Altruism as Atonement for Profit

"Hip and get laid," or "cool and sexy" - you want to quibble, Fred? Somehow I doubt the success of the i-pod (I don't own one - yet) has anything to do with penis envy, unlike your post 31, which is green and drooling. Of course, I should have read your post 34 (your "gibberish is a substitute for therapy") first, then I'd have known not to bother.

Ted

Post 41

Thursday, July 5, 2007 - 2:42pm

Ted::

So, Apple's marketing campaign is not about selling membership to a non-existing community?

I'm stunned to learn this. See, this is why I check the In-ter-net, for updates like this.

If so, then I take it all back. It is not actually advertising genius. It's just clever, in a 'WIRED' kind of in-your-face short attention span graphics kind of way.

I'm so dissapointed to learn this.

regards,
Fred

Post 42

Thursday, July 5, 2007 - 2:55pm

Sarcasm, when it actually has something to say, can be funny. But I frankly don't know, and frankly don't care to know, what it is that you have fooled yourself into thinking I have said or you are saying here. The topic is "Altruism as Atonement for Profit" which got sidetracked to attacks on MS. If you want to make some sort of coherent point on Apple's marketing strategy, (something upon which, contra your post 41, I have not commented) go ahead. You can even start your own thread! But don't try to take me to task for not having answered a question which you haven't asked. Excuse me, time for dinner.

Ted
(Edited by Ted Keer
on 7/05, 2:59pm)

Post 43

Thursday, July 5, 2007 - 3:33pm

Boiled down, everything we do is because we want to do it for one reason or another.

That is true, Andrew, but we're interested in exactly those details. They're not as simple as "because they want to." The reasons for why are very important.

It's not enough to say "it makes me feel good to give." We want to know why it makes you feel good?

Post 44

Thursday, July 5, 2007 - 4:03pm

Ted:

I have offended you, resulting in this lecture to stay on topic, and for that I am terribly sorry.

Sarcasm, when it actually has something to say, can be funny. But I frankly don't know, and frankly don't care to know, what it is that you have fooled yourself into thinking I have said or you are saying here. The topic is "Altruism as Atonement for Profit" which got sidetracked to attacks on MS. If you want to make some sort of coherent point on Apple's marketing strategy, (something upon which, contra your post 41, I have not commented) go ahead.

Clearly, I have fooled myself into thinking that I misread the deep intellectual point you actually were trying to make with the drive-by below:

Fred, do you really find the guy in the Apple ad "cool" and sexy?

I mean, when picking through the post that was not addressed to you, that is the topic that you felt compelled to emit those bon-mots in response to, how was I to assume the deep intellectual point you actually wanted to share, while keeping this thread focused like a laser beam on "Altruism as Atonement."   As if it was I who was Mr. Amazining No Short Term Memory Man, and was incapable of scrolling back 3 posts.   But, thank you for the In-ter-net lecture.

You spray-painted your compelling drive by(a keeper, btw), and wanted to play, now you don't. That's ok.   So, I won't ask about gay/straight bigotry.    I mean, with the bon mots above, I don't know, and can only guess at the point you were trying to make. Maybe you actually wanted to know if I found the guy in the Apple "cool" and sexy, my first hint being, the actual words you used to express yourself on this focused tight as a laserbeam thread.   I would be referring to your actual comment, but contra to that, I won't, because I wouldn't want to sidetrack, hijack, or otherwise jack with an In-ter-net thread, that would be an awful precedent, unparalleled in the history of idle mental masturbation.    Especially when this one had long devolved into the latest breathless retelling of the "Chevy/Ford" debates.

Why do I do this if this is mental masturbation? Beats me. This place is, after all, unabashadly, the RebirthofReason on the In-ter-net.   It really isn't the same old, same old.    It's where "Objectivists" pine on about the failure of Objectivism to mob up, etc., snipe at each other over pure nonsense, and find offense in posts not addressed to them.  It's where ideas are cast into blenders and selectively hurled back at strangers, nearly untouched by human minds. It's where adults pretend to lecture other strangers and imagine they care.   It's where mental defectives, like me, go to dump stream of consciousness gibberish as pure therapy, and pretend that it is not really lost noise in a sea of same.

Unlike the rest of IP address space.

4 was a bust, 6 is no better. Maybe 8 will finally bring the Golden Age?

regards,
Fred

Post 45

Thursday, July 5, 2007 - 4:12pm

Not offended, bored.

Thursday, July 5, 2007 - 4:34pm

Teresa:

It's not enough to say "it makes me feel good to give." We want to know why it makes you feel good?

Damn straight we do.

But, before he or Bill Gates explains why to anybody, shouldn't we all be made to understand why he or Bill Gates needs to explain to anybody? Is it, for membership in a club of some type?    Is it, to validate the parking of his soul or intellect?

What is the benefit to be gained by the giver of the explanation?

As well, what if there is more than one reason?

This happens every day, why do people do them?

a] Motorist randomly yields to let another motorist in/out of queue inching along, risking the hatred of scores of random horm blowing, frustrated losers behind him who are yet once again going nowhere. OK, I lied. I saw this once, in Cleveland, and nobody blew their horn. The Midwest is very polite.   But, it can't all be Jerry Seinfeld's Mother Teresa on the Cheap Theory.    Some of it might be, but some of it might be as well, rationally, "If I want to live in a part of the world like that, then I have to make a part of the world like that."

b] Stranger holds door for another stranger.   Ditto. Costs nothing, but time, yet gains nothing.   Are the people who do this really mental defectives who think they are buying cheap brownie points into Heaven?   That, '10 in your face door holds' make up for that unreported parking lot dent?

Maybe there are all kinds of reasons.    But first, before their why, why must/should the doers spill their guts?

regards,
Fred

Post 47

Friday, July 6, 2007 - 4:35am

But, before he or Bill Gates explains why to anybody, shouldn't we all be made to understand why he or Bill Gates needs to explain to anybody?

Short answer: yes.

Short explanation of short answer: to avoid relativism in morality.

Post 48

Friday, July 6, 2007 - 12:19pm

Teresa:

Short explanation of short answer: to avoid relativism in morality.

I understand now.

To apply for membership in a club that presupposes:

    1] 'Why' others spend their own money is a moral issue subject to universal absolutes arrived at by ... counting the heads of yet others still.
    2] Pleasing those others absolute sense of 'moral relativism' is important to its members.
    3] The best way to circumvent the moral absolute defined succinctly by "One Skin, One Driver" , aka, Rand in three words, is to invent claims of moral relativism if that absolute is not subjugated to empower busybodies raising their hands to vote morality.

In that light, I can undersand why anyone might pass on the demands to justify their why.    They must figure, if membership in that club was not a requirement in the creation of the conditions requiring others to consider the sniffing of their why-ness, then continuing the same state is probably not going to do them any harm.

Or at least, not avoid doing them any good.   I would think the moral absolute of "One Skin, One Driver" would trump the moral indignation hurled by wannabee slaveowners, trying to wheedle their way to a position of unearned, undeserved judgement over others.   You there! Make sure your whyness aligns itself with the tribe's sensibilities and is not relatively out of alignment, or the tribe will issue you a parking ticket for the illegal parking of your soul.   Never mind that, in order to serve that summons, the "One Skin, One Driver" rule must be totally trashed.   The world has long had a name for "One skin, others driving." Its called 'raising a family."

No, wait a minute, that's not right at all, that's voluntary. It's called 'slavery.'

I guess if folks want to subject themselves to that club, they are free to do so, along with all the rights and priveledges afforded thereto.

regards,
Fred

Post 49

Friday, July 6, 2007 - 6:28pm

Fred,

Your Chrisianity is showing.

   1] 'Why' others spend their own money is a moral issue subject to universal absolutes arrived at by ... counting the heads of yet others still.

Judgement is always a moral issue.

    2] Pleasing those others absolute sense of 'moral relativism' is important to its members.

Judgement of what to value and why is always a personal moral issue. Choosing Bill Gates as a hero is a moral issue, Fred.

    3] The best way to circumvent the moral absolute defined succinctly by "One Skin, One Driver" , aka, Rand in three words, is to invent claims of moral relativism if that absolute is not subjugated to empower busybodies raising their hands to vote morality.

What to value and why are moral issues, Fred. Morality isn't automatic, Fred. It has to be discovered, Fred. Does Bill Gates have his finger on moral absolutes? How do we know one way or the other, Fred? By rational judgement. That's how, Fred. The press is holding Gates up as a hero, Fred. Is he a hero, Fred? How would you know, if judgement is a moral faux pas, Fred?

Fred thinks rational judgement is the act of a "busybody." Don't judge, don't think.

I'm through with you, Fred. Watch closely, Fred: I'm making the moral judgement that you have a nasty habit of replacing coherent thought with insipid sarcasm. There's no value in that kind of exchange for me. There isn't even any entertainment value in it, because it isn't clever or well timed sarcasm.  Just pathetic sarcasm substituting for, what could be, a decent argument.

/Judgement.

Post 50

Saturday, July 7, 2007 - 8:23am

Teresa:

Tone is hard to read in this medium. The checkvalve on my inner dialog has momentarily failed, that is all, it is not personal.

Judgement of what to value and why is always a personal moral issue

So, that is why individuals must submit their why's to a tribal committee? Because it is always a personal moral issue?

That's not sarcasm, I just truly don't see how that follows.

My 'Christianity' is showing???? Praise Jesus, a true f'n miracle.   See, now that is sarcasm.

So, Bill Gates is being a made out to be a hero by some fraction of the press, and it's our job to clean up the mess. Because part of the press is not joining in the Big Headed Puppet "Hate Gates" Parade, or because that part of the press has accused him of being either smart or successful, or because Bill Gates deep inner motivations, the things that make the life 'Bill Gates' happy, are the raise your hands and count heads 'wrong' reasons? Or, just not our reasons, as if there were absolutely only a fixed set of reasons that should ever make someone happy.   We can call it The List.   OneSizeFitsAll.    The Ten Commandments of Shouldness.  (When commenting on religion, as I define religion, I can't help but get religious.) There is an objective universe, as it is, so therefore, there can and should be only one absolute fixed set of paths to happiness, and its our job in ordering the Universe to marshall the inner wetbits of humanity into neat ordered piles of matter and don't matter.

As in, objectively, other parts of the press laud "Steve Jobs" as a hero.

Hmm. Can't bear it sarcasm alert, hide the children. Apple is a competitor of Microsoft, so some parts of the press must be lauding the wrong guy, and we must dive inside the personal motivations of the principals to decide which part of the lauding press is defective. Similarly, Chevy competes with Ford so only one can be either a totally good or totally bad car, and to objectively determine that, we must ...dive into the psyche of Henry Ford.  As well, the Bloods fight the Cripps, so which ones aren't the street thugs?   Yes, and the Nazis fought with the Communists for domination in Germany while the Social Democrats stood on the sideline and effectively cheered those meat eaters on as pacifist vegan enablers, so which ones weren't the totalitarian statists?   It can't be both/all, every race to the singular must have a winner. We can't have 'the' press praising both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, just like we can't possibly live without knowing which car is objectively better, Chevy or Ford. They can't objectively both be 'the' best, and thus, deserving of making oil spots in our garages, so which 'one' is it? If we live in a world where we allow some of the press to praise Chevy while other parts praise Ford, then our deep, deep seated need to fill the world with manageable singulars will be thwarted.

The part of the tribe that believes that it has either the ability, right, or means to assess 'Bill Gates/Steve Jobs/Joe Blow' internal , ie, inside of his own skin motivations , ie, that which makes the life 'Bill Gates' happy when 'Bill Gates' spends 'Bill Gates' money is exactly the proper public issue of 'morality' that needs to be confronted; the immorality of that part of the tribe when it pretends it has the ability, right or means to do so.   What follows 'pretends' is 'acts upon the mistaken belief,' just like what is happening with the myth of 'the' economy in our when did they suddenly become an 'it' command centrally controlled 'the' economy economies?

We/others have the ability, right and means to assess the objective impact of what goes on outside of Bill Gates skin, his impact on others, his business practices, his means of dealing with others.   But, his 'happiness?' His internal motivations? His 'whys' for what makes Bill Gates happy?   F' that, that is none of the tribe's f'n business.   The tribes f'n business begins with his objective impact on the tribe.    The internal free parking of Bill Gates/Steve Jobs soul/intellect does not require validation by the tribe. Maybe in the tribe's collective mind it does, but what could be less important to Bill Gates/Steve Jobs? Objectively, that will become important to Bill Gates/Steve Jobs when said validation is a serious prerequsite to do business in this universe as it is, and not just the forever fringe topic of backwater mental masturbation in-ter-net sites, which pretty much means 'all of them.'

Bill Gates/Steve Jobs have lots of external attributes on which to fairly judge their external attributes. In this world, as it is, they both sign both sides of their paycheck.   That alone is enough to bring the ire of millions of folks in the latest edition of 'Chevy' vs 'Ford.'

regards,
Fred

Post 51

Saturday, July 7, 2007 - 12:00pm

This is not an arbitrary "my gang is better than yours" issue. Gates & Co. did a LOT of major damage to the entire computing industry, to the detriment of users and producers worldwide.

Many examples have already been discussed, here or in other threads. The one that stands out as exemplary of the MicroSoft attitude is when MicroSloth trashed JAVA. JAVA was produced by Sun and licensed by MicroSloth, with a strict contract that absolutely forbade MS from altering the programming language in any way that would introduce incompatibilities accross platforms, as the whole point of JAVA was to give control back to the users of computing systems, whatever they were running. Write once - use everywhere.

While JAVA was a serious programming language, with a learning curve, it was also tens of times easier to learn than the bizarrely difficult Visual BASIC, MicroSloth's competing product that only ran on MicroSloth OS's, and even then had major incompatibility problems between versions. JAVA promised a universal computing environment in which the users would once again have the kind of direct control over their experience that they had with the Amiga, the Atari ST, the NEXT (later adopted as the OS for the Mac), OS/2 and of course the old 8-bit machines, as well as even Windoze 3.1.1 - at least to a far greater degree than any current Windoze product.

MicroSloth, however, wants to lock everyone into using only their products, with just enough market share allowed for the official competition - the Mac, to avoid anti-trust laws. So, in direct violation of their contract, they deliberately introduced incompatibilities into JAVA, destroying the purpose of the language and essentially wrecking its market. Sun sued and won a large settlement, which MS happily paid as the price of maintaining a coercive monopoly.

Post 52

Saturday, July 7, 2007 - 1:50pm

Phil:

It was all a little heavy handed, hamfisted, no doubt.  Sometimes, naked sweaty apes happen.

I totally agree that selling 'not Java' as 'Java' was nonsense, and a violation of the agreement with Sun.  There was definitely a period there with all that Visual J++ nonsense that made you wonder, 'What marketing marvel is this?' But then again, who bit on that? MSJVM RIP. It always seemed a little fringe.

Today, Suns JRT and MS.NET CLR coexist peacefully, Java and not Java, more than enough paths for interop. It doesn't matter that CLR has 'J#', that is not Java.  In the end, all that remains is more developer choices, not less.    At most, MS made a marketing mistake, as part of some stupid strategy.    They should have made it plainer that they were offering 'not Java', and not attempted to be half in/half out of their agreement with Sun.   Visual J++/MSJVM?    Definitely a false start, and they paid their penalty.

But Suns JRT and MS.NET CLR do coexist peacefully, so how is that today locking anybody out of using Java on Windows? I'm not understanding that part, no matter what their little marketers once imagined was going to be possible.

Also, the whole issue with Netscape and IE.  When was it not possible to a] obtain a free browser and b] install an alternative browser on Windows? Netscapes objection was that MS was giving away an alternative browser, which is the absolute height of NCSA MOSAIC irony.

circa 1994:

In a move to appease the voracious appetites of netizens for free software, Mosaic Communications will offer a free version of 1.0 as well.

'netizens' Gives you goosbumps. Apparently they have voracious appetities, requiring appeasing. But, sometimes, it's like living in a world where nobody has a memory lasting longer than 10 minutes. Netscape can't survive if folks are giving away free browsers on the in-ter-net? Hello. MS. Those bastards. Giving away alternative browsers, trying to drive poor Netscape out of the business of appeasing the appetites of netizens. How could they?

The pizza boxes got put away, they put on suits and ties, and suddenly the folks at Netscape(once Mosaic Communications)were paying for real mortgages, crying about folks giving away goodies. And, our Schadenfreude fueled courts actually listened to them.

Naked sweaty apes a plenty all over the place in those court battles. Unsightly all around.

regards,
Fred

Post 53

Saturday, July 7, 2007 - 2:56pm

The problem is that MS's move with JAVA effectively killed the market. Yes, JAVA still exists, and yes you can write programs that will generally run on all the main platforms. However, from a time when the JAVA manuals were jumping off the bookstore shelves to the point when Sun won its case and settlement was several years. No software product and developer base can survive for years with a product up in the air, effectively unusable due to the risk that it won't work at some arbitrary point in time.

Note that JAVA is still in fairly common use for application prototyping by software professionals. It was and is a good language that shortcuts the long learning curve for the casual developer. At the local OS/2 user group in the mid-to-late '90's there was a very popular JAVA programming SIG/seminar. Many of the attendees were people who had no intention of becoming full-time professional programmers. But JAVA was easy enought to learn and use that they were able to build custom web environments in short order that could do things impossible in HTML or JavaScript.

I.e., they were like the early adopters in the late '70's, many of whom started with a simple personal project - like the college students who wrote the first spreadsheet program on an Apple II in order to predict football scores for betting on games, and ended up with VisiCalc, which revolutionized accounting worldwide.

The impact of the hiatus due to MS's effective fraud and intellectual property theft was to kill that nascent market and all the interesting or perhaps world shaking new applications that the typical computing hobbiest public might have developed, moving the market back into the top-down, ceritified expert mode that I recall all too well from the '60's and '70's.

They don't call MicroSoft "the Borg" for nothing. If you have something good, it will attempt to eat you, and, failing that, put you out of business. Look up the history of a marketing networking business model called "Firefly."

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1999/08/21243

Note that a lot of the FireFly model simply disappeared into the MS patent vault, and has not been seen since.

Post 54

Saturday, July 7, 2007 - 6:15pm

Microsoft is also having trouble with its Xbox: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/07/06/xbox.360.warranty.ap/index.html

Jim

Post 55

Sunday, July 8, 2007 - 8:29am

Phil:

No software product and developer base can survive for years with a product up in the air, effectively unusable due to the risk that it won't work at some arbitrary point in time.

I see your point, but the issue with MSJVM was always just 'for MS' platform.  It begs the question; is Gates/MS to be condemned for creating the only platform that 'no software product and developer base' can long live without being stable and constant and consistent from box to box(yikes. If so, condemn away!) There is irony in that.   The markets offer alternatives, including free alternatives, that are steadfast and that have always run only Sun JRT, pure to the last drop.   The markets condemn via punishment, not reward, and they do so in total, not just on one issue.

In the specific case of marketing 'not Java on MS' as 'Java on MS', MS rightly paid a penalty for violating an agreement. They took from Sun outside of the agreement with Sun.    As well, even if Visual J++ muddied the water for a while (and, not many folks bit on it as well, exactly for the reasons you outline), in general, should MS/Gates be prohibited from trying to offer what they believe(right or wrong, its theirs to try and fail or try and succeed with,) is the best enhancements to whatever they make available on their platform?    I totally agree they blew their 'Not Java explicitly targeted to take advantage for MS platform' concept, which eventually became .NET/CLR, but I don't believe they should be prohibited from offering .NET/CLR (Not Java) as an alternative.    They should have, and did not, market their initial forays into "Not Java for the MS Platform" as "Not Java for the MS Platform".   By being cute with the marketing/packaging, they rightly got punished.   But most folks knew what it was and wasn't, and that is why so few folks bit on MSJVM. Its not just RIP because of the lawsuit. It has been supplanted by .NET/CLR, ie, what it should have been all along.

I never looked at MS/DOS/WIN legally as a 'common carrier,' and yet the markets train them to act that way by a series of punishment and reward.  I have kernel mode drivers written for NT 3.51 that survived unscathed through NT 4, the WIN2K merge, and through today.   Not because of anything I did(in fact, several of them violate several of their 'should dos'), but because of the remarkable commitment to backwards compatibility that always slows down their releases. Yes, I know that doesn't apply 100% across the board, even recently with .NET 1/1.2/3.0, and yet even with that(I imagine drive mfgs will rescue us if/when we are dealing with .NET/25.0), it is possible to side-by-side all of them.

And of course, there is ROTOR/MONO. That hardly seems like MS clinging to the last penny to be squeezed out of the market. What it looks like is, a competition in the arena of ideas.   Developers should wake up happy in this world of choices, especially when there are so many levels of interop between pure Java and CLR/.NET.

Your point goes to the entire history of software development/computerdom, not just MS Marketing lurches hither and yon. Little is stable.   And yes, I'm glad the WIN9x/Me path died, but that painful history was their attempt at a legacy transition/upgrade path.

20 years ago, I had a DOS based product that did dual independent satellite channel ingest in the background, with independent foreground analysis processing.  Two TSRs processing continuous streams from sat channels, and a foreground display/analysis app. It was more than a little fringe. But, I sold a lot of it to our military and to militaries all over the world, because it ran on a cheap platform and performed like much more expensive equipment.   Then, MS came out with Windows, and made this much easier to do on cheap platforms.   By doing so, the investment in the DOS version immediately became obsolete, but it created other opportunities under Windows(such as, the Windows upgrade.) I don't mean 'creative' opportunities, I might have preferred to toil elsewhere. I mean 'market' opportunities. So, one door closed, a much bigger one opened.   That's often what happens with 'change.'   There were nothing but more choices as a result of what MS did. I was not prohibited from targeting Free BSD Unix or Apple or later alternatives or even DOS, those choices remained.

You talk about Java like it died. I'm just not seeing that. It's still thriving as far as I can tell. But "a product up in the air?" I really enjoy Ray Kurzweils books, he's got an interesting series on change, the latest "The Singularity is Near." Its mostly empirically focused on hardware change, I think the drag on his premise is software.   Its somewhere wrapped up in your observation, which I think is both true and not true at the same time. If it is absolutely true, then no software product and developer base can survive for years, period.

But, maybe they shouldn't, as is.   That is kind of implicit in Ray's observations. Maybe they won't, as is.

I'd recommend taking a look at his 'Age of SPiritual Machines" and "Singularity is Near" books.   I am not saying they are prophetic, that is a dangerous business to be in. I am saying they offer some insightful observations by a smart guy.

I used to teach a course in the mid 80s at night, in a little local business school.   (Visicalc/Lotus 123/DBase/WordStar some intro to simple programming, basic care and feeding computerdom for business folks. ) At the first class, I always said ""Folks, this is all going to change, so don't look at this as purely vocational. Its details, but relax on the details. Look for the forest, not the trees. RTFM the trees. " I used an analogy that was floating around back then about "Kitty Hawk to 747/Moon in about half a century."   In some ways(hardware)applies to computerdom.   But the software side is way lagging that promise.    20 years later, faster hardware is running essentially the same applications, V15, but there is a new revolutionary knowledge distribution/dissemination channel unfortunately based early on on the concept of GOTO incarnate, fortunately since resolved.   It has created tons of new opportunities, and has eliminated others, like all revolutionary change.   In balance, it has been a huge plus. But, has it significantly helped this lag in software (lagging relative to advances in hardware) that is keeping us from fulfilling the "Kitty Hawk to..." growth path?  In theory, it should help(and does, in many instances)big time, but I don't know, something else is afoot.    What it has objectively done is, divert 90% of all US engineering talent to the focused mission of making bitmaps dance in an entertaining fashion, in one way or the other, either directly or in support of. Websites, games, video, simulations, movieFX, TVGraphics... the advertising beast needs to be fed.  All those channels need to be filled, 24/7/365.   While so much of our resources are busy making bitmaps dance... at least the hardware is getting better.

I'm not complaining.   It has created a ton of opportunities. But you got to wonder some time, what are we doing?

regards,
Fred

Post 56

Sunday, July 8, 2007 - 9:08am

Phil:

I read your FireFly link.

Microsoft subsequently bought the company in 1998 and incorporated its technology into the MSN services group. Now, with usage dwindling to, at most, 200 simultaneous users, it will finally put Firefly out of its misery. "It really didn't make sense to offer two sites that offer comparable services," said Margie Miller, product manager of Microsoft's consumer commerce group. "Change is always difficult." The underlying Firefly code has already been incorporated into the company's forthcoming Microsoft Passport -- a centralized log-in hub for any Web service requiring registration. Microsoft said that the company would welcome any constructive suggestions from Firefly community members. "When they provide us with some actionable suggestions, we will be looking into them," Miller said.

??? MS bought the company. The creators took on VS partners in 1995, then that entity sold the company to MS in 1998. Bill Gates strong armed them into selling? Forced them to sell? Used some heavy handed cross patent infringment threat to make it happen? (Er... we have a 'patent' on the heady concept of a box drawn around text, or somethign equally as stupid, and you are infringing that patent, even though you are using tools we sold you that purport to enable you to create products with boxes drawn around text...") Had pictures of them with livestock? I didn't see any mention of that. Just poor Max saying something about "Microsoft taking from you." Dear Max, "buying" is not "taking," and "selling" is not "being robbed." Let me guess. Max was ok in '95 when he took on VC partners in exchange for $2.6Million dollars, but later became miffed when those same partners actually wanted a return on their investment and exercised their right to participate in some now group decision to sell out to MS that Max didn't beleive in. Max believed that the money came without any strings, was his by birthright. Max, the ethical path there is, don't take the funding in 1995. His need for funding in 1995 is not a claim on the world to provide it free of charge, or later be subject to a group decision. Oh, wait a minute, Max is being quoted from some NYTimes article. We have to apply the "Working Families Party" factor. That article makes sense now. reagrds,Fred

Post 57

Sunday, July 8, 2007 - 1:58pm

I'm saying that the FireFly buyout was part of the MS pattern, of reducing control of information to themselves, period. FireFly was doing great before MS ate it, with over 2 million active users.

Did you know that MS bought the largest, most comprehensive set of photographs of the world, going back to the 19th Century a few years back and stuck it in a salt mine (for safekeeping, of course), while their people are busy cataloging (and presumeably pricing) it. These photos were essentially a world archive, without which, in many cases, there is no other photographic record of the same time or place.

"20 years later, faster hardware is running essentially the same applications..."

Exactly. But it's even worse. The Amiga had apps in the '80's that have never been duplicated.* I predicted in the late '70's that the response of the international corporate/state hierarchies to the information revolution would be to systematically undermine it via use of state intervention when necessary to tip the balance in their favor. I did not foresee, BTW, that intellectual property would be a major weapon in their arsenal. (Google on "AJAX patent.")

Note the embargo by the Reagan administration on cheap memory chips from Japan circu '86. The PC was minimally impacted, as it could not do much with the extra memory even if it had it. On the other hand, it seriously impacted the Mac, Amiga and Atari ST, any one of which had ten times the processing capabilities of the PC.

*One of my published articles from '89 describes a learning environment for a young child, based on existing technology, in which the child interacts directly with an intelligent virtual environment via what is called generically "VideoPlace," in which the incoming image from a video camera is processed for edge detection and other features, allowing the body image of the child to directly interact with objects on the screen. This system was available on the Amiga in '86 as a completely user programmable package allowing the user to set up any virtual environment imaginable using a point and drag GUI, and control anything the computer could do from the video input. There is no such product available today.

Post 58

Sunday, July 8, 2007 - 2:38pm

http://news.com.com/Image+navigation%2C+with+a+sci-fi+touch/2100-11398_3-6095679.html

Phil:

The '89 Amiga work sounds really interesting.

If you haven't already seen it, you'd probably be interested in:

(MS TouchLight) http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6096513.html?tag=ne.vid

�and

http://news.com.com/2100-1008_3-6181699.html

Also, http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Re; MS buying up digital imagery. Well, they look like they are serious about taking on Google Earth/Keyhole. (Who else would have the resources to do that?)

Check out their on line SDK here.   http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/   The "I want to" "Show me" "Source code" "Reference" "Learn More" model is very clean. They have a 'normal' on line SDK as well, but 10 minutes with this and you are on your way.

Select a topic, then select 'Source Code' and cut and past, etc., scarf code and drop it in. Like Google's KML, extensible model for injecting your own overlays.

Google bought Keyhole....now, MS competing with Google Earth.   That's just more developer choices.    By all appearances, they aren't buying up that imagery to squirrel it away in a vault somewhere.

regards,
Fred

Post 59

Monday, July 9, 2007 - 7:53pm