I find it curious that MS is taking the effort to spread some FUD on the eve of Apple's Macworld announcements. In years past, they wouldn't have even bothered to do so, because they essentially wrote off Apple as a competitor.
Could this be a sign that MS is getting a bit nervous about OS X and its potential to infiltrate their corporate and home markets?
You singled out my example of the Roman empire as proof of my ignorance of history, but my comment was that if cheap labor were the only factor in determining the relative economic strength of a nation-state, the Romans wouldn't have had an empire. And I'm not sure about the relevance of your comment about the US South prior to the Civil War. The South underperformed the North to a huge degree specifically because they used slave labor. It was only after the Civil War that the American economy, no longer dragged down by the Southern plantation economy, was able to truly modernise.
Just ask the Branch Davidians.
I'm not going to apologize for the US government's handling of the Branch Davidians standoff. But it's specious to compare the Branch Davidians incident with the clampdown on the Falung Gong. They are completely different in scale and cause. It's also instructive to remember that while the FBI was acquitted of wrongdoing, the repurcussions from the event have led to inquiries, a storm of debate, and changes within the FBI. There is no such internal debate regarding handling of the Falung Gong in China, because the system prohibits it.
I don't make any contention that the US is even remotely perfect, or that it's the only place to be, or even that it's going to maintain hegemony forever. But I do believe that whatever nation-state overtakes the United States will only do so on the basis of a social structure rooted in respect for the individual.
China is making huge strides. They have tremendous industrial and high-tech potential, and smart, hardworking people. That's obvious. But the Soviet Union had those same advantages, and their inability to reconcile their technological progress with the squelching of free thought made their experiment doomed to failure from the start.
It's my belief that the Chinese system of government will have to evolve if the country is to ever approach, much less overtake, the US economically.
" is not a country, it's a zone of economic cooperation between several nations. Japan's GDP is second by a wide margin to that of the US, and it's per capita GDP is just over 2/3 that of the US - ($24,900/head for Japan in 2000 vs. $36,200/head for US in 2001).
Your arguments about who could or couldn't be a military superpower are beside the point, as are your comments about whether human rights in China are an issue to the US government.
I agree with you about Bush and his ilk. But the fact is, over the past decade, there has been a huge degree of domestic dispute in the US about how we should deal with Chinese human rights issues. Is engagement a better means of influencing their behavior in that area, or is economic punishment?
China's armed forces hover at around 2.8M active personnel, while the US forces stand at about 1.3M. Include reserve forces, and the Chinese military balloons to well over 4x the size of the US military. So in fact it does choose to sustain a military of the same size (larger, actually).
I understand that you're upset about American military, economic, and cultural hegemony. But to chalk it up solely to an "inferiority complex" is a bit childish, don't you think? I agree with you that the US could stand to curb its military expendatures quite a bit, but as history has shown, power abhors a vacuum. The moment the US disengages from a region, someone else will step in to assert control.
None of the countries you mentioned gave up great power status willingly - their empires were wrested from them.
It's convenient having the US as a scapegoat, because while they're lording it over you, you can snarl about how overbearing they are, and if you get in trouble, they'll still be there to save your bacon. I guess memories are selective. Folks remember Pinochet and forget WW I, WW II, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, etc.
Get a grip. First, "all the jobs" didn't go to Mexico. You've been listening to far too much of the David Duke Radio Diatribe. During the 1990s, the United States enjoyed unprecidented prosperity, and in spite of our current recession, we're still the sole economic superpower on the planet by a tremendous margin.
If cheap labor were the only factor in determining the relative economic strength of a nation-state, the Romans would never have built and sustained their empire. Ditto for the Venicians, French, English, and Americans.
China is not *the* place to be. Just ask the Falung Gong. Just ask anyone who gives a fuck about freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, due process, or basic fucking human rights of any kind in China.
And from a business perspective, lack of these things, particularly in a world economy dominated by post-industrial persuits that require human creativity and unfettered access to information, is the kiss of death.
Sure, China is booming. But recall the USSR. Right up to 1989/90, many experienced Sovietologists were still predicting that the Soviet Union would allow only moderate reforms, and would certainly be around for another 50 years. That's the problem with a government with limited transparency - you never really know with any certainty what's really going on with the economy (or anything else for that matter).
No avoiding hand-to-hand
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Well, air power advocates have been trying to make the case for the last fifty years that hand-to-hand combat is going the way of the dinosaur, but in my opinion it all comes down to this: if you can't stand on a spot of ground and hold it, you don't control it. If you don't control it, you can't affect change (take apart the enemy's military structure, implement a "regime change" that will actually stick, etc.). Image how things might have been different had the US not occupied Japan and Germany following WWII. The presence of troops on the ground in those countries assured a level of compliance (and acted as deterrence to the Soviets) in an unequivocal manner.
Robots will augment, but never replace humans in warfare, in the same way that the automatic rifle has superceded the knife, but not rendered it obsolete.
Resource sacrifices vs. human sacrifices
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Hmm.. interesting theory, but I'm not sure there's any historical evidence to back it up. Our technological supremacy didn't make the US more likely to intervene in the Balkans, for example. You could even make the argument that the more technologically advanced and by extension casualty-sensitive a society gets, the more pressure there is *against* going to war.
As a former soldier, I'm all for it
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Robot Wars
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Let's clarify something. The most moral way to wage war is to get it over as quickly as possible, with the least amount of casualties on both sides. If you're going to fight a war, win the war, and win it fast.
The question of whether killer robots are moral or amoral is in my view a complete waste of time. Once you've decided to wage war, you want to win it (note that I'm talking about *war* here, not peacemaking and peacekeeping operations, which are frequently confused with, but are completely different in character from actual war).
The United States has become a leader in warfare technology precisely because the American public values the lives of its sons and daughters. If our opponents had access to this sort of technology (assuming it works reliably and effectively) they'd use it. Would the Chinese government have used human wave tactics during the Korean War if it could have used less horrific means of persuing its military goals? Of course.
I'd make the suggestion that if the technology exists, and you don't use it, you're willingly killing more of your own and potentially of the enemy as well.
There seems to be a fundamental misinterpretation running through many of these threads. The gist of it is that the US government shouldn't be legislating in copyright-related areas, as the marketplace should sort things out on its own.
The correlary to this view is that copyright law (which extends all the way back to the US Constitution) was established primarily to protect those who create and distribute creative works. In fact, it was created as a compact between average citizens and those citizens or organizations that were provided with copyright protections.
The underlying goal of this compact was to strengthen the culture of the United States for all its citizens. The underlying goal was never to provide special protections for copyright holders in some sort of vacuum of privelege.
Interestingly, in their primer on copyright, the RIAA neglects this vial information. As usual, they cite the rights of the copyright holder, without pointing out that those rights are mirrored by specific and explicit rights given to the general public as part of the copyright compact.
The RIAA essentially constitutes a cartel, and as such when they decide to endorse computer-damaging CDs or other nonsense, it's not simply a matter of consumer choice. Unopposed, the RIAA will get what it wants. What it wants in this case is to deny you and me the right to exercise our end of the copyright compact.
As we're seeing now with WorldCom, Enron, et. al., even though the Congress is generally overly-lenient with big business, from time to time the politicians realize that it's in nobody's best interests for these people to be given free rein.
I for one am happy to see at least one member of Congress who is willing to stand up and make this an issue. Cynics will call it grandstanding, or proof that he didn't get enough money from the music industry, and so on. But I see it as proof that the American political system can work.
As others have pointed out, it's not enough to steal songs via Limewire all day in a "protest" against the RIAA. Sometimes you have to *gasp* get to know the issues, vote *double gasp* and stop whining that the system doesn't work.
It's not exactly like there's a hue and cry from all corners of the globe, demanding metric time.
Like any technology innovation, the benefits have to be at least a geometric improvement over the old way of doing things, or the adoption cost is too high.
It's like the QWERTY keyboard. Inefficient, but the cost in training, restandardization, and so on is too great when weighed against the gain accrued by switching to a Dvorak keyboard.
Nuclear power. Great idea! Uh.. if we put the spent fuel rods on indian reservations.
Multi-use urban areas. Cool! Uh.. as long as it's only in new, "planned communities". I paid too much for my house with a white picket fence. Don't want my property value to go down.
Desegregation. Uh... except when our school's SAT scores plummet the first few years after bussing starts.
It's the way of things. We all want freedom, independence, and somehow we also want social cohesion, all without any sacrifice. There's always more in the horn of plenty, just keep diggin' around and you'll find it somehow.;-)
That's a scary thought indeed. I hadn't really thought about it that way, but do you think they'll be able to pull that off with television? They don't seem to have as much leverage in the MPEG, and broadcasters have a built-in aversion to any one company calling the shots on the technical end.
It seems to me that as they enter the TV market, they're dealing with a different kind of animal than they're used to. Of course, they've been working hand in glove with NBC for some time now, so they've doubtless learned a lot from the experience.
That's the thing about Microsoft. You can never count them out, because they can afford to hemmorage money and make colossal mistakes, because their pockets are so deep.
It will be interesting (in the "may you live in interesting times" sort of way), regardless of how it turns out.
Microsoft and the media conglomerates
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This is interesting. The closer they get to some form of gaming/TV convergence, the more Microsoft will have to deal with the potential conflicts of interest between their hardware and software efforts.
Microsoft has always come down heavily in favor of aggressively protecting copyrighted material. They support the media giants in their efforts to make copy-proof one-time use media. They are talking about integrating code checking (intellectual property validation by another name) into future OS releases.
They've always taken this stance because first and foremost, they're a software company. But now they're moving into hardware. Companies like Dell and Apple, which have been up in arms about the media conglomerates' strong-arm tactics, have a vested interest in standing up for fair-use rights as computers become more tightly integrated with media creation and playback.
So far Microsoft has skirted the issue with ReplayTV, but if they try to take TV integration to the next level, they'll run smack-dab into the media giants.
Of course, based on their history, MS is likely to make deals with the media giants that restrict fair use by creating micropayment schemes or some other method of tracking and billing users for the wonderful things they're doing with the TV/game box.
This would alienate users in droves, especially when there are plenty of other competitors out there who aren't primarily software companies. Of course, MS could just wait for the hardware companies to do all the hard work of fighting the intellectual property battles with the media industry. Then they could step in after the dust clears, and reap the benefits without exposing themselves.
Whatever happens, Microsoft is literally getting so big and diversified that some of its products are bound to compete with each other in significant ways. I wonder, can Bill, as clever as he is, continue to advance Microsoft on all fronts without at some point having to scale back his ambitions?
You're right. I was wrong to say "first to market. A more accurate term would have been "rushed to market". Microsoft waits until a market is created, then pushes something out the door to show that yes, they're in that market as well.
Of course, this leads to the dreaded "Microsoft is entering the market!" syndrome.
It's rather obvious that the dominant paradigm in software development today is that of Microsoft. Their mantra has always been:
1) Get to market first, at all costs
2) Continue to add features, based on customer feedback
3) When the product gets good enough (after 4 or 5 major revisions) tout its reliability and stability
More about Microsoft's philosophy here: Microsoft Secrets. It's an old book, but still provides valuable insights into why the world of commercial software development has become more and more insane over the years.
Developers operate in an environment driven almost completely by market forces. Of course this begs the question - how much money would the economy loose if software were not driven by marketing and sales, and developers actually were given enough time to create virtually bug-free programs?
Apple has some kick-ass handwriting technology, no doubt. The Newton 2000, for example, was a tremendous machine. Recognition worked well, the interface was extremely intuitive, and there were some great vertical market apps for the Newton.
But as Apple found out, demand is the key. The Palm OS succeeded for a variety of reasons, but my feeling is that it triumphed over the Newton primarily due to two things:
1) Newton's early, much-huballooed release that didn't live up to expectations
and
2) The form factor of the original Palm Pilot. The Palm devices were and are smaller. They fit in a pocket or a purse or an attache. They fit the paradigm people were used to. The Newton's bulk simply looked and felt clunky and awkward to many people.
Now Microsoft is going to ship their tablet technology soon, but aside from geeks on Slashdot, there just is no hue and cry for handwriting recognition technology. The Tablet PC is a cool technology in search of a real-world application.
For example, look at the size of a Tablet PC. Sure, it might be spiffy for surfing the Web while you're sitting on your couch, but honestly, will most people replace their laptops with Tablets just so they can do this? With laptops getting so thin and light, there isn't much discernable difference between a Tablet PC and a laptop in terms of bulk and size.
As has been mentioned before by others, typing is inherently faster and less of a strain than writing by hand. It's simply a more efficient means of turning thoughts into data. With speech recognition coming into its own on laptops, I don't see how the Tablet PC's handwriting recognition will seem in any way superior to consumers.
The gap in time between XP's handwriting recognition and OS X 10.2's release will be minimal, but even so, I doubt there will be a groundswell of consumer excitement about the technology.
Apple learned its lesson the first time around - whatever they do with handwriting recognition, my guess is they have some real-world applications in mind for specifically-defined markets.
Just because Apple has been slow to market with their handwriting recognition products doesn't mean they have been foolish all these years. In business you have to pick and choose your battles, and I think Apple has been smart not to take up the cause of handwriting recognition until the time is right.
You know how it is: the congressmen want every advanced weapon system they can get their larded hands on (boy, Rumsfeld had a tough time killing off the Crusader system), but when it comes time to pony up for a living wage for military personnel, those same congressmen are nowhere to be found.
It's because military folks have no single constituency. They come from everywhere, so every representative and senator can pass the buck on taking care of them.
I vividly remember being at the Infantry School at Ft. Benning in the early '90s, watching some of the "low impact" trainees run through their morning drill. It was really pathetic. We mollycoddled them because their parents figured we're not fighting the Cold War any more, why be so hard on the recruits?
When there's no war to be fought, the military is just like the firefighters - nifty uniforms and an interesting way of life, but not something to pay much attention to. When the war comes, all attention focuses on the military. That's just the way it is in a republic such as ours.
Remember also that an astoundingly low percentage of representatives and senators have ever served, even in the Guard or Reserves. I honestly think that until you've sat in the freezing mud for 12 hours, waiting to set off an ambush, or deployed to a combat zone while your loved ones worry every day for your safety, you can't know what it's like to be in the military.
It's amazing to me that we continue to get such capable young men and women to serve, given the crap they have to put up with (and I'm not referring to their military duties).
In this case the moral man sees nothing wrong with distributing information or with receiving information..
I find your argument intreaguing, and it's definitely making me think, but while songs and movies are, at some level information, at another level they're creative works. Would you agree that there's a difference between informing your fellow monkeys about the tiger down by the river, and creating your own song or movie about it?
A friend of mine (who, believe it or not, is a lawyer) asked this question of someone not long ago, in an attempt to help him see that his justifications were just that - justifications.
The MPAA is bad. I'd wager most of the technology-literate world has figured that out by now. They're moneygrubbing monopolists, no doubt about it.
The current system of copyright and distribution is broken - no doubt about it.
But when you steal something, you're still stealing it. No amount of arguments about how the Iranians don't subscribe to international patent law, or about the fact that Film88 bought the movies and are just renting them, will change that.
So through some miracle of legal justification, you may in fact not be breaking the law. That's for the courts (or politics) to decide. You're buying from a thief. That might not make you a thief by legal definition, but what does it make you by moral definition?
Oh, wait. I forgot. We're all geeks here, so the only moral imperatives are: 1) information wants to be free, and 2) anyone trying to impede my freedom in any way is evil.
Something akin to: "If a person practices integrity and nobody (by definition) observes it, it can't be proven and therefore may not have happened."
That's a good point. Since integrity is a subjective value defined by society, it would stand to reason that unless the actions that constitue integrity are observed, they are not occuring.
Of course, you could take a more Eastern approach and say that actions, whether observed or not, contribute to the overall pattern of the Universe, and therefore have life of their own.
It's much easier when you're not the ultimate authority for your actions. If there's a source of absolution, ultimately anything is forgivable and you can be absolved of your sins. Of course, the definition of "sin" depends on your society's definition of such, so we're in that whole conundrum of whether all morals are simply conventions society places on individuals as a means of perpetuating the species.
Believe it or not, that definition of integrity is something I picked up on during my training (in a former life) as an Army officer. Integrity was held (at least by my leadership instructors) as the most important characteristic of an officer. The logic was that if you could be trusted to take responsibility for your actions, you would ultimately take the initiative to ensure that such trust was well-placed.
Does that mean that all military officers manifest such integrity at all times?:-) Doubtful. But it's a worthy goal to aspire to, I think.
"in some ways I think that the copy protection issue with software is similar"
Uhhh.. except that if you're a musician (as opposed to a music label) you make most of your money through live concerts, and you really only make a pittance off the albums themselves.
I'm just trying to picture the guys at Macromedia live at the Arco Arena hammering out code, panties flying on stage, fans screaming...
Slashdot Mirror
Could this be a sign that MS is getting a bit nervous about OS X and its potential to infiltrate their corporate and home markets?
That's a widely-disputed claim.
You singled out my example of the Roman empire as proof of my ignorance of history, but my comment was that if cheap labor were the only factor in determining the relative economic strength of a nation-state, the Romans wouldn't have had an empire. And I'm not sure about the relevance of your comment about the US South prior to the Civil War. The South underperformed the North to a huge degree specifically because they used slave labor. It was only after the Civil War that the American economy, no longer dragged down by the Southern plantation economy, was able to truly modernise.
Just ask the Branch Davidians.
I'm not going to apologize for the US government's handling of the Branch Davidians standoff. But it's specious to compare the Branch Davidians incident with the clampdown on the Falung Gong. They are completely different in scale and cause. It's also instructive to remember that while the FBI was acquitted of wrongdoing, the repurcussions from the event have led to inquiries, a storm of debate, and changes within the FBI. There is no such internal debate regarding handling of the Falung Gong in China, because the system prohibits it.
I don't make any contention that the US is even remotely perfect, or that it's the only place to be, or even that it's going to maintain hegemony forever. But I do believe that whatever nation-state overtakes the United States will only do so on the basis of a social structure rooted in respect for the individual.
China is making huge strides. They have tremendous industrial and high-tech potential, and smart, hardworking people. That's obvious. But the Soviet Union had those same advantages, and their inability to reconcile their technological progress with the squelching of free thought made their experiment doomed to failure from the start.
It's my belief that the Chinese system of government will have to evolve if the country is to ever approach, much less overtake, the US economically.
Your arguments about who could or couldn't be a military superpower are beside the point, as are your comments about whether human rights in China are an issue to the US government.
I agree with you about Bush and his ilk. But the fact is, over the past decade, there has been a huge degree of domestic dispute in the US about how we should deal with Chinese human rights issues. Is engagement a better means of influencing their behavior in that area, or is economic punishment?
China's armed forces hover at around 2.8M active personnel, while the US forces stand at about 1.3M. Include reserve forces, and the Chinese military balloons to well over 4x the size of the US military. So in fact it does choose to sustain a military of the same size (larger, actually).
I understand that you're upset about American military, economic, and cultural hegemony. But to chalk it up solely to an "inferiority complex" is a bit childish, don't you think? I agree with you that the US could stand to curb its military expendatures quite a bit, but as history has shown, power abhors a vacuum. The moment the US disengages from a region, someone else will step in to assert control.
None of the countries you mentioned gave up great power status willingly - their empires were wrested from them.
It's convenient having the US as a scapegoat, because while they're lording it over you, you can snarl about how overbearing they are, and if you get in trouble, they'll still be there to save your bacon. I guess memories are selective. Folks remember Pinochet and forget WW I, WW II, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, etc.
If cheap labor were the only factor in determining the relative economic strength of a nation-state, the Romans would never have built and sustained their empire. Ditto for the Venicians, French, English, and Americans.
China is not *the* place to be. Just ask the Falung Gong. Just ask anyone who gives a fuck about freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, due process, or basic fucking human rights of any kind in China.
And from a business perspective, lack of these things, particularly in a world economy dominated by post-industrial persuits that require human creativity and unfettered access to information, is the kiss of death.
Sure, China is booming. But recall the USSR. Right up to 1989/90, many experienced Sovietologists were still predicting that the Soviet Union would allow only moderate reforms, and would certainly be around for another 50 years. That's the problem with a government with limited transparency - you never really know with any certainty what's really going on with the economy (or anything else for that matter).
Robots will augment, but never replace humans in warfare, in the same way that the automatic rifle has superceded the knife, but not rendered it obsolete.
The question of whether killer robots are moral or amoral is in my view a complete waste of time. Once you've decided to wage war, you want to win it (note that I'm talking about *war* here, not peacemaking and peacekeeping operations, which are frequently confused with, but are completely different in character from actual war).
The United States has become a leader in warfare technology precisely because the American public values the lives of its sons and daughters. If our opponents had access to this sort of technology (assuming it works reliably and effectively) they'd use it. Would the Chinese government have used human wave tactics during the Korean War if it could have used less horrific means of persuing its military goals? Of course.
I'd make the suggestion that if the technology exists, and you don't use it, you're willingly killing more of your own and potentially of the enemy as well.
Which is more moral?
The correlary to this view is that copyright law (which extends all the way back to the US Constitution) was established primarily to protect those who create and distribute creative works. In fact, it was created as a compact between average citizens and those citizens or organizations that were provided with copyright protections.
The underlying goal of this compact was to strengthen the culture of the United States for all its citizens. The underlying goal was never to provide special protections for copyright holders in some sort of vacuum of privelege.
Interestingly, in their primer on copyright, the RIAA neglects this vial information. As usual, they cite the rights of the copyright holder, without pointing out that those rights are mirrored by specific and explicit rights given to the general public as part of the copyright compact.
The RIAA essentially constitutes a cartel, and as such when they decide to endorse computer-damaging CDs or other nonsense, it's not simply a matter of consumer choice. Unopposed, the RIAA will get what it wants. What it wants in this case is to deny you and me the right to exercise our end of the copyright compact.
As we're seeing now with WorldCom, Enron, et. al., even though the Congress is generally overly-lenient with big business, from time to time the politicians realize that it's in nobody's best interests for these people to be given free rein.
I for one am happy to see at least one member of Congress who is willing to stand up and make this an issue. Cynics will call it grandstanding, or proof that he didn't get enough money from the music industry, and so on. But I see it as proof that the American political system can work.
As others have pointed out, it's not enough to steal songs via Limewire all day in a "protest" against the RIAA. Sometimes you have to *gasp* get to know the issues, vote *double gasp* and stop whining that the system doesn't work.
Like any technology innovation, the benefits have to be at least a geometric improvement over the old way of doing things, or the adoption cost is too high.
It's like the QWERTY keyboard. Inefficient, but the cost in training, restandardization, and so on is too great when weighed against the gain accrued by switching to a Dvorak keyboard.
Multi-use urban areas. Cool! Uh.. as long as it's only in new, "planned communities". I paid too much for my house with a white picket fence. Don't want my property value to go down.
Desegregation. Uh... except when our school's SAT scores plummet the first few years after bussing starts.
It's the way of things. We all want freedom, independence, and somehow we also want social cohesion, all without any sacrifice. There's always more in the horn of plenty, just keep diggin' around and you'll find it somehow. ;-)
It seems to me that as they enter the TV market, they're dealing with a different kind of animal than they're used to. Of course, they've been working hand in glove with NBC for some time now, so they've doubtless learned a lot from the experience.
That's the thing about Microsoft. You can never count them out, because they can afford to hemmorage money and make colossal mistakes, because their pockets are so deep.
It will be interesting (in the "may you live in interesting times" sort of way), regardless of how it turns out.
Microsoft has always come down heavily in favor of aggressively protecting copyrighted material. They support the media giants in their efforts to make copy-proof one-time use media. They are talking about integrating code checking (intellectual property validation by another name) into future OS releases.
They've always taken this stance because first and foremost, they're a software company. But now they're moving into hardware. Companies like Dell and Apple, which have been up in arms about the media conglomerates' strong-arm tactics, have a vested interest in standing up for fair-use rights as computers become more tightly integrated with media creation and playback.
So far Microsoft has skirted the issue with ReplayTV, but if they try to take TV integration to the next level, they'll run smack-dab into the media giants.
Of course, based on their history, MS is likely to make deals with the media giants that restrict fair use by creating micropayment schemes or some other method of tracking and billing users for the wonderful things they're doing with the TV/game box.
This would alienate users in droves, especially when there are plenty of other competitors out there who aren't primarily software companies. Of course, MS could just wait for the hardware companies to do all the hard work of fighting the intellectual property battles with the media industry. Then they could step in after the dust clears, and reap the benefits without exposing themselves.
Whatever happens, Microsoft is literally getting so big and diversified that some of its products are bound to compete with each other in significant ways. I wonder, can Bill, as clever as he is, continue to advance Microsoft on all fronts without at some point having to scale back his ambitions?
Of course, this leads to the dreaded "Microsoft is entering the market!" syndrome.
1) Get to market first, at all costs
2) Continue to add features, based on customer feedback
3) When the product gets good enough (after 4 or 5 major revisions) tout its reliability and stability
More about Microsoft's philosophy here: Microsoft Secrets. It's an old book, but still provides valuable insights into why the world of commercial software development has become more and more insane over the years.
Developers operate in an environment driven almost completely by market forces. Of course this begs the question - how much money would the economy loose if software were not driven by marketing and sales, and developers actually were given enough time to create virtually bug-free programs?
But as Apple found out, demand is the key. The Palm OS succeeded for a variety of reasons, but my feeling is that it triumphed over the Newton primarily due to two things:
1) Newton's early, much-huballooed release that didn't live up to expectations
and
2) The form factor of the original Palm Pilot. The Palm devices were and are smaller. They fit in a pocket or a purse or an attache. They fit the paradigm people were used to. The Newton's bulk simply looked and felt clunky and awkward to many people.
Now Microsoft is going to ship their tablet technology soon, but aside from geeks on Slashdot, there just is no hue and cry for handwriting recognition technology. The Tablet PC is a cool technology in search of a real-world application.
For example, look at the size of a Tablet PC. Sure, it might be spiffy for surfing the Web while you're sitting on your couch, but honestly, will most people replace their laptops with Tablets just so they can do this? With laptops getting so thin and light, there isn't much discernable difference between a Tablet PC and a laptop in terms of bulk and size.
As has been mentioned before by others, typing is inherently faster and less of a strain than writing by hand. It's simply a more efficient means of turning thoughts into data. With speech recognition coming into its own on laptops, I don't see how the Tablet PC's handwriting recognition will seem in any way superior to consumers.
The gap in time between XP's handwriting recognition and OS X 10.2's release will be minimal, but even so, I doubt there will be a groundswell of consumer excitement about the technology.
Apple learned its lesson the first time around - whatever they do with handwriting recognition, my guess is they have some real-world applications in mind for specifically-defined markets.
Just because Apple has been slow to market with their handwriting recognition products doesn't mean they have been foolish all these years. In business you have to pick and choose your battles, and I think Apple has been smart not to take up the cause of handwriting recognition until the time is right.
Especially for OS X and Linux. Uh.. oh.. wait...never mind.
It's because military folks have no single constituency. They come from everywhere, so every representative and senator can pass the buck on taking care of them.
I vividly remember being at the Infantry School at Ft. Benning in the early '90s, watching some of the "low impact" trainees run through their morning drill. It was really pathetic. We mollycoddled them because their parents figured we're not fighting the Cold War any more, why be so hard on the recruits?
When there's no war to be fought, the military is just like the firefighters - nifty uniforms and an interesting way of life, but not something to pay much attention to. When the war comes, all attention focuses on the military. That's just the way it is in a republic such as ours.
Remember also that an astoundingly low percentage of representatives and senators have ever served, even in the Guard or Reserves. I honestly think that until you've sat in the freezing mud for 12 hours, waiting to set off an ambush, or deployed to a combat zone while your loved ones worry every day for your safety, you can't know what it's like to be in the military.
It's amazing to me that we continue to get such capable young men and women to serve, given the crap they have to put up with (and I'm not referring to their military duties).
I find your argument intreaguing, and it's definitely making me think, but while songs and movies are, at some level information, at another level they're creative works. Would you agree that there's a difference between informing your fellow monkeys about the tiger down by the river, and creating your own song or movie about it?
The MPAA is bad. I'd wager most of the technology-literate world has figured that out by now. They're moneygrubbing monopolists, no doubt about it.
The current system of copyright and distribution is broken - no doubt about it.
But when you steal something, you're still stealing it. No amount of arguments about how the Iranians don't subscribe to international patent law, or about the fact that Film88 bought the movies and are just renting them, will change that.
So through some miracle of legal justification, you may in fact not be breaking the law. That's for the courts (or politics) to decide. You're buying from a thief. That might not make you a thief by legal definition, but what does it make you by moral definition?
Oh, wait. I forgot. We're all geeks here, so the only moral imperatives are: 1) information wants to be free, and 2) anyone trying to impede my freedom in any way is evil.
That's a good point. Since integrity is a subjective value defined by society, it would stand to reason that unless the actions that constitue integrity are observed, they are not occuring.
Of course, you could take a more Eastern approach and say that actions, whether observed or not, contribute to the overall pattern of the Universe, and therefore have life of their own.
Where is a Philosophy major when you need one? :-)
It's much easier when you're not the ultimate authority for your actions. If there's a source of absolution, ultimately anything is forgivable and you can be absolved of your sins. Of course, the definition of "sin" depends on your society's definition of such, so we're in that whole conundrum of whether all morals are simply conventions society places on individuals as a means of perpetuating the species.
Believe it or not, that definition of integrity is something I picked up on during my training (in a former life) as an Army officer. Integrity was held (at least by my leadership instructors) as the most important characteristic of an officer. The logic was that if you could be trusted to take responsibility for your actions, you would ultimately take the initiative to ensure that such trust was well-placed.
Does that mean that all military officers manifest such integrity at all times? :-) Doubtful. But it's a worthy goal to aspire to, I think.
Economist #1: "The economy is going to collapse this quarter!"
Economist #2: "No! It's on an upswing, you idiot!"
Dietician #1: "Balanced intake of carbs, protein, and fats is best."
Dietician #2: "Uh, yeah, sure.. if you want to look like Rosanne. Max protein, don't worry about the fat, and cut down on the carbs."
Space Scientist #1: "Thousands of life-giving planets are out there. We have the calculations right here. Really."
Space Scientist #2: "Look, dude, the odds of there being other life-bearing planets are almost nil. We have the calculations right here. Really."
I mean it in good humor, but as a layman it sure is difficult to tell which of the astronomers and other guessers are on the right track.
Uhhh.. except that if you're a musician (as opposed to a music label) you make most of your money through live concerts, and you really only make a pittance off the albums themselves.
I'm just trying to picture the guys at Macromedia live at the Arco Arena hammering out code, panties flying on stage, fans screaming...