ultimate purpose of life, heeehe. And all I wanted was some calculating engine to do my homework and releive the tedium of making astronomical charts for navigating and otherwise dominating the planet.
I think, what is the 'rest of the story' is that M$, created with much experience w/ software piracy (I can post the Gate's ancient '76 'open letter to hobbyists' if necessary) simply expects people to steal copies of anything if at all possible - therefore offering refunds for software is strongly discouraged, because they expect folks to simply keep win9x installed, make a dup of the cd, and try to get some money back for free!
Of course the real issue is that their marketing has vendors locked into a knee-jerk "of course you'll want Win & M$Office w/ that PC" - sorta like McDonalds giving and billing you for fries w/ every Hamburger, because their potatoe supplier has a monopoly on potatoes and McD or BurgerClown can't buy 'em from anybody else so they have to cave in to whatever M$ demands.
That's why I keep saying, it's an illegal/unethical company with illegal/unethical customers and I'd just as soon avoid the whole mess of 'em, the whole sleezy unprofessional lot.
used to be, a lot of products sported the mark "Patent Pending" - which makes it sound "new & improved" to the uninformed, but obviously means, hey we've merely applied for a patent. I'd bet more than a few should have changed the mark to "patent rejected" eventually.
find an early 1980's Bandai 'Frisky Tom' handheld VFD game (great color flourscent display and game play) for a nice price 'cause the seller did'nt put 'vfd' in the title so people searching for one couldn't find it - love it. Keep it up, sellers!
now that you mention it - it wouldn't suprise me a bit if someone starts selling V-Chip blockers. It's rather like the telco who 1st sells someone "caller ID" so you can see who's calling, then turn around and sell someone else "caller ID blocking", so that people w/ caller ID can't tell who's calling!! In the end, you have two people paying you and their right back where they started. These are all basically forms of techno arms races - you sell one group weapons and then turn around and sell their opponents counter-weapons - the only ones who come out ahead are the arms suppliers selling 'upgrades' to one side to equalize the power differance caused by them 'upgrading' the other side.
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Well, one example of a technology that was NOT very quickly replaced by a superior one (superior in some aspects anyway) was AM radio. In the 20's and 30's a very large patent holding company named RCA had a large vested interest in both capital and experience in AM. One radio pioneer named Maj. Armstrong sought to find a solution to the problem of 'static' and invented FM. He even invented mux FM (multi channel, stereo), but had very great difficulty getting it out, particularly with the RCA problem. Eventually he just walked out a 13th floor window - and FM didn't 'catch on' untill the 60's.
Chuck
I must gain objective knowledge of the origin of all space, time, matter and energy, including me, the knower himself, and no rinky-dink little backwater planet overpopulated with superstitious primitives is going to stop me! Igor, the switch!
Interestingly depressing theory that Sagan had tho, that we can't find any ETI because they(we) always end up nuking them(our)selves.
It's either that or wait 5 billion years for Sol to engulf the earth in all it's gigantic red glory.
Chuck
videoconferencing w/ Mr. Spacely about sprokets and cogs.
Chuck
articles are ribbed for your pleasure; possible penalties for early withdrawal;
kinda go together actually.
<FAUX-HTML>
<BOLD>Because I can.</BOLD>
</FAUX-HTML>
Chuck
QA, Shitsume Corp. -- (speaking of disclaimers!)
During my collage years an English prof created a multi-disciplinary course on the effect of technology on society/culture - that was like '81 or '82, but we did read some cool books and had interesting discussions; e.g., "Zen & Motorcycle Maintenance", "Existential Pleasures of Engineering", "Mythical Man-Month", oh, BF Skinner's book, uh, Waldon Two (?), and some others.
Personally, I find techno to be enlightening, IT mind expanding, but w/ vast possiblities for BS etc if you get too lost in the upper levels of abstraction (which companies advert as 'easy to use' crap) which alienates one's mind from hard reality. Linux is like a gym where your minds gets a good workout. Another - rots your brain w/ it's zany antics.
Chuck
Little boxes
running windows
and they're all made of ticky-tacky
and they always need rebooting
Hmmmm - I can recall the days when introducing CALCULATORS into the edu environ was cause for alarm - "How will we get kids to learn math when they can just punch a few buttons and get the answer" instructors asked. "Teecher, why do I have to learn long division now that a box can do it for me?" Ditto's when 'interactive' computers took over - instead of having to punch a stack of cards, submit the program and wait several hours to get a printout back - there was no longer an incentive to weed out bugs the FIRST time.
:))
Like someone else mentioned, M$'s Raison d'etre and chief source of revenue is packaging complex software concepts so the uneducated layperson can utilize it - like Ford making the Model-T affordable to many people and raking in profits doing do, it didn't raise the quality of the average driver; contrarywise, it made it possible for any, ahem, idiot to become a menace to his or her fellow beings.
So, I'm fantasizing about M$ coming out with packages like "M$ TermPaper" - you pays you $95, put in the CD, it autoruns setup, it leads the 'student' thru a few generic menu selections and then spits out a 'paper' that is statistically unique but errily similar to the all other output it produces, in the way that all PowerPoint presentation kinda looks like all the canned example presentations, etc. Thus all the students are above average, dont' have to make much effort, gets a superficial idea of the process in case they'd ever have to really research something, M$ makes more, stockholders happy, alls right with the world, don't worry be happy, Ignorance is bliss.
Yours ever optimistically
Chuck
Little boxes
running windows
Chuck
since a vast majority of the universe is just a big, friggin waste of space, time, matter and energy. May as well put some of it to good use, like boosting the ol' bottom line!
Chuck
you mean other than "keep an eye out for other people's successful ideas and steal them"? Like, uh, BASIC, QDOS, WIMP, DTP, Inet, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. We're still waiting for that innovation!
Chuck
usual gritty Intel detail site - now w/ Dr. Dobbs
Chuck
many confuse "easy to use" with "easy to learn".
Contrary to what some would argue, many tasks in M$ products are not always a piece of cake either. While they talk about the ideal of plug and play, fact is we run into many features like, fer instance, someone here d/l and ran an Internet phone program, it clobbered their pc-card ethernet config and they had to call me, the Linux dude, to come bail them out (Gawd, I love M$ for the job security due to their lousy products!). M$ is particularly frustrating, to me, due to the fact that they DO try to hide all the techy details from appliance users, and all the anti-piracy tricks they have to build in to keep the same honest. Sometimes I have to spend hours, days trying to trick a semi-automatic M$ system into doing what the customers wants while I bawl about how it could have been accomplished in minutes if I had full open access. Bottom line on automatic software: when it works automatically, it's great!
When it fails (like during a botched installation) , it's HELL!!
Chuck
or have a go at it, that sounds like awesome fun, IF you can take it!
Chuck
does w/ "caller id" - one person pays the company to collect possible evidence (caller ID), the suspect pays the company to keep it secret (caller ID block) - thus they can collect fee's from both parties and keep the status quo.
Chuck
ha, we've heard THAT sentiment before. Personally, I feel that the typical Wintel box of today, the latest and greatest, is a horribly backwards machine compared with what could be and will be. Ford may have mass produced and made an affordable car, but they have evolved tremendously since then - and the typical wintel box is still at a very primitive stage, w/ much room for improvement. It may take a revolutionary discontinuity instead of a smooth progression, but it will happen.
Chuck
One might call these descriptions "objective" but a more accurate term would be "intersubjectively convergent."
whew - learn something new here everyday!
Help stamp out hate crimes - quit pissing me off.
Chuck
I'm not even sure *plants* have feelings - perhaps machines happily malfunction in their subjective perception of eternal bliss whilst their creators curse foul matter - Deep thought! Calculate the meaning and ultimate purpose of life, heeehe. And all I wanted was some calculating engine to do my homework and releive the tedium of making astronomical charts for navigating and otherwise dominating the planet.
Chuck
I think, what is the 'rest of the story' is that M$, created with much experience w/ software piracy (I can post the Gate's ancient '76 'open letter to hobbyists' if necessary) simply expects people to steal copies of anything if at all possible - therefore offering refunds for software is strongly discouraged, because they expect folks to simply keep win9x installed, make a dup of the cd, and try to get some money back for free!
Of course the real issue is that their marketing has vendors locked into a knee-jerk "of course you'll want Win & M$Office w/ that PC" - sorta like McDonalds giving and billing you for fries w/ every Hamburger, because their potatoe supplier has a monopoly on potatoes and McD or BurgerClown can't buy 'em from anybody else so they have to cave in to whatever M$ demands.
That's why I keep saying, it's an illegal/unethical company with illegal/unethical customers and I'd just as soon avoid the whole mess of 'em, the whole sleezy unprofessional lot.
Chuck
used to be, a lot of products sported the mark "Patent Pending" - which makes it sound "new & improved" to the uninformed, but obviously means, hey we've merely applied for a patent. I'd bet more than a few should have changed the mark to "patent rejected" eventually.
Chuck
Chuck
find an early 1980's Bandai 'Frisky Tom' handheld VFD game (great color flourscent display and game play) for a nice price 'cause the seller did'nt put 'vfd' in the title so people searching for one couldn't find it - love it.
Keep it up, sellers!
Chuck
now that you mention it - it wouldn't suprise me a bit if someone starts selling V-Chip blockers. It's rather like the telco who 1st sells someone "caller ID" so you can see who's calling, then turn around and sell someone else "caller ID blocking", so that people w/ caller ID can't tell who's calling!! In the end, you have two people paying you and their right back where they started. These are all basically forms of techno arms races - you sell one group weapons and then turn around and sell their opponents counter-weapons - the only ones who come out ahead are the arms suppliers selling 'upgrades' to one side to equalize the power differance caused by them 'upgrading' the other side.
Chuck
Chuck
one could scan enough product announcements and buzzwords and come up with a DaDa engine script to crank 'em out.
Chuck
Slashdot discussion contributor
appoint yourself supreme being, wait for others to get into trouble, take control, maintain a spotless media profile, repeat until world domination.
The risk of evil is the cost of freedom.
Chuck
darn it.