An earlier story covered discoveries that some commercial software already incorporated recognition of the Eurion constellation.
Once again, though, I disagree with yet another technical solution to a social problem. It's just like speed bumps in parking lots. Make life inconvenient and miserable for everyone because of the small percentage that abuse the system...
I see lots of Mom `n Pop businesses that "computerized" themselves in the late 1980's with DOS systems that keep cranking away year after year.
As business owners, they keep a sharp eye on costs and a critical, suspicious eye on whiz-bang claims from the IT industry. A real upgrade would have to be able to justify itself in cost-benefit terms comparable to what they obtained in 1988. That's hard to do for a small business, easier for larger businesses that can spread the benefits over a larger field.
We've had the opportunity and the ability to deliver "rich client experience in the browser" for five years (Flash, Java, DHTML, ActiveX), and users/execs haven't demanded it yet. Why do you think anything will change?
Good point, but IMHO those other means of enriching the web client interface towards the levels that native applications have enjoyed for years are something for which there is latent demand, particularly in the corporate and business arena.
All those previous solutions have been afflicted variously by clunkiness, insecurity, non-standardness, cross platform portability problems, installed base of old clients using old standards.
The biggest barriers right now are two-fold: one, the installed base of users of old browsers need a tangible benefit (like free, easy MP3 or video of TV shows) from the new browser they would download.
Two, MS, which has built a near monopoly on the web browser and has the ability to rollout a new standard in IE7, would need to see a business benefit to themselves. They do, but they can afford to take their time developing their own standards away from the light of competition and in a way to bring them the best revenue in the future.
the type of person who can design a good theme is unlikely to be able to help with the other bugs
...so that these two parts of bug-fixing and feature-polishing Firefox can be done in parallel by two different people. That's a great thing, not to be taken lightly.
[It always sucks when development slows because There Can Be Only One developer that knows how to fix the problem, add the feature, etc.]
Ever since emails at MS got exposed in court and Monica Lewinsky's emails to her friend about the insensitive clod not getting her flowers everyone has decided to have an Official Policy For Getting Rid of Old Potentially Incriminating Email.
It's a double plus advantage: clear out space on the servers, increase the speed of searches through old email, and decrease legal liability.
But it doesn't increase my trust in those companies or government agencies that have such policies.
Verbal communications, hints and innuendo have provided vanishing trails of evidence for years while paper has reinforced accountability. With use of paper ebbing, accountability will decrease and, along with it, trust in other people and institutions. As if we needed less trust in powerful institutions, which operate under enough invisibility and leave-no-trace principles now that much greater abuses of trust are possible than before.
I think I provide rather excellent support to myself on them. Very rarely do I ever get placed on hold or have some idiot trying to describe something to me that he barely understands.
You haven't been talking to yourself for very long, I see.
With the above, it surprises me that instead of things like Atkins, there is not a more racial approach to diet. I.E. A "northern european" diet heavier on dairy, an asian diet heavier on fish etc.
Actually, there is.
A while back people started coming out with the notion that the ideal diet (and, for that matter, entire lifestyle including exercise regimen) depended on blood type, which roughly characterizes some racial features.
I have been working in gene mapping for years and always felt that the 'junk' was there for a reason.
Sometimes, too, the gene may have moved into the junkyard for a good reason.
Just imagine reactivating some junk human genes to see what happens:
Human females have a more pronounced season of going into and out of heat.
Get an extra furrowed forehead to better protect vision during rainstorms and intense heat on veldt.
Get large hairy ears to better pick up on approaching predators like lions.
Given the current rate of change in human environment due to social and cultural changes, I'd venture to guess we have a lot more junk DNA that needs to exit (eg, propensity to develop diabetes if not on a hunter/gatherer diet) than we have need to reactivate old junk DNA.
If we could engineer useful new DNA, probably creating a visual transmitter capable of expressing information more quickly than voice or hand movement would be high on the list. I would call this the Teletubby gene...
A key thing here, too, is that confidence in your ability means you don't need to rely upon on closing the source to keep your customers. They will stay because it is manifestly evident that you do good work and have good people.
If your people become the key developers of Project X, which is GPL'd, then they will be the ones that people turn to for expertise.
Not just in adding features to Project X, but also in deploying and maintaining Project X at their site, customizing it to their business needs, etc. Those latter tasks are probably where more of the money is, even though programmers and developers like the glamour of the former. Just do the former to establish the reputation you need for the latter.
Sure, someone can fork off a Project AlmostX from your codebase, but the good work on Project X will have an established reputation and people will want to stick to the mainstream.
I mean, really, how much of the marketplace has been siphoned off by MySuperPatchedLinux or by YourSQL?
It would be fair to consider that transportation system federally-subsidized as well.
Good and bad points to that, too. Lately, one of the bad points being the relative inefficiency of trucks vs rail traffic as measured using in units of
distance*weight/quantity-petroleum
.
Personally, IMHO the feds ought to subsidize construction of more light rail networks, capable of higher speeds, and using modern computer controls that were not available when the current rail network was built.
Yes, but was that in the specs? Or was that something you voluntarily done for your client?
I consider myself a pretty good programmer, taking pains to write quality code, that is extensible, powerful, flexible, elegent, etc. It is anathema for me to do a shoddy job.
But some years ago I had a wise boss who told me
not to deliver a Cadillac to the customer when a Volkswagen will do.
They want to turn on the radio, tune it to whatever radio station is most convenient, and hear good, intersting, complex music. That's not going to happen, though.
Sigh. Unfortunately, you're right.
Up until about a year ago we had a wonderful local station that played music like that.
And I listened to it.
It was great.
But, somehow, financially they weren't able to keep afloat. To this day, I have to wonder which factors contributed to that insolvency:
actual low audience
perceived low audience ratings from some ratings company
incompetent station management
Anyway, I had no idea the station was about to go under. Instead, one day I just started hearing Yet Still Even Another Damn Adult Oriented Dino Rock Station with The Same Damn Songs.
But I am lazy; I like to listen to new and interesting stuff and am willing to listen to some songs that I don't find as good. It's a bigger time and money investment to go to a concert that turns out to suck.
he had already earned it but took the deferred compensation. He would have got it no matter who got that contact.
That's absolutely correct.
But it's also correct that picking deferred compensation when taxes are going to go down on future income is a wise business decision on Cheney's part.
Especially so if he has an influential hand in affecting tax policy. And he does.
Some people might call that a classic conflict of interest. That's for the old-fashioned, though.
Others might call it the invisible hand of the marketplace where Cheney's acting in "enlightened self-interest."
Therefore, it's just up to the rest of us gullible participants in this "marketplace of government policy" to figure out our own self interests and to act accordingly. Dick Cheney is our teacher.
This has the advantage that you could do this with a straight face, too. "Sir, since I'll be leaving and don't want you to suffer any downtime I'll need to transfer the Admin/root privileges to each user until you decide upon a new sysadmin."
But it's the most evil revenge possible, giving heavy firepower to the incompetent. Only the wise will ask you if they can get into trouble wielding power; most droids will just assume the mantle and start directing the broom to carry the water pails.
(It would be a good idea to make a really good backup, put the copies of the CD's in multiple safe places, and be ready for the inevitable phone call a few weeks later asking you to come back and "fix a little problem we're having..."
Of course, it will be on an hourly basis, fully loaded because you're self-employed, work is very short term, etc.
notice the apparent lack of any mention of the free software community
The whole impetus in the marketplace has been to continually grow the commoditised part of the computer.
Start from the x86 compatible CPU, move up through standard hardware such as ATA, SCSI, USB, PCI, etc., up through the BIOS.
Sun and MS would like for the line to stop right there.
But it doesn't have to.
The "commodity computer" ought to include a constantly growing set of standard pieces that anyone can take for granted, such as multi-tasking OS, a web server, an SQL server, etc.
Both companies really need to move up the food chain away not only from hardward, but up from the OS and generic software services. I think both Java and.NET are somewhat in this direction, but both companies seem to want to own the higher level interface and then milk it for cash in the same way that they have earlier for lower level parts of the computer.
but the underlying APIs and technology involved are completely different from the old GUI API.
MS needs to get this part right to satisfy customers running legacy third party applications developed under previous version of Windows. It's often been observed, and rightly so, that MS' biggest competitor is itself - old versions of its own software competing against its new offerings.
If MS doesn't do a good enough job emulating their old API's under the sleek new and improved Longhorn, then they run the danger that people will just run Linux with Wine and not upgrade to Longhorn.
This would be an example of competition to MS motivating them to improve their new product quality beyond what would have been necessary if there were no competition.
Anonymity is a particularly valuable right or privelege (and I constantly decry how it becomes eroded through the onslaught of spam).
Anonymity a natural extension of the free press and the right of free speech. Dissenting ideas, even if they have merit, can be suppressed because of fear of retribution from the majority opinion, fear of getting targeted for "terrorism profile-matching investigation", etc.
In the event that regular speech and the free expression of ideas in the press is in jeopardy, it is exceedingly important that dissenting ideas have some forum. If not, then we put ourselves in danger of being led down an irrational path.
I have an idea. I submit my idea. I get immediate, high-volume feedback.
So, if Slashdot had enough money, perhaps they could actually have more of a traditional editor.
Someone who culled through the story and the postings and provided a concise synopsis of the most valuable reader comments.
Perhaps, like editors of peer-reviewed technical journals, the editor could delegate "summary authority" to various karmawhore posters to reduce direct workload...
I have my cell setup to not send Caller ID, but have it programmed to *82 turn it on selectively only to people I know that have anonymous call blocking.
Most businesses are smart enough to not block anonymous calls. It coulda been a sale. But, then, I sure don't want them logging my sacred cell number.
Not to malign my favorite site, but I noticed that I could find old Slashdot postings more easily with Google than I could with Slashdot's built-in search.
MS has the people and money to do pretty much as it pleases.
It would not please it to undermine Windows by selling Office for Linux, in particular.
Yet, if Linux continues to grow and MS wants to be a part of the software vendor marketplace it has to be able to offer compelling products on whatever the customers are using.
I think they could sell a lot of copies of Office for Linux right now.
But they'll wait because they don't want to be part of the movement putting a knife in the back of Windows. Office for OS X isn't so chancy because they feel comfortable that Apple has a relatively slowly-changing market share.
The problem is that by the time they decide Windows the underlying OS has been marginalized by a "better commodity", the Linux users will have adapted and made due with OpenOffice, StarOffice, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
So, then, is "software" auf Deutsch pronounced "zoft-var-eh"?
An earlier story covered discoveries that some commercial software already incorporated recognition of the Eurion constellation.
Once again, though, I disagree with yet another technical solution to a social problem. It's just like speed bumps in parking lots. Make life inconvenient and miserable for everyone because of the small percentage that abuse the system...
There are still people that use DOS-applications
I see lots of Mom `n Pop businesses that "computerized" themselves in the late 1980's with DOS systems that keep cranking away year after year.
As business owners, they keep a sharp eye on costs and a critical, suspicious eye on whiz-bang claims from the IT industry. A real upgrade would have to be able to justify itself in cost-benefit terms comparable to what they obtained in 1988. That's hard to do for a small business, easier for larger businesses that can spread the benefits over a larger field.
We've had the opportunity and the ability to deliver "rich client experience in the browser" for five years (Flash, Java, DHTML, ActiveX), and users/execs haven't demanded it yet. Why do you think anything will change?
Good point, but IMHO those other means of enriching the web client interface towards the levels that native applications have enjoyed for years are something for which there is latent demand, particularly in the corporate and business arena.
All those previous solutions have been afflicted variously by clunkiness, insecurity, non-standardness, cross platform portability problems, installed base of old clients using old standards.
The biggest barriers right now are two-fold: one, the installed base of users of old browsers need a tangible benefit (like free, easy MP3 or video of TV shows) from the new browser they would download.
Two, MS, which has built a near monopoly on the web browser and has the ability to rollout a new standard in IE7, would need to see a business benefit to themselves. They do, but they can afford to take their time developing their own standards away from the light of competition and in a way to bring them the best revenue in the future.
the type of person who can design a good theme is unlikely to be able to help with the other bugs
...so that these two parts of bug-fixing and feature-polishing Firefox can be done in parallel by two different people. That's a great thing, not to be taken lightly.
[It always sucks when development slows because There Can Be Only One developer that knows how to fix the problem, add the feature, etc.]
if it's not there, they can't subpoena it.
Ever since emails at MS got exposed in court and Monica Lewinsky's emails to her friend about the insensitive clod not getting her flowers everyone has decided to have an Official Policy For Getting Rid of Old Potentially Incriminating Email.
It's a double plus advantage: clear out space on the servers, increase the speed of searches through old email, and decrease legal liability.
But it doesn't increase my trust in those companies or government agencies that have such policies.
Verbal communications, hints and innuendo have provided vanishing trails of evidence for years while paper has reinforced accountability. With use of paper ebbing, accountability will decrease and, along with it, trust in other people and institutions. As if we needed less trust in powerful institutions, which operate under enough invisibility and leave-no-trace principles now that much greater abuses of trust are possible than before.
I think I provide rather excellent support to myself on them. Very rarely do I ever get placed on hold or have some idiot trying to describe something to me that he barely understands.
You haven't been talking to yourself for very long, I see.
do you want the 'pretty version'? Be warned that it may affect system performance."
This kind of "truth in labeling" ought to be applied more broadly than just computers. Say, to girlfriends, for example.
With the above, it surprises me that instead of things like Atkins, there is not a more racial approach to diet. I.E. A "northern european" diet heavier on dairy, an asian diet heavier on fish etc.
Actually, there is.
A while back people started coming out with the notion that the ideal diet (and, for that matter, entire lifestyle including exercise regimen) depended on blood type, which roughly characterizes some racial features.
I have been working in gene mapping for years and always felt that the 'junk' was there for a reason.
Sometimes, too, the gene may have moved into the junkyard for a good reason.
Just imagine reactivating some junk human genes to see what happens:
Human females have a more pronounced season of going into and out of heat.
Get an extra furrowed forehead to better protect vision during rainstorms and intense heat on veldt.
Get large hairy ears to better pick up on approaching predators like lions.
Given the current rate of change in human environment due to social and cultural changes, I'd venture to guess we have a lot more junk DNA that needs to exit (eg, propensity to develop diabetes if not on a hunter/gatherer diet) than we have need to reactivate old junk DNA.
If we could engineer useful new DNA, probably creating a visual transmitter capable of expressing information more quickly than voice or hand movement would be high on the list. I would call this the Teletubby gene...
A key thing here, too, is that confidence in your ability means you don't need to rely upon on closing the source to keep your customers. They will stay because it is manifestly evident that you do good work and have good people.
If your people become the key developers of Project X, which is GPL'd, then they will be the ones that people turn to for expertise.
Not just in adding features to Project X, but also in deploying and maintaining Project X at their site, customizing it to their business needs, etc. Those latter tasks are probably where more of the money is, even though programmers and developers like the glamour of the former. Just do the former to establish the reputation you need for the latter.
Sure, someone can fork off a Project AlmostX from your codebase, but the good work on Project X will have an established reputation and people will want to stick to the mainstream.
I mean, really, how much of the marketplace has been siphoned off by MySuperPatchedLinux or by YourSQL?
so as to to pay less taxes.
Me, too.
Like Microsoft, I got a huge tax deduction last year on my income tax return for XBox and MSN ventures.
and the interstate trucking system,
It would be fair to consider that transportation system federally-subsidized as well.
Good and bad points to that, too. Lately, one of the bad points being the relative inefficiency of trucks vs rail traffic as measured using in units of
Personally, IMHO the feds ought to subsidize construction of more light rail networks, capable of higher speeds, and using modern computer controls that were not available when the current rail network was built.
Yes, but was that in the specs? Or was that something you voluntarily done for your client?
I consider myself a pretty good programmer, taking pains to write quality code, that is extensible, powerful, flexible, elegent, etc. It is anathema for me to do a shoddy job.
But some years ago I had a wise boss who told me
They want to turn on the radio, tune it to whatever radio station is most convenient, and hear good, intersting, complex music. That's not going to happen, though.
Sigh. Unfortunately, you're right.
Up until about a year ago we had a wonderful local station that played music like that.
And I listened to it.
It was great.
But, somehow, financially they weren't able to keep afloat. To this day, I have to wonder which factors contributed to that insolvency:
Anyway, I had no idea the station was about to go under. Instead, one day I just started hearing Yet Still Even Another Damn Adult Oriented Dino Rock Station with The Same Damn Songs.
But I am lazy; I like to listen to new and interesting stuff and am willing to listen to some songs that I don't find as good. It's a bigger time and money investment to go to a concert that turns out to suck.
Prosecution for signal overlap is just like trespassing.
It's interesting how much of new technology is getting wrapped in terms of property rights, just as the electromagnetic spectrum has become.
I swear, 100 years from now people will assume you have to pay for things that would dumbfound us now.
Pretty much in the same way that aboriginal Americans several centuries ago were confused with European concepts of "land owndership".
he had already earned it but took the deferred compensation. He would have got it no matter who got that contact.
That's absolutely correct.
But it's also correct that picking deferred compensation when taxes are going to go down on future income is a wise business decision on Cheney's part.
Especially so if he has an influential hand in affecting tax policy. And he does.
Some people might call that a classic conflict of interest. That's for the old-fashioned, though.
Others might call it the invisible hand of the marketplace where Cheney's acting in "enlightened self-interest."
Therefore, it's just up to the rest of us gullible participants in this "marketplace of government policy" to figure out our own self interests and to act accordingly. Dick Cheney is our teacher.
This has the advantage that you could do this with a straight face, too. "Sir, since I'll be leaving and don't want you to suffer any downtime I'll need to transfer the Admin/root privileges to each user until you decide upon a new sysadmin."
But it's the most evil revenge possible, giving heavy firepower to the incompetent. Only the wise will ask you if they can get into trouble wielding power; most droids will just assume the mantle and start directing the broom to carry the water pails.
(It would be a good idea to make a really good backup, put the copies of the CD's in multiple safe places, and be ready for the inevitable phone call a few weeks later asking you to come back and "fix a little problem we're having..."
Of course, it will be on an hourly basis, fully loaded because you're self-employed, work is very short term, etc.
notice the apparent lack of any mention of the free software community
The whole impetus in the marketplace has been to continually grow the commoditised part of the computer.
Start from the x86 compatible CPU, move up through standard hardware such as ATA, SCSI, USB, PCI, etc., up through the BIOS.
Sun and MS would like for the line to stop right there.
But it doesn't have to.
The "commodity computer" ought to include a constantly growing set of standard pieces that anyone can take for granted, such as multi-tasking OS, a web server, an SQL server, etc.
Both companies really need to move up the food chain away not only from hardward, but up from the OS and generic software services. I think both Java and .NET are somewhat in this direction, but both companies seem to want to own the higher level interface and then milk it for cash in the same way that they have earlier for lower level parts of the computer.
but the underlying APIs and technology involved are completely different from the old GUI API.
MS needs to get this part right to satisfy customers running legacy third party applications developed under previous version of Windows. It's often been observed, and rightly so, that MS' biggest competitor is itself - old versions of its own software competing against its new offerings.
If MS doesn't do a good enough job emulating their old API's under the sleek new and improved Longhorn, then they run the danger that people will just run Linux with Wine and not upgrade to Longhorn.
This would be an example of competition to MS motivating them to improve their new product quality beyond what would have been necessary if there were no competition.
the separate issues of privacy and anonymity
Good points.
Anonymity is a particularly valuable right or privelege (and I constantly decry how it becomes eroded through the onslaught of spam).
Anonymity a natural extension of the free press and the right of free speech. Dissenting ideas, even if they have merit, can be suppressed because of fear of retribution from the majority opinion, fear of getting targeted for "terrorism profile-matching investigation", etc.
In the event that regular speech and the free expression of ideas in the press is in jeopardy, it is exceedingly important that dissenting ideas have some forum. If not, then we put ourselves in danger of being led down an irrational path.
I have an idea. I submit my idea. I get immediate, high-volume feedback.
So, if Slashdot had enough money, perhaps they could actually have more of a traditional editor.
Someone who culled through the story and the postings and provided a concise synopsis of the most valuable reader comments.
Perhaps, like editors of peer-reviewed technical journals, the editor could delegate "summary authority" to various karmawhore posters to reduce direct workload...
To deactivate: press *87
I have my cell setup to not send Caller ID, but have it programmed to *82 turn it on selectively only to people I know that have anonymous call blocking.
Most businesses are smart enough to not block anonymous calls. It coulda been a sale. But, then, I sure don't want them logging my sacred cell number.
So I can type "g site:slashdot.org..
Not to malign my favorite site, but I noticed that I could find old Slashdot postings more easily with Google than I could with Slashdot's built-in search.
That makes financial success less of a given.
Innovators dilemma.
MS has the people and money to do pretty much as it pleases.
It would not please it to undermine Windows by selling Office for Linux, in particular.
Yet, if Linux continues to grow and MS wants to be a part of the software vendor marketplace it has to be able to offer compelling products on whatever the customers are using.
I think they could sell a lot of copies of Office for Linux right now.
But they'll wait because they don't want to be part of the movement putting a knife in the back of Windows. Office for OS X isn't so chancy because they feel comfortable that Apple has a relatively slowly-changing market share.
The problem is that by the time they decide Windows the underlying OS has been marginalized by a "better commodity", the Linux users will have adapted and made due with OpenOffice, StarOffice, etc.