OK, I'm not particularly fond of companies that try to restrict competition - that included, in the late 70's/early 80's, IBM, AT&T, Bell Canada (in fact, most of the Canadian telcos), and MS. But every single FACT I stated - the IBM FUD, the tremendous advantage MS got from piggybacking on IBM, the sneering attitude of large business to the Mac - all of those are objective and true, as some other commentators have graciously provided support to.
You can disagree with my opinions all you like; that's your privilege. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - don't ignore the facts because you don't like my opinions. That's just being pig-headed.
139 posts on/. on child porn issues, and not a single "Think of the children!" comment? I'm appalled.
But seriously, this is just another example of what I call the "extended childhood" of North American children. Forget the Puritans; it was common all across Europe to marry children of 13-14 years of age for centuries. (Hell, didn't Jerry Lee Lewis marry a 14-year old in 1950's?) But even though our kids, thanks to TV, computers, and the net, are much more educated than kids were in the 1930's, we keep trying to protect them from their own natural urges for longer and longer periods of time.
And this weird American prudishness just continues to amaze me. Here in Canada, on regular broadcast TV, not just cable, you can see nudity and soft-core sex practically every night. And on plain vanilla cable (which virtually all Canadians have), not specialty pay channels, you can even see hard core sex late night on the weekends. I really don't get why people think it's fine for the kids to see hundreds (if not thousands) of murders as they grow up, but think that if their kids see a naked breast, they'll be instantly corrupted.
Since you're probably too young, let me enlighten you. In the late 70's, when PC's began to appear, corporate IT managers were deathly afraid of them. IBM, like AT&T, did an excellent job of selling FUD - "Hey, if you connect one of those PC's, you'll bring down your entire SNA network!". And I'm sure you're quite unaware of the overwhelming market share (90+%) that IBM had in the computing world at the time. But those damn users, tired of the glacial slowness of mainframe application development, slow response times, and especially the lack of a spreadsheet capability, kept demanding a way to connect PC's to their network. So IBM developed the PC, and contracted with M$ to develop DOS. (There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that Gates offered to sell M$ for some trifling sum - $10 million, I've heard - but IBM, which felt that it would only sell a few thousand PC's, turned him down.)
So now, corporate managers had a PC that was blessed by IBM. They started to buy them. And, as they did, those damn users kept demanding them. So the sheep^HIT managers bought more. By the time Apple introduced the Mac, the PC already had a huge lead because of this tremendous IBM lock in. And when the Mac was introduced, I was working for a company that was developing a PBX controller based on Mac technology. But when we took it to our first prospects, their overwhelming response was "You're not going to run it on that toy, are you?". Since we needed multi-tasking, which DOS didn't offer at the time, we had to build a complete user interface on top of SCO Unix. Then the question we got was "Does it run Lotus 1-2-3?".
Time passed, and the demand for personal computers exploded. (I remember Sir Terry Mathews, billionaire owner of, at various times, Mitel, Newbridge, and March Networks, sneering at it, saying "What executive would want one of those on his desk?" - probably one of the few errors he made in his career.) But again, as the majority of IT managers would only authorise IBM PC's, DOS kept growing. Even when the PC clones arrived, it was a hard sell to IT managers, who were still told by their IBM account reps that connecting clones could bring down their whole network.
Of course, in industries that didn't have massive networks (K-12, arts, advertising, etc.), the Mac did quite well. But when you compare that market to the much larger banking, finance, manufacturing, health care, and government markets - M$ built a huge lead. And that was because they piggybacked on the IBM connection, NOT BECAUSE they were superior.
Oh, I quite disagree; Apple made a conscious choice to keep the Mac hardware and OS closed so that they could control the interaction between the two. They've always been open to have outside developers create the applications. Don't you remember - or perhaps you're too young - the constant crashes of MS-DOS machines, in part because of its ridiculous 64k RAM limit? The numerous incompatibilities with video cards, printers, etc.? Apple decided that by closing the system, they would avoid all these problems, and users would have a better experience.
Now, with the iPhone, 1) Apple offered a pretty good suite of apps from day 1, and 2) I'm sure they wanted to get some experience and correct any bugs before opening it up to outside developers. It was a brand new product, and if I were developing such a thing, I'd want some control over how it worked initially, so that it didn't get a market reputation as being unreliable. As a telecom engineer, I've noticed how it's funny that people accept it when their computer crashes, but go completely ballistic when their phones don't work. Now that they've got more experience, they've begun to open it up to developers, haven't they? Again, I see it as a case that they want apps they know are going to work to protect its reputation for reliability.
I'm sure Firefox will be authorized at some time. Skype - I don't know, I bet AT&T has an agreement that doesn't let Apple put voip on the phone, but that's just speculation on my part. AT&T, however, does have a long history of stifling competition (cf Carterphone, MCI, etc.).
And more to the point - why should your surfing history and emails be kept for two years? Do you have to store your snail mail for two years? Man, America is getting increasingly totalitarian. What's next, body cavity searches when you go to the library?
Go read your math book again. 4 pi r squared is the formula for the surface area of a sphere. You might know those as "balls", though I do wonder if you have any.
Well, in my universe, the area of circle is pi*r squared. So you would multiply by two if you could use both sides of the quarter. 3.1415 * 2 *.995/2 ^2 works out to about 1.5 square inches. I mean, come on man - a 3.5" by 5" piece of paper has a total surface area of 35 square inches. You seriously think that a quarter has the same area as the piece of paper?
Please hook me up with whatever you're smoking; it seems pretty powerful.
Aside from many of those people being Liberal-leaning in general
I'm so sick of the word "liberal" being misused. The original liberals were all about more personal liberty, and fewer restrictions. Now it means a bunch of neo-fascists who want to meddle in everyone's lives. But I agree with you - the Republicans are just as bad. Government spending in Canada and the US is about 40% of GDP already, and with Obama spending an almost additional 5% (which many people think will double to about $1.4 trillion, or 10%), that means literally half the dollars earned will be some form of government cheque.
Good luck maintaining the value of the greenback. Personally, I'd buy gold.
This is just insanely stupid. Advertising provides information, and even some entertainment. How do you expect companies to sell their products without advertising? Are they going to magically inform us by telepathy? I use ads to identify sales, to get product information, and to learn about new products. Some ads are annoying - Head-On comes to mind - but others are funny or touching. And when a new business crops up, such as a restaurant, how are they going to let people know they're there without advertising? You clearly know nothing about business.
Water vapor produces a positive feedback element-- the hotter it gets, the more water vapor in the atmosphere, and the higher the water-induced greenhouse effect.
But, seriously, does that necessarily follow? One could also argue that the more water vapour in the air, the more clouds there are, which could conceivably increase the albedo. Since the top of clouds over 18,000 feet are almost all ice, and not water vapour, and ice has a very high reflectivity, it's at the very least arguable to say that the two effects might offset. Of course, maybe they don't; I don't profess to have any data one way or the other. I'm just saying this is the type of reasoning that drives me nuts; it could be true, it could be false, but the AGW crowd takes one side, doesn't always provide data, or ignores data that refutes their position, and calls anyone who disagrees with them a nutter. Not saying you do, though. Some other poster referred to Mythbusters proving this; I haven't seen that episode, but did they provide for clouds with ice at the top? I kind of doubt it, having seen how they approach other things.
In a thread above, some guy claimed water levels in Lake Superior were dropping. I provided a link to a joint Canadian-US government agency which has been monitoring water levels on the Great Lakes since 1918 - years before anyone even thought about AGW, so I don't think anyone could suggest they were biased one way or another - which clearly showed the levels have fluctuated within about a 1 foot range for all of the lakes. In particular, I pointed out that Lake Superior is today about 4.7 inches lower than it was in 1918, on a mean depth of about 601 feet. However, it is still higher today than it was in 1926. As you stated, there are many effects, positive and negative, and we don't really know how they all interact.
I'm skeptical of AGW because I've read so many forecasts ("Tuvalu will be completely underwater in three years! Antarctica is melting!", etc.) when I keep seeing data (atmospheric screen shots showing the southern ice cap hasn't changed size over the last 20 years, temperatures creeping lower, not higher, over the last nine years, etc.) that contradicts them. I studied engineering at college; when there's a model that predicts certain things, and the physical reality is the opposite, I tend to have some doubts about the model. When the data start to match the model, I'll believe in AGW too.
FUCK YOU, retard. I linked to a Canadian government agency, and a Canadian newspaper. I do not work for anyone right now; I'm a self-employed financial counsellor, you gutless, anonymous suck. I don't control what the reporter writes, and I'm not a dishonest little turd like you probably are who would try to edit or disguise what was originally written. I provided two honest links to refute what the original turd wrote. Are you so mentally deranged that you actually believe a few guys flying in planes over literally millions of square kilometres can count every single polar bear - a white object on a white background - accurately? If so, you're even more stupid than the original poster.
Get off my internet, you simpleton.
More Democrat misinformation. Glass-Steagall, the law keeping investment banks and commercial banks separate, was repealed under President Bill Clinton in 1999. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which committed commercial banks and S&L's (at the time, the providers of almost all private sector mortgages) to ensure that a proportionate number of loans were made in low income and minority districts was signed in 1997 by President Jimmy Carter. A related act, the FHE Financial Safety and Soundness Act (nice bit of Orwellian doublespeak there, as it encouraged exactly the opposite), was signed into law in 1992 by President Bill Clinton. The Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking Act (I'm abbreviating these acts' full names from now on because I'm tired of typing) which would base federal decisions to allow banks to engage in interstate banking and/or merge with another bank in another state in part on the banks' CRA ratings was signed into law in 1994 by President Bill Clinton. Note that "community organizers" were encouraged to provide public comments on merger proposals, which helped put more pressure on banks to lend to marginal borrowers. In October 1997, First Union Capital Markets and Bear, Stearns & Co launched the first publicly available securitization of Community Reinvestment Act loans, issuing $384.6 million of such securities, while Bill Clinton was president.
Now, I am not all suggesting that Republicans are blameless; they are responsible for laxness as well, but to suggest it's all their fault is revisionism at best, and just blatant propaganda at worst.
Of course, I get to say this as a smug Canadian; some of our big banks have suffered some losses as a result of dabbling in the US mortgage market, but none are in any danger of failing. We managed to find a way to allow our big 6 national banks to get into the brokerage business while still keeping enough check on them that they couldn't get into serious trouble. And those regulations were passed by various Conservative and Liberal governments, so I'm not anyone's side there either.
I heard a guy the other day on the radio who was supposed to be the world's number one expert on energy. He said "Barring a technological advance, we'll still be a fossil fuel economy in 25 years". I wanted to mention to him that "technological advances" are exactly what human beings are good at.
So right, which is why the constant stifling of technological advance drives me nuts. If people want to shut down coal burning plants, let's build some nuclear ones. But other people keep bringing up the straw men of nuclear waste or Three Mile Island. At some point in time, you have to choose the lady or the tiger. No technological change comes without some risk. Take the automobile; since 1975, there have been 1.5 million deaths in the US from car accidents. This is only slightly less than the total of all American military deaths since the War of 1812. I'm sure if you went back to 1950 (couldn't find the list), car deaths would overtake war deaths. But, while many people protest against war, I don't hear anyone protesting we should give up cars.
So if the Chinese electric car and the Chevy Volt are actually introduced in the next year or two, I think we'll see a massive changeover, especially by commuters, in just a few years. Why pay for gas at $2-3/gal, when you can charge your car overnight at off-peak rates? And here's a free one for government - you can encourage the changeover by letting single drivers in e-cars use the carpool lanes. Cost - zero, but incentive to people to buy e-cars - huge.
Redundant? Most people who've studied science past Grade 10 are pretty aware of this principle. But maybe it needs to be hammered into some people's heads again.
Yes, don't let the facts get in your way. http://www.waterlevels.gc.ca/C&A/netgraphs_e.html The charts here show that water levels in all the Great Lakes have fluctuated up and down over the last 90 years, and some are higher (Lake Erie, Lake Ontario), and some are down (Lake Superior, Lakes Michigan and Huron) from 1918, but all are higher than lows they reached in the late 1920's, when global warming, according to the so-called models, hadn't taken effect.
The data, collected by the Canadian Hydrographic Service, in conjunction with a similar US agency, show that, for example, the mean water level for Lake Superior in 1918 was 183.33 metres. In 2008, it was 183.21. (Since you're probably SI challenged, that's a difference of 4.7 inches on a 601 foot deep lake.) That's a difference of.000645%. ZOMFG - 6.5 ten thousandths of a percent! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
| Frankly, I think he should have stabbed everyone with an HIV syringe.
Quite possibly the most mind-numbingly stupid comment ever posted on slashdot
I don't know; I thought his comment about getting "cocky" CEO's to "release" the cure
for AIDs was equally stupid. US companies spent $10 billion on AIDS research in 2007. If any one had a cure, he could make billions of dollars. The idea that someone is sitting on that gold mine is just laughable.
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You can disagree with my opinions all you like; that's your privilege. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - don't ignore the facts because you don't like my opinions. That's just being pig-headed.
You win. A much more appropriate choice. Never saw the show, though.
But seriously, this is just another example of what I call the "extended childhood" of North American children. Forget the Puritans; it was common all across Europe to marry children of 13-14 years of age for centuries. (Hell, didn't Jerry Lee Lewis marry a 14-year old in 1950's?) But even though our kids, thanks to TV, computers, and the net, are much more educated than kids were in the 1930's, we keep trying to protect them from their own natural urges for longer and longer periods of time.
And this weird American prudishness just continues to amaze me. Here in Canada, on regular broadcast TV, not just cable, you can see nudity and soft-core sex practically every night. And on plain vanilla cable (which virtually all Canadians have), not specialty pay channels, you can even see hard core sex late night on the weekends. I really don't get why people think it's fine for the kids to see hundreds (if not thousands) of murders as they grow up, but think that if their kids see a naked breast, they'll be instantly corrupted.
Please tell that to John Ashcroft, the sanctimonious prig.
Duck Dodgers! Space garbageman of the 21st century!
That's what I thought as soon as I RTFA. So, it must be true. Life imitates art!
Nope, that's what they were called. But thanks to the OP for reminding me; I'd forgotten it.
So now, corporate managers had a PC that was blessed by IBM. They started to buy them. And, as they did, those damn users kept demanding them. So the sheep^HIT managers bought more. By the time Apple introduced the Mac, the PC already had a huge lead because of this tremendous IBM lock in. And when the Mac was introduced, I was working for a company that was developing a PBX controller based on Mac technology. But when we took it to our first prospects, their overwhelming response was "You're not going to run it on that toy, are you?". Since we needed multi-tasking, which DOS didn't offer at the time, we had to build a complete user interface on top of SCO Unix. Then the question we got was "Does it run Lotus 1-2-3?".
Time passed, and the demand for personal computers exploded. (I remember Sir Terry Mathews, billionaire owner of, at various times, Mitel, Newbridge, and March Networks, sneering at it, saying "What executive would want one of those on his desk?" - probably one of the few errors he made in his career.) But again, as the majority of IT managers would only authorise IBM PC's, DOS kept growing. Even when the PC clones arrived, it was a hard sell to IT managers, who were still told by their IBM account reps that connecting clones could bring down their whole network.
Of course, in industries that didn't have massive networks (K-12, arts, advertising, etc.), the Mac did quite well. But when you compare that market to the much larger banking, finance, manufacturing, health care, and government markets - M$ built a huge lead. And that was because they piggybacked on the IBM connection, NOT BECAUSE they were superior.
Here endeth the lesson.
Now, with the iPhone, 1) Apple offered a pretty good suite of apps from day 1, and 2) I'm sure they wanted to get some experience and correct any bugs before opening it up to outside developers. It was a brand new product, and if I were developing such a thing, I'd want some control over how it worked initially, so that it didn't get a market reputation as being unreliable. As a telecom engineer, I've noticed how it's funny that people accept it when their computer crashes, but go completely ballistic when their phones don't work. Now that they've got more experience, they've begun to open it up to developers, haven't they? Again, I see it as a case that they want apps they know are going to work to protect its reputation for reliability.
I'm sure Firefox will be authorized at some time. Skype - I don't know, I bet AT&T has an agreement that doesn't let Apple put voip on the phone, but that's just speculation on my part. AT&T, however, does have a long history of stifling competition (cf Carterphone, MCI, etc.).
Oh, foo. What I want to know is how far could Ballmer throw the phone?
And more to the point - why should your surfing history and emails be kept for two years? Do you have to store your snail mail for two years? Man, America is getting increasingly totalitarian. What's next, body cavity searches when you go to the library?
Go read your math book again. 4 pi r squared is the formula for the surface area of a sphere. You might know those as "balls", though I do wonder if you have any.
Please hook me up with whatever you're smoking; it seems pretty powerful.
Hey, this is Slashdot. No economic jokes allowed!
I'm so sick of the word "liberal" being misused. The original liberals were all about more personal liberty, and fewer restrictions. Now it means a bunch of neo-fascists who want to meddle in everyone's lives. But I agree with you - the Republicans are just as bad. Government spending in Canada and the US is about 40% of GDP already, and with Obama spending an almost additional 5% (which many people think will double to about $1.4 trillion, or 10%), that means literally half the dollars earned will be some form of government cheque.
Good luck maintaining the value of the greenback. Personally, I'd buy gold.
This is just insanely stupid. Advertising provides information, and even some entertainment. How do you expect companies to sell their products without advertising? Are they going to magically inform us by telepathy? I use ads to identify sales, to get product information, and to learn about new products. Some ads are annoying - Head-On comes to mind - but others are funny or touching. And when a new business crops up, such as a restaurant, how are they going to let people know they're there without advertising? You clearly know nothing about business.
Hey, the Delorean can make 117 trips!
But, seriously, does that necessarily follow? One could also argue that the more water vapour in the air, the more clouds there are, which could conceivably increase the albedo. Since the top of clouds over 18,000 feet are almost all ice, and not water vapour, and ice has a very high reflectivity, it's at the very least arguable to say that the two effects might offset. Of course, maybe they don't; I don't profess to have any data one way or the other. I'm just saying this is the type of reasoning that drives me nuts; it could be true, it could be false, but the AGW crowd takes one side, doesn't always provide data, or ignores data that refutes their position, and calls anyone who disagrees with them a nutter. Not saying you do, though. Some other poster referred to Mythbusters proving this; I haven't seen that episode, but did they provide for clouds with ice at the top? I kind of doubt it, having seen how they approach other things.
In a thread above, some guy claimed water levels in Lake Superior were dropping. I provided a link to a joint Canadian-US government agency which has been monitoring water levels on the Great Lakes since 1918 - years before anyone even thought about AGW, so I don't think anyone could suggest they were biased one way or another - which clearly showed the levels have fluctuated within about a 1 foot range for all of the lakes. In particular, I pointed out that Lake Superior is today about 4.7 inches lower than it was in 1918, on a mean depth of about 601 feet. However, it is still higher today than it was in 1926. As you stated, there are many effects, positive and negative, and we don't really know how they all interact.
I'm skeptical of AGW because I've read so many forecasts ("Tuvalu will be completely underwater in three years! Antarctica is melting!", etc.) when I keep seeing data (atmospheric screen shots showing the southern ice cap hasn't changed size over the last 20 years, temperatures creeping lower, not higher, over the last nine years, etc.) that contradicts them. I studied engineering at college; when there's a model that predicts certain things, and the physical reality is the opposite, I tend to have some doubts about the model. When the data start to match the model, I'll believe in AGW too.
Enough, good night.
FUCK YOU, retard. I linked to a Canadian government agency, and a Canadian newspaper. I do not work for anyone right now; I'm a self-employed financial counsellor, you gutless, anonymous suck. I don't control what the reporter writes, and I'm not a dishonest little turd like you probably are who would try to edit or disguise what was originally written. I provided two honest links to refute what the original turd wrote. Are you so mentally deranged that you actually believe a few guys flying in planes over literally millions of square kilometres can count every single polar bear - a white object on a white background - accurately? If so, you're even more stupid than the original poster. Get off my internet, you simpleton.
Now, I am not all suggesting that Republicans are blameless; they are responsible for laxness as well, but to suggest it's all their fault is revisionism at best, and just blatant propaganda at worst.
Of course, I get to say this as a smug Canadian; some of our big banks have suffered some losses as a result of dabbling in the US mortgage market, but none are in any danger of failing. We managed to find a way to allow our big 6 national banks to get into the brokerage business while still keeping enough check on them that they couldn't get into serious trouble. And those regulations were passed by various Conservative and Liberal governments, so I'm not anyone's side there either.
So right, which is why the constant stifling of technological advance drives me nuts. If people want to shut down coal burning plants, let's build some nuclear ones. But other people keep bringing up the straw men of nuclear waste or Three Mile Island. At some point in time, you have to choose the lady or the tiger. No technological change comes without some risk. Take the automobile; since 1975, there have been 1.5 million deaths in the US from car accidents. This is only slightly less than the total of all American military deaths since the War of 1812. I'm sure if you went back to 1950 (couldn't find the list), car deaths would overtake war deaths. But, while many people protest against war, I don't hear anyone protesting we should give up cars.
And, if there's been one constant trend with technologies of all kinds over the last 30 years, it's the rapidly decreasing time from a technology's introduction to the time when it's adopted by a significant percentage of the population. Great chart here: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XJseql2u5l0/R7H6Ocva9AI/AAAAAAAAB5s/_HcTnkO8xPw/s1600-h/consumption_rates_technology.jpg
So if the Chinese electric car and the Chevy Volt are actually introduced in the next year or two, I think we'll see a massive changeover, especially by commuters, in just a few years. Why pay for gas at $2-3/gal, when you can charge your car overnight at off-peak rates? And here's a free one for government - you can encourage the changeover by letting single drivers in e-cars use the carpool lanes. Cost - zero, but incentive to people to buy e-cars - huge.
I call pseudo-Godwin!
Redundant? Most people who've studied science past Grade 10 are pretty aware of this principle. But maybe it needs to be hammered into some people's heads again.
The data, collected by the Canadian Hydrographic Service, in conjunction with a similar US agency, show that, for example, the mean water level for Lake Superior in 1918 was 183.33 metres. In 2008, it was 183.21. (Since you're probably SI challenged, that's a difference of 4.7 inches on a 601 foot deep lake.) That's a difference of .000645%. ZOMFG - 6.5 ten thousandths of a percent! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Polar bear numbers are not decreasing. The numbers that suggest they are are compiled by aerial surveys. Inuit hunters on the ground, and the residents of Churchill, Manitoba have a different opinion http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1ea8233f-14da-4a44-b839-b71a9e5df868
I'd call you an f***ing idiot, but I seriously doubt you're smart enough to have ever had sex.
Quite possibly the most mind-numbingly stupid comment ever posted on slashdot
I don't know; I thought his comment about getting "cocky" CEO's to "release" the cure for AIDs was equally stupid. US companies spent $10 billion on AIDS research in 2007. If any one had a cure, he could make billions of dollars. The idea that someone is sitting on that gold mine is just laughable.