After all these years, the Left still hates to admit that the conservatives not only won, but that they were on the right side all along.
Better to give too much credit to a man who did something, than to pretend the challenge never existed. By your argument, Gandhi just happened to come along and give a few good speeches when the British were ready to leave India anyway.
Journalistic standards today are getting weakened by two forces: one is the drive to "get the news out in Internet time," which means printing it first and verifying it later. This is a pardonable sin, in my book. The second, and far worse, is the now seemingly unlimited willingness of the big three networks and CNN to editorialize during newscasts. This is a nefarious and dangerous force, and one which must be fought like Hell.
A lot of Americans are sick of being treated to your condescending European attitude. If your post were any more shrill, only dogs would be able to read it.
In case you're under 30, I'll remind you that the European (and American) left once parroted the same ball of #$@! about Reagan and Thatcher. Don't you waste any time thanking them for ending the threat of a Soviet invasion of Europe, okay?
As for Russai and China, I am perfectly happy voting for a candidate who will simultaneously piss two of the most corrupt and tyrannical nations on the face of the Earth.
The Tribe of Slashbots has scanned your post and found you guilty of the following Slashdot heresies:
1. Backing up your opinion(s) with fact(s)
2. Making a reasoned argument in favor of a right-winger
3. Being older and wiser
4. Failure to state how increased use of Linux or the GPL would solve this problem
As a result, we have decided to vote you off the island. Thank you for your participation.
But I for one, would think much more highly of you if:
You said something more insightful than "he is a carbon rod," which is simple ad hominem
You wrote it as part of an editorial where you actually lay out an argument, as opposed to peanut gallery remarks
You carried some remarks speaking for "the other side"
Or even did an "Ask Slashdot" where the questions were submitted to both GWB and Al Gore.
Like I said, it's your press, print what you want. "Abusing Slashdot" will only do more to convince many of us that Slashdot speaks primarily for the far-left wing of the "geek" population.
All their money is going to lawyers. Just like it always has.
LOL!
So true. Napster has to be one of the dumbest ideas I've seen get this much funding. People think VCs are the smartest eggs in the box. Please. They just have enough dough to stay ahead of the odds.
How about the argument that regardless of what you think you're entitled to, copying and distributing the music is strictly illegal.
If I buy a CD, should I be allowed to rip an MP3 of it for my own purposes? Is the data I am buying inseparable from the medium on which it is distributed? If I can loan a CD to a friend, can I loan him an MP3 file? What is the difference?
The problem here is that the record industry has no sense of proportion here; if they could they would sell CDs with dongles. Likewise, the zealots on the other side think they're entitled to warez and free CDs, and won't understand property rights until they graduate from college and have to start paying their taxes. Please, I believe in IP. I just think that both sides have their heads up their asses on this one.
I agree with you that the distinctions between Google and Napster are largely semantic, but that is not how the public perceives them.
Google == search engine
Napster == pirate MP3s
With Napster gone, there will not be as much of an organized "enemy" to fight. It will just be a giant game of Whack-A-Mole for the RIAA. Gnutella et. al. are far more frightening to them, and there is nothing they can do to stop them.
It's only this arrogant geek-centric view of the world that makes us think that "getting the technology" is so important. You can explain the relevant points of information in five minutes, and even that isn't the fundamental issue.
One side believes that if you buy a Britney Spears CD, you should be able to make copies of it and put it up on Napster. The other side does not. That is the issue, quit obscuring it with whining about "you don't understand the technology."
You and I are talking about two different kinds of sheep.
Most people will learn as much technology as they find useful. Having tasted the fruits of Napster, people will find the alternatives and use them. I wouldn't underestimate the ability of the college-radio types (who often master piles of audiophilic arcana) to pick up Gnutella.
I also wouldn't underestimate the musical taste of nerds. Up here in Boston the pocket-protector crowd is quite avant-garde musically speaking, and this is a fairly conservative town.
Finally, we will still be better off without Napster. With the easy targets picked off, the RIAA et. al. will have to fight this one on principles. It will be a much more honest battle.
The best thing about Napster's alternatives is that they are neither strong nor unified. There is nothing to attack.
Not having the sheep around for a while might not hurt either. I'm a little tired of the whole OSS = Intellectual Piracy spin that we've been catching in the media lately.
Blaming the mouse is easy, but ultimately wrong. The mouse is a natural result of the need to interface with objects on a 2D screen. Before you can get rid of the mouse you need to get rid of the screen, and this will not likely happen any time soon.
The shift in thinking I am talking about has little to do with input/output devices and more to do with the underlying design concept of an idea-based system. Right now everything is built around the notion of fixed documents, which as I stated before are simply proxies for the more basic unit of an idea. What I would love to see is an interface system designed not around documents but around hyperlinks.
Now initially it might work like so: I go to a meeting with a client who suggests a new feature for my product. When I get back to my desk I go and create a new "idea" object. My IdeaOS allows me to keep many such objects around, and at any time I can make one of them the "Active Idea." This might appear as an icon on my desktop.
When you create an idea you can give it all sorts of characteristics. These might be unique things like "Color = Purple" or links such as "Color = Idea #7's Color." Entire idea objects might be simple characteristics of other idea objects.
With an idea object you might have associated "output methods," which could include text, pictures, or other things. Depending on the nature of these things they might be automatically generated and updated, or they may not. But the point, in the short term, is that you at least see the web which ties the whole mess together. Even though you may not be able to say, "if we change the color of the panel our profits will go down," at least the marketing department will know that they need to re-shoot all the pictures for the ad campaign.
From a management perspective this is an ideal way of structuring things. At any point in time the CEO can look at the six (or N) high-level ideas, and perhaps change one slightly. This change will percolate down the chain of ideas, either altering automatically or at least informing everything down the line of the changes that need to be made. Likewise if a person wants to change an idea somewhere down the line, he or she can see the effects this will have on ideas above and lateral to them.
It is true that a corporation cannot acheive the singlemindedness of the Borg, and that even the Soviet Union failed to eradicate the individual mind.
But the motives of the individuals are not the question; the Soviet Union was evil because of what it created as an organization.
If you look at any organization with a microscope you will see plenty of random Brownian motion going on. But there is still a whole, and this whole moves in a certain direction. There were many good Soviets, but that does not make the Soviet Union any less evil.
This feature was impressive if only for its incredible lack of content. The only people left who are surprised by the public's distrust of the media, are media people themselves.
You have just sung the song of every disenchanted interface designer out there.
This is not a problem of kernels, or CPU cycles, or the lack of effective 3D displays. It is really so much more basic, and yet, more challenging.
Even though I have not used a typewriter in a year, and the filing cabinet in my office lays there unused, those two objects are the basis of my computer's design.
We may talk about the paperless office oday, but it is meaningless. We are still document-driven rather than knowledge-driven.
Businesses are fighting this, but it is an expensive war. My company uses a system called Onyx for Customer Relations Management. It is a very complicated and clunky client/server system that cost over $500,000 to acquire, and probably that much again per year to train people and keep it running. Look at ERP systems like SAP or BAAN, these are equally moribund, and yet companies still throw billions at them annually, because they are still the best (only?) option.
People do not think in documents, they think in ideas, but you cannot capture the pulses of neurons and transmit them directly. A document is merely a way to capture this stuff so that it can be stored, retrieved, and transmitted to others.
I work as a product manager, and do everything from talk with clients and users to writing specs and drawing mockups for our developers. Most of what I do revolves around collections of ideas of how a feature should work- "The sort button should be on the right side, and all items should sort in ascneding order..." I spend probably 1/3 of my time just maintaining concurrency between specs for development, marketing docs, training manuals, and management summaries.
Let's say I decide the sort button should be on the left instead- that could mean that dozens of documents need to be altered, even though only one concept has changed. Now think- what if I could simply create a "Sort Order" object, and instantiate it in multiple places: word documents, development specs, and page mockups. If I change it, I change it in just one place, and it either updates automatically or at least tells me what needs to be updated by hand. This would not only save me time, it would prevent bugs and many misunderstandings.
I swear I am learning to code now just so that I can take a stab at this problem. I support Linux because it provides a sized canvas on which many ideas can be painted. Gnome is doing a lot of yeoman work, and I am sure it will be useful, but I would love to see more truly speculative design being done. This is where Linux (or some other free OS) could really revolutionize things, because you do not necessarily have to consider the short-term business imperatives that MS and Apple do. Even if either one of them could deliver a system like the one I have described, I believe it would be a failure, because people are not generally ready for such a thing. A small subset would be, and they will adopt it, and in a short time businesses will realize how much more productive those people can be.
Michaelangelo seemed like quite a blowhard to his contemporaries, I'll bet.
I am at first shocked at how little enthusiasm I see here for a dramatic vision of technology's future. One would think a bunch of proclaimed geeks would celebrate anyone's attempt at creating a new vision, even if it is still mostly BS. Then again, the captains of sailing vessels were the greatest critics of the early steamships.
you seem to be severely out of touch with regards to coder salaries
No, you're severely out-of-touch with the 90% of the world that isn't in IT. I'm 24 and live in South Boston, and make more money than the 45-year-old steelworker next door who has a family and a mortgage and payments on a car. People like me are pushing people like him out of the neighborhood he grew up in, and when it "gets old," we'll move on, while he gets shoved into the distant suburbs. There's more than one perspective to be had here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% for capitalism. But too often people confuse being dealt a lucky hand with skill at playing cards.
If management is making the job miserable, then hell yeah, GTFO of there. I'm not saying you should stay at a job that sucks. It's just that there are tons of people in less-rewarding fields with a lot more to worry about than the average 24-year-old who put in 55 or more hours per week and would be happy to clear $40,000 with full benefits. So I get a little sick of hearing people moan about "poor me" when the deal they have ain't so bad.
If you're 24 and making nearly $40k/year you have very very little to complain about.
55 hours a week? Is that considered hard time in Kansas City? I live in Boston and that is what everyone around here does, for about the same money, in a city that is much more expensive.
I don't always love my job either, but long workweeks aren't going to get any sympathy from me. Sounds like good ol' Worldcom just trimmed a little fat.
An enlightened despot can be a good thing, yes, but what happens when he exits the scene?
One of the great advantages democracy has over most tyrannies is that elections replace the problem of succession inherent in most single-leader systems. It was partly to uphold this principle that George Washington refused to stand for election a third time, even though he could have won without any trouble.
Linus is young so this isn't likely to ever be a serious problem, but sometimes the most important thing a leader can do is to name his eventual successor.
Posts like this make me wish I had a mod point to give you. Anyway...
the web is worse than tv for fostering a sense of narrative
Definitely- even "Baywatch" at leasts attempts to wrap a POS plot around the T&A.
The complete and utter cooptation of the web by commercial interests.
Go cry on somebody else's shoulder. It's not polluting any rivers or making the air dirty and it's fostering the transfer of large sums of money from the suits to the pocket-protector crowd.
The web promotes exchange and access to information. In the near future, information by itself will become as much of a commodity as cement or cold-rolled steel. The only people who will profit then will be those who can add value, aka Knowledge. The fewer of these people there are, the more money I will make.
What about society? It will survive, just like it has for generations. In the US there are tons of resources available for people who want to adapt, and a tremendous job market waiting for those who do. If people resist changing with the times they will get run over, and that's nothing new.
By his measures, the printing press, TV, and radio didn't matter for much either, since they didn't make people directly able to buy more stuff right off the bat.
The digital revolution will change the way the world gets things done even if it doesn't change the amount of things that get done. I'm willing to bet it will change both.
Krugman seems to have made his bid to join the list of people who said things like, "A Wheel! Who needs one?," "Man will never fly," and "no one will ever need more than 640k of ram."
Slashdot Mirror
Your request has already been filled. Don't get greedy, mmmkay?
GOD
Better to give too much credit to a man who did something, than to pretend the challenge never existed. By your argument, Gandhi just happened to come along and give a few good speeches when the British were ready to leave India anyway.
-cwk.
Journalistic standards today are getting weakened by two forces: one is the drive to "get the news out in Internet time," which means printing it first and verifying it later. This is a pardonable sin, in my book. The second, and far worse, is the now seemingly unlimited willingness of the big three networks and CNN to editorialize during newscasts. This is a nefarious and dangerous force, and one which must be fought like Hell.
-cwk.
In case you're under 30, I'll remind you that the European (and American) left once parroted the same ball of #$@! about Reagan and Thatcher. Don't you waste any time thanking them for ending the threat of a Soviet invasion of Europe, okay?
As for Russai and China, I am perfectly happy voting for a candidate who will simultaneously piss two of the most corrupt and tyrannical nations on the face of the Earth.
-cwk.
1. Backing up your opinion(s) with fact(s)
2. Making a reasoned argument in favor of a right-winger
3. Being older and wiser
4. Failure to state how increased use of Linux or the GPL would solve this problem
As a result, we have decided to vote you off the island. Thank you for your participation.
-cwk.
Like I said, it's your press, print what you want. "Abusing Slashdot" will only do more to convince many of us that Slashdot speaks primarily for the far-left wing of the "geek" population.
-cwk.
LOL!
So true. Napster has to be one of the dumbest ideas I've seen get this much funding. People think VCs are the smartest eggs in the box. Please. They just have enough dough to stay ahead of the odds.
-cwk.
If I buy a CD, should I be allowed to rip an MP3 of it for my own purposes? Is the data I am buying inseparable from the medium on which it is distributed? If I can loan a CD to a friend, can I loan him an MP3 file? What is the difference?
The problem here is that the record industry has no sense of proportion here; if they could they would sell CDs with dongles. Likewise, the zealots on the other side think they're entitled to warez and free CDs, and won't understand property rights until they graduate from college and have to start paying their taxes. Please, I believe in IP. I just think that both sides have their heads up their asses on this one.
-cwk.
This fight is really very simple and will only get more simple once Napster is gone.
One group of people believe that if you buy a Britney Spears CD, you also have the right to make copies of it and put it out on Napster.
The other side does not.
That's all there is to it, folks, and I haven't heard a great case from either side yet.
-cwk.
Google == search engine
Napster == pirate MP3s
With Napster gone, there will not be as much of an organized "enemy" to fight. It will just be a giant game of Whack-A-Mole for the RIAA. Gnutella et. al. are far more frightening to them, and there is nothing they can do to stop them.
It's only this arrogant geek-centric view of the world that makes us think that "getting the technology" is so important. You can explain the relevant points of information in five minutes, and even that isn't the fundamental issue.
One side believes that if you buy a Britney Spears CD, you should be able to make copies of it and put it up on Napster. The other side does not. That is the issue, quit obscuring it with whining about "you don't understand the technology."
-cwk.
Most people will learn as much technology as they find useful. Having tasted the fruits of Napster, people will find the alternatives and use them. I wouldn't underestimate the ability of the college-radio types (who often master piles of audiophilic arcana) to pick up Gnutella.
I also wouldn't underestimate the musical taste of nerds. Up here in Boston the pocket-protector crowd is quite avant-garde musically speaking, and this is a fairly conservative town.
Finally, we will still be better off without Napster. With the easy targets picked off, the RIAA et. al. will have to fight this one on principles. It will be a much more honest battle.
-cwk.
The best thing about Napster's alternatives is that they are neither strong nor unified. There is nothing to attack.
Not having the sheep around for a while might not hurt either. I'm a little tired of the whole OSS = Intellectual Piracy spin that we've been catching in the media lately.
-cwk.
The shift in thinking I am talking about has little to do with input/output devices and more to do with the underlying design concept of an idea-based system. Right now everything is built around the notion of fixed documents, which as I stated before are simply proxies for the more basic unit of an idea. What I would love to see is an interface system designed not around documents but around hyperlinks.
Now initially it might work like so: I go to a meeting with a client who suggests a new feature for my product. When I get back to my desk I go and create a new "idea" object. My IdeaOS allows me to keep many such objects around, and at any time I can make one of them the "Active Idea." This might appear as an icon on my desktop.
When you create an idea you can give it all sorts of characteristics. These might be unique things like "Color = Purple" or links such as "Color = Idea #7's Color." Entire idea objects might be simple characteristics of other idea objects.
With an idea object you might have associated "output methods," which could include text, pictures, or other things. Depending on the nature of these things they might be automatically generated and updated, or they may not. But the point, in the short term, is that you at least see the web which ties the whole mess together. Even though you may not be able to say, "if we change the color of the panel our profits will go down," at least the marketing department will know that they need to re-shoot all the pictures for the ad campaign.
From a management perspective this is an ideal way of structuring things. At any point in time the CEO can look at the six (or N) high-level ideas, and perhaps change one slightly. This change will percolate down the chain of ideas, either altering automatically or at least informing everything down the line of the changes that need to be made. Likewise if a person wants to change an idea somewhere down the line, he or she can see the effects this will have on ideas above and lateral to them.
Blah blah. You get the idea...
-cwk.
But the motives of the individuals are not the question; the Soviet Union was evil because of what it created as an organization.
If you look at any organization with a microscope you will see plenty of random Brownian motion going on. But there is still a whole, and this whole moves in a certain direction. There were many good Soviets, but that does not make the Soviet Union any less evil.
This feature was impressive if only for its incredible lack of content. The only people left who are surprised by the public's distrust of the media, are media people themselves.
-cwk.
This is not a problem of kernels, or CPU cycles, or the lack of effective 3D displays. It is really so much more basic, and yet, more challenging.
Even though I have not used a typewriter in a year, and the filing cabinet in my office lays there unused, those two objects are the basis of my computer's design.
We may talk about the paperless office oday, but it is meaningless. We are still document-driven rather than knowledge-driven.
Businesses are fighting this, but it is an expensive war. My company uses a system called Onyx for Customer Relations Management. It is a very complicated and clunky client/server system that cost over $500,000 to acquire, and probably that much again per year to train people and keep it running. Look at ERP systems like SAP or BAAN, these are equally moribund, and yet companies still throw billions at them annually, because they are still the best (only?) option.
People do not think in documents, they think in ideas, but you cannot capture the pulses of neurons and transmit them directly. A document is merely a way to capture this stuff so that it can be stored, retrieved, and transmitted to others.
I work as a product manager, and do everything from talk with clients and users to writing specs and drawing mockups for our developers. Most of what I do revolves around collections of ideas of how a feature should work- "The sort button should be on the right side, and all items should sort in ascneding order..." I spend probably 1/3 of my time just maintaining concurrency between specs for development, marketing docs, training manuals, and management summaries.
Let's say I decide the sort button should be on the left instead- that could mean that dozens of documents need to be altered, even though only one concept has changed. Now think- what if I could simply create a "Sort Order" object, and instantiate it in multiple places: word documents, development specs, and page mockups. If I change it, I change it in just one place, and it either updates automatically or at least tells me what needs to be updated by hand. This would not only save me time, it would prevent bugs and many misunderstandings.
I swear I am learning to code now just so that I can take a stab at this problem. I support Linux because it provides a sized canvas on which many ideas can be painted. Gnome is doing a lot of yeoman work, and I am sure it will be useful, but I would love to see more truly speculative design being done. This is where Linux (or some other free OS) could really revolutionize things, because you do not necessarily have to consider the short-term business imperatives that MS and Apple do. Even if either one of them could deliver a system like the one I have described, I believe it would be a failure, because people are not generally ready for such a thing. A small subset would be, and they will adopt it, and in a short time businesses will realize how much more productive those people can be.
-cwk.
You can do this right now without too much trouble, it just takes a performance hit while the page-server needs to talk to the database.
-cwk.
Then switch to something else or shut up. You must have other choices, and if you don't, then start your own ISP, or be glad you have anything at all.
-cwk.
I am at first shocked at how little enthusiasm I see here for a dramatic vision of technology's future. One would think a bunch of proclaimed geeks would celebrate anyone's attempt at creating a new vision, even if it is still mostly BS. Then again, the captains of sailing vessels were the greatest critics of the early steamships.
-cwk.
1. Is it an enterprise-class solution?
2. Can I get it from an application service provider?
3. Is it web-enabled?
4. What sort of wireless messaging capabilities does it provide?
-cwk.
No, you're severely out-of-touch with the 90% of the world that isn't in IT. I'm 24 and live in South Boston, and make more money than the 45-year-old steelworker next door who has a family and a mortgage and payments on a car. People like me are pushing people like him out of the neighborhood he grew up in, and when it "gets old," we'll move on, while he gets shoved into the distant suburbs. There's more than one perspective to be had here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% for capitalism. But too often people confuse being dealt a lucky hand with skill at playing cards.
If management is making the job miserable, then hell yeah, GTFO of there. I'm not saying you should stay at a job that sucks. It's just that there are tons of people in less-rewarding fields with a lot more to worry about than the average 24-year-old who put in 55 or more hours per week and would be happy to clear $40,000 with full benefits. So I get a little sick of hearing people moan about "poor me" when the deal they have ain't so bad.
-cwk.
55 hours a week? Is that considered hard time in Kansas City? I live in Boston and that is what everyone around here does, for about the same money, in a city that is much more expensive.
I don't always love my job either, but long workweeks aren't going to get any sympathy from me. Sounds like good ol' Worldcom just trimmed a little fat.
-cwk.
-cwk.
One of the great advantages democracy has over most tyrannies is that elections replace the problem of succession inherent in most single-leader systems. It was partly to uphold this principle that George Washington refused to stand for election a third time, even though he could have won without any trouble.
Linus is young so this isn't likely to ever be a serious problem, but sometimes the most important thing a leader can do is to name his eventual successor.
-cwk.
the web is worse than tv for fostering a sense of narrative
Definitely- even "Baywatch" at leasts attempts to wrap a POS plot around the T&A.
The complete and utter cooptation of the web by commercial interests.
Go cry on somebody else's shoulder. It's not polluting any rivers or making the air dirty and it's fostering the transfer of large sums of money from the suits to the pocket-protector crowd.
The web promotes exchange and access to information. In the near future, information by itself will become as much of a commodity as cement or cold-rolled steel. The only people who will profit then will be those who can add value, aka Knowledge. The fewer of these people there are, the more money I will make.
What about society? It will survive, just like it has for generations. In the US there are tons of resources available for people who want to adapt, and a tremendous job market waiting for those who do. If people resist changing with the times they will get run over, and that's nothing new.
-cwk.
The digital revolution will change the way the world gets things done even if it doesn't change the amount of things that get done. I'm willing to bet it will change both.
Krugman seems to have made his bid to join the list of people who said things like, "A Wheel! Who needs one?," "Man will never fly," and "no one will ever need more than 640k of ram."
-cwk.