Sayonara

Is this to suggest that an action in that direction only "counts" if it has unbound scope? I do not agree that the lack of governments currently committed to putting such ideals into action makes them impractical per se. There are other factors to consider. It makes them "currently undesirable". As a sentient species we are still quite morally and socially immature (which, ironically, can be measured using the disparity between ideals and practice). However we might not always exist this way.

It could work if there were some sort of widespread "aggressive altruism" in society, but we don't seem to be anywhere near that level of unity.

If they were not allowed to keep profit, there would be little or no incentive for competition, which could easily quell innovation. It's unfortunate but true.

Just a quick note - I think it is important to keep in mind in this discussion that marketing is not the same as advertising.

Sorry for the long post guys - it includes replies to several posts. The statement was "Windows sucks". The response was "but it runs on 90% of the world's computers". My responses are attempting to demonstrate why that is a BAD ANSWER, not why it's "wrong". As has already been stated, this is not strictly true, and you know it. Microsoft have managed to insert their product into the self-sustaining cycle that is the sweet spot of any market. The average user buys a computer expecting to be able to turn it on and go because they don't understand the differentiations between hardware, BIOS, and O/S. Your average Joe doesn't even know that other domestic or consumer operating systems are available (whether free or not), much less that they can be installed in place of the supplied O/S. These expectations have nothing whatsoever to contribute towards the idea of home users "choosing" Windows. It's a result of the product's placement, which in turn is a result of Microsoft's early strategies (carrying no value on the books for its products, delaying public options for as long as possible, and - the big ones - their deft dealings with IBM, and their infiltration of hardware supply.) The majority of end-user systems running Windows doesn't really tell us anything about how good it is, as I am trying to explain. Have done. It's one of the first things you learn on a computing degree. Again, you are throwing phrases around here without any regard for what they mean. What is "90% of the computer using populations", and without more in-depth analysis how can you demonstrate anything from that other than your ability to count? It has plenty going for it. But having the exact features that x number of people want doesn't necessarily mean that it is 'better' than anything else. It may well be, but it's still a poor response to "windows sucks". I'd certainly expect a high figure, but this 90% seems to have been pulled out of someone's flue. Given that the original phrase was "90% of computers", and not "90% of desktops or boxes with end-user-available operating systems", it seems to me that either the reasoning ought to take all computers into account, or the claim needs to be adjusted accordingly. I know I tend to waffle, but please try to follow what I am saying. The number of computers running an O/S is not representative of the quality of that O/S. Therefore, in order to qualify or disqualify the statement that Windows sucks [relative to other systems, one presumes] we need to take something else into account. Call me crazy but I would suggest that the quality of a computing system is best indicated by its capacity for computation. It's not 9 admins per *nix box it's 9 boxes per admin - ie: you need 3 times the number of admins than with Windows servers to meet the same performance targets. My mistake, sorry. However the same argument essentially applies - we can't arbitrarily ascribe the notion that *nix is necessarily "worse" from that information alone. "I chose this example because it supports X". Frown. I don't see how that is particularly relevant to the issue at hand. We don't really need to consider how the situation can change. Although there clearly are advantages to be gained, and tbh it takes less than an hour to get someone doing the basics in Linux (which includes using Open Office Text to the sort of standard that most people use Word). Quite true, but this doesn't tell us anything about the operating system other than it's the one they use. Employees don't have the luxury of installing their O/S of choice, and as we have already agreed systems like WinNT are deployed because they are currently preferable in terms of licensing and support requirements, which is all down to marketing and the fact that we happen to be at this particular point in history. If you don't know about the other options, it's not a "choice". Microsoft's market penetration in terms of the brand is truly a phenomenon. Which is more due to the fact that most domestic users have few complex requirements, and are either unaware of or don't care about the issues that usually divide Windows and (for the sake of argument) Linux advocates. It's really not because they see Windows as being the technological apex of operating systems. Absolutely agree. Like I said, that's only a choice if the user knows they can do that. The vast majority of domestic consumers who buy computers do not fall into this category - half of them don't even understand the window and desktop metaphors, for god's sake. I would tend to agree with this. However I think the percentage of consumers falling into this category can be easily overestimated (especially for people like us, who tend to gravitate to the same social locations), and probably is not high enough (yet) to shift the PC market paradigm. It's not an assumption. Microsoft have worked very hard to claim that prize - when the market did not exist, you'd have to have been a complete monkey not to try. Well, I say they worked hard. There was actually a good deal of luck and "right place, right time" involved too. And some fortuitous "walking away from smoking wreck of the project without anyone noticing". Firstly, I'd point out that consumers are lazy. They aren't going to revolt against Microsoft and stage marches in the city streets over something that really won't affect them that much. I mean seriously - you need a PC. Are you going to wait for the market to change, or go out and buy one of the ones available that does what you need? Secondly, those products are available from countless retailers (I imagine the degree of availability will depend on the location). Let's not forget though that there are many retailers whose supplier-trader agreements will not allow them to sell a hard drive or CPU to a consumer unless they purchase an OEM copy of Windows with it. Take CCL Computers, for example. It's fortunate that the web allows us to break that small part of the O/S monopoly by searching for retailers with no such requirements. However consumers who do not understand the market will often accept such conditions at face value, as they do for virtually every other market going. He may not be explaining it very well, but his point is perfectly valid. See above. There is no excuse for intellectual dishonesty in a thread with such a self-evident subject as this. This coming from the person who told us to "try reading up on [microsoft's] story some time". Do the research. What people "don't want" is not the issue (or rather, what people "fail to say they do want") - markets shift towards demand. Knowledge has to exist among consumers before a market can shift - it's a very obvious prerequisite for demand. Non-windows systems such as Sun and Mac OS tend to occupy small technological niches. It's only recently that Linux has exploded into a widely acceptable suite of products that are accessible to a larger range of users. Given enough time, it is perfectly possible and perhaps even likely that many more consumers will become aware of this and start creating demand. To ignore this possibility is naive, and smacks of premature judgement. Which is what I meant by my "particular point in history" comment, many lines above. Additionally, the implicit idea that Linux ought to appear pre-installed in high-street stores in order to "prove" that people want to use it is just ridiculous. You'd have to be devoid of any concept of the way either o/s is marketed to come to that conclusion. If you go out and buy a PC, chances are Windows is already on it (regardless of whether or not you intend to use it). You can't just assume that every consumer knows that (a) it's not the only choice, or (b) they don't have to buy it. Consumer ignorance is a major factor in sustaining a false monopoly. If your average person goes out to buy a computer because they hear it can help manage their finances, music and word processing needs, they aren't likely to be equipped with a vast battery of computer science knowledge. They walk past the Apple store with barely a glance ("HOW MUCH!? I just can't understand how they sell anything.") and walk into PC World. Wherein they are confronted by row after row after row of PCs with Windows already installed. "Wow," they think, "Microsoft sure have a lot of PCs to choose from." The bottom line is that a PC running Windows will probably be fine for what they want to do, but (oh my god my brain, it wants to scream) that still doesn't make Windows better than operating system n.

I don't see aything wrong with being an idealist, even one with "impractical" ideals. As long as there are people keeping ideas alive, situations eventually change.

That post is idiotic.

I didn't mean to imply that you said she wasn't shot. I am simply pointing out that what you/we/they think of her shouldn't allow one to "adjust" the severity of any consequences for the shooter.

Might I suggest Blike for "Minister of Pacifying the Masses", and Phi for All for "Minister of Keeping the Horror within Sensible Limits".

Yes. It just quite galling to see smear being applied under the guise of 'considering all the facts'. If you got shot by someone, you got shot by them. Your political beliefs, voting history or the boys/girls you kissed at school have got nothing to do with it and don't make you any less shot. Society really needs to hunt out all lawyers and burn them at the stake - seriously, they're the root of all our problems. They make people think in stupid terms.

Like I said earlier, it would not surprise me if Windows had the lead in terms of installation numbers. But to blithely claim then that Windows runs "on 90% of computers" in response to "Windows sucks" (with the implication being that it has this market share due to it's level of not-suckingness) is both erroneous and misleading. - It's erroneous because the figures just aren't that high, unless you ignore various technologies for no good reason. - It's misleading because - for the reasons we have just discussed - the number of installations is not related to the capacity, capability or complexity of the operating system. Windows is a triumph of marketing, not technology. Are you taking your off-site DR systems into account? What about the computers that are involved in interfacing your network with others? Do you not think that the raw numbers need to be adjusted for uptime and runtime? Unless the original proposal is going to be quietly turned into "Windows runs on 90% of computers of the type that we typically run Windows on", which is retarded, we need to take account of every box with an O/S on it. I don't think that's really relevant. Without knowing how much work the two systems do per box, you can't just compare the number of admins and decide one is better. For instance, those 9 admins on your *nix box could be doing more than three times the total work than the admins looking after the Windows box (or, if you prefer, a third of the work each - it's easier to sit back and look busy when you're admining on *nix). So... "Windows is a triumph of marketing, not technology." I think that it is about £60 at the moment, with very attractive bulk volume discounts. I'm not sure what the potential for end user retraining has to do with comparing current figures - it looks to me like you're turning your post into a list of "Windows versus *nix" reasons, which don't have anything to do with the discussion. Which has already been conceded. However the points were that (i) there very likely aren't so many more than people seem to think (I mean, let's not forget that IT in business has as diverse a set of requirements as anything else - not everyone has millions of Win terminals per server, and many business have exactly the opposite setup), and (ii) raw terminal numbers is a great way of measuring market penetration but not system suitability or capability. I think vB collects those automatically, and there used to be a stats page which included the records. Don't know if it still exists. They aren't really going to help though, because very few of the non-Windows machines out there are going to be used for web browsing.

I don't have Max installed at the moment, but if your renders are taking more than a day I'd suggest rendering them on Linux, which won't choke on its own memory mismanagement.

Yes, which is why I used the standard *nix. Windows isn't considered to fall into that category, despite its origins. True, but terminals get "used" for about eight hours a day at most (and the vast majority of them much less than that). It's not helpful to just count licenses sold or unique o/s footprints (and I'd dispute that an internal network of NT clients, for example, count as unique footprints, because they are deployed centrally and user-specific data is not a part of the o/s). The degree to which an o/s is in use can only be realistically represented by uptime and load. I wouldn't be too sure about that if I were you. Data warehousing, industry gateways, forward/store buffers, disaster recovery sites... even the immense rendering clusters used by CGI companies - these all require considerable resources in terms of individual machines. And that's before we've even started on the web (which actually is 70% Unix) the hundreds of thousands of backbone datacenters, and the millions of redundant backup systems and RAID boxes that happily chug away day-in, day-out.

Presumably he's confronted either with some sort of password-protected parental control program, or some network deployed censorware.

Having seen Coventry and I can assure you it's the last place I'd want to be found. Since I last posted in this thread, I have had a good night's sleep and done a full day of work.

I think he's actually referring to circumventing content or blacklist filters at his end. But to answer your question, the act of accessing a web site (i.e. using a URL) is not illegal. Cracking is, and dealing in certain content is, but that's not what was asked.

I'm actually referring to *nix, not just Linux. Let's not forget Sun, BSD and so on either. Unix or legacy systems are the basis of virtually all backbone systems in commerce, business, research, simulation, and communications. Big whoopee if NT happens to be running on the staff's terminals. It would not surprise me if Windows was in the lead, but I seriously doubt it has a 90% market share.

And unless that's true in all cases for that species, your example has nothing to do with the evolution of that species. If it IS supposed to be true in all cases for this species, then calling it "atypical" is being very kind. I don't accept the premise.

It isn't. But then "ye" isn't a technical term, is it?

I don't think there are any laws against accessing web sites.

90% of the world's home PCs, I think you probably mean? [edit] Split from this thread: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9547

Good job we can make the distinction between genetic representation in a generation, and "representing evolution" then, isn't it?

This is absolutely correct. The value of an ecosystem is not an easy thing to interpret, because there are so many factors to consider that it's difficult to compare their relative importance (especially since they are often 'important' with respect to completely different things.)

Yes, I'm using shorthand because I can't be bothered typing it out in long form. That back-fired, didn't it? What I mean is that in any given ecosystem (or rather in a community, which is easier to consider without sacrificing too many involved factors), the dynamic equilibrium that exists is unlikely to be expressed in the same way for an extended period of time. Communities change - it's in their nature to do so. The various interspecies mutualisms will eventually erode the stability of the system either as a whole or in part (with the interfaces being the 'points of contact' between different species), which will shift the equilibrium, and those mutualisms may change in strength as the inter- and intraspecies behaviours that they contain react to every stimulus coming their way. Given that communities are so fluid and difficult to scope, as they're supposed to be, it seems odd that Katz should practically lament their passing.

If that's a requirement of your argument then this must be one weird species. G < G + GN is not "false", it's "not necessarily true in all cases" - for example the mother could have had more than one infant before we starting iterating N. There are various trivial combinations we could look at, but I wasn't going to sit there typing them all out (lunchbreak ). The point is that all the combinations involving self-sacrifice (for the species you gave in your example, anyway) lead to either equal or reduced representation, not an increase. That's the only point I was disputing.