What is Microsoft doing?
Microsoft is shifting more and more of their revenue stream to server products. There are only so many features you can stuff into Word, and let's face it, OpenOffice is perfectly suitable for most office workers. Microsoft is also pushing hard to have third-party software (and hardware) vendors embed Microsoft components in their software. We're in the Microsoft ISV program--and I have spent time with the corporate legal staff discussing whether or not Microsoft will indemnify us against any claim for IP infringement. This announcement clears the issue up--they will.
What's the big deal?
I work for a company that makes lighting controls. We make the dimmer in your dining room--but we also make control systems for very large projects, such as Lincoln Financial Field (home of the Philadelphia Eagles). We provide Windows-based control software (among lots of other things)--it would be a serious issue if a vendor to Microsoft sued us for infringement based on Microsoft's code. That's exactly what SCO did to AutoZone. SCO didn't contend that AutoZone intentionally infringed--they alleged that AutoZone was using an app developed by IBM that infringed. Nonetheless, AutoZone lands in court in an IP infringement case. Microsoft's indemnification effectively means that if somebody sues us on the same kind of claim, we don't have to worry. Microsoft will defend the case, bankrupt the attorneys, crush the plaintiffs, reduce their homes to rubble, enslave their children, and--and ruin their self-esteem!. We won't have to be involved at all. 8-)
From our perspective, that's a good thing.
But doesn't this portend an onslaught of Microsoft attorneys arrayed against the forces of Open Source? Isn't the battle of Armageddon nigh?
No. This simply means that Microsoft is telling vendors that embed Microsoft products that they do not have to worry about getting caught up in an IP infringement case. That's all.
As a prior Election Official, do you have any views on voting system reform? Questions such as switching to an approval voting system or even eventually abolishing the Electoral College....
Electoral system reform
The most pressing need, today, is a radical re-examination of voter registration procedures and voting procedures to eliminate vote fraud. I cannot stress this enough--the election today will be stolen; the only question is which side will steal more votes. I deeply regret that statement--but I mean every word of it. The electoral system today is simply a wide-open invitation to several different sorts of vote fraud, and you can be absolutely certain they're happening.
Bogus registration #1: A young man who works down the hall from me is registered to vote here in Pennsylvania. He's also registered to vote in New Jersey. He can (although he won't) vote twice today--and there is no way to tell that he didn't.
Bogus registration #2: Register your dog--and request an absentee ballot for him. Unless your state requires absentee ballots be posted publicly, and one of your neighbors notices that "Froo-froo Jones" got an absentee ballot, you've stolen a vote.
Bogus registration #3: Register every alien (foreigner, not LGM) you can find. Nobody, at least in Pennsylvania, asks for proof of citizenship, even for first-time voters. Do you have a driver's license? You get to vote.
Vote theft #1: Get volunteers into nursing homes, registering voters. Offer to help with absentee ballots. Take ballots to courthouse--dropping ballots you don't like into the trash.
In short--the system is wide open for vote theft. It must be fixed; and there must be a careful scouring of this election to identify where votes have been stolen. And--without fail--those responsible for vote them (duplicate registration, vote theft, etc.) must go to jail. No probation, no community service--bona fide Big House jail time.
The Electoral College
The Electoral College is the most misunderstood feature of American polity. It should not be abolished--to the complete contrary, it should be strengthened; which is to say, it should be restored to how it was originally intended. The problem with the EC in most states is that each state is a "winner takes all" race: win the heavily-populated parts of California, and you can ignore the rest of the state. Win Houston and Dallas, and you can ignore the rest of Texas. Win New York City, and don't waste your time on upstate.
If EC votes were counted for each congressional district, with the winner of the EC votes in the state getting the bonus two "Senate" votes, it would have the immediate effect of taking major media buys out of the campaign. You couldn't run a last-minute attack ad campaign--you wouldn't have flash-in-the-pan candidates like Howard Dean or Jimmy Carter appearing out of the woodwork. You'd have to communicate--and convince--voters in every part of the country, rather than focus on a limited number of media markets in "swing" states. You'd have a lot less noise, and a lot more signal.
There is such a thing as the Law of Unintended Consequences. And one likely consequence of such a thing would be that fewer people would be likely to vote: because there would be less television noise, and because the campaigns would have to persuade, not sloganeer. Most consumers in America respond to ads--not to Op Ed page articles. Political campaigns would tend toward Op Ed types--hopefully that would mean more thoughtful voters.
What you're missing is that it's not the votes that are important. The votes are simply a reflection of the intention of the voter. In the process of making intention into a vote you have an error rate that is a function of the general IQ of the voters, the amount of time the voter has, the complexity of the ballot, the amount of loud music in the room, etc., etc., etc.
At an academic level, I will concede that one might make a theoretical distinction between the voter's intent and the actual vote cast. At a practical level, that might be a concern in determining whether a given voting system is too complex for the typical voter to understand. (And I have had to use the little demo voting machine over and over and over again to help seemingly capable people figure out how to vote.)
BUT... I absolutely disagree with the notion that we can, or even should consider, looking for an error rate in how votes are counted. There are rules. We play by them. We don't need to, and should not, make it any more complicated than that.
(Deep breath. I'm about to do something totally insane--try to present a rational, factual explanation of a political subject on SlashDot. Maybe its because I've been eating nothing but red M&Ms all day....)
IAMPAEO--BIHBO
I Am Not Presently An Election Official--But I Have Been One. And I can promise you, with all sincerity, that the margin of error is effectively zero. We count every single ballot, whether on the voting machines or in absentee ballots, regardless of how late we have to stay up to do it. The people in your county registrar's office total up all of the ballots from the polling places, and keep checking and re-checking until they have it right. The math is done in front of representatives from all political parties, as well as any candidate-appointed watchers that are present as well. When the election results are certified, the results are correct--with an error rate of zero.
Oh, c'mon. What about...
I have been an election official for more than fifteen years--and I have been involved in counting votes on Election night in heavily Democratic wards, and in heavily Republican wards. It does not matter--we get the vote total correct, and we turn it in to the county. Then the county re-checks our work--and they carefully preserve the voting machines until they're convinced we have done the work correctly. (One year, back in the 1980s, the county had questions about one of our voting machines and called the officials back in later in the week to make sure they understood what we'd done.)
Don't confuse the results announced on TV with the certified election
I have also done consulting work with the Elections Unit of a major TV network. They have an entirely different agenda: their goal is to "call" the election for one candidate or the other before any other media outlet. They are basing their "calls" on exit-polling data ("pardon me, ma'am, but could you tell me who you voted for?") in a handful of selected precincts across a state. They will report preliminary totals ("And we now see Governor Bloviate leading with 1,424,325 votes with 21% of precincts reporting...") without explaining the context (are those Bloviate's strong precincts? Who says the numbers are correct?) They're out to report fast, accuracy be damned. (Sorry, Charlie, but that's the way it really is.)
The real story, the real vote total, comes when the election is certified. And the "chaos" that we all saw in Florida was the actual process of certifying an election. There were flaws (the biggest: they hadn't defined any rules for how to count votes)--but they eventually arrived at a standard, and used that standard to count votes. They ended up with a total. That's the final number.
All that said....
The total vote count will be determined with a level of error of zero. What will not be determined--and what I fear will be rampant in this election, on both sides--is how many votes were fraudulent, due to duplicate registrations, absentee ballot fraud, etc.
Uhh...Fox News is owned by an Aussie, Rupert Murdoch.
While Rupert Murdoch was born in Australia, he is now a U.S. citizen. News Corp., which is the Murdoch-controlled entity that owns Fox Broadcasting, is seeking shareholder approval to re-incorporate in the United States.
I used to work in book publishing, and have also done consulting work for a major U.S. broadcast network. I've had to explain dozens of times that there is no relationship between Uncle Rupert and me. 8-)
Why not? We can invent an imminent threat from any country we want, why settle for the dirty, crapass countries half-way around the world? The facts have no bearing on this administration, so let's invade the countries with the best looking women first.
Ask a silly question, get a silly (but true) answer: There are McDonald's franchises in Brazil. The U.S. has never gone to war with any country that has a McDonald's.
Several people have posted on this topic that the "innovation" that Sun is claiming is a seat license. That's not really correct--what Sun is claiming is that they are licensing software from a central source per-employee and per-month. That's (slightly) different from installing a copy-protected EXE and charging a fee for each install.
But that doesn't mean Sun has an original idea.
In the late 1990s I worked with a client to develop several web applications that were billed on a per-user/per-month basis. The applications identified users and installed copies, and permitted the end users to review their records before billing (so they could remove portions of the software from machines they weren't using, etc.). Without seeing the specifics of the Sun patent application, this sounds as though it would be a very credible example of prior art.
Which brings me to my point:
Does anyone in the community know how to provide examples of prior art to the USPTO examiner? Or is the best recourse to tell my client to call his lawyer?
In this day and age, I think it is a good thing that the government in general, and the military (especially the National Guard) in particular, has mapped the locations of plants that produce particularly toxic gases. In the event of a catastrophe, merging the geo-spatial data with up-to-date information from the National Weather Service would be crucial to determining dispersal patterns and what populations would be affected. ("Affected" in the hazmat industry usually means "killed.")
Similarly, I think it would extremely useful for the government to identify the locations of, and easiest access to, where transcontinental fiber-optic links cross the Mississippi River.
I can think of no good reason for Joe Public to know--at the detail of lat/lon--that kind of information. Because Joe Public might just be thinking about mischief, and knowing that kind of information might give him all the help he needed.
What the military is doing is a good thing
They're capturing geo-spatial data. That's geography--where stuff is located. They're looking at stuff that the USGS is not looking at (the USGS looks for polling places, churches, schools, and radio towers--they do not identify or catalog hazmat locations or high-voltage power lines). That makes a lot of sense to me--somebody should be looking at this.
The article? Note the source: the Federation of American Scientists. They're generally regarded as a left wing group that is deeply suspicious of the military. Note the tenor of the comments from the one source in the article: deeply suspicious of the military--to the point of thinking that geo-spatial mapping could be used for personal surveillance. Um, not.
In sum, I think the FAS is getting lathered up over a misunderstanding of what the program is doing. Not every small Defense department project is a secret conspiracy.
...Unless, of course, they're verifying the information by flying around in Little Black Helicopters. 8-)
Re:Two examples to consider
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Wrong. The Statute of Monopolies [216.239.39.104] was enacted in 1623.
Hi, and thanks for googling....
The Statute of Monopolies modified the power of the crown to establish monopolies--limiting it, ostensibly, to granting monopolies for devices. Like a lot of English law, there was a gulf between word and deed--the crown kept right on issuing monopolies (the Hudson Bay Company springs to mind, and I expect that the East India Company had not been chartered yet). And inventors were not given property rights to their inventions--they could petition the crown for a monopoly, but there was nothing that said they'd get one.
And, in fact, few did. It was not until the development of "modern" patent law, in the 1740s and 1750s, that the rules changed.
Read Longitude--there's an excellent discussion of the situation there.
Right. Because technological innovation never happened before 1627.
First, the Industrial Revolution happened (in England) in the 18th century, not the 17th. Intellectual property laws were established in the 1740s and 1750s, and the explosion of innovation began immediately.
Prior to that, the pace of technological innovation was--glacial. If you look at the common work tasks of the day (in farming, in inland transportation, in shipping, in manufacturing) the pace of technological innovation was so slow as to be difficult to measure.
Some examples:
Ships: essentially unchanged in fundamental design for 700 years (evolutionary design, but a master mariner transported from 1066 A.D. to 1766 A.D. would have little or no trouble sailing from one end of the Mediterranean to the other). By 1866 most naval vessels had steam power and paddle wheels (in addition to sails), and the Russians had launched the Great White Fleet of all-ironclad ships. Within another 40 years sail disappeared entirely from naval vessels, ships hulls were made of steel, displacements rose from hundreds of tons to tens of thousands of tons (two orders of magnitude), and ships were signaling one another with blinker lights.
Explosives: Black powder was developed in (I think) the 11th century. And remained essentially unchanged--and the only game in town for blasting rock, mines, etc. By the end of the 19th century Nobel had invented dynamite, and DuPont had developed a whole range of explosives--revolutionizing civil engineering (yay!) and war (boo!).
Manufacturing: the weaving of wool clothing, and the ubiquity of woolen clothing, remained essentially unchanged from the beginning of recorded history into the mid-1700s. With the development of IP laws, new technology to comb, card, and spin cotton into thread, and weave cotton thread into cheap and washable clothing, revolutionized clothing--and ended the Black Death (spread by fleas that infested woolen clothing).
Metallurgy: Iron and its manufacture remained essentially unchanged for centuries. The development of black powder, among other things, facilitated the development of canals, which in turn made possible the development of larger-scale iron mining and manufacturing. By the 1870s steel was being mass-produced--and the manufacturing revolution was on.
The list goes on, and on, and on. The pace of technological change before the adoption of IP laws was non-existent. The pace of technological change after the adoption of IP laws was torrid at the start, and has only increased in speed since.
And, in the main, IP laws have done precisely what the framers intended. I work for the company that invented the electronic dimmer--back in 1961. We still make that dimmer, and a number of competitors make cheaper knock-offs. During the years when the company had a patent on the dimmer (and subsequently the fluorescent dimmer) the founders had the time and revenue to build a business and develop newer products. When those patents expired, a number of competitors launched their own versions. Bully for them. Society as a whole benefits from the development of new technology--and we have incentive to continue to develop new products and newer technology. Strip away the protection of IP laws, and we have zero incentive to develop anything new--we'd have to shift our focus to becoming a commodity producer in search of the lowest possible manufactured cost. Outsource everything to Madagascar, and tell the employees to go get jobs at McDonalds.
Nope--better to use IP laws to stimulate innovation, and let us export technology (which we do) to Japan, Korea, China, and every other major country in the world.
To "bury" a man at sea, they would sew him into his hammock with two round shot (cannon balls) and slide his body overboard.
If you're at all curious (as opposed to just making a wisecrack) you might find Patrick's O'Brian's fictional--but drawn from solid historical accounts, including Anson's logs--novel The Golden Ocean to be interesting.
Those who would abandon the concept of intellectual property should, I think, fully explain how society would (or could) continue to encourage the taking of risk to produce innovation. Let me propose two examples for consideration:
The problem of longitude
In the 18th century the biggest technological challenge of the age was the question of longitude--how to tell where you were at sea. In a particularly grim demonstration of this, Commodore Anson's fleet (of the British Navy) sailed east instead of west in search of fresh provisions, only to realize their mistake after almost a week of sailing in the wrong direction. They buried almost a hundred men a day from scurvy while they retraced their steps to find Juan Fernandez Island.
Dava Sobel's magnificent book Longitude describes the technological challenge, and the decades-long struggle the inventor and his family fought to claim the prize that was offered. The inventor died in poverty--while others rushed to market with copies of his invention. Parliament was finally shamed into awarding the money, but only after he'd died.
The question: without a substantial financial incentive, the guy would have kept making wooden clocks. Given the fumbling and stumbling around (and outright deceit) by the authorities, the inventor probably should have kept making wooden clocks.
The Ansari X Prize
Hey, we're on SlashDot. Everybody is watching Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites as they race into space. In theory they are propelled by the Ansari X Prize. In practice, they have already spent more than they'll earn from the X Prize. Paul Allen has plowed upwards of $20 million into the project--and might get nothing if somebody beats the Scaled Composites team to the prize. Absent a financial incentive, why should Paul Allen, Burt Rutan, and the rest of the team pursue this?
Learn the lessons of history
Historians have debated for centuries about why the Industrial Revolution began when it did, in England. An important precursor was a substantial rise in farm productivity--but the widely-acknowledged "tipping point" was the establishment of intellectual property laws. Up till that point anyone who figured out a better, faster, cheaper way to weave cloth or spin yarn would enjoy a momentary advantage over his competitors--and could be instantly crushed by a competitor with more available cash (who could thus implement the innovation faster). Once IP laws were in place, the inventor had a huge financial incentive to bring that invention to market, or simply to publicly disclose it. The results are undeniable: the Industrial Revolution spawned an unbelievable amount of technological innovation that has continued at an ever-increasing pace until today. Confined to those countries that have solid IP laws. Countries that do not have solid IP laws in place generally see no technological innovation at all--and when their countrymen do come up with something, it is only after they move to a country with strong IP laws. (To draw an extreme example, don't look for breathtaking pharmacology discoveries from Zimbabwe anytime soon.)
At the end of the day...
At least for Americans, talk of abandoning IP laws is kind of pointless. It would require a change to the U.S. Constitution, which is unlikely in the extreme. If any other country were so foolish as to abandon IP laws--hey, go right ahead. One less competitor for us to worry about....
"...the number of jobs that allows for those benefits have been shrinking dramatically over the past 20 years."
Um, no.
Unemployment insurance is not a "benefit" that an employee may or may not get. It is an entitlement, funded by payroll contributions paid by the employer (entirely in most states, but split with the employee in others). Part-time jobs typically are not covered for unemployment--but any full-time job is. And full-time employment in the U.S. has most certainly not been "shrinking dramatically over the past 20 years." (To the contrary, full-time employment has increased in that time period.)
Your statement about how the BLS counts people receiving unemployment benefits is half-right. Only people receiving unemployment are counted as unemployed--where you're mistaken is in thinking that once a person's unemployment has run out, the BLS regards that person as employed. That's not how it works.
The BLS determines employment based on statistical extrapolation of employment data polled monthly from a broad cross-section of businesses across the country. Years ago, when I was the business manager of a small publishing house, I got a monthly survey form from the BLS, which I would fill out and send in. That's how the BLS can report on growth (or decline) in manufacturing, service, or farm-sector jobs: they're surveying employers in different job sectors across the country (and across the economy).
If you read the BLS documents, you'll find cautions against using unemployment figures derived from state unemployment reports and comparing them with employment data derived from employer reports. The unemployment data are hard numbers--the total of new claims for unemployment insurance, for instance. The employment data are statistical projections from voluntary surveys. (If you forget to send the form in they nag you--but you can always drop out of the survey entirely.) You can't correlate the two--it is a perfect example of "comparing apples to oranges."
Yes, please--do check.
For starters, check with the U.S. Dept. of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics--which is the agency that tabulates and reports on job gains and losses. Any statistical discussion of employment and employment trends in the U.S. will inevitably use BLS data. And the data, as you've heard in the press, is that unemployment has been declining, and net employment is up, at least since the 4th quarter of 2003. (It may be longer, but I didn't look beyond the "at-a-glance" index on the BLS page I linked to above.)
Employment overall is one thing--but how about geek employment?
I cannot comment about geek employment nationwide--but I can comment about geek employment in the New York-Philadelphia metropolitan area. In short, we're past the tipping point, where recruiters are calling up to offer jobs, instead of not bothering to return your calls for positions. That inevitably has the effect of driving up wages--either direct wages (pay to you) or indirect wages (benefits, free lunch, etc.).
How much of that is smoke?
A lot of people are skeptical about headhunters, and whether they really have the jobs they claim to have. I can't say. What I can say, though, is that my employer is actively recruiting, and we will be making a major effort at on-campus recruiting in the fall.
Digression: in fact, I have an open req for a co-op student who is majoring in either software engineering or computer science, for the Spring 2005 semester. The student will be working on implementing an existing commercial application on Linux using the Mono implementations of C# and ASP.Net, and PostgreSQL. Prior experience with Linux is an absolute must, prior experience with C# will be a strong plus, prior experience with databases is a strong plus, prior experience with PostgreSQL would be nice. Contact me at jmurdoch-at-Lutron-dot-com for more information.
In the (relatively) early days of ATMs a couple of crooks bought a machine, built a nice-looking case around it, and rolled it into a shopping mall. They programmed it to report that "your transaction could not be completed--please try again later." Of course, it wasn't connected to anything--except a recorder that was logging all the ATM card numbers and the customer-entered PINs. The crooks came back, rolled away the ATM, and drained the bank accounts of the poor folks who tried to use the machine.
A number of people have posted comments suggesting that (PTP) the root of the problem here was Acxiom's shoddy security. And have then followed up by posting open-ended questions about "how can we secure the 'Net when bozos like these guys don't lock their doors?"
There's a simple solution.
And no, it does not involve jail time for dumb sysadmins (stupidity is not a crime). It is much simpler--it's called tort law. If you are injured by Acxiom's shoddy security practices, you have a legal claim against the parties responsible for your injury. So, for example, suppose that your credit card information was swiped--and it transpires that the data came from an Acxiom-maintained database of information from General Electric. You can sue both General Electric and Acxiom, claiming a financial loss, damage to your reputation, economic losses due to your now-shredded credit rating, etc.
Suing by yourself might be an exercise in frustration--but here's where contingent-fee litigation ("you only pay if we collect") works for the little guy: convince an attorney to pursue this as a class-action suit, and companies like General Electric will pay significant money to get out of the suit.
The result?
No--you're not going to get rich. You're probably not likely to get much beyond the actual cash loss you can prove. But you will dramatically raise the cost of outsourcing database maintenance to companies like Acxiom. And that's the only realistic way, IMHO, to solve this problem. Big companies have to learn that outsourcing the IT problem to the lowest bidder includes a substantial amount of risk--which, sooner or later, will cost them cash.
Triborough Bridge Commission to be privatized
on
419 Scam Blow-by-Blow
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Hey--Rookie, baby!
I'm sorry if I sound too informal--but you're the Rook Cameron in the 1977 pledge class of the Beta Pi chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha, right? I'm sure it's got to be you, man--long time: long, long time.
So what are you up to? I went off to Wall Street with Dave Scott and Paul Emerich (did you hear that Paul died in the Bahamas last year?). Dave is still selling securities, still running marathons, and is still totally PW'd by Sarah. I did the stock broker thing for a while, but got caught up on some, um, complexities with the Justice Department. Not a big deal--but had to find a new career direction.
Nowadays I'm kind of working "off Wall Street" (sort of the same way that some plays are produced "Off Broadway" to avoid paying union wages). I'm part of a small group that packages deals, finds investors to participate, and does big deals. Right now I'm working on a hush-hush kind of project that has some major potential.
Hey--would you be interested in getting involved in something like this? My partners typically work with a very select group of investors--but they owe me, BIG TIME, for solving a little problem that threatened our last big deal. I'm sure I could get you into this, if you really wanted to make a big score. If you want in--this is a terrific opportunity, but because it's an election year, YOU HAVE TO AGREE THAT YOU WILL NOT TELL ANYBODY--FOR ANY REASON--ABOUT THIS DEAL.
Here's the deal: the state of New York is facing a budget crisis. The governor's budget people completely underestimated tax receipts, and they're desperately trying to avoid a major cash shortfall. Here's what they're going to do: privatize the Triborough Bridge Commission. They're going to sell the commission's assets (bridges and tunnels) as well as capitalize a portion of the commission's continuing toll revenue over the next twenty years. We anticipate an IPO on the order of $8-12 billion (with a "B") dollars--it will be the biggest IPO in the U.S. in the past four years.
But there's a catch: the commission is full of political hacks and their cronies. They'll scream bloody murder if the deal is done in public, especially in an election year. So the governor's office is looking to quietly handle the sale through a third-party proxy: we set up a shell corporation to register for the IPO, we "technically" acquire the assets on consignment, we price the IPO, and we make the sale. We will have to price the IPO at a point that ensures that we can grease any potential problems with "friends and family" shares--but our take will be.5 percent of the IPO. That might sound like chump change--but one-half of one percent of $8 billion is $40 million dollars. If that's chump change, I wanna be a chump, right?
If you're interested, let me know. We have to put up a small amount of cash to create the partnership that will buy a shell corporation that actually registers the IPO. I'm sure I can get my partners to let you into this (you'll have to demonstrate liquidity to keep them happy, and the feds off our backs)--but you'll make out like a bandit. It'll be great to do something crazy with you--like old times, right?
But hey--if you're not interested, that's entirely cool. (Or if you're not the same Rook Cameron--geez, then I'm totally sorry for ranting at you like this.) But if you do want into this, let me know. We can make a killing.
The technology you're referring to is called DALI (digitally-addressing lighting interface? Not entirely sure). DALI is a means of digitally addressing a fluorescent fixture--it is a popular technology in Europe, although it is presently rare in the United States. (I work for a lighting control systems manufacturer who is about to change that. And...(golly! gee!)...we use XML. 8-)
There are a lot of reasons for using DALI--turning off the lights at night isn't generally considered to be one of them. (We use relays and a clock to do that.) But digitally-addressable ballasts permit us to offer personalized lighting control--so if you're the kind of programmer who likes lower light over your cube, you can lower your light level. If you are in a meeting room giving a presentation, you can dim the lights near the screen, but keep the rest of the lights in the room at a higher level. If you're laying out a floor filled with cubicles, you can (simply) specify that light levels over your corridors will be higher than lights over the cubes. If you build a room with walls that extend to the ceiling (and thus are required to have a light switch by the door) you can "group" a set of ballasts to respond to keypress events from the wallstation. DALI gives you a lot of benefits in managing a building.
Buildings talking to each other?
Um, no. But it does make sense for buildings to talk to a control system. We figure that 30% of the total operating cost for an office building is lighting. Even if you don't have brownouts where you are (the phrase "taxpayer-subsidized coal mines" springs to mind) you probably do have demand pricing for electrical power. If you run a campus of buildings (a university, an apartment complex, or a corporate office park) electricity represents one of your major costs. And--in the minds of many facilities managers--electricity is generally regarded as a "controllable cost" that is anything but. People turn the lights on, the electric company sends a bill. If people turn the lights on at times of peak demand, the power company sends a much, much bigger bill. What to do?
It's called "load shed"
There is a basic idea called load shedding--when the price of electricity goes up, start turning things off. In general it is pretty binary--the price exceeds X, so we turn off all the machine tools. The price exceeds X2, and we turn off some other part of a manufacturing plant. And so forth.
But that kind of load-shedding is a kind of brute force solution: you're using less power, but you're turning things off. Which means you're not doing something--something that presumably is part of your business. Using technologies like digitally-addressable ballasts, and photo sensors, and occupancy sensors, and algorithms that measure light levels and determine whether to adjust the lights and/or change the level of motorized shades, we can shed load in such a way that you probably don't even notice--even though we're saving you a bundle on your electric bill.
Stand back! I have XML and I know how to use it....
The bottom line is that the only times in the last forty years the US has fought a serious military adversary - Vietnam and Bosnia - much of the high tech that was promoted as being decisive failed. A conflict between he Koreas would probably show this again.
[Giggle]
Evidently you weren't paying attention during, oh, say, the first Gulf War. When the world's press was saying that the U.S. was sending inexperienced American kids against the battle-hardened Iraqis, the fourth-largest army in the world, and easily the best-armed of the Soviet client states. Saddam Hussein's PR types were telling everybody about their prepared "killing fields" which they would flood with oil and ignite--burning the American tank crews as they advanced. Practically every military analyst assured viewers or readers that the Iraqis were tough, motivated, well-armed, and had spent 10 long years in continuous combat against maniacal forces from Iran. Newspapers surveyed their readers about how they'd react to casualty counts of 10,000, 20,000, or more.
The war was, well, rather anti-climactic. The killing fields? The bunkers that controlled them were flattened by Fuel Air Explosives (FAE) that put more pressure per square inch on their targets than did the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Haven't heard any Americans talk about nuclear weapons in a decade or two? FAEs are one of the reasons why. All the destruction, none of the politics.)
The debut of the previously-unheard of F-117 completely changed the order of battle over Baghdad--and the use of laser- and video-guided weapons for precision bombing changed the world's perception of air power. And while a battleship launched in the 1940s may not be "new tech"--it's fire control and fire guidance systems were sufficiently new tech that Iraqi soldiers were videotaped surrendering to the spotter drone. (They figured out quickly that when the spotter drone appeared, 16-inch shells [weighing more than your car] would soon follow.)
And let's forget that the actual tank combat was completely assymetrical, because the Iraqis used roads, while the Americans used GPS--and appeared out of nowhere on the Iraqis flank.
Bosnia?
Perhaps you weren't old enough to remember Bosnia--where U.S. technology was so overpowering that there was no need to put U.S. troops on the ground. It was only after NATO was replaced by U.N. "peacekeepers" that the atrocities began--the Serbs figured out very, very early that they did not want to fsck with the U.S. Air Force. (The Air Force staged a little atrocity of their very own--using bombing, missiles, and close air attack to drive the Serbs into a very small area--which they carpet-bombed from B-52s.)
Those who know the North Koreans best (including leaders in the South Korean government who have repeated this views in my hearing) believe that they have--at best--an altered view of reality. But even the NK military leaders do not believe they can take on the U.S. That's why they have insisted on negotiating with the U.S., not the South, for decades. It has only been in the past few years, as the North has so clearly collapsed economically, that they have finally begun direct talks with the South. And the nature of the talks is one of mercy and kindness extended by a wealthy elder to a starving peasant--not the dialogue of equals.
The ultimate high-tech American weapon, of course... ...is the Internet. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Internet has had, and is having, a radical effect on people around the world. And it is achieving the highest and best aim of any weapon--it prevents potential adversaries from going to war. The more we know about each other--and the more people can learn about their country from sources other than the official government news agency, the more the dictators tremble. Note carefully those regimes that are most opposed to participatory democracy--mainland China, Saudi Arab
Really? That memo must not have reached me. We managed to stop it the last time.
Actually, the North did overrun Seoul in the early days of the Korean War, and came dangerously close to sweeping the entire length of the peninsula. Rapid reinforcements stemmed the invasion--and the subsequent landing at Inchon forced the North into headlong retreat. Then the Chinese intervened, yadda yadda yadda.
Interesting, yet so Cold War oriented. This will stop terrorists, how?
Terrorism, state-sponsored or otherwise, isn't the only military issue in the world. The Cold War is long over--but in its place have appeared a number of smaller-scale regional conflicts. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq are three that spring to mind. North Korea is certainly another potential threat that any responsible military commander will consider.
Do you have a world atlas handy? No? Click this link, it will take you to a small map showing North Korea--with a handy map scale in the lower left hand corner. You'll note that the entire Korean peninsula is less than 200 miles wide--meaning that a small handful of U.S. Navy destroyers armed with these railguns could effectively put incredible firepower onto practically any spot in either country. In practice (because there is a range of high mountains running like a spine down the eastern side of the peninsula) you'd have to position 2-3 destroyers on either side, and you'd have 100% fire cover.
That changes all sorts of equations. It lessens aviation requirements in the Korean theater, it lessens troop requirements in theater, and it is a technology that is easy to demonstrate--but well beyond the technological reach of the North Koreans (first because they have limited metalurgical assets to develop the guns, and second because they have very limited ability to find and thus target a ship far out at sea).
The effect may indeed impact anti-terrorism
The ability to inexpensively drop heavy-duty firepower onto the Korean peninsula raises the very real prospect that the U.S. would not need to keep 35,000 combat troops, and thousands of Air Force troops, not to mention planes, ships, and other equipment, focused on North Korea. Some of those forces could be put to better use--such as tracking, identifying, and killing terrorists.
Sure, there's a copy of every book published in the US in the Library of Congress. Maybe. One copy.
The Library of Congress used to receive a copy of each new copyrighted work, but that stopped with the enactment of the Copyright Act of 1976. The librarian of Congress made the point, with examples, that McDonald's (among other businesses) was copyrighting their tray liners, and dutifully submitting one copy of each to the Library of Congress. This wasn't, according to the librarians, quite what Jefferson had in mind. The requirement was dropped.
Under the Copyright Act of 1976, and subsequent revisions, copyright is assured as soon as the work is "reduced to fixed form" (printed from your laser printer, for example).
I've lived and worked in Pennsylvania for many years--Pennsylvania enacted a law assessing sales tax on computer software back in the late 1980s, only to repeal the tax several years later.
Why? In short, it failed.
The law of unintended consequences
Simply put, one of the problems of taxation is that it can be very difficult to accurately assess how people (and companies) will respond. You simply cannot say "companies in Illinois [or Pennsylvania] bought $600 million worth of custom software in 2003, so if we assess a 6% tax we'll reap a $64 million windfall in 2005." It's not that simple--anybody who can avoid the tax will work to do so. And there are lots of ways that a tax like that can be avoided--and those ways generally will result in a tax loss for the state.
Example: A company is considering expanding its mortgage servicing operations. That includes a $10 million custom software project. Locate that operation adjacent to existing offices in Illinois, and you'll have to shoulder an additional $600,000 in taxes in your startup costs. Locate that project in Iowa or Wisconsin, and you get to keep $600K. What's the net result? First, the state of Illinois doesn't get the $600,000--second, the state loses the jobs that would have used that software, and (presumably) will continue having to pay welfare, unemployment assistance, or other government assistance to people who could have filled those jobs.
In Pennsylvania...
It sounded like a good idea. I was working for a software development company at the time--we were planning on opening a company office in Pennsylvania, and doing development here. Instead I worked as an independent contractor, and development (and the development jobs) essentially stayed in California. Lots of other companies did the same thing--or moved development work to offices outside the state. The net effect: practically no revenue for the state, and all sorts of (admittedly anecdotal) evidence of job flight from the state.
Memo to the governor:
Custom software is a capital expenditure. And practically any economist (you might start at the University of Chicago, and perhaps the economist(s) at Caterpillar) will tell you that taxing capital items is generally bad economic policy: you want companies making capital expenditures, because those create j-o-b-s.
Hopefully, the state of Illinois has economic development people who can address this issue before the governor does something stupid and causes a bunch of people to lose their jobs. If nothing else, they should be able to notice that economic development people from a lot of other states will start telling their clients (corporations considering locating in Illinois) about Illinois's new Technology Disincentive Plan. And if you happen to be in the custom software business in Illinois, contact your legislator. Your job may not be going to Bombay--but it may be going to Milwaukee.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi!
What is Microsoft doing?
Microsoft is shifting more and more of their revenue stream to server products. There are only so many features you can stuff into Word, and let's face it, OpenOffice is perfectly suitable for most office workers. Microsoft is also pushing hard to have third-party software (and hardware) vendors embed Microsoft components in their software. We're in the Microsoft ISV program--and I have spent time with the corporate legal staff discussing whether or not Microsoft will indemnify us against any claim for IP infringement. This announcement clears the issue up--they will.
What's the big deal?
I work for a company that makes lighting controls. We make the dimmer in your dining room--but we also make control systems for very large projects, such as Lincoln Financial Field (home of the Philadelphia Eagles). We provide Windows-based control software (among lots of other things)--it would be a serious issue if a vendor to Microsoft sued us for infringement based on Microsoft's code. That's exactly what SCO did to AutoZone. SCO didn't contend that AutoZone intentionally infringed--they alleged that AutoZone was using an app developed by IBM that infringed. Nonetheless, AutoZone lands in court in an IP infringement case. Microsoft's indemnification effectively means that if somebody sues us on the same kind of claim, we don't have to worry. Microsoft will defend the case, bankrupt the attorneys, crush the plaintiffs, reduce their homes to rubble, enslave their children, and--and ruin their self-esteem!. We won't have to be involved at all. 8-)
From our perspective, that's a good thing.
But doesn't this portend an onslaught of Microsoft attorneys arrayed against the forces of Open Source? Isn't the battle of Armageddon nigh?
No. This simply means that Microsoft is telling vendors that embed Microsoft products that they do not have to worry about getting caught up in an IP infringement case. That's all.
Electoral system reform
The most pressing need, today, is a radical re-examination of voter registration procedures and voting procedures to eliminate vote fraud. I cannot stress this enough--the election today will be stolen; the only question is which side will steal more votes. I deeply regret that statement--but I mean every word of it. The electoral system today is simply a wide-open invitation to several different sorts of vote fraud, and you can be absolutely certain they're happening.
In short--the system is wide open for vote theft. It must be fixed; and there must be a careful scouring of this election to identify where votes have been stolen. And--without fail--those responsible for vote them (duplicate registration, vote theft, etc.) must go to jail. No probation, no community service--bona fide Big House jail time.
The Electoral College
The Electoral College is the most misunderstood feature of American polity. It should not be abolished--to the complete contrary, it should be strengthened; which is to say, it should be restored to how it was originally intended. The problem with the EC in most states is that each state is a "winner takes all" race: win the heavily-populated parts of California, and you can ignore the rest of the state. Win Houston and Dallas, and you can ignore the rest of Texas. Win New York City, and don't waste your time on upstate.
If EC votes were counted for each congressional district, with the winner of the EC votes in the state getting the bonus two "Senate" votes, it would have the immediate effect of taking major media buys out of the campaign. You couldn't run a last-minute attack ad campaign--you wouldn't have flash-in-the-pan candidates like Howard Dean or Jimmy Carter appearing out of the woodwork. You'd have to communicate--and convince--voters in every part of the country, rather than focus on a limited number of media markets in "swing" states. You'd have a lot less noise, and a lot more signal.
There is such a thing as the Law of Unintended Consequences. And one likely consequence of such a thing would be that fewer people would be likely to vote: because there would be less television noise, and because the campaigns would have to persuade, not sloganeer. Most consumers in America respond to ads--not to Op Ed page articles. Political campaigns would tend toward Op Ed types--hopefully that would mean more thoughtful voters.
At an academic level, I will concede that one might make a theoretical distinction between the voter's intent and the actual vote cast. At a practical level, that might be a concern in determining whether a given voting system is too complex for the typical voter to understand. (And I have had to use the little demo voting machine over and over and over again to help seemingly capable people figure out how to vote.)
BUT... I absolutely disagree with the notion that we can, or even should consider, looking for an error rate in how votes are counted. There are rules. We play by them. We don't need to, and should not, make it any more complicated than that.
IMHO
(Deep breath. I'm about to do something totally insane--try to present a rational, factual explanation of a political subject on SlashDot. Maybe its because I've been eating nothing but red M&Ms all day....)
IAMPAEO--BIHBO
I Am Not Presently An Election Official--But I Have Been One. And I can promise you, with all sincerity, that the margin of error is effectively zero. We count every single ballot, whether on the voting machines or in absentee ballots, regardless of how late we have to stay up to do it. The people in your county registrar's office total up all of the ballots from the polling places, and keep checking and re-checking until they have it right. The math is done in front of representatives from all political parties, as well as any candidate-appointed watchers that are present as well. When the election results are certified, the results are correct--with an error rate of zero.
Oh, c'mon. What about...
I have been an election official for more than fifteen years--and I have been involved in counting votes on Election night in heavily Democratic wards, and in heavily Republican wards. It does not matter--we get the vote total correct, and we turn it in to the county. Then the county re-checks our work--and they carefully preserve the voting machines until they're convinced we have done the work correctly. (One year, back in the 1980s, the county had questions about one of our voting machines and called the officials back in later in the week to make sure they understood what we'd done.)
Don't confuse the results announced on TV with the certified election
I have also done consulting work with the Elections Unit of a major TV network. They have an entirely different agenda: their goal is to "call" the election for one candidate or the other before any other media outlet. They are basing their "calls" on exit-polling data ("pardon me, ma'am, but could you tell me who you voted for?") in a handful of selected precincts across a state. They will report preliminary totals ("And we now see Governor Bloviate leading with 1,424,325 votes with 21% of precincts reporting...") without explaining the context (are those Bloviate's strong precincts? Who says the numbers are correct?) They're out to report fast, accuracy be damned. (Sorry, Charlie, but that's the way it really is.)
The real story, the real vote total, comes when the election is certified. And the "chaos" that we all saw in Florida was the actual process of certifying an election. There were flaws (the biggest: they hadn't defined any rules for how to count votes)--but they eventually arrived at a standard, and used that standard to count votes. They ended up with a total. That's the final number.
All that said....
The total vote count will be determined with a level of error of zero. What will not be determined--and what I fear will be rampant in this election, on both sides--is how many votes were fraudulent, due to duplicate registrations, absentee ballot fraud, etc.
While Rupert Murdoch was born in Australia, he is now a U.S. citizen. News Corp., which is the Murdoch-controlled entity that owns Fox Broadcasting, is seeking shareholder approval to re-incorporate in the United States.
I used to work in book publishing, and have also done consulting work for a major U.S. broadcast network. I've had to explain dozens of times that there is no relationship between Uncle Rupert and me. 8-)
Hi!
I was just being a smart aleck--but you're right. That'd be a useful mod option.
Thanks!
But "Obviously wearing tinfoil hat" isn't one of the mod options.
Ask a silly question, get a silly (but true) answer: There are McDonald's franchises in Brazil. The U.S. has never gone to war with any country that has a McDonald's.
Several people have posted on this topic that the "innovation" that Sun is claiming is a seat license. That's not really correct--what Sun is claiming is that they are licensing software from a central source per-employee and per-month. That's (slightly) different from installing a copy-protected EXE and charging a fee for each install.
But that doesn't mean Sun has an original idea.
In the late 1990s I worked with a client to develop several web applications that were billed on a per-user/per-month basis. The applications identified users and installed copies, and permitted the end users to review their records before billing (so they could remove portions of the software from machines they weren't using, etc.). Without seeing the specifics of the Sun patent application, this sounds as though it would be a very credible example of prior art.
Which brings me to my point:
Does anyone in the community know how to provide examples of prior art to the USPTO examiner? Or is the best recourse to tell my client to call his lawyer?
In this day and age, I think it is a good thing that the government in general, and the military (especially the National Guard) in particular, has mapped the locations of plants that produce particularly toxic gases. In the event of a catastrophe, merging the geo-spatial data with up-to-date information from the National Weather Service would be crucial to determining dispersal patterns and what populations would be affected. ("Affected" in the hazmat industry usually means "killed.")
Similarly, I think it would extremely useful for the government to identify the locations of, and easiest access to, where transcontinental fiber-optic links cross the Mississippi River.
I can think of no good reason for Joe Public to know--at the detail of lat/lon--that kind of information. Because Joe Public might just be thinking about mischief, and knowing that kind of information might give him all the help he needed.
What the military is doing is a good thing
They're capturing geo-spatial data. That's geography--where stuff is located. They're looking at stuff that the USGS is not looking at (the USGS looks for polling places, churches, schools, and radio towers--they do not identify or catalog hazmat locations or high-voltage power lines). That makes a lot of sense to me--somebody should be looking at this.
The article? Note the source: the Federation of American Scientists. They're generally regarded as a left wing group that is deeply suspicious of the military. Note the tenor of the comments from the one source in the article: deeply suspicious of the military--to the point of thinking that geo-spatial mapping could be used for personal surveillance. Um, not.
In sum, I think the FAS is getting lathered up over a misunderstanding of what the program is doing. Not every small Defense department project is a secret conspiracy.
...Unless, of course, they're verifying the information by flying around in Little Black Helicopters. 8-)
Hi, and thanks for googling....
The Statute of Monopolies modified the power of the crown to establish monopolies--limiting it, ostensibly, to granting monopolies for devices. Like a lot of English law, there was a gulf between word and deed--the crown kept right on issuing monopolies (the Hudson Bay Company springs to mind, and I expect that the East India Company had not been chartered yet). And inventors were not given property rights to their inventions--they could petition the crown for a monopoly, but there was nothing that said they'd get one.
And, in fact, few did. It was not until the development of "modern" patent law, in the 1740s and 1750s, that the rules changed.
Read Longitude--there's an excellent discussion of the situation there.
First, the Industrial Revolution happened (in England) in the 18th century, not the 17th. Intellectual property laws were established in the 1740s and 1750s, and the explosion of innovation began immediately.
Prior to that, the pace of technological innovation was--glacial. If you look at the common work tasks of the day (in farming, in inland transportation, in shipping, in manufacturing) the pace of technological innovation was so slow as to be difficult to measure.
Some examples:
The list goes on, and on, and on. The pace of technological change before the adoption of IP laws was non-existent. The pace of technological change after the adoption of IP laws was torrid at the start, and has only increased in speed since.
And, in the main, IP laws have done precisely what the framers intended. I work for the company that invented the electronic dimmer--back in 1961. We still make that dimmer, and a number of competitors make cheaper knock-offs. During the years when the company had a patent on the dimmer (and subsequently the fluorescent dimmer) the founders had the time and revenue to build a business and develop newer products. When those patents expired, a number of competitors launched their own versions. Bully for them. Society as a whole benefits from the development of new technology--and we have incentive to continue to develop new products and newer technology. Strip away the protection of IP laws, and we have zero incentive to develop anything new--we'd have to shift our focus to becoming a commodity producer in search of the lowest possible manufactured cost. Outsource everything to Madagascar, and tell the employees to go get jobs at McDonalds.
Nope--better to use IP laws to stimulate innovation, and let us export technology (which we do) to Japan, Korea, China, and every other major country in the world.
To "bury" a man at sea, they would sew him into his hammock with two round shot (cannon balls) and slide his body overboard.
If you're at all curious (as opposed to just making a wisecrack) you might find Patrick's O'Brian's fictional--but drawn from solid historical accounts, including Anson's logs--novel The Golden Ocean to be interesting.
Those who would abandon the concept of intellectual property should, I think, fully explain how society would (or could) continue to encourage the taking of risk to produce innovation. Let me propose two examples for consideration:
The problem of longitude
In the 18th century the biggest technological challenge of the age was the question of longitude--how to tell where you were at sea. In a particularly grim demonstration of this, Commodore Anson's fleet (of the British Navy) sailed east instead of west in search of fresh provisions, only to realize their mistake after almost a week of sailing in the wrong direction. They buried almost a hundred men a day from scurvy while they retraced their steps to find Juan Fernandez Island.
Dava Sobel's magnificent book Longitude describes the technological challenge, and the decades-long struggle the inventor and his family fought to claim the prize that was offered. The inventor died in poverty--while others rushed to market with copies of his invention. Parliament was finally shamed into awarding the money, but only after he'd died.
The question: without a substantial financial incentive, the guy would have kept making wooden clocks. Given the fumbling and stumbling around (and outright deceit) by the authorities, the inventor probably should have kept making wooden clocks.
The Ansari X Prize
Hey, we're on SlashDot. Everybody is watching Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites as they race into space. In theory they are propelled by the Ansari X Prize. In practice, they have already spent more than they'll earn from the X Prize. Paul Allen has plowed upwards of $20 million into the project--and might get nothing if somebody beats the Scaled Composites team to the prize. Absent a financial incentive, why should Paul Allen, Burt Rutan, and the rest of the team pursue this?
Learn the lessons of history
Historians have debated for centuries about why the Industrial Revolution began when it did, in England. An important precursor was a substantial rise in farm productivity--but the widely-acknowledged "tipping point" was the establishment of intellectual property laws. Up till that point anyone who figured out a better, faster, cheaper way to weave cloth or spin yarn would enjoy a momentary advantage over his competitors--and could be instantly crushed by a competitor with more available cash (who could thus implement the innovation faster). Once IP laws were in place, the inventor had a huge financial incentive to bring that invention to market, or simply to publicly disclose it. The results are undeniable: the Industrial Revolution spawned an unbelievable amount of technological innovation that has continued at an ever-increasing pace until today. Confined to those countries that have solid IP laws. Countries that do not have solid IP laws in place generally see no technological innovation at all--and when their countrymen do come up with something, it is only after they move to a country with strong IP laws. (To draw an extreme example, don't look for breathtaking pharmacology discoveries from Zimbabwe anytime soon.)
At the end of the day...
At least for Americans, talk of abandoning IP laws is kind of pointless. It would require a change to the U.S. Constitution, which is unlikely in the extreme. If any other country were so foolish as to abandon IP laws--hey, go right ahead. One less competitor for us to worry about....
Um, no.
Unemployment insurance is not a "benefit" that an employee may or may not get. It is an entitlement, funded by payroll contributions paid by the employer (entirely in most states, but split with the employee in others). Part-time jobs typically are not covered for unemployment--but any full-time job is. And full-time employment in the U.S. has most certainly not been "shrinking dramatically over the past 20 years." (To the contrary, full-time employment has increased in that time period.)
Your statement about how the BLS counts people receiving unemployment benefits is half-right. Only people receiving unemployment are counted as unemployed--where you're mistaken is in thinking that once a person's unemployment has run out, the BLS regards that person as employed. That's not how it works.
The BLS determines employment based on statistical extrapolation of employment data polled monthly from a broad cross-section of businesses across the country. Years ago, when I was the business manager of a small publishing house, I got a monthly survey form from the BLS, which I would fill out and send in. That's how the BLS can report on growth (or decline) in manufacturing, service, or farm-sector jobs: they're surveying employers in different job sectors across the country (and across the economy).
If you read the BLS documents, you'll find cautions against using unemployment figures derived from state unemployment reports and comparing them with employment data derived from employer reports. The unemployment data are hard numbers--the total of new claims for unemployment insurance, for instance. The employment data are statistical projections from voluntary surveys. (If you forget to send the form in they nag you--but you can always drop out of the survey entirely.) You can't correlate the two--it is a perfect example of "comparing apples to oranges."
Yes, stronger.
Yes, please--do check.
For starters, check with the U.S. Dept. of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics--which is the agency that tabulates and reports on job gains and losses. Any statistical discussion of employment and employment trends in the U.S. will inevitably use BLS data. And the data, as you've heard in the press, is that unemployment has been declining, and net employment is up, at least since the 4th quarter of 2003. (It may be longer, but I didn't look beyond the "at-a-glance" index on the BLS page I linked to above.)
Employment overall is one thing--but how about geek employment?
I cannot comment about geek employment nationwide--but I can comment about geek employment in the New York-Philadelphia metropolitan area. In short, we're past the tipping point, where recruiters are calling up to offer jobs, instead of not bothering to return your calls for positions. That inevitably has the effect of driving up wages--either direct wages (pay to you) or indirect wages (benefits, free lunch, etc.).
How much of that is smoke?
A lot of people are skeptical about headhunters, and whether they really have the jobs they claim to have. I can't say. What I can say, though, is that my employer is actively recruiting, and we will be making a major effort at on-campus recruiting in the fall.
In the (relatively) early days of ATMs a couple of crooks bought a machine, built a nice-looking case around it, and rolled it into a shopping mall. They programmed it to report that "your transaction could not be completed--please try again later." Of course, it wasn't connected to anything--except a recorder that was logging all the ATM card numbers and the customer-entered PINs. The crooks came back, rolled away the ATM, and drained the bank accounts of the poor folks who tried to use the machine.
A number of people have posted comments suggesting that (PTP) the root of the problem here was Acxiom's shoddy security. And have then followed up by posting open-ended questions about "how can we secure the 'Net when bozos like these guys don't lock their doors?"
There's a simple solution.
And no, it does not involve jail time for dumb sysadmins (stupidity is not a crime). It is much simpler--it's called tort law. If you are injured by Acxiom's shoddy security practices, you have a legal claim against the parties responsible for your injury. So, for example, suppose that your credit card information was swiped--and it transpires that the data came from an Acxiom-maintained database of information from General Electric. You can sue both General Electric and Acxiom, claiming a financial loss, damage to your reputation, economic losses due to your now-shredded credit rating, etc.
Suing by yourself might be an exercise in frustration--but here's where contingent-fee litigation ("you only pay if we collect") works for the little guy: convince an attorney to pursue this as a class-action suit, and companies like General Electric will pay significant money to get out of the suit.
The result?
No--you're not going to get rich. You're probably not likely to get much beyond the actual cash loss you can prove. But you will dramatically raise the cost of outsourcing database maintenance to companies like Acxiom. And that's the only realistic way, IMHO, to solve this problem. Big companies have to learn that outsourcing the IT problem to the lowest bidder includes a substantial amount of risk--which, sooner or later, will cost them cash.
Hey--Rookie, baby!
I'm sorry if I sound too informal--but you're the Rook Cameron in the 1977 pledge class of the Beta Pi chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha, right? I'm sure it's got to be you, man--long time: long, long time.
So what are you up to? I went off to Wall Street with Dave Scott and Paul Emerich (did you hear that Paul died in the Bahamas last year?). Dave is still selling securities, still running marathons, and is still totally PW'd by Sarah. I did the stock broker thing for a while, but got caught up on some, um, complexities with the Justice Department. Not a big deal--but had to find a new career direction.
Nowadays I'm kind of working "off Wall Street" (sort of the same way that some plays are produced "Off Broadway" to avoid paying union wages). I'm part of a small group that packages deals, finds investors to participate, and does big deals. Right now I'm working on a hush-hush kind of project that has some major potential.
Hey--would you be interested in getting involved in something like this? My partners typically work with a very select group of investors--but they owe me, BIG TIME, for solving a little problem that threatened our last big deal. I'm sure I could get you into this, if you really wanted to make a big score. If you want in--this is a terrific opportunity, but because it's an election year, YOU HAVE TO AGREE THAT YOU WILL NOT TELL ANYBODY--FOR ANY REASON--ABOUT THIS DEAL.
Here's the deal: the state of New York is facing a budget crisis. The governor's budget people completely underestimated tax receipts, and they're desperately trying to avoid a major cash shortfall. Here's what they're going to do: privatize the Triborough Bridge Commission. They're going to sell the commission's assets (bridges and tunnels) as well as capitalize a portion of the commission's continuing toll revenue over the next twenty years. We anticipate an IPO on the order of $8-12 billion (with a "B") dollars--it will be the biggest IPO in the U.S. in the past four years.
But there's a catch: the commission is full of political hacks and their cronies. They'll scream bloody murder if the deal is done in public, especially in an election year. So the governor's office is looking to quietly handle the sale through a third-party proxy: we set up a shell corporation to register for the IPO, we "technically" acquire the assets on consignment, we price the IPO, and we make the sale. We will have to price the IPO at a point that ensures that we can grease any potential problems with "friends and family" shares--but our take will be .5 percent of the IPO. That might sound like chump change--but one-half of one percent of $8 billion is $40 million dollars. If that's chump change, I wanna be a chump, right?
If you're interested, let me know. We have to put up a small amount of cash to create the partnership that will buy a shell corporation that actually registers the IPO. I'm sure I can get my partners to let you into this (you'll have to demonstrate liquidity to keep them happy, and the feds off our backs)--but you'll make out like a bandit. It'll be great to do something crazy with you--like old times, right?
But hey--if you're not interested, that's entirely cool. (Or if you're not the same Rook Cameron--geez, then I'm totally sorry for ranting at you like this.) But if you do want into this, let me know. We can make a killing.
Keep smilin',
Ray Atley
Hi!
The technology you're referring to is called DALI (digitally-addressing lighting interface? Not entirely sure). DALI is a means of digitally addressing a fluorescent fixture--it is a popular technology in Europe, although it is presently rare in the United States. (I work for a lighting control systems manufacturer who is about to change that. And...(golly! gee!)...we use XML. 8-)
There are a lot of reasons for using DALI--turning off the lights at night isn't generally considered to be one of them. (We use relays and a clock to do that.) But digitally-addressable ballasts permit us to offer personalized lighting control--so if you're the kind of programmer who likes lower light over your cube, you can lower your light level. If you are in a meeting room giving a presentation, you can dim the lights near the screen, but keep the rest of the lights in the room at a higher level. If you're laying out a floor filled with cubicles, you can (simply) specify that light levels over your corridors will be higher than lights over the cubes. If you build a room with walls that extend to the ceiling (and thus are required to have a light switch by the door) you can "group" a set of ballasts to respond to keypress events from the wallstation. DALI gives you a lot of benefits in managing a building.
Buildings talking to each other?
Um, no. But it does make sense for buildings to talk to a control system. We figure that 30% of the total operating cost for an office building is lighting. Even if you don't have brownouts where you are (the phrase "taxpayer-subsidized coal mines" springs to mind) you probably do have demand pricing for electrical power. If you run a campus of buildings (a university, an apartment complex, or a corporate office park) electricity represents one of your major costs. And--in the minds of many facilities managers--electricity is generally regarded as a "controllable cost" that is anything but. People turn the lights on, the electric company sends a bill. If people turn the lights on at times of peak demand, the power company sends a much, much bigger bill. What to do?
It's called "load shed"
There is a basic idea called load shedding--when the price of electricity goes up, start turning things off. In general it is pretty binary--the price exceeds X, so we turn off all the machine tools. The price exceeds X2, and we turn off some other part of a manufacturing plant. And so forth.
But that kind of load-shedding is a kind of brute force solution: you're using less power, but you're turning things off. Which means you're not doing something--something that presumably is part of your business. Using technologies like digitally-addressable ballasts, and photo sensors, and occupancy sensors, and algorithms that measure light levels and determine whether to adjust the lights and/or change the level of motorized shades, we can shed load in such a way that you probably don't even notice--even though we're saving you a bundle on your electric bill.
Stand back! I have XML and I know how to use it....
[Giggle]
Evidently you weren't paying attention during, oh, say, the first Gulf War. When the world's press was saying that the U.S. was sending inexperienced American kids against the battle-hardened Iraqis, the fourth-largest army in the world, and easily the best-armed of the Soviet client states. Saddam Hussein's PR types were telling everybody about their prepared "killing fields" which they would flood with oil and ignite--burning the American tank crews as they advanced. Practically every military analyst assured viewers or readers that the Iraqis were tough, motivated, well-armed, and had spent 10 long years in continuous combat against maniacal forces from Iran. Newspapers surveyed their readers about how they'd react to casualty counts of 10,000, 20,000, or more.
The war was, well, rather anti-climactic. The killing fields? The bunkers that controlled them were flattened by Fuel Air Explosives (FAE) that put more pressure per square inch on their targets than did the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Haven't heard any Americans talk about nuclear weapons in a decade or two? FAEs are one of the reasons why. All the destruction, none of the politics.)
The debut of the previously-unheard of F-117 completely changed the order of battle over Baghdad--and the use of laser- and video-guided weapons for precision bombing changed the world's perception of air power. And while a battleship launched in the 1940s may not be "new tech"--it's fire control and fire guidance systems were sufficiently new tech that Iraqi soldiers were videotaped surrendering to the spotter drone. (They figured out quickly that when the spotter drone appeared, 16-inch shells [weighing more than your car] would soon follow.)
And let's forget that the actual tank combat was completely assymetrical, because the Iraqis used roads, while the Americans used GPS--and appeared out of nowhere on the Iraqis flank.
Bosnia?
Perhaps you weren't old enough to remember Bosnia--where U.S. technology was so overpowering that there was no need to put U.S. troops on the ground. It was only after NATO was replaced by U.N. "peacekeepers" that the atrocities began--the Serbs figured out very, very early that they did not want to fsck with the U.S. Air Force. (The Air Force staged a little atrocity of their very own--using bombing, missiles, and close air attack to drive the Serbs into a very small area--which they carpet-bombed from B-52s.)
Those who know the North Koreans best (including leaders in the South Korean government who have repeated this views in my hearing) believe that they have--at best--an altered view of reality. But even the NK military leaders do not believe they can take on the U.S. That's why they have insisted on negotiating with the U.S., not the South, for decades. It has only been in the past few years, as the North has so clearly collapsed economically, that they have finally begun direct talks with the South. And the nature of the talks is one of mercy and kindness extended by a wealthy elder to a starving peasant--not the dialogue of equals.
The ultimate high-tech American weapon, of course...
...is the Internet. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Internet has had, and is having, a radical effect on people around the world. And it is achieving the highest and best aim of any weapon--it prevents potential adversaries from going to war. The more we know about each other--and the more people can learn about their country from sources other than the official government news agency, the more the dictators tremble. Note carefully those regimes that are most opposed to participatory democracy--mainland China, Saudi Arab
Actually, the North did overrun Seoul in the early days of the Korean War, and came dangerously close to sweeping the entire length of the peninsula. Rapid reinforcements stemmed the invasion--and the subsequent landing at Inchon forced the North into headlong retreat. Then the Chinese intervened, yadda yadda yadda.
Terrorism, state-sponsored or otherwise, isn't the only military issue in the world. The Cold War is long over--but in its place have appeared a number of smaller-scale regional conflicts. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq are three that spring to mind. North Korea is certainly another potential threat that any responsible military commander will consider.
Do you have a world atlas handy? No? Click this link, it will take you to a small map showing North Korea--with a handy map scale in the lower left hand corner. You'll note that the entire Korean peninsula is less than 200 miles wide--meaning that a small handful of U.S. Navy destroyers armed with these railguns could effectively put incredible firepower onto practically any spot in either country. In practice (because there is a range of high mountains running like a spine down the eastern side of the peninsula) you'd have to position 2-3 destroyers on either side, and you'd have 100% fire cover.
That changes all sorts of equations. It lessens aviation requirements in the Korean theater, it lessens troop requirements in theater, and it is a technology that is easy to demonstrate--but well beyond the technological reach of the North Koreans (first because they have limited metalurgical assets to develop the guns, and second because they have very limited ability to find and thus target a ship far out at sea).
The effect may indeed impact anti-terrorism
The ability to inexpensively drop heavy-duty firepower onto the Korean peninsula raises the very real prospect that the U.S. would not need to keep 35,000 combat troops, and thousands of Air Force troops, not to mention planes, ships, and other equipment, focused on North Korea. Some of those forces could be put to better use--such as tracking, identifying, and killing terrorists.
The Library of Congress used to receive a copy of each new copyrighted work, but that stopped with the enactment of the Copyright Act of 1976. The librarian of Congress made the point, with examples, that McDonald's (among other businesses) was copyrighting their tray liners, and dutifully submitting one copy of each to the Library of Congress. This wasn't, according to the librarians, quite what Jefferson had in mind. The requirement was dropped.
Under the Copyright Act of 1976, and subsequent revisions, copyright is assured as soon as the work is "reduced to fixed form" (printed from your laser printer, for example).
Hi!
I've lived and worked in Pennsylvania for many years--Pennsylvania enacted a law assessing sales tax on computer software back in the late 1980s, only to repeal the tax several years later.
Why? In short, it failed.
The law of unintended consequences
Simply put, one of the problems of taxation is that it can be very difficult to accurately assess how people (and companies) will respond. You simply cannot say "companies in Illinois [or Pennsylvania] bought $600 million worth of custom software in 2003, so if we assess a 6% tax we'll reap a $64 million windfall in 2005." It's not that simple--anybody who can avoid the tax will work to do so. And there are lots of ways that a tax like that can be avoided--and those ways generally will result in a tax loss for the state.
Example: A company is considering expanding its mortgage servicing operations. That includes a $10 million custom software project. Locate that operation adjacent to existing offices in Illinois, and you'll have to shoulder an additional $600,000 in taxes in your startup costs. Locate that project in Iowa or Wisconsin, and you get to keep $600K. What's the net result? First, the state of Illinois doesn't get the $600,000--second, the state loses the jobs that would have used that software, and (presumably) will continue having to pay welfare, unemployment assistance, or other government assistance to people who could have filled those jobs.
In Pennsylvania...
It sounded like a good idea. I was working for a software development company at the time--we were planning on opening a company office in Pennsylvania, and doing development here. Instead I worked as an independent contractor, and development (and the development jobs) essentially stayed in California. Lots of other companies did the same thing--or moved development work to offices outside the state. The net effect: practically no revenue for the state, and all sorts of (admittedly anecdotal) evidence of job flight from the state.
Memo to the governor:
Custom software is a capital expenditure. And practically any economist (you might start at the University of Chicago, and perhaps the economist(s) at Caterpillar) will tell you that taxing capital items is generally bad economic policy: you want companies making capital expenditures, because those create j-o-b-s.
Hopefully, the state of Illinois has economic development people who can address this issue before the governor does something stupid and causes a bunch of people to lose their jobs. If nothing else, they should be able to notice that economic development people from a lot of other states will start telling their clients (corporations considering locating in Illinois) about Illinois's new Technology Disincentive Plan. And if you happen to be in the custom software business in Illinois, contact your legislator. Your job may not be going to Bombay--but it may be going to Milwaukee.