Mod down for unoriginal taste of humor

First Moscow or anyone else might want to focus on Wikileaks now, and probably Assange will be killed to set an example. However there will be always surpressed minority groups etc, who will copycat this kind of journalism for their own interests. So the Rubicon has been crossed already. This is the spirit of the internet, people will always find ways to circumvent all kinds of government control to get the real stories out in the open. So as it is unevitable that a murder of Assange will bhe used to set an example and demotivate such copycats, but despite that people with enough motivation van't be stopped. Also this is also a foreign intelligence weapon (that may backfire) which will be used by foreign intelligence services of countries witch have the intrest to stir things up in their own sovereign interest. And the latter can't be stopped in anyway.

Secondly Assange is not an American, so American laws do not apply to him. If the American government doesnt like these thing to leak outside their jurisdiction, they should not made all of these documents accessable by a normal soldier (and also the US army treat their soldiers a bit better, or at least account for disgruntled employees). Secondly if there were no double speak and meddling in others foreign affairs such documents wouldn't be so dangerous. The latter is not on the account for Assange but to the US itself. Third if the security is so crap, it's the US responsibility that seems to be lacking as well (at a laughable level). Fourth Assange has the rare honor to be on the interpol list for rape, which by itself is very questionable too. Of course it is a smear campaign.

The biggest achievements for all mankind have been driven by unreasonable people with a extreme drive to achieve something for the greater good. I think he fits into that picture. If he is willing to put his life at stake for this kind of transparency, I think such thing is honorable! He has balls of steel.

There are a lot of companies talking about quality and innovation, while making more or less the shame shit as the competition. What makes a company shine these days, is not doing something different (some detail that no real person actually cares about) is the "wow" factor and Apple still has it, Microsoft is just as sexy as porridge. HP, Acer, Microsoft, etc. No excellence in imagination in a constant way.

So how does Apple has that? They have been about design of their products for decades. The old days when people where only still saying "wow" by seeing a computer. Now that we are past seeign those dull grey boxes that they called pc's, when companies act as if they have forgotten what the first p (personal) means. So why a grey dull box in the living room, working exactly the same way as we would use them on their work? Why not something that blends in nice with what people do in their lives, also besides working? Why not something that has a very good user experience and in some caes is even fashionable? Apple thought of that decades ago. Now it seems to work.

But now I see an Apple drunk of its success during their last presentations. I really lost the count of all the superlatives they used in their keynotes to appraise their own products. People will eventually get tired all these superlatives. When superlatives are used to decribe things that people don't care anymore about, then Apple becomes porridge too, maybe not grey but apple white. I don't care about some AA battery from Appel with included loader, and even less to hear superlatives about that.

I only hope the money and the power doesn't kick out the imagination, fantasy and innovation of Apple. That they will not become porridge. I rather see them making products with some technological child deseases than becoming a design company for AA cell batteries

I quote" We are looking for yield engineers for all kinds of new technologies so we can become #1 in the following technologies..." Who needs competitors if you got such PR!!

windows XP ;)

What linux they talk about? The kernel? Or some distribution? I mean there isn't exactly a revolution on kernels at hand, is there? So this is just hollow marketdroid speak. Unless someone can really point to some revolution to kernel development I cannot take this seriously, nor does anyone else.

In the end we will end up with fiber, but not necessarily because of the obvious reasons. In Negroponte's book "Being Digital" he writes about the Chinese destroying the network because of theft of the copper. So the Chinese had to use fiber because copper based network became very expensive in numerous ways. I don't say the Dutch or citizens of any other country will steal the copper, but if there is so much speculation in the commodities prices might become so high fiber will become most attractive. I am Dutch. Just before the dot com boom I moved to a rented flat. This new flat had fiber everywhere and not yet cable. Then the dot com bubble exploded and neither the cabling, telephone or fiber company wanted to do further investments on their networks. I ended up living above a fiber network which wasn't finished and no cable, so I had to resort to my old 56K dailup modem, while most people had cable or adsl. I remember the price of downloading a debian iso image. My telephone cost where often around 800 euro's that time. Ofcourse I moved again shortly. But I still hear that on my old flat they don't have fiber, though they do have cable.

Microsoft was a successful fast growing me-too company, especially during the windows 95 and office. But they have became so big, because they were trying to control every software market. Now they're just me-too company with organisation-obesitas, and that doesn't bode well for innovation (which they sure need). Google and Apple are the booming innovative companies of late. Me-too ideas just happen not work so well for them anymore.

Microsoft has a swat load of Phd's working for them, this is no mediocre size R&D however it is in using those smart peoples research to be innovative. Second microsoft has tons of ideas they start and they don't follow up on it (being politics or whatever). Even Microsoft admits they never get it the first time, they get it the third time... Or at least at some point to be more realistic.

But despite they low ratio new projects and succeeded projects is so incredibly low (ofcourse it's what it was never meant to be a IBM sized kind of company), they crank out something innovative at times. App store, they want one. didn't work, never hear from it again. Apple store, they want one so they can sell zunes that noones wants to buy. Etc etc.

They are just a dull big company burning huge sums of money and once in a while you get that intelligent Microsoft that they actually did something of importance. Those projects you call is the only part where they are succesful. I can name a huge pile of things that didn't work, so for both consumers and businesses they are losing their edge big time. In some ways Microsoft is nothing more than just dumb money running the show.

mod this down if you don't like surfer speak

Come on the editors of Slashdot should know about the difference between the word hacker and cracker. A hacker has only a negative sound to those who don't know the history about the word or know what they are talking about, you know the way Hollywood uses the word for example. Crackers are the criminal oness. Or at least say something like "black hats" instead of hacker, when it's the criminals you are writing about.

More and more articles seems to suffer from the same lack of geekyness in multiple different ways..

Here some facts from 2006 about internet content: Total Growth of the Internet 43.6% Violence and Crime 14.4% Porn and Sex 12.8% Computer Crime 10.0% Illegal Drugs 8.7% I think NELL should be very fast to learn what's important in life.. Well the internet builds character

Patent offices have loads of work because of all these patents. Where two dogs fight over a bone the third one takes it. In this case thats the patent office. So to game the system, look to business processes as they can be patented too. Some small patent office, only setup for the sole purpose to spoil the patent industry, should patent patent-processes and sue every patent office that can be found. Also patent useless stuff of certain software parts that happen to be used also on the average patent office website. And gather funding of some small software companies behind a smokescreen. Than we sure see how the patent industry benefits from the thing called software patents and business process patents.It is ofcourse big news if a patent office loses suits on patents. Than put the news on Slashdot with some links to several patent office websites and than they have enough PR like there is no tomorrow...

Ok what then? Do you want to take the protectionist approach? Well this topic has nothing to do with the recession for crying out loud.

I think the American invention of the internet and all the investment is definately something to be proud of. It has brought the best of America to the world, freedom of speech, better media, etc. It has brought without any doubt more freedom than any premptive war has done...

I also think it had brought more jobs to America that if they would have patented it or used some form of protectionism. I think the investment in the free, sharing and open qualities of the net has not only payed out itself financially, but also intellectually and morally.

The reason America once prospered as worlds wealthiest creditor nation. They had a comparative advantage in economic freedom. Taxes were much lower and the government was less intrusive. They borrowed a lot of money from the Europeans in the 19th century. America used that money for like infrastructure and factories; they did capital investments. And by building factories they became the worlds leading manufacturer and exporter of high quality, low cost consumer goods, also even when the paid the highest wages in the world. And because they made productive use of the money they borrowed of the Europeans, they were able to repay the debt by selling those manufactured consumer goods to Europeans. By 1980 Americans owned more foreign assets than all the creditor nations in the world combined, they were the worlds most wealthy lenders with a high savings rate.

Today is the exact opposite. They no longer flood the world with low cost high quality goods, but they flood the world with dollars. The United States routinely borrows from the poorest nations in the world. The relationship is now: America consumes and everybody else produces. America borrows and everybody else saves. Without American consumption, what would all these Chinese do for jobs? Well it's not about jobs. You don't want jobs so you can work, you want jobs so you can consume; a higher standards of living. The fact that the Chinese get jobs in exchange for the products they give us doesn't do any good for the Chinese. The Chinese are perfectly capable of consuming their output themselves. They don't need their government to artificially suppress the exchange rate of the Yuan so that they can artificially elevate the value of the Dollar so that the Americans get to consume all the goods that the Chinese could have consumed had it not been for that monetary policy.

This current dynamic where Americans don't save and not produce is not viable. America convinced the foreigners painting their fence and pay them is a privilege. But the minute the Chinese, the Japanese stop buying these Dollars, the show is over.

All this borrowed consumption is going to have to be paid. American consumers are now loaded up with debt to their eyeballs, and the very nature of that debt.

It is stupid from the governent to stimulate ownership of residential property by stimulating people and banks to use NINJA-mortgages(No Income, No Jobs or Assets). Credit for people with no money is insane, ofcourse they cant pay back. Ofcourse that means trouble for banks, and so on. Predatory lending also took a part of the blame. Also not wise was to use the value of a house as a kind of slot machine. It was a mania on the housing marktet that made it to a bubble bound to collapse.

I can strongly advice you to read the standard economic work of Niall Ferguson: "The Ascent of Money" . Innovation in financial products has always followed a bust and boom cycle.

Having no supervision on complex financial products like derivations is insane, even by any measure of common sense. The innovated product of securitizes mortgages in trenches for mortgages give to people with no income, no jobs or assets is also insane. Especially when it gets a AAA stamp from the American credit rators. Ofcourse that means that people will find out those products are hard to put a price on later when buyers understand that junk NINJA mortgages shouldnt have an AAA rating. The Fed didn't supervise the deratives market. Of course it was a wild west there.

People should have saved. The Fed should have supervised the deratives market. The Government shouldn't have made NINJA mortgages posible. America maybe cannot produce cheaper (wages of Chinese and Indians are way lower), but maybe Amerricans can better products. If Americans can't, bad luck. That is called competition. Don't be lazy to think that America has threw money away at the internet at the expense of america resulting in the current crisis. That's total BS. Instead: save, invest, export and compete!


By the way, siolationism and protectionism have been ore hurtful to the economy than the openess of the internet. The Great Depression got bad for a big part because of protectionism. And patents didnt helped innovations so much either. Mind sharing and investment in R&D did work. America has just to figure out again how to use the money wisely and invest it in R&D, education and in all openness and freedom. The internet again is only a good example.