F#

Ken Tilton <ken@theoryyalgebra.com> wrote on Wed, 18 Apr 2007:
> What has the idea of monopoly got to do with the idea of shoddy work?

Once a monopoly has been established, consumers generally "must" purchase the
good regardless of its quality. Hence, there is little incentive to improve
quality.

It's competition, and the failures of shoddy work, that gets quality work to
the fore. Without competition, quality work is more like a kind of charity,
which you can do if it makes you feel good, rather than a necessity of
survival.

-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ don@geddis.org
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr.
Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come
out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that
could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage

Don Geddis wrote:
> Ken Tilton <ken@theoryyalgebra.com> wrote on Wed, 18 Apr 2007:
>
>>What has the idea of monopoly got to do with the idea of shoddy work?
>
>
> Once a monopoly has been established, consumers generally "must" purchase the
> good regardless of its quality. Hence, there is little incentive to improve
> quality.
>
> It's competition, and the failures of shoddy work, that gets quality work to
> the fore. Without competition, quality work is more like a kind of charity,
> which you can do if it makes you feel good, rather than a necessity of
> survival.

Hasn't this brilliant retort to that plausible argument percolated to
your new server?:

"The crappiness of Windows /suppresses/ society's adoption of
technology, and in turn shareholder value."

kt

--
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"Algebra is the metaphysics of arithmetic." - John Ray

"As long as algebra is taught in school,
there will be prayer in school." - Cokie Roberts

"Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra."
- Fran Lebowitz

"I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive."
- Tim Allen

On Apr 18, 7:06 pm, Ken Tilton <k...@theoryyalgebra.com> wrote:

>
> Ah, but even now we are undercomputerized. If one has a monopoly as pure
> as MS's (what? 90+% of the market?) then the easiest way to grow is to
> grow the market. A shoddy Windows has suppressed adoption.

But this again isn't because MS aren't trying: they are trying, it's
just that, absent competition, they've become flabby and useless and
they *can't* innovate. Look at the stupid amount of time it takes them
to ship an OS release.

I realise I'm failing to make my point very well. Monopolies really
aren't good for anyone at all, and in the long term *this includes the
monopolist*, because they rot. However they *are* local maxima of
profitability for the monopolist, and it is extremely hard for a
potential monopolist to avoid becoming an actual monopolist because
they it is *definitely* the case that you can extract monopoly rents,
while in theory you ought to be able to avoid the rot, but in practice
you never can, despite some heroic attempts.

>
> Nah, jumping in late to markets already established hence dominated by a
> first-mover is the hard way to grow. Not to be passed over, but the real
> bucks would have been in establishing an ethic of first quality and
> then innovation.

It's not about growing: it's about preventing others from developing a
market area which might impinge on your monopoly. Monopolists need to
do this even if it involves losing money (which it almost always
does). There's a good book about IBM which describes this in some
detail. It's significant that through a combination of internal rot
and failing to maintain control over neighbouring market segments
(minis and desktops) they eventually lost their monopoly. The IBM book
was written before this panned out, I don't know if there is anything
which describes the "fall" of IBM (which has unquestionably been good
for them as a company).

--tim

In article <1176977783.859218.241150@l77g2000hsb.googlegroups .com>,
Tim Bradshaw <tfb+google@tfeb.org> wrote:

> On Apr 18, 7:06 pm, Ken Tilton <k...@theoryyalgebra.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Ah, but even now we are undercomputerized. If one has a monopoly as pure
> > as MS's (what? 90+% of the market?) then the easiest way to grow is to
> > grow the market. A shoddy Windows has suppressed adoption.
>
> But this again isn't because MS aren't trying: they are trying, it's
> just that, absent competition, they've become flabby and useless and
> they *can't* innovate. Look at the stupid amount of time it takes them
> to ship an OS release.
>
> I realise I'm failing to make my point very well. Monopolies really
> aren't good for anyone at all, and in the long term *this includes the
> monopolist*, because they rot. However they *are* local maxima of
> profitability for the monopolist, and it is extremely hard for a
> potential monopolist to avoid becoming an actual monopolist because
> they it is *definitely* the case that you can extract monopoly rents,
> while in theory you ought to be able to avoid the rot, but in practice
> you never can, despite some heroic attempts.
>
> >
> > Nah, jumping in late to markets already established hence dominated by a
> > first-mover is the hard way to grow. Not to be passed over, but the real
> > bucks would have been in establishing an ethic of first quality and
> > then innovation.
>
> It's not about growing: it's about preventing others from developing a
> market area which might impinge on your monopoly. Monopolists need to
> do this even if it involves losing money (which it almost always
> does). There's a good book about IBM which describes this in some
> detail. It's significant that through a combination of internal rot
> and failing to maintain control over neighbouring market segments
> (minis and desktops) they eventually lost their monopoly. The IBM book
> was written before this panned out, I don't know if there is anything
> which describes the "fall" of IBM (which has unquestionably been good
> for them as a company).
>
> --tim

I'd say it is save to kill this thread in my newsreader now... ;-)

--
http://lispm.dyndns.org

On Apr 18, 5:13 pm, Andy Freeman <ana...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> Almost all of us have rejected said hobby-horse. Wouldn't he be
> better off
> trying to convert folk who haven't seen it?

What on earth are you talking about? I'm quite sure that most of us
had not given F# even the tiniest glance before this eruption. Having
only briefly glanced at the MS page on it, it sounds like it's Caml
for .NET with the type inferencer integrated into the IDE. If, god
forbid, I find myself stuck doing .NET programming, it looks far, far
more bearable than the other language offerings for that platform, all
of which translate to "career change" for me.

As for the question of what decent Lisper could possibly need so much
help learning Caml that they'd want to pay this guy $20/month to
subscribe to his journal ...

On Apr 19, 4:01 am, "Thomas F. Burdick" <tburd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 18, 5:13 pm, Andy Freeman <ana...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Almost all of us have rejected said hobby-horse. Wouldn't he be
> > better off
> > trying to convert folk who haven't seen it?
>
> What on earth are you talking about? I'm quite sure that most of us
> had not given F# even the tiniest glance before this eruption.

The hobby-horse is O'Caml,which Harrop has been beating for
years. He's also told us repeatedly about F#, which is O'Caml
with the Microsoft treatment, so even if you believe that said
treatment makes a difference, it's same-old same-old. And, if
you care about the MS treatment, aren't you more likely to
get the relevant information through a MS channel?

What did CLL do to deserve such attention?

-andy

Ken Tilton <ken@theoryyalgebra.com> wrote on Wed, 18 Apr 2007:
> The crappiness of Windows /suppresses/ society's adoption of technology,
> and in turn shareholder value.

It's a tough call. I understand that argument, that a monopolist can
maximize profits mostly by growing the whole market. Which at least is
plausible. Although here you're making an indirect argument that the best
route to growing the market for PCs is improving some nebulous "quality"
metric on Windows, which for now they are only making at a "crappy" level.

Even that part is debatable, whether improving Windows "quality" really would
cause additional PCs to be sold.

But even if true, Microsoft has an unusual problem, compared to previous
monopolies. In past cases, such as Standard Oil or AT&T, the product
produced typically was consumed, and the consumers needed to continue buying
it over and over again. In that sense, it was somewhat similar to providing
a service.

I've heard Bill Gates give a few speeches about Microsoft strategy, and he
basically admits that (in most of their markets) they have no direct
competitors. He's not worried about Lotus 1-2-3 somehow taking market share
from Excel.

No, Microsoft's biggest competition is PREVIOUS VERSIONS of THEIR OWN
products! The problem with selling bucketloads of Windows Vista, is that
people _already_ own Windows XP, and it works pretty well for them.

The main problem that Microsoft works on from a strategic standpoint is
basically planned product obsolescence. This is why new versions of Word
save documents in a format that old versions of Word can't read. The hope is
that a few folks in an office will upgrade, and then start sending around
documents to their co-workers, but the co-workers won't be able to read the
new documents, so THOSE folks will need to upgrade Word also, EVEN IF they
have no compelling need to do so personally, based on new features.

This primary need to get people to buy the same software over and over again
is actually a drive that in some cases can be at odds with your suggestion of
improving overall "quality" of the product. In some cases, the Microsoft
software architects need to deliberately weaken their products, in order to
enable to upgrade wave that provides continual revenue.

(You see all these same motivations, and similar behavior, with Oracle in
databases, by the way. For all the same reasons. It's just that Microsoft
affects "ordinary" people, while Oracle "only" affects businesses.)

-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ don@geddis.org
Ineptitude: If you can't learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it
poorly. -- Despair.com

Tim Bradshaw <tfb+google@tfeb.org> wrote on 19 Apr 2007 03:1:
> Monopolies really aren't good for anyone at all, and in the long term *this
> includes the monopolist*, because they rot.
[...]
> while in theory you ought to be able to avoid the rot, but in practice you
> never can, despite some heroic attempts.

I assume you mean "rot" as in quality of product or something. But if you
mean that the company collapses from within and dies, and would have been
stronger and longer-lasting if it hadn't been such a monopoly, I don't think
that's true. Monopolies rarely die on their own. Sometimes the market moves
on eventually (IBM mainframes -> PCs); sometimes the government breaks them
up (Standard Oil, AT&T). But rarely does becoming a monopoly make you more
vulnerable to later collapse.

And in the case of Microsoft in particular, Bill Gates cemented his
reputation as one of the best CEOs in the world, with his reaction to
Netscape in the mid-1990's. Netscape was the biggest potential threat to the
MS operating system monopoly that the company had ever seen. For a few
years, there was a chance that all applications would migrate to the web, and
future software development would be "platform neutral"; the net effect would
be that the Netscape browser would become the new monopoly OS of PCs, and MS
Windows would no longer matter.

Gates saw this in time, and refocused the HUGE company that Microsoft is and
was to attack and defeat this threat. There were a whole bunch of angles to
Gates's counterattack, and I'll leave out the details here. But you
underestimate the skill of Gates if you think that Microsoft had "rotted" --
despite their software sucking in 1995 just as much as it does now.

-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ don@geddis.org
In judo: When pushed, pull; when pulled, push.
In aikido: When pushed, turn; when pulled, enter.

Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> On Apr 18, 5:13 pm, Andy Freeman <ana...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Almost all of us have rejected said hobby-horse. Wouldn't he be
>> better off trying to convert folk who haven't seen it?
>
> What on earth are you talking about?

He is claiming that Lispers are uninterested in other languages.

> As for the question of what decent Lisper could possibly need so much
> help learning Caml that they'd want to pay this guy $20/month to
> subscribe to his journal ...

See "Apparently, I don't understand pattern matching", for example:

http://cs.hubfs.net/forums/thread/2654.aspx

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
The F#.NET Journal
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/product...ournal/?usenet

On Apr 19, 7:43 pm, Don Geddis <d...@geddis.org> wrote:

> I assume you mean "rot" as in quality of product or something.

Well, quality of management etc etc yes.

> But if you
> mean that the company collapses from within and dies, and would have been
> stronger and longer-lasting if it hadn't been such a monopoly, I don't think
> that's true. Monopolies rarely die on their own.

No. But they get to the point where you don't have to push very
hard. It takes a while, of course: it took 500 years for the Roman
empire to rot, and probably almost another 500 before people really
realised it was dead. Companies don't take so long, fortunately.

> Gates saw this in time, and refocused the HUGE company that Microsoft is and
> was to attack and defeat this threat. There were a whole bunch of angles to
> Gates's counterattack, and I'll leave out the details here. But you
> underestimate the skill of Gates if you think that Microsoft had "rotted" --
> despite their software sucking in 1995 just as much as it does now.

Oh no, they won that battle. But I think they have probably lost the
war by now. Just as with the Roman empire we probably have not yet
noticed, but I think the Vista release will be seen as the moment at
which the decline from monopoly began.

--tim

(just in case: I'm not arguing that Linux will win or anything naive
like that.)

On Apr 19, 1:31 pm, Jon Harrop <j...@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> > On Apr 18, 5:13 pm, Andy Freeman <ana...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> Almost all of us have rejected said hobby-horse. Wouldn't he be
> >> better off trying to convert folk who haven't seen it?
>
> > What on earth are you talking about?
>
> He is claiming that Lispers are uninterested in other languages.

Not at all.

I'm pointing out that, other that Harrop, there isn't much/any
interest
in discussing Caml-languages in CLL.

For better or worse, usenet is topic oriented. CLL isn't the place
for
discussing the virtues of Avaya phones or dalmations, even if lispers
happen to care about those things.

The first couple of messages can slide under the "hey, you guys
might be interested in this", but we're way past that. Folks who want
caml or relevant discussions know where to find it.

I note that Harrop hasn't bothered to tell us why he keeps posting
about Caml in CLL.

Perhaps there should be a newsgroup creation vote for
comp.lang.lisp.caml
(or lisp-caml) so Harrop can have a forum.

In article <1177084893.686488.98730@q75g2000hsh.googlegroups. com>,
Andy Freeman <anamax@earthlink.net> wrote:

> On Apr 19, 1:31 pm, Jon Harrop <j...@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> > Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> > > On Apr 18, 5:13 pm, Andy Freeman <ana...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > >> Almost all of us have rejected said hobby-horse. Wouldn't he be
> > >> better off trying to convert folk who haven't seen it?
> >
> > > What on earth are you talking about?
> >
> > He is claiming that Lispers are uninterested in other languages.
>
> Not at all.
>
> I'm pointing out that, other that Harrop, there isn't much/any
> interest
> in discussing Caml-languages in CLL.
>
> For better or worse, usenet is topic oriented. CLL isn't the place
> for
> discussing the virtues of Avaya phones or dalmations, even if lispers
> happen to care about those things.
>
> The first couple of messages can slide under the "hey, you guys
> might be interested in this", but we're way past that. Folks who want
> caml or relevant discussions know where to find it.

Right. I would sometimes even tolerate messages like
'this is how I'd do it in X, what is the Lisp way?'.
But he seems to be totally uninterested in Lisp.

> I note that Harrop hasn't bothered to tell us why he keeps posting
> about Caml in CLL.

Yeah. There is a CAML mailing list where his postings
are on-topic.

Mostly he want to create traffic for his website
and create business with his F# stuff.

> Perhaps there should be a newsgroup creation vote for
> comp.lang.lisp.caml
> (or lisp-caml) so Harrop can have a forum.

Well, there are cross-language newsgroups
like comp.lang.functional . Everybody
who has an interest in Functional Programming
can read that (I do sometimes). comp.object is also
somehow relevant, since CAML is also an object-oriented language.
CAML also has its own mailing list which can be read
at fa.caml .

In comp.lang.lisp or comp.lang.lisp.* pure CAML (and for derived
languages like F#) postings like many of
Mr. Harrop are off-topic. Somehow he things Lisp users
haven't seen the light and he needs to evangelize
in c.l.l. Sometime ago it was Mathematica,
now it is F#. Advertising his F# business is
especially off-topic in c.l.l. I wish him well with his business,
but c.l.l is definitely not a newsgroup for any random
business that is mostly unrelated to Lisp.

--
http://lispm.dyndns.org

Rainer Joswig wrote:
> Mostly he want to create traffic for his website
> and create business with his F# stuff.

I hate it when people do that. http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/ It is so
transparent. http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/demo.html Who do they think
they are kidding? http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/about_us.html Not me!

kzo

--
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"Algebra is the metaphysics of arithmetic." - John Ray

"As long as algebra is taught in school,
there will be prayer in school." - Cokie Roberts

"Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra."
- Fran Lebowitz

"I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive."
- Tim Allen

In article <cs7Wh.27$lm5.15@newsfe12.lga>,
Ken Tilton <ken@theoryyalgebra.com> wrote:

> Rainer Joswig wrote:
> > Mostly he want to create traffic for his website
> > and create business with his F# stuff.
>
> I hate it when people do that. http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/ It is so
> transparent. http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/demo.html Who do they think
> they are kidding? http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/about_us.html Not me!
>
> kzo


We'll better give the advertising space to you. ;-)

Btw., your website is not very clear what it is about.
I guess it is software I have to buy? Or not? Is it
for free? Is it ready? Soon?

--
http://lispm.dyndns.org

Rainer Joswig wrote:

> In article <cs7Wh.27$lm5.15@newsfe12.lga>,
> Ken Tilton <ken@theoryyalgebra.com> wrote:
>
>> http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/demo.html

Nice demo. How much did you pay for the licences for using the sound
samples? I think at least one was from "2001: A Space Odyssey"

I wonder how the program knows all the time, which hint would be the best
for a wrong answer. Looks like much work to think of all possible failures
the student can make and a complicated program to detect it.

> Btw., your website is not very clear what it is about.
> I guess it is software I have to buy? Or not? Is it
> for free? Is it ready? Soon?

On the main page you can read: "Free download arrives: September 1, 2007"

--
Frank Buss, fb@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de