Never having worked in a "Microsoft Shop," i wonder what kind of support the actual OS vendor really supplies.
They're kind of like the government. They take a tax, you take what you get, you're free to complain all you want, they provide a blame target, but they still keep getting your money and you still keep giving it to them.
Oh - and it's almost as difficult to change an entrenched vendor as it is to change your government. They come out with a Whizz Bang campaign every few years promising the world but it's the same, really.
Every time anyone even hints that they have been silenced, it makes the front page of every newspaper.
Every? What evidence supports that proposition? I'd be more inclined to believe that some important issues make the news and that some don't.
An official ceremonial "ripping of credentials" is a silly, counterproductive idea (unless inciting emotion helps you sell advertsing space) and an inappropriate means for combating global warming skeptics.
Better to keep the entire debate in the open, will all the evidence referenced, all the unanswerable questions available, and all the funding sources of the quoted experts and their venues also fully disclosed.
The politicization of science needs to be fought with some of the same methods that have made scientific inquiry successful in the first place: full disclosure and open debate.
Oh, and it might not hurt if universal public education in our representative democracies helped citizens to recognize the difference between rational analysis and emotional argument.
When computers get overloaded with work like this (host lookups, for example) they ask for help from other computers.
As my stupid first try, how about asking each sysadmin to run a spreadsheet column of hostnames through an md5hash and let them convert servers with a '1' on the first day, 'a' on the tenth day, etc.?
Nope. Microsoft has no shortage of talented coders. The problem is in their management, and that's not going to change until the Vista disaster causes a shareholder revolt, removing their top six levels of deadwood.
A large company like Microsoft has so much monetary momentum that removing the top six levels of deadwood is not imminent.
The easy way for any given talented staff member to remove the top six levels of deadwood is to change to a different company or division.
While I'm inclined to a cynical view that Microsoft is unnecessarily burdening the specification - and they probably don't mind the fact that this will impede the development of competitors products - I do have to admit the possibility that they are addressing a different criticism that many have made of them in the past.
Namely, that Microsoft specifications are incomplete and/or imprecise (corner cases, etc.).
Albeit verbose, is their specification technically watertight?
Or is it merely, "Here's everything Word can do as a result of development since 1985." with no overall logical structure?
What would happen to to the US government if all of its bonds and bills were suddenly called in and no one else bought?
The Federal Reserve would simply print more Federal Reserve Notes (i.e., cash) and purchase those bonds. Of course, there might be some inflationary consequences of such actions, but they do represent a buyer of last resort for US government bonds.
On the topic of wealth stratification: there is something akin to a GINI index that, if it becomes sufficiently extreme, will increase the probability of insurrection. Before that, however, you can expect to see other symptoms such as more repressive legislation, police actions, etc.
Most of the time the wealthy aren't foolish enough to let things get really bad. It's not in their interests to squeeze that hard. Governments which are representative democracies have an advantage in that, despite the influence of money on elections, on media, on legislation, the people will ultimately vote towards policies of wealth redistribution if things get too bad. IMHO, that's a better course of correction that the periodic armed rebellions that afflict repressive governments.
There is something of an issue these days with mobile capital and wealth seeking the most friendly venue (Cayman Islands, Switzerland, etc.). If wealth flees the economies of those states with friendlier social welfare policies (Europe) and invests in states with friendly wealth-preservation policies (China?), then there could eventually be enough force to change governments to radical right or radical left even in what we now consider to be stable democracies. It would be shame.
I agree. While AJAX is teh hot new thang, Javascript still sucks.
Python would be great if:
It could live in a sandbox on the machine.
It had a powerful cross-platform widget set.
It was based on scalable vector graphics.
I think using Python as Jython running on the JVM would satisfy part of this.
Perhaps a PyQT or Swing widget set would fit the bill, but maximum niceness is always hard to achieve cross-platform.
The SVG initiative has the right idea, but it's married to javascript and dom and, last I heard, suffered from an inability to tell how big a box was needed for a string in a font and generally suffered from DesignedByCommittee-itis. Basic rudimentary SVG you can see is going to need scalable widgets pretty soon anyway if AJAX keeps going.
Definitely, we need
an easy scripting language,
safe sandboxing,
scalable client side widgets
While someone might be able to put together a compelling solution using Mozilla and Firefox (XUL was an effort in this direction), it won't fly big time unless the application could be loaded as a plug-in from any old IE user.
I agree there's a logical inconsistency when
old_version = current_version;
current_version++;
happens.
Fortunately for Microsoft, most consumers are so jaded by the onslaught of advertisement they're more than happy to forget that Windows 95 is the Best Operating System Ever.
The essential means for pushing past Good Enough for MSFT is to get pre-installed new versions of software on shiny new laptops used by upper management sending post-modern incompatible file formats down to the masses of worker bees in Corportorporia where enough discomfort will be enough to dislogdge them from Good Enough.
If the economy isn't "free" unless it has absolutely zero state participation, then this is some definition of "free" that isn't very interesting.
Agreed. There are many interesting points on this continuum:
Where the power of the market increases far beyond the power of the state to the point where market players buy and sell legislation.
Where the power of the state is diminished to the point where powerful market players begin to assume responsibility for what is traditionally a state function - such as police action against other market participants, consumers, etc. who are adversely affecting revenue in a severe way.
Where the market discovers the toolbox of psychology which had been traditionally reserved for use by the church or the state.
A case could be made that strong market players, ever in need of a powerful state entity that can provide stability and a legal framework, are slowly abandoning the USA for the PRC.
The last time copyrighted material was released into the public domain was 1977. (non-renewed material - 1991)
The next possible time for new material to enter the public domain is 2048.
That is a huge period of information suppression.
And rightly suppressed from public release.
You recall the original intent of copyright law to encourage authors to create new works for public enjoyment?
It's pretty obvious to everyone that there is an extreme shortage of new information coming out these days. This excruciating dearth of new content is hurting everyone!
I think everyone can agree that increasing copyright protections beyond Walt Disney's lifetime will encourage him to rise from the grave and to write more cartoons based on those medieval fairy tales.
It is certainly *not* unreasonable for Microsoft to overwrite the MBR. Especially when they expect that their OS will be the only one.
I recognize that Microsoft practically adheres to the The Highlander Theory of OS installation. And, practically, since Windows installations have been screwed over by MBR viruses many times in the past I understand where the attitude can be justified.
But this reality sure makes it ironic to see MS's courtroom antics when they try to show that alternative operating systems are bona fide competitors (as if corporate IT organizations spend more than a millisecond considering alternatives to their huge investment in lock-in Windows ware.)
A lot of US political culture assumes the market "takes care of itself", and is almost ideologically against state intervention, to the point the US
The US hasn't completely foresworn state intervention in the market. In fact, the US political systems is setup to receive bids so that state intervention in the market is dictated according to the wishes of the market.
The large amplification of this particular feedback mechanism makes me nervous about the stabilty of both the state and the market.
You're correct in pointing out that people can tell us things which are either true or false. Pretty clear cut.
That's the first hurdle, one which, I'm afraid to say, disqualifies many politicians and pundits.
Secondly, people can tell us things which are technically true, but omit other things that are true in an attempt to frame the issue to promote a particular point of view. News media largely belongs to this category: what qualifies as news and what needn't appear in the news?
Between the first group of liars and the second group of "framers" you'll get virtually all politicians and most pundits. That's sad, true, and I can see why you'd want to throw out this second batch of misleaders with the first batch of blatant liars.
One of the significant underlying problems is that many people in the second group actually believe that they are doing good, acting in good faith, telling us the truth. They simply have no idea that they've been cultivated in a framed box, speaking and acting out of confirmation bias more than a clever amoral attempt in full awarenewss to deceive others in order to achieve particular ends.
and there are still people who aren't convinced it works...
What is it that scares people about the benefits of free trade, apart from them becoming local victims of more efficient producers elsewhere?
It's that free trade establishes a free market in more than just the goods and services sold at Walmart and IT offshoring outfits. We all know intuitively that if the means of production can travel around to find the most efficient worker and cheapest goods that overall efficiency will be optimized and the world as a whole will benefit. But that doesn't necessarily mean that all people benefit equally or event that some people don't suffer greater costs even as the overall size of the pie increases.
Something else is up for sale, because we are dealing with a marketplace of different nations with different laws. Laws and their enforcement can be bought and sold to a greater or lesser degree to modify labor standards, environmental standards, financial transparency, corruption enforcement, property rights, income taxes, corporate taxes, etc. We tend to think of these as rock-hard principles when in fact they may be bought and sold in their own market.
That market in legislation and the possibility of ending up worse-off even as the overall pie gets bigger is what makes people uneasy about globalization.
that promises to shrink the size and scope of government and remove power from the gov't to restore it to the people.
A nice sounding thesis except for a couple items:
there aren't just 2 players in the game for power: government and people. Besides "political parties" there are corporations, unions, churches,..., many of which are more than happy to fill any power vacuum that may open up.
"the people" are still largely gullible, ignorant, emotional actors that can be influenced to a sufficient degree by the intermediate entities that would seek power.
If Munich is going ahead and doing this in the first place they might want to make some fundamental changes to their IT infrastructure since they will be ripping the guts out it anyway.
If restructuring a complete IT workflow system is at all as difficult as platform porting and restructuring a complicated computer program, then you need to resist the temptation of just "fixing things while we're in there anyway".
If things don't work later, then it's too hard to track down the responsible fix.
I've noticed an uptick in "plausible cover" calls to my residence despite being on the Do Not Call list.
Voicemail messages for "Tina" about a new job on cruise ship that is available and they're just letting her know about it on the number that "she left at our web site".
Because "Tina" has "requested further information" and "left her phone number" they have a get out of jail free card.
Right. Never mind that their web site operator is a fly-by-night outfit in a country with a weak legal system.
I'm afraid this annoying porosity of the law won't be adequately addressed for some time given all the other more pressing issues that haven't been resolved.
A new technology which allows developers to just pull together complete applications from pre-fabricated blocks. Where have I heard this before a million times?
From a would-be vendor of pre-fabricated blocks that would like to sell all the blocks to you, to any other would-be block developer, have exclusive control over all future block development and hopefully take a small slice of pie from the huge user base of endusers of the application you develop with pre-fabricated blocks.
The whole venture needs to be open and free and the standard unencubered by the baggage of a large committee comprised of representatives from would-be vendors of pre-fabricated blocks that will come up with a Union of all elements solution.
Face it: retraining 10,000 employees on alternative operating systems won't be nearly as cost effective as maintaining the existing Windows installs, so the desktops will remain Windows for the foreseeable future.
This is really the pivotal issue. And, incomplete and irrational decisions have been made both ways.
Your quick evaluation includes correctly includes the cost of retraining office workers on a new system.
But you have to include the counterweight: What is the net present value of all of the future moneys I must pay to Microsoft to maintain my MS-centric infrastructue?
The answer to that question is vital to any evaluation. It differs for different businesses, institutions, charities, schools, individuals, etc. and I bet Microsoft knows the the answer to that question better than most people so that they can set their prices accordingly.
If you have a few hundred GB of data, you aren't going to want online storage. To access your data is going to take too much time.
Presumably you wouldn't be shuttling hundreds of GB through a local application on a browser-like interface.
Years ago I dealt with large datasets from supercomputers that we wanted to visualize. We were very careful about insuring the big I/O traffic tasks happened where B/W was good (on the same machine that had the big disks, for example).
It does bring up an additional consideration, though. If I want my remote data encrypted that's fine, but I'll still need a high B/W pipe from the data server to a 3rd application server that I do trust to deal with my cleartext.
Re:let's take that further
on
iPods at War
·
· Score: 1
A lot of those soldiers are under 21. I say let's give them the right to drink.
I know where you're coming from and I basically agree.
But consider the people over 21 that have the simultaneous right to drink and the right to vote - look what that has gotten us!
In all probability "Office for Linux" will really be "MS WebOffice" that looks kind of like this:
a high bandwidth connection to msweboffice.com
any standards-compliant web browser
a monthly subscription fee
your willingness to funnel your documents through a third party, just like you do with your webmail, but if not, then...
you can buy a personal business enterprise class MS WebOffice server -- running Windows, of course.
[This is a fictitious business plan. Resemblence to living business plans is purely coincidental. If this were a Real Business Plan you would have been advised about copyrights and forced to sign an NDA.]
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They're kind of like the government. They take a tax, you take what you get, you're free to complain all you want, they provide a blame target, but they still keep getting your money and you still keep giving it to them.
Oh - and it's almost as difficult to change an entrenched vendor as it is to change your government. They come out with a Whizz Bang campaign every few years promising the world but it's the same, really.
How does this bill compare to what I believe are a reasonable set of rights like this?
Inasmuch as
- the marketplace for purchasing legislation is rather distorted with only two sellers (D and R = $) and is pratically opaque and
- as most voters are more concerned/distracted with the battle over Anna Nicole Smith's burial than DMCA, and
- as most voters probably don't even know what the DMCA is.
I expect money (which is needed to retain power in the periodic incumbent fest elections) will again streamroll this bill.Every? What evidence supports that proposition? I'd be more inclined to believe that some important issues make the news and that some don't.
An official ceremonial "ripping of credentials" is a silly, counterproductive idea (unless inciting emotion helps you sell advertsing space) and an inappropriate means for combating global warming skeptics.
Better to keep the entire debate in the open, will all the evidence referenced, all the unanswerable questions available, and all the funding sources of the quoted experts and their venues also fully disclosed.
The politicization of science needs to be fought with some of the same methods that have made scientific inquiry successful in the first place: full disclosure and open debate.
Oh, and it might not hurt if universal public education in our representative democracies helped citizens to recognize the difference between rational analysis and emotional argument.
When computers get overloaded with work like this (host lookups, for example) they ask for help from other computers. As my stupid first try, how about asking each sysadmin to run a spreadsheet column of hostnames through an md5hash and let them convert servers with a '1' on the first day, 'a' on the tenth day, etc.?
A large company like Microsoft has so much monetary momentum that removing the top six levels of deadwood is not imminent.
The easy way for any given talented staff member to remove the top six levels of deadwood is to change to a different company or division.
Isn't this the sequel to SOAP vs XML-RPC?
While I'm inclined to a cynical view that Microsoft is unnecessarily burdening the specification - and they probably don't mind the fact that this will impede the development of competitors products - I do have to admit the possibility that they are addressing a different criticism that many have made of them in the past.
Namely, that Microsoft specifications are incomplete and/or imprecise (corner cases, etc.).
Albeit verbose, is their specification technically watertight?
Or is it merely, "Here's everything Word can do as a result of development since 1985." with no overall logical structure?
The Federal Reserve would simply print more Federal Reserve Notes (i.e., cash) and purchase those bonds. Of course, there might be some inflationary consequences of such actions, but they do represent a buyer of last resort for US government bonds.
On the topic of wealth stratification: there is something akin to a GINI index that, if it becomes sufficiently extreme, will increase the probability of insurrection. Before that, however, you can expect to see other symptoms such as more repressive legislation, police actions, etc.
Most of the time the wealthy aren't foolish enough to let things get really bad. It's not in their interests to squeeze that hard. Governments which are representative democracies have an advantage in that, despite the influence of money on elections, on media, on legislation, the people will ultimately vote towards policies of wealth redistribution if things get too bad. IMHO, that's a better course of correction that the periodic armed rebellions that afflict repressive governments.
There is something of an issue these days with mobile capital and wealth seeking the most friendly venue (Cayman Islands, Switzerland, etc.). If wealth flees the economies of those states with friendlier social welfare policies (Europe) and invests in states with friendly wealth-preservation policies (China?), then there could eventually be enough force to change governments to radical right or radical left even in what we now consider to be stable democracies. It would be shame.
- It could live in a sandbox on the machine.
- It had a powerful cross-platform widget set.
- It was based on scalable vector graphics.
I think using Python as Jython running on the JVM would satisfy part of this.Perhaps a PyQT or Swing widget set would fit the bill, but maximum niceness is always hard to achieve cross-platform.
The SVG initiative has the right idea, but it's married to javascript and dom and, last I heard, suffered from an inability to tell how big a box was needed for a string in a font and generally suffered from DesignedByCommittee-itis. Basic rudimentary SVG you can see is going to need scalable widgets pretty soon anyway if AJAX keeps going.
Definitely, we need
- an easy scripting language,
- safe sandboxing,
- scalable client side widgets
While someone might be able to put together a compelling solution using Mozilla and Firefox (XUL was an effort in this direction), it won't fly big time unless the application could be loaded as a plug-in from any old IE user.I agree there's a logical inconsistency when
old_version = current_version;
current_version++;
happens.
Fortunately for Microsoft, most consumers are so jaded by the onslaught of advertisement they're more than happy to forget that Windows 95 is the Best Operating System Ever.
However, more difficult than overcoming the "this version is better" switcheroo is, IMHO, the "my version is Good Enough©".
Good Enough© has won contests against worthy contenders such as "New and Improved" and "Technologically Superior" and "Long Term Best Interest". Indeed, Microsoft owes much of its own success against its competitors by providing a Good Enough solution that has become hard to avoid. OS2 anyone?
The essential means for pushing past Good Enough for MSFT is to get pre-installed new versions of software on shiny new laptops used by upper management sending post-modern incompatible file formats down to the masses of worker bees in Corportorporia where enough discomfort will be enough to dislogdge them from Good Enough.
Agreed. There are many interesting points on this continuum:
A case could be made that strong market players, ever in need of a powerful state entity that can provide stability and a legal framework, are slowly abandoning the USA for the PRC.
And rightly suppressed from public release.
You recall the original intent of copyright law to encourage authors to create new works for public enjoyment?
It's pretty obvious to everyone that there is an extreme shortage of new information coming out these days. This excruciating dearth of new content is hurting everyone!
I think everyone can agree that increasing copyright protections beyond Walt Disney's lifetime will encourage him to rise from the grave and to write more cartoons based on those medieval fairy tales.
I recognize that Microsoft practically adheres to the The Highlander Theory of OS installation. And, practically, since Windows installations have been screwed over by MBR viruses many times in the past I understand where the attitude can be justified.
But this reality sure makes it ironic to see MS's courtroom antics when they try to show that alternative operating systems are bona fide competitors (as if corporate IT organizations spend more than a millisecond considering alternatives to their huge investment in lock-in Windows ware.)
The US hasn't completely foresworn state intervention in the market. In fact, the US political systems is setup to receive bids so that state intervention in the market is dictated according to the wishes of the market.
The large amplification of this particular feedback mechanism makes me nervous about the stabilty of both the state and the market.
No it's not.
You're correct in pointing out that people can tell us things which are either true or false. Pretty clear cut.
That's the first hurdle, one which, I'm afraid to say, disqualifies many politicians and pundits.
Secondly, people can tell us things which are technically true, but omit other things that are true in an attempt to frame the issue to promote a particular point of view. News media largely belongs to this category: what qualifies as news and what needn't appear in the news?
Between the first group of liars and the second group of "framers" you'll get virtually all politicians and most pundits. That's sad, true, and I can see why you'd want to throw out this second batch of misleaders with the first batch of blatant liars.
One of the significant underlying problems is that many people in the second group actually believe that they are doing good, acting in good faith, telling us the truth. They simply have no idea that they've been cultivated in a framed box, speaking and acting out of confirmation bias more than a clever amoral attempt in full awarenewss to deceive others in order to achieve particular ends.
What is it that scares people about the benefits of free trade, apart from them becoming local victims of more efficient producers elsewhere?
It's that free trade establishes a free market in more than just the goods and services sold at Walmart and IT offshoring outfits. We all know intuitively that if the means of production can travel around to find the most efficient worker and cheapest goods that overall efficiency will be optimized and the world as a whole will benefit. But that doesn't necessarily mean that all people benefit equally or event that some people don't suffer greater costs even as the overall size of the pie increases.
Something else is up for sale, because we are dealing with a marketplace of different nations with different laws. Laws and their enforcement can be bought and sold to a greater or lesser degree to modify labor standards, environmental standards, financial transparency, corruption enforcement, property rights, income taxes, corporate taxes, etc. We tend to think of these as rock-hard principles when in fact they may be bought and sold in their own market.
That market in legislation and the possibility of ending up worse-off even as the overall pie gets bigger is what makes people uneasy about globalization.
A nice sounding thesis except for a couple items:
- there aren't just 2 players in the game for power: government and people. Besides "political parties" there are corporations, unions, churches,
..., many of which are more than happy to fill any power vacuum that may open up.
- "the people" are still largely gullible, ignorant, emotional actors that can be influenced to a sufficient degree by the intermediate entities that would seek power.
No, I don't like it either.If restructuring a complete IT workflow system is at all as difficult as platform porting and restructuring a complicated computer program, then you need to resist the temptation of just "fixing things while we're in there anyway".
If things don't work later, then it's too hard to track down the responsible fix.
I haven't used it myself, but Alexander Grahn's movie15 package purports to embed animations into LaTeX PDF documents.
I've noticed an uptick in "plausible cover" calls to my residence despite being on the Do Not Call list.
Voicemail messages for "Tina" about a new job on cruise ship that is available and they're just letting her know about it on the number that "she left at our web site".
Because "Tina" has "requested further information" and "left her phone number" they have a get out of jail free card.
Right. Never mind that their web site operator is a fly-by-night outfit in a country with a weak legal system.
I'm afraid this annoying porosity of the law won't be adequately addressed for some time given all the other more pressing issues that haven't been resolved.
From a would-be vendor of pre-fabricated blocks that would like to sell all the blocks to you, to any other would-be block developer, have exclusive control over all future block development and hopefully take a small slice of pie from the huge user base of endusers of the application you develop with pre-fabricated blocks.
The whole venture needs to be open and free and the standard unencubered by the baggage of a large committee comprised of representatives from would-be vendors of pre-fabricated blocks that will come up with a Union of all elements solution.
This is really the pivotal issue. And, incomplete and irrational decisions have been made both ways.
Your quick evaluation includes correctly includes the cost of retraining office workers on a new system.
But you have to include the counterweight:
What is the net present value of all of the future moneys I must pay to Microsoft to maintain my MS-centric infrastructue?
The answer to that question is vital to any evaluation. It differs for different businesses, institutions, charities, schools, individuals, etc. and I bet Microsoft knows the the answer to that question better than most people so that they can set their prices accordingly.
Presumably you wouldn't be shuttling hundreds of GB through a local application on a browser-like interface.
Years ago I dealt with large datasets from supercomputers that we wanted to visualize. We were very careful about insuring the big I/O traffic tasks happened where B/W was good (on the same machine that had the big disks, for example).
It does bring up an additional consideration, though. If I want my remote data encrypted that's fine, but I'll still need a high B/W pipe from the data server to a 3rd application server that I do trust to deal with my cleartext.
I know where you're coming from and I basically agree.
But consider the people over 21 that have the simultaneous right to drink and the right to vote - look what that has gotten us!
You're onto something.
In all probability "Office for Linux" will really be "MS WebOffice" that looks kind of like this:
[This is a fictitious business plan. Resemblence to living business plans is purely coincidental. If this were a Real Business Plan you would have been advised about copyrights and forced to sign an NDA.]