But with WordPerfect it actually was a good reason: It's a superior product. I've used Word (from 6.0), Star/Open/LibreOffice(.org), LateX for 15 years, PageMaker/Indesign, even Google docs.
I still consider WordPerfect the best word processor. I have used it from version 4.2 to X5 (I don't have the newer X6/X7).
Where Microsoft wins: - It's got an Office Suite, not just a word processor. Excel is the killer application, even as PowerPoint and Visio are better than the competition as well. - Groupware. Exchange is a continent ahead of any competition and essential for most larger businesses. - MS offers a whole ecosystem, from OS, coding platforms, database servers and what have you. All of which cooperate quite a lot better than any competing solutions.
At my home and even at my job there is very little MS, but we're the exception and with reason. For our line of work (custom high performance computing hardware and software) MS not a good solution. But for previous employers MS was/is. The Open Source community is just not very good at providing enterprise solutions, as most people in the community have not the faintest idea what that would look like.
I think it started with institutes like CERN, but there are more and more large "instruments" that require hundreds, if not thousands of people to get at a few very interesting results. The main reason is that for instruments like that, the boundary between engineer and researcher is very vague, as every part is a unique design and requires quite a bit of R&D to create.
As a result the papers that do come out of research like that are going to have large lists of authors/contributors.
Pushing the boundaries of science more and more blurs the lines between engineering and research. Turning what would have been engineers into co-authors of the papers that publish the results.
I've seen a presentation of their more recent results, but that doesn't seem to be public yet, I can't find a link.
One of the coolest things we did recently with the LOFAR telescope was to observe the Solar Eclipse in real time, I think it has never been done with a radio telescope before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I think Apple will stay in the desktop/laptop market as long as it's the development platform for their software. I believe it's a core principle of how Apple operates to not be dependent on anyone but Apple. It's why they have all their design and technology in house. This gives them the immense power to switch suppliers and manufacturing locations and completely control their own future.
Pc-clone manufaturers and brands come and go because the parts are interchangeable. Apple doesn't live in that world and actively tries to prevent it.
Apple might let someone like Samsung, Asus or Foxconn manufacture something for them, but they do all the design themselves to prevent what Compaq did to IBM.
There are a few cracks in that Apple philosophy, in that they use Intel chips and some other PC components for their desktops, but they have demonstrated to be able to successfully switch if need when they moved from Power to x86. They have enormous power because they can believably tell any of their suppliers that they might move. It's why they have their own OS, office suite, cloud, browser, etc.
It gives them long term security and complete independence. This results in a company that is much more agile than it's size and age would let you to believe. It is one of the core reasons Apple is able to do what it does.
What Apple learned from the PC manufacturers, is to not depend on anyone. They are one of the few companies who keep all design and technology in-house. It's key to how Apple operates that they can and do switch suppliers and manufacturing locations.
The whole PC-clone industry became possible because IBM and others didn't own the designs or the technology. It is why companies like ASUS, MSI, AMD and many others exist in the PC industry, but there are no equivalents in Apple land.
It is the key difference between the PC and Apple industry. It is also the reason why I think Apple will be making machines for OSX for a long time, at least as long as those are needed to develop software for Apple (iOS or whatever). Apple doesn't want to depend on any one and doesn't want anyone to be easily able to copy them. It is at the core of their business model.
I think you need to blame a system where schools like that exist in the first place.
Dutch schools are funded per student, with extra budget for students with lower language proficiency and similar problems. There's also some extra funding for schools in small villages, monumental buildings, etc.
Secondly, students are put in classes with kids of similar academic achievement (4-5 levels), to allow them to challenge each other. This also separates academic ability from background, although it's not perfect.
What a silly idea to couple school funding to local property taxes. That's really weird and almost certainly will lead to large inequality. Is that really how it works in the USA?
Maybe not the engine, but a lot of parts in my car (a 2001 Saab 9-3) need the "tech 2 unit" to properly de-mate and then re-unite them with the car electronics. This includes things like the climate control, stereo and in-dash info display.
230 ppm is quite high. In general you want your car to run with lower emissions, as it also means that it's using its fuel more efficiently. Those hydrocarbons are unburnt fuel.
And yes, most refineries make even the dirtiest trucks look clean. Follow the money and local ordinances "to keep the jobs in the town". Doesn't mean they're good for your health or the environment though.
Exchange is a given in many a corporate environment. Not for technical reasons, but for legal and business reasons. Choices like Microsoft and Oracle are almost a default because of two reasons: - You can have a nice Platinum contract for same business day support. - You have a target for your lawyers if things go wrong.* **
Neither of these are provided by the kind of project you mention.
*) I'm talking from Europe, it's probably worse in the USA. **) I'm talking something that can absorb a €100+ million damage claim.
Inflation is an inherent part of our money system. Interest is what creates inflation. 95%+ of this is created by the banks through mortgages. The other few percent is partially done by governments and is mostly needed to compensate for population and economy growth. This is true for most economies, only some Arabic ones have a somewhat different system, because return-on-investment is illegal there because of religious reasons. Most of the world used to work that way until the late middle ages.
Most things today depend on interest or other return-on-investment, like mortgages and other loans, credit, pensions, shares and dividend, savings accounts, etc. It's an integral part of our economy and capitalism in general. Learn something yourself instead of listening to the talking heads on TV.
I bought a good inkjet printer years ago that wasn't cheap, but had cheap ink. I bought it at the height of Hewlett-Packard's "liquid gold ink - cheap printer" strategy.
I still use it frequently. Individual cartridges are â3.50, a full set of four CMYB is â11.00.
It's the Canon Pixma IP3000. It prints at 4800 x 1200 dpi. It prints double sided from its 150 page paper tray. It does photo prints well when using the correct paper. It can handle envelopes, cardboard, CDs and other materials that can't be bent or folded from it's manual feed. I think it's from 2003 and I still find it a great printer.
You are complaining about the funding models, not peer reviewed publishing. I agree on the funding models having problems. The issue there is that most funding is influenced by politics, which in turn is influenced by established industry powers.
The problem with that philosophy is the less able drivers, like the elderly, who need that amount of attention to function at, or too often, well below the speed limit.
The speed limit doesn't exist for you, roads are designed so that grandma can drive it. That's why it is boring for most able bodied younger people.
The second problem is that a lot of people underestimate their reaction time. This is because your body lies to you and delays your perception to make it seem you react much faster than you actually do.
The combination of these two factors is that with higher speed limits, or when speeding, you end up with lot's of crashes between high speed vehicles and "grandma".
There is plenty of evidence. for example, traffic accidents in Belgium used to be 4x higher than in the Netherlands, until they changed their law to allow speed cameras, just like in the Netherlands. This dropped the number of traffic accidents by a factor of 3 as people stopped speeding. That's a HUGE difference.
My problem with the new Star Trek movies is that they're fun, but they're not Star Trek. They're an SF action movie in Star Trek clothes.
Star Trek is always about the human condition. When I leave the theatre after a ST movie, I want to be asking myself if I would have done the same thing as in the movie.
The Adams ST movies have none of that, they're as empty as a Transformers movie.
A Star Trek movie needs to make me wonder and question myself.
I think the first-part-the-pole district based system is very flawed.
- It makes lawmakers more beholden to local constituencies that to the general good of the country. - It leads to a two party system. - It makes it really hard to create new parties to keep the system fresh and with-the-times. - Because everything is represented in only two parties, these parties are overly broad and tend to have a lot of infighting. - It makes things like gerrymandering possible. - It makes some votes much more valuable than others. (swing states).
It's only advantage is that you're almost sure to always have a governing majority. Unless you split your government into multiple chambers and elections of course...
If pay-per-month streaming services would be available in my country. (The Netherlands).
The only options I have are Spotify and iTunes. And iTunes only started selling a few movies last year, before that they only had music.
iTunes USA refuses to sell to me, as do Netflix, Hulu and the like, because I'm in the wrong country.
If I'm lucky something will be released on DVD two or more years after it was aired for the first time, if it's released in Region 2 at all, sometimes there is only a Region 1 release.
No wonder illegal downloading is big in my country.
Unfortunately Netflix and such aren't available in my country. I do have a Spotify premium account and I like it a lot.
It all comes down to being able to watch/listen where, when and how I want without limitations.
Spotify allows me to download my playlists to my phone or my laptop and listen to it everywhere.
I had cases where I had legitimately bought the Blu-Ray, but the system crapped out when I tried to run it and it needed a software update. After messing with it for over an hour, I just downloaded a ripped version and watched that, it was easier than trying to get the Blu-Ray disk to work. (Avatar if you're interested, there were a lot of people with problems with that one).
I also might want to watch some episodes of a TV series I have on my phone or tablet. But this is a pain as well.
I hardly download anything. Nowadays if I can't easily watch/listen to it legally in the way I want, I just don't buy it. (I haven't bought a Blu-Ray disk since the pain I had with the Avatar disk, even though I did get it to run after messing with the software update some more on a later date).
If it's harder to use the legal medium than it is to use the illegal medium, then they need t fix things.
Which in turn is Google's fault for designing Android to be sold that way. They deliberately choose not to have control over the fragmentation and issues like this.
There are definitely positions at the Bachelor and Master level (In Comp.Sci or equivalent) at universities and research institutes. Also don't forget large oil firms and the like.
There are two types: - Scientific Programmers: Those that work on implementing, scaling and optimizing algorithms for number crunching purposes. Knowledge of the specific field is certainly an advantage here. - Generic Programmers: From lab automation to webpages, database backends, archives and various other things that organisations need to do their work.
It's hard to get a permanent contract though, as a lot of the funding is on projects for 2-5 years.
Job adverts might be on the sites of the organisations themselves and sometimes the employers have a combined website. In the Netherlands there is AcademicTransfer for example, where all publicly funded research organisations pool their job adds.
I think in places like NYC it has to do with real estate prices. Everything above ground is probably expensive as humans can live/work there. It's the underground places where no sunlight penetrates that gets the machines and utilities as nobody cares if they have any windows. Also these machines are usually heavy so it's easy to put them into basements as no lifting is required and means the structure of the building can be lighter.
It's not a good idea in case of disasters, but it makes a lot of economic sense in the short term for a lot of reasons. The problem is that especially the USA isn't very good at having their infrastructure and buildings robust against disasters. To an outsider it's obvious that the choice in the US seems to be that it's cheaper to rebuild than to make things hurricane/flooding/tornado/earthquake-proof. The best example is Katrina. Areas in the Netherlands have separate organisations for managing the water. It's not part of government and has it's own taxes and separate elections. A lot of these go back to medieval times. They care for the waterways, dikes, levies, shelters, disaster relief and similar structures. It's their sole responsibility and absolute priority. So there is never a trade-off against healthcare, military, education, transportation or any other government function. It's like if you would make FEMA and the corps of engineers into completely independent organisations with their own taxes and elections.
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But with WordPerfect it actually was a good reason: It's a superior product.
I've used Word (from 6.0), Star/Open/LibreOffice(.org), LateX for 15 years, PageMaker/Indesign, even Google docs.
I still consider WordPerfect the best word processor. I have used it from version 4.2 to X5 (I don't have the newer X6/X7).
Where Microsoft wins:
- It's got an Office Suite, not just a word processor. Excel is the killer application, even as PowerPoint and Visio are better than the competition as well.
- Groupware. Exchange is a continent ahead of any competition and essential for most larger businesses.
- MS offers a whole ecosystem, from OS, coding platforms, database servers and what have you. All of which cooperate quite a lot better than any competing solutions.
At my home and even at my job there is very little MS, but we're the exception and with reason. For our line of work (custom high performance computing hardware and software) MS not a good solution. But for previous employers MS was/is. The Open Source community is just not very good at providing enterprise solutions, as most people in the community have not the faintest idea what that would look like.
Ah, then which jobs would you include or not include? Make-up? Costume design? Modelling? Lighting? Sound?
What would be your criteria for being an important enough contribution?
Lol, Terabytes.
I think you mean Petabytes.
Terabytes is what we did in the nineties.
- Radioastronomy (and probably other disciplines).
I think it started with institutes like CERN, but there are more and more large "instruments" that require hundreds, if not thousands of people to get at a few very interesting results. The main reason is that for instruments like that, the boundary between engineer and researcher is very vague, as every part is a unique design and requires quite a bit of R&D to create.
As a result the papers that do come out of research like that are going to have large lists of authors/contributors.
Pushing the boundaries of science more and more blurs the lines between engineering and research. Turning what would have been engineers into co-authors of the papers that publish the results.
Here is a presentation by Pim Schellaert (referenced in the article) with some more information:
http://www.lofar.org/wiki/lib/...
I've seen a presentation of their more recent results, but that doesn't seem to be public yet, I can't find a link.
One of the coolest things we did recently with the LOFAR telescope was to observe the Solar Eclipse in real time, I think it has never been done with a radio telescope before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In general you can find a lot of info about what we're doing with the LOFAR telescope here:
http://www.astron.nl/dailyimag...
and here: http://www.lofar.org/wiki/doku...
I think Apple will stay in the desktop/laptop market as long as it's the development platform for their software. I believe it's a core principle of how Apple operates to not be dependent on anyone but Apple. It's why they have all their design and technology in house.
This gives them the immense power to switch suppliers and manufacturing locations and completely control their own future.
Pc-clone manufaturers and brands come and go because the parts are interchangeable. Apple doesn't live in that world and actively tries to prevent it.
Apple might let someone like Samsung, Asus or Foxconn manufacture something for them, but they do all the design themselves to prevent what Compaq did to IBM.
There are a few cracks in that Apple philosophy, in that they use Intel chips and some other PC components for their desktops, but they have demonstrated to be able to successfully switch if need when they moved from Power to x86. They have enormous power because they can believably tell any of their suppliers that they might move. It's why they have their own OS, office suite, cloud, browser, etc.
It gives them long term security and complete independence. This results in a company that is much more agile than it's size and age would let you to believe. It is one of the core reasons Apple is able to do what it does.
What Apple learned from the PC manufacturers, is to not depend on anyone. They are one of the few companies who keep all design and technology in-house.
It's key to how Apple operates that they can and do switch suppliers and manufacturing locations.
The whole PC-clone industry became possible because IBM and others didn't own the designs or the technology. It is why companies like ASUS, MSI, AMD and many others exist in the PC industry, but there are no equivalents in Apple land.
It is the key difference between the PC and Apple industry. It is also the reason why I think Apple will be making machines for OSX for a long time, at least as long as those are needed to develop software for Apple (iOS or whatever). Apple doesn't want to depend on any one and doesn't want anyone to be easily able to copy them. It is at the core of their business model.
Then maybe you're spending on the wrong things, just like in US healthcare?
I think you need to blame a system where schools like that exist in the first place.
Dutch schools are funded per student, with extra budget for students with lower language proficiency and similar problems. There's also some extra funding for schools in small villages, monumental buildings, etc.
Secondly, students are put in classes with kids of similar academic achievement (4-5 levels), to allow them to challenge each other. This also separates academic ability from background, although it's not perfect.
What a silly idea to couple school funding to local property taxes. That's really weird and almost certainly will lead to large inequality. Is that really how it works in the USA?
Maybe not the engine, but a lot of parts in my car (a 2001 Saab 9-3) need the "tech 2 unit" to properly de-mate and then re-unite them with the car electronics. This includes things like the climate control, stereo and in-dash info display.
230 ppm is quite high.
In general you want your car to run with lower emissions, as it also means that it's using its fuel more efficiently. Those hydrocarbons are unburnt fuel.
And yes, most refineries make even the dirtiest trucks look clean. Follow the money and local ordinances "to keep the jobs in the town". Doesn't mean they're good for your health or the environment though.
Exchange is a given in many a corporate environment.
Not for technical reasons, but for legal and business reasons.
Choices like Microsoft and Oracle are almost a default because of two reasons:
- You can have a nice Platinum contract for same business day support.
- You have a target for your lawyers if things go wrong.* **
Neither of these are provided by the kind of project you mention.
*) I'm talking from Europe, it's probably worse in the USA.
**) I'm talking something that can absorb a €100+ million damage claim.
Inflation is an inherent part of our money system. Interest is what creates inflation. 95%+ of this is created by the banks through mortgages.
The other few percent is partially done by governments and is mostly needed to compensate for population and economy growth.
This is true for most economies, only some Arabic ones have a somewhat different system, because return-on-investment is illegal there because of religious reasons. Most of the world used to work that way until the late middle ages.
Most things today depend on interest or other return-on-investment, like mortgages and other loans, credit, pensions, shares and dividend, savings accounts, etc.
It's an integral part of our economy and capitalism in general. Learn something yourself instead of listening to the talking heads on TV.
I bought a good inkjet printer years ago that wasn't cheap, but had cheap ink. I bought it at the height of Hewlett-Packard's "liquid gold ink - cheap printer" strategy.
I still use it frequently. Individual cartridges are â3.50, a full set of four CMYB is â11.00.
It's the Canon Pixma IP3000. It prints at 4800 x 1200 dpi. It prints double sided from its 150 page paper tray. It does photo prints well when using the correct paper. It can handle envelopes, cardboard, CDs and other materials that can't be bent or folded from it's manual feed. I think it's from 2003 and I still find it a great printer.
You are complaining about the funding models, not peer reviewed publishing.
I agree on the funding models having problems. The issue there is that most funding is influenced by politics, which in turn is influenced by established industry powers.
The point of the ISS was to figure out long term space habitation and how to build a big space station.
I don't know how to do that any other way, please enlighten me.
The problem with that philosophy is the less able drivers, like the elderly, who need that amount of attention to function at, or too often, well below the speed limit.
The speed limit doesn't exist for you, roads are designed so that grandma can drive it. That's why it is boring for most able bodied younger people.
The second problem is that a lot of people underestimate their reaction time. This is because your body lies to you and delays your perception to make it seem you react much faster than you actually do.
The combination of these two factors is that with higher speed limits, or when speeding, you end up with lot's of crashes between high speed vehicles and "grandma".
There is plenty of evidence. for example, traffic accidents in Belgium used to be 4x higher than in the Netherlands, until they changed their law to allow speed cameras, just like in the Netherlands. This dropped the number of traffic accidents by a factor of 3 as people stopped speeding.
That's a HUGE difference.
My problem with the new Star Trek movies is that they're fun, but they're not Star Trek. They're an SF action movie in Star Trek clothes.
Star Trek is always about the human condition. When I leave the theatre after a ST movie, I want to be asking myself if I would have done the same thing as in the movie.
The Adams ST movies have none of that, they're as empty as a Transformers movie.
A Star Trek movie needs to make me wonder and question myself.
I think the first-part-the-pole district based system is very flawed.
- It makes lawmakers more beholden to local constituencies that to the general good of the country.
- It leads to a two party system.
- It makes it really hard to create new parties to keep the system fresh and with-the-times.
- Because everything is represented in only two parties, these parties are overly broad and tend to have a lot of infighting.
- It makes things like gerrymandering possible.
- It makes some votes much more valuable than others. (swing states).
It's only advantage is that you're almost sure to always have a governing majority. Unless you split your government into multiple chambers and elections of course...
If pay-per-month streaming services would be available in my country. (The Netherlands).
The only options I have are Spotify and iTunes. And iTunes only started selling a few movies last year, before that they only had music.
iTunes USA refuses to sell to me, as do Netflix, Hulu and the like, because I'm in the wrong country.
If I'm lucky something will be released on DVD two or more years after it was aired for the first time, if it's released in Region 2 at all, sometimes there is only a Region 1 release.
No wonder illegal downloading is big in my country.
Unfortunately Netflix and such aren't available in my country. I do have a Spotify premium account and I like it a lot.
It all comes down to being able to watch/listen where, when and how I want without limitations.
Spotify allows me to download my playlists to my phone or my laptop and listen to it everywhere.
I had cases where I had legitimately bought the Blu-Ray, but the system crapped out when I tried to run it and it needed a software update. After messing with it for over an hour, I just downloaded a ripped version and watched that, it was easier than trying to get the Blu-Ray disk to work. (Avatar if you're interested, there were a lot of people with problems with that one).
I also might want to watch some episodes of a TV series I have on my phone or tablet. But this is a pain as well.
I hardly download anything. Nowadays if I can't easily watch/listen to it legally in the way I want, I just don't buy it. (I haven't bought a Blu-Ray disk since the pain I had with the Avatar disk, even though I did get it to run after messing with the software update some more on a later date).
If it's harder to use the legal medium than it is to use the illegal medium, then they need t fix things.
Which in turn is Google's fault for designing Android to be sold that way. They deliberately choose not to have control over the fragmentation and issues like this.
There are definitely positions at the Bachelor and Master level (In Comp.Sci or equivalent) at universities and research institutes.
Also don't forget large oil firms and the like.
There are two types:
- Scientific Programmers: Those that work on implementing, scaling and optimizing algorithms for number crunching purposes. Knowledge of the specific field is certainly an advantage here.
- Generic Programmers: From lab automation to webpages, database backends, archives and various other things that organisations need to do their work.
It's hard to get a permanent contract though, as a lot of the funding is on projects for 2-5 years.
Job adverts might be on the sites of the organisations themselves and sometimes the employers have a combined website. In the Netherlands there is AcademicTransfer for example, where all publicly funded research organisations pool their job adds.
I think in places like NYC it has to do with real estate prices. Everything above ground is probably expensive as humans can live/work there. It's the underground places where no sunlight penetrates that gets the machines and utilities as nobody cares if they have any windows. Also these machines are usually heavy so it's easy to put them into basements as no lifting is required and means the structure of the building can be lighter.
It's not a good idea in case of disasters, but it makes a lot of economic sense in the short term for a lot of reasons. The problem is that especially the USA isn't very good at having their infrastructure and buildings robust against disasters. To an outsider it's obvious that the choice in the US seems to be that it's cheaper to rebuild than to make things hurricane/flooding/tornado/earthquake-proof. The best example is Katrina. Areas in the Netherlands have separate organisations for managing the water. It's not part of government and has it's own taxes and separate elections. A lot of these go back to medieval times. They care for the waterways, dikes, levies, shelters, disaster relief and similar structures. It's their sole responsibility and absolute priority. So there is never a trade-off against healthcare, military, education, transportation or any other government function. It's like if you would make FEMA and the corps of engineers into completely independent organisations with their own taxes and elections.