Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble....
The operative words here are "speech" and "assemble".
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you can slander anyone you like. You can't sell graphic pornography in a toy store. There are limits to free speech. You can say what you want, but you can't do so in a purely unlimited fashion.
Freedom to assemble also has limitations. You can't just get 50,000 of your best friends together for a march on the White House without a permit. The government can't deny you a permit without good reason (say, security concerns), but in the real world the freedom to assemble isn't infinite.
This NLRB regulation seems borderline, though. Sure, the uniforms are owned by the employers, but they don't necessarily have any Constitutional right to control their brand identity when employees are wearing those uniforms. Police, firefighters, and military personnel all have rather strict regulations about fraternization while in uniform, but their salaries are paid by the state, and they work directly for the public.
It would be interesting to see how the Supreme Court would rule if the NLRB regulation was challenged and made its way to the Supreme Court.
They'll probably also tell me how "beleagured PC maker Apple" is ready to shut down any day now.
That's not the economists talking, that's the industry pundits. I enjoy looking back at some of their better pronouncements from time to time. It's a hobby of sorts:
"You just wouldn't do that. You wouldn't do something that disruptive.'' - analyst Tim Bajarin, quoted in the Mercury News, May 24, 2005, a few days before Apple announced a switch from IBM to Intel processors.
"I believe this is a purely negotiating move by Apple to grab some attention and headlines and to point out that they're feeling underappreciated by IBM" - Evin Krewell, editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report, quoted in the Mercury News, May 24, 2005, a few days before Apple announced a switch from IBM to Intel processors.
"Stick a fork in 'em - this Apple is cooked." - Robert Thomson, Financial Post, 2/20/2003
"For those who love Apple's products, this is all just so typical. This company has made an art of innovation -- from the personal computer itself to the point-and-click operating system -- only to invariably surrender the high sales ground to the boring knock-off artists who copy Apple's best ideas into a new and slightly cheaper model. So it's not surprising Wall Street is already bracing for another disappointment." - Steve Maich, Macleans.ca, 2005/05/09
"Folks, the Mac platform is through...." - John C. Dvorak, 1998
Count David Goldstein, president of the Dallas-based growth-strategy consulting firm Channel Marketing Corp., among the critics of Apple's retail plans. "It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for them to open retail stores," he says. - May 01, 2001 Macworld Magazine
"The iPod, with its backward-looking feature set and dramatically inflated price, has only its good looks going for it." - Lukas Hauser, the MacCommunist, 10/23/2001
"This Mini Mac, or whatever they're calling it, isn't just stupid. it's groundbreakingly stupid. And it's far worse than anything we read about in the rumors. It's far worse than I ever could have imagined. Apple's gone and invented barriers to Switching that weren't even previously on the radar." - billpalmer.net, 1/11/05
Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD Intelect, said that the iPod will likely stand out for its large storage capacity but predicted that the device may have trouble digging out a niche in the market." - CNET News, 10/23/2001
Just to show you that the Slashdot crowd isn't immune:
"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." - Slashdot's CmdrTaco, referring to Apple's brand new iPod music player, October 23, 2001
"There is no future in a $400 (about $250 too expensive) firewire-only (5% of computer users) hardrive-based (read: fragile) mp3 player. Any one of these critical flaws might doom the product - take them all together and you have another classic corporate farce." - Slashdot reader Dave Wood on Apple's new iPod music player, October 23, 2001.
I'm not sure I'd do any better as a pundit either. I didn't think Apple would switch to Intel, and I didn't think Apple would release a headless Mac.
I was shocked to hear that she was on the list for the president of the World Bank.
Once you're in The Club, it doesn't matter whether you screw up or not. Win, lose, or draw, you're still in The Club. It's not how well you do, but how you play the game!
They're on your Board of Directors, you're on theirs. You go to Vail, they go to Vail. You go to Davos, they go to Davos. Your kids go to Philips Exeter Academy, so do theirs.
She's been anointed. She's in The Club and can do no wrong.
I'm glad you still have the proper democratic reflex a citizen should have when confronted with issues, but really you should realize "writing to your congressman" nowadays amounts to pushing a button that's been disconnected.
The powerful have always had more influence on elected officials than average Joes. No doubt about it. But particularly on issues that are not on the top of your representative's agenda, a concise and well-articulated opinion can matter. The most successful politicians are those who follow Tip O'Neill's dictum that "All politics is local." It is of course easier to make things happen at the local level, because the constituencies are smaller. But Congressional staffers do take note of the letters that come in, and they let their bosses know how they are trending. The flip side of the frequent complaint that politicians will go whichever direction the wind pushes them is that when they hear enough voices from their constitutents, they will act. After all, the next election is always just around the corner.
I don't assume that my individual letters make a difference, but I do feel that when I have more involvement in the system, my gripes are more legitimate. I am taking the time and effort to be a citizen, and while my efforts may not result in any change, I know for certain that not doing anything won't help. I'd say apathy only encourage a less democratic process, because when we expect less from our institutions, we are rewarded with less.
The FBI is most likely investigating to determine whether there is a case against Lynn. If they find something in the DMCA that he has run afoul of, most likely they'll prosecute.
I've been writing letters to my Congressman and Senators about the DMCA for some time, but they're not listening. Until we can get legislators in office who actually understand how the DMCA casts a chill on issues like the Lynn fiasco, this sort of thing will continue.
My feeling is that unfortunately this just isn't a big enough issue on Joe Citizen's radar. There's a war in Iraq, the government is spending money like it's going out of style, there are disagreements over almost every social issue imaginable, and that monster SUV he bought last year now costs him $85/week to fill up. Some computer guy revealing Cisco vulnerabilities isn't high on his list, so it won't be high on his legislators' lists either.
I didn't previously realize that the USPTO was a profit center, or that those profits were siphoned off to other government agencies. Follow the money and you'll find out what's really going on.
It is rather rediculous that the Patent Office can't pay its people enough money because it is busy shelling out money to the Dept. of Homeland Security. Given that patents are such an important part of the American economy, I find it (somewhat) surprising that the problem of fee diversion has been allowed to fester like this.
Given the federal government's uptick in deficit spending, I can see why fee diversion seems like a good short-term solution to help mitigate budget woes at other departments, but it is obviously not smart in the long term.
The point in all of this is that computing technology suppliers have consistently overvalued the technology from the beginning of the computer revolution until now, particularly with regard to incremental costs such as software licensing.
Heh heh. Excellent stuff. I'm going to use this one on him the next time we get into it. Should be fun. He tends to lionize Bill Gates and successful companies in general, so every time I point out to him that MS is on its way down, he just can't stand it. I particularly appreciate your point about Microsoft's unwitting reliance on software piracy.
the rough equivalent of moore's law (computers get faster over time) and simple logic show us that we will, if need be, get to an overabundance of bandwidth available to us.
Perhaps there will be an overabundance of bandwidth, but usable bandwith and available fiber aren't the same thing, as the last five years have amply demonstrated. The cable companies were talking about broadband back in the days when I was reading Interactivity magazine (c. 1996), and broadband is only now installed in roughly half of American homes. The "last mile" problem was caused because nobody wanted to pony up the cost of getting all that fiber connected to all those homes.
Sure, the requirement for a typical home might be only a few Mb/s tops, but I think you're underestimating the degree to which content fills available bandwidth. Once broadband finally reaches the majority of American homes, watch as that bandwidth gets filled up with fat media like high-res streaming video, better VoIP, and less-compressed, higher-quality torrents. It has already happend with email. Remember when you had to.zip all attachments and make sure they were under 100k?
Also, you mention Internet2. It was launched in 1998. It's 2005 now, and it is anyone's guess how long it will take to move I2 from research to full-scale implementation. It could easily take a decade for Internet2 capabilities to reach the mainstream, and another decade for developers to figure out how to take full advantage.
I'm not saying that eventually we won't all be enjoying some sort of uber-Internet as envisioned by Keven Kelly. I just think that his time frame is wildly optimistic. These things don't just happen by themselves.
Commercial software, then, is where innovation happens. Open source software excels at development and commoditization. They not only exist, but complement each other.
You put it much better than I did.
I'd add that innovation is rewarded for companies that pursue products, while development and commoditization is rewarded for companies that pursue services. It is no suprise that IBM (primarily a services company, in spite of the hardware arm) jumped on Open Source, while Microsoft (primarily a products company) has not.
And the Machine of 2015 will be built by...?
on
The Future of the Net
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
DARPA?
Microsoft?
Google?
My point is that the biggest consistent problem with Wired's predictions about the Internet over the last (pause for dramatic effect) is that they ignore the economic realities. Who pays for this wonderful infrastructure? I'm not talking about the apps. He waxes poetic about us all developing those as we use Flickr. I'm talking about the actual physical infrastructure and the protocols that hold it all together.
If it is government-developed, which government is going to do the developing? The US? Given the current state of American skepticism toward anything non-military that the government builds, I'd say no. China? Perhaps, but they don't want a system that allows that sort of freedom. Nobody else has the muscle to do it, save the EU, and we all can see they have bigger issues to deal with, like whether they'll be around in ten years.
If it is being developed by a corporation or collection of corporations, how do they make money creating infastructure improvements? After the Great Fiber Bungle of the dot-com era, I don't see any of the telecoms lining up to throw down the big money for something like this, particularly given that they're too engaged in their own marketshare battles to collaborate on anything this vast.
The Internet is an oddity, in that it was originated through American government spending during the Cold War, popularized because of a British researcher who developed the Web, and accelerated due to massive commercial speculation. I think Kevin Kelly's dream of a future Internet is great, but I think it disregards the fundamentally commercial nature of the existing Internet.
Given that changes to the fundamental infrastructure of the Net require far more deliberation, cooperation, and investment than changes that occur in the server and client realm, I think we'll still be talking about convergence and a fully-integrated, always-on Internet ten years from now.
I frequently debate a good friend of mine who owns a small software company. I tell him that Open Source software does not mean the end of proprietary commercial software. In fact, I think it ultimately might make more specialized and sophisticated commercial software practical because purchasers who use Open Source have to pay less for the basic underpinnings of their computing environment and therefore have more money to spend on narrow but highly customized applications.
His argument against Open Source isn't about the capabilities of Open Source software itself. Rather, he believes that Open Source software leads corporations and consumers to undervalue the value of software. If Open Source software is being given away freely, he argues, people will feel that software is a commodity rather than a specialized product that requires a lot of hard work and brainpower to properly develop. If the software becomes devalued, he feels, the industry as a whole will continue to slide rapidly toward commodity status.
I disagree with him on this point, primarily because I feel that computer programming is no longer the technological high ground that it once was. While it shouldn't be devalued, it is no longer reasonable to assume that software companies can command the immense profits that made Microsoft a monopoly. If anything, it seems to me that competition from Open Source will help push commercial software to innovate.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. I just heard a rather interesting story on NPR about payola and how the recent Sony payout fits into the big picture. Payola has existed since the 1950s, and will likely continue, with occasional slaps on the wrist simply because it's so effective for record companies. They don't necessarily want to restrict the variety of choices as much as they want to make sure that they're pushing you toward the "right" choices.
If the music industry doesn't change their business model from a mere media distribution model (media in my book include DRMd files) to a value adder (promotion, marketing, infrastructure, artist scouts, etc) and continues their rather odd "criminalize-thy-customer" business model my prediction is that 10 years from now they are deader then Jimmy Hoffa.
Personally I think it's already too late for the industry. The small indies that reallly understand what's going on are going to create the next wave music industry, one that is far less reliant on radio, emphasizes broad choice, and recognizes that if you function as a middleman, you have to provide value for artists and consumers, or both will route around you.
Discussion is passe; drive-by verbal attacks are the way to go. It's rampant in our politics, our sports, our music. In order to get noticed, you have to go with the shocking, the titilating, or the just plain aggressive.
It's the triumph of limited thinking and the obliteration of nuance. All kneel before the altar of unrestrained self-promotion!
Crappy music. Dominance by conglomerates. Payola. Overwhelming amounts of annoying advertising. Poor audio quality. Limited choices in a given geographic area.
Nowhere is it written that radio is the ideal medium for music, and the usual suspects (the RIAA, the music conglomerates, corporate radio) have been milking this cow for so long that it's getting almost completely dried up.
The Internet is a much better distribution medium, primarily because there are so many different ways to structure on-demand music through the 'Net. Internet radio, online purchasing, and online renting for a monthly flat fee are already available. Terrestrial radio allows for just two different business models: Advertiser supported or donation supported, while the Internet allows for a wide variety of business models and therefore more choices.
The worst thing about commercial terrestrial radio is that it provides the illusion of choice, but because it is wholly advertiser supported, it practically begs to be gamed. If its masters want to squeeze the cow until it dies, maybe we should let them. It's not like there aren't other alternatives to terrestrial radio.
These people are predators. There is nothing they won't do to make relatively little money. For a short time I worked for a company who did this stuff and word on the street was they had people killed for interfering with their business.
So by your own logic, if someone had whacked you while you were employed by a spamming operation, your killers would have been justified?
What percentage of all active computer users in the United States are on Macs?
What percentage of "non-technical" computer users have installed Linux and use it as their primary OS?
These are the sorts of questions that can be of vital importance to companies when they are trying to determine which markets they should be in, how they should orient their marketing, what improvements they need to make to their products, and so on. The problem is that this information is extremely difficult to pin down, which is why these analysts proliferate.
If it's tough to get reliable data you can base decisions on, it's even more difficult to determine whether a given market analysis is worth a damn.
Re:The reason he thinks IE 7 will spur more FF gro
on
The Future of Firefox
·
· Score: 1
It is a well-known phenomenon in the software industry that competitor upgrades are a good time to shake their customers loose. If the upgraded product is too different (has so many new or changed features that it looks and feels like a different product) or is too heavy (requires new hardware or an OS upgrade from Win2000 to WinXP, say) then users will be motivated to look for other solutions to their problem.
I hadn't heard of that phenomenon, so I must have not been paying enough attention over the years. Thanks for pointing this out. I suppose the key is in whether Firefox takes advantage of the opportunity with some marketing muscle and/or a new rev of Firefox.
Don't be surprised if it's better than you expect it to be. MS is terrible at innovating, but very good at counterpunching when someone threatens them.
Japan fought the United States right up to the day the surrender documents were signed, even though it was obvious the United States would win. Did that make the battle any less ferocious?
That's actually beside the point, because the outcome of the battle for the search market is by no means a foregone conclusion. Microsoft is pouring a lot of time, energy, and money into search technology. Google obviously still dominates, but not by nearly the margin they did even one year ago. Yahoo has improved its interface and is slowly doing a better job of integrating its disparate services. MSN Search is clearly better than it used to be, both in interface and search relevance. Microsoft has identified search as a core technology, and they will not sit idly by and watch Google eviscerate them in such an important market.
You go on thinking there isn't a battle. Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft all know differently.
Re:The reason he thinks IE 7 will spur more FF gro
on
The Future of Firefox
·
· Score: 1
And the only reason I plan to investigate IE 7 is to make sure web sites I build will work in that environment.
Until a recent career shift, I did pretty much the same thing. We ran IE 6x in Win2k under VirtualPC so we could check rendering behavior, but we coded to W3C standards and then tweaked to force IE to work properly.
According to some of the stories I've read (including this one), IE 7 *may* support full CSS2, but will probably only cover a subset of CSS2. Great. This is just what we all need - another incomplete implementation of CSS. What year is it?
"Folks, the Mac platform is through...." - John C. Dvorak, 1998
The reason he thinks IE 7 will spur more FF growth
on
The Future of Firefox
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Dotzler figures that fifty percent of Windows users are still on Win 2k, and in order to get all the spiffy new IE 7 features, they'll need to upgrade to XP. His calculation seems to be that people will become annoyed at having to upgrade their OS just to get a new browser, and will therefore jump to Firefox instead.
I'm not sure about that logic. When MS puts their mind to it, they can make a fine browser. They jump from IE 3 to 4 and then to 5 was impressive. My guess is that IE 7 will not be as bad as expected, and they may sneak in a few features that the Firefox team hadn't anticipated. Microsoft wants to push users to upgrade, so if they can create even one little "must have" feature in IE 7 that Firefox doesn't already use, they may succeed in enticing more than a few Win 2k users to buy XP.
Even if Microsoft doesn't roll out a blockbuster with IE 7, I doubt that the release of a *competing* browser is going to somehow push people to switch to Firefox. With all the press Firefox has been getting, if you haven't at least tried out Firefox by now, you're not likely to so unless IE leaps out of your browser and stabs you in the forehead.
Slashdot Mirror
The operative words here are "speech" and "assemble".
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you can slander anyone you like. You can't sell graphic pornography in a toy store. There are limits to free speech. You can say what you want, but you can't do so in a purely unlimited fashion.
Freedom to assemble also has limitations. You can't just get 50,000 of your best friends together for a march on the White House without a permit. The government can't deny you a permit without good reason (say, security concerns), but in the real world the freedom to assemble isn't infinite.
This NLRB regulation seems borderline, though. Sure, the uniforms are owned by the employers, but they don't necessarily have any Constitutional right to control their brand identity when employees are wearing those uniforms. Police, firefighters, and military personnel all have rather strict regulations about fraternization while in uniform, but their salaries are paid by the state, and they work directly for the public.
It would be interesting to see how the Supreme Court would rule if the NLRB regulation was challenged and made its way to the Supreme Court.
That's not the economists talking, that's the industry pundits. I enjoy looking back at some of their better pronouncements from time to time. It's a hobby of sorts:
"You just wouldn't do that. You wouldn't do something that disruptive.'' - analyst Tim Bajarin, quoted in the Mercury News, May 24, 2005, a few days before Apple announced a switch from IBM to Intel processors.
"I believe this is a purely negotiating move by Apple to grab some attention and headlines and to point out that they're feeling underappreciated by IBM" - Evin Krewell, editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report, quoted in the Mercury News, May 24, 2005, a few days before Apple announced a switch from IBM to Intel processors.
"Stick a fork in 'em - this Apple is cooked." - Robert Thomson, Financial Post, 2/20/2003
"For those who love Apple's products, this is all just so typical. This company has made an art of innovation -- from the personal computer itself to the point-and-click operating system -- only to invariably surrender the high sales ground to the boring knock-off artists who copy Apple's best ideas into a new and slightly cheaper model. So it's not surprising Wall Street is already bracing for another disappointment." - Steve Maich, Macleans.ca, 2005/05/09
"Folks, the Mac platform is through... ." - John C. Dvorak, 1998
Count David Goldstein, president of the Dallas-based growth-strategy consulting firm Channel Marketing Corp., among the critics of Apple's retail plans. "It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for them to open retail stores," he says. - May 01, 2001 Macworld Magazine
"The iPod, with its backward-looking feature set and dramatically inflated price, has only its good looks going for it." - Lukas Hauser, the MacCommunist, 10/23/2001
"This Mini Mac, or whatever they're calling it, isn't just stupid. it's groundbreakingly stupid. And it's far worse than anything we read about in the rumors. It's far worse than I ever could have imagined. Apple's gone and invented barriers to Switching that weren't even previously on the radar." - billpalmer.net, 1/11/05
Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD Intelect, said that the iPod will likely stand out for its large storage capacity but predicted that the device may have trouble digging out a niche in the market." - CNET News, 10/23/2001
Just to show you that the Slashdot crowd isn't immune:
"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." - Slashdot's CmdrTaco, referring to Apple's brand new iPod music player, October 23, 2001
"There is no future in a $400 (about $250 too expensive) firewire-only (5% of computer users) hardrive-based (read: fragile) mp3 player. Any one of these critical flaws might doom the product - take them all together and you have another classic corporate farce." - Slashdot reader Dave Wood on Apple's new iPod music player, October 23, 2001.
I'm not sure I'd do any better as a pundit either. I didn't think Apple would switch to Intel, and I didn't think Apple would release a headless Mac.
Any economist will tell you the mouse is worth what people are willing to pay for it.
Once you're in The Club, it doesn't matter whether you screw up or not. Win, lose, or draw, you're still in The Club. It's not how well you do, but how you play the game!
They're on your Board of Directors, you're on theirs. You go to Vail, they go to Vail. You go to Davos, they go to Davos. Your kids go to Philips Exeter Academy, so do theirs.
She's been anointed. She's in The Club and can do no wrong.
The powerful have always had more influence on elected officials than average Joes. No doubt about it. But particularly on issues that are not on the top of your representative's agenda, a concise and well-articulated opinion can matter. The most successful politicians are those who follow Tip O'Neill's dictum that "All politics is local." It is of course easier to make things happen at the local level, because the constituencies are smaller. But Congressional staffers do take note of the letters that come in, and they let their bosses know how they are trending. The flip side of the frequent complaint that politicians will go whichever direction the wind pushes them is that when they hear enough voices from their constitutents, they will act. After all, the next election is always just around the corner.
I don't assume that my individual letters make a difference, but I do feel that when I have more involvement in the system, my gripes are more legitimate. I am taking the time and effort to be a citizen, and while my efforts may not result in any change, I know for certain that not doing anything won't help. I'd say apathy only encourage a less democratic process, because when we expect less from our institutions, we are rewarded with less.
The FBI is most likely investigating to determine whether there is a case against Lynn. If they find something in the DMCA that he has run afoul of, most likely they'll prosecute.
I've been writing letters to my Congressman and Senators about the DMCA for some time, but they're not listening. Until we can get legislators in office who actually understand how the DMCA casts a chill on issues like the Lynn fiasco, this sort of thing will continue.
My feeling is that unfortunately this just isn't a big enough issue on Joe Citizen's radar. There's a war in Iraq, the government is spending money like it's going out of style, there are disagreements over almost every social issue imaginable, and that monster SUV he bought last year now costs him $85/week to fill up. Some computer guy revealing Cisco vulnerabilities isn't high on his list, so it won't be high on his legislators' lists either.
http://www.sysadminday.com/Gifts.htm
I'm waiting patiently for Web Developer Day. Petroleum Transfer Technician Day was last Tuesday.
It is rather rediculous that the Patent Office can't pay its people enough money because it is busy shelling out money to the Dept. of Homeland Security. Given that patents are such an important part of the American economy, I find it (somewhat) surprising that the problem of fee diversion has been allowed to fester like this.
Given the federal government's uptick in deficit spending, I can see why fee diversion seems like a good short-term solution to help mitigate budget woes at other departments, but it is obviously not smart in the long term.
Heh heh. Excellent stuff. I'm going to use this one on him the next time we get into it. Should be fun. He tends to lionize Bill Gates and successful companies in general, so every time I point out to him that MS is on its way down, he just can't stand it. I particularly appreciate your point about Microsoft's unwitting reliance on software piracy.
Perhaps there will be an overabundance of bandwidth, but usable bandwith and available fiber aren't the same thing, as the last five years have amply demonstrated. The cable companies were talking about broadband back in the days when I was reading Interactivity magazine (c. 1996), and broadband is only now installed in roughly half of American homes. The "last mile" problem was caused because nobody wanted to pony up the cost of getting all that fiber connected to all those homes.
Sure, the requirement for a typical home might be only a few Mb/s tops, but I think you're underestimating the degree to which content fills available bandwidth. Once broadband finally reaches the majority of American homes, watch as that bandwidth gets filled up with fat media like high-res streaming video, better VoIP, and less-compressed, higher-quality torrents. It has already happend with email. Remember when you had to .zip all attachments and make sure they were under 100k?
Also, you mention Internet2. It was launched in 1998. It's 2005 now, and it is anyone's guess how long it will take to move I2 from research to full-scale implementation. It could easily take a decade for Internet2 capabilities to reach the mainstream, and another decade for developers to figure out how to take full advantage.
I'm not saying that eventually we won't all be enjoying some sort of uber-Internet as envisioned by Keven Kelly. I just think that his time frame is wildly optimistic. These things don't just happen by themselves.
You put it much better than I did.
I'd add that innovation is rewarded for companies that pursue products, while development and commoditization is rewarded for companies that pursue services. It is no suprise that IBM (primarily a services company, in spite of the hardware arm) jumped on Open Source, while Microsoft (primarily a products company) has not.
Microsoft?
Google?
My point is that the biggest consistent problem with Wired's predictions about the Internet over the last (pause for dramatic effect) is that they ignore the economic realities. Who pays for this wonderful infrastructure? I'm not talking about the apps. He waxes poetic about us all developing those as we use Flickr. I'm talking about the actual physical infrastructure and the protocols that hold it all together.
If it is government-developed, which government is going to do the developing? The US? Given the current state of American skepticism toward anything non-military that the government builds, I'd say no. China? Perhaps, but they don't want a system that allows that sort of freedom. Nobody else has the muscle to do it, save the EU, and we all can see they have bigger issues to deal with, like whether they'll be around in ten years.
If it is being developed by a corporation or collection of corporations, how do they make money creating infastructure improvements? After the Great Fiber Bungle of the dot-com era, I don't see any of the telecoms lining up to throw down the big money for something like this, particularly given that they're too engaged in their own marketshare battles to collaborate on anything this vast.
The Internet is an oddity, in that it was originated through American government spending during the Cold War, popularized because of a British researcher who developed the Web, and accelerated due to massive commercial speculation. I think Kevin Kelly's dream of a future Internet is great, but I think it disregards the fundamentally commercial nature of the existing Internet.
Given that changes to the fundamental infrastructure of the Net require far more deliberation, cooperation, and investment than changes that occur in the server and client realm, I think we'll still be talking about convergence and a fully-integrated, always-on Internet ten years from now.
His argument against Open Source isn't about the capabilities of Open Source software itself. Rather, he believes that Open Source software leads corporations and consumers to undervalue the value of software. If Open Source software is being given away freely, he argues, people will feel that software is a commodity rather than a specialized product that requires a lot of hard work and brainpower to properly develop. If the software becomes devalued, he feels, the industry as a whole will continue to slide rapidly toward commodity status.
I disagree with him on this point, primarily because I feel that computer programming is no longer the technological high ground that it once was. While it shouldn't be devalued, it is no longer reasonable to assume that software companies can command the immense profits that made Microsoft a monopoly. If anything, it seems to me that competition from Open Source will help push commercial software to innovate.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. I just heard a rather interesting story on NPR about payola and how the recent Sony payout fits into the big picture. Payola has existed since the 1950s, and will likely continue, with occasional slaps on the wrist simply because it's so effective for record companies. They don't necessarily want to restrict the variety of choices as much as they want to make sure that they're pushing you toward the "right" choices.
If the music industry doesn't change their business model from a mere media distribution model (media in my book include DRMd files) to a value adder (promotion, marketing, infrastructure, artist scouts, etc) and continues their rather odd "criminalize-thy-customer" business model my prediction is that 10 years from now they are deader then Jimmy Hoffa.
Personally I think it's already too late for the industry. The small indies that reallly understand what's going on are going to create the next wave music industry, one that is far less reliant on radio, emphasizes broad choice, and recognizes that if you function as a middleman, you have to provide value for artists and consumers, or both will route around you.
Discussion is passe; drive-by verbal attacks are the way to go. It's rampant in our politics, our sports, our music. In order to get noticed, you have to go with the shocking, the titilating, or the just plain aggressive.
It's the triumph of limited thinking and the obliteration of nuance. All kneel before the altar of unrestrained self-promotion!
Nowhere is it written that radio is the ideal medium for music, and the usual suspects (the RIAA, the music conglomerates, corporate radio) have been milking this cow for so long that it's getting almost completely dried up.
The Internet is a much better distribution medium, primarily because there are so many different ways to structure on-demand music through the 'Net. Internet radio, online purchasing, and online renting for a monthly flat fee are already available. Terrestrial radio allows for just two different business models: Advertiser supported or donation supported, while the Internet allows for a wide variety of business models and therefore more choices.
The worst thing about commercial terrestrial radio is that it provides the illusion of choice, but because it is wholly advertiser supported, it practically begs to be gamed. If its masters want to squeeze the cow until it dies, maybe we should let them. It's not like there aren't other alternatives to terrestrial radio.
So by your own logic, if someone had whacked you while you were employed by a spamming operation, your killers would have been justified?
Gee, that's a swell idea. Yahoo! is working hard to make the Web more "cross platform" than it was before. ;-)
How many people are using Windows 2000?
What percentage of all active computer users in the United States are on Macs?
What percentage of "non-technical" computer users have installed Linux and use it as their primary OS?
These are the sorts of questions that can be of vital importance to companies when they are trying to determine which markets they should be in, how they should orient their marketing, what improvements they need to make to their products, and so on. The problem is that this information is extremely difficult to pin down, which is why these analysts proliferate.
If it's tough to get reliable data you can base decisions on, it's even more difficult to determine whether a given market analysis is worth a damn.
I hadn't heard of that phenomenon, so I must have not been paying enough attention over the years. Thanks for pointing this out. I suppose the key is in whether Firefox takes advantage of the opportunity with some marketing muscle and/or a new rev of Firefox.
Don't be surprised if it's better than you expect it to be. MS is terrible at innovating, but very good at counterpunching when someone threatens them.
That's actually beside the point, because the outcome of the battle for the search market is by no means a foregone conclusion. Microsoft is pouring a lot of time, energy, and money into search technology. Google obviously still dominates, but not by nearly the margin they did even one year ago. Yahoo has improved its interface and is slowly doing a better job of integrating its disparate services. MSN Search is clearly better than it used to be, both in interface and search relevance. Microsoft has identified search as a core technology, and they will not sit idly by and watch Google eviscerate them in such an important market.
You go on thinking there isn't a battle. Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft all know differently.
Until a recent career shift, I did pretty much the same thing. We ran IE 6x in Win2k under VirtualPC so we could check rendering behavior, but we coded to W3C standards and then tweaked to force IE to work properly.
According to some of the stories I've read (including this one), IE 7 *may* support full CSS2, but will probably only cover a subset of CSS2. Great. This is just what we all need - another incomplete implementation of CSS. What year is it?
"Folks, the Mac platform is through... ." - John C. Dvorak, 1998
I'm not sure about that logic. When MS puts their mind to it, they can make a fine browser. They jump from IE 3 to 4 and then to 5 was impressive. My guess is that IE 7 will not be as bad as expected, and they may sneak in a few features that the Firefox team hadn't anticipated. Microsoft wants to push users to upgrade, so if they can create even one little "must have" feature in IE 7 that Firefox doesn't already use, they may succeed in enticing more than a few Win 2k users to buy XP.
Even if Microsoft doesn't roll out a blockbuster with IE 7, I doubt that the release of a *competing* browser is going to somehow push people to switch to Firefox. With all the press Firefox has been getting, if you haven't at least tried out Firefox by now, you're not likely to so unless IE leaps out of your browser and stabs you in the forehead.