As a QA guy, this is something I wrestle with constantly. There's a compromise, almost without exception, made on every project/product between having it done fast and cheap vs. having it being done properly (proper CMM technique, full documentation, usability testing, user acceptance, design reviews, etc.).
QA is a study in compromise between these two points, as well as a balance between the needs of the user and the needs of the development organization (money/time, interface design, platforms, etc.). I can provide a certain level of quality assurance on any project, no matter what the timeline looks like, but those who lay out that timeline have to be willing to accept the risks that poses for the organization. A fast project often does equal a much higher level of risk.
Something to consider, though: programmers, being creative people, often are at their best under the pressure of a tight timeline. It keeps them from drowning in the details, and can lead to some very elegant solutions. It can also reduce the amount of PHB micro-management, which has a whole string of benefits.
Compromises have a way of staying around longer than we expect, waiting for a chance to come out and say hello in disturbing ways. A shorcut may just mean massive amounts of rework when porting to a new platform, database, etc. Remember all those old COBOL programs that were supposed to be obsolete a few years back?
Seems to be an artifact of a culture that views a concrete language rather dimly, I'm afraid. After all, some deep understanding it might *gasp* result in intellectual thought, and endanger the 30-second attention-span most contemporary marketing is struggling hard to reduce to 15 seconds.
Every noun isn't a verb. If you're an architect, you design things. A plumber is one who plumbs, since the word 'plumber' indicates profession. Architecture, however, is the study and practice of structural design.
No, English isn't consistent, but there are definite structures of acceptable language (which, admittedly, shift over time). This is likely to become a term we'll see more commonly used as time passes. Remember 'normalcy'? That took hold fairly quickly.
Was in a meeting the other week, and our Fearless Leader told us we had to "systematize everything we do". 'Nuff said.
Actually, the creative aspects of that 'industry' are doing just fine, but are hampered by a multi-gazillion-dollar corporation-controlled financing and distribution network. People with money don't want to lose that money, they think people are sheep, they keep funding Nightmare on Elm St. XXVII and the like.
If we as their audience stop attending movies and buying recordings they release, then something will happen. Until that point, when the huge numbers of people stop thinking that Top 40 Radio is all there is, when they stop heading in to see Dumb and Dumberer and the latest Rocky franchise, then they will continue reaping huge profits and controlling what we see and hear.
If it really bothers you, do a couple of things: - Go see local bands, and support them directly. - Watch movies at your local art-movie house, made by someone other than Sony, Fox, etc. - Write to your elected representatives with your concerns about copyright and ownership. Be clear, intelligent, and specific.
Karl Schroeder has some interesting ideas on something called the Rights Economy in Permanence. Amazon carries it.
If we cannot step our little feet out of the basket, then we will just have to enjoy things as the trip gets warmer and warmer.
Good points here, but what is the suggested resolution? Basing copyright time on creation time is wildly difficult at best, and would be a complete farce at worst.
In a world that isn't completely controlled by a totalitarian government, the wealthy will always find ways to take advantage of ownership, and the less astute will always be taken advantage of. That is not, however, license to do nothing to stop the astonishing erosion of the public domain we've seen for the last 20 years or so. We have to do something, and this sounds like a meaningful way to start.
Besides, in utopian societies without disparity, the art sucks, since there's no dissonance to drive it. Ever look at the wall art on Star Trek?
Has anyone tried using Snort, as part of Henwen for the Mac world? How much more control does the Henwen wrapping give you than using Snort alone?
Thoughtful writing
on
Dancing Barefoot
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I'm glad to see some of Wil's writing make it into print after having read his blog for so long. His style online, while not always what one would consider highly-polished (an asset, actually) is very heart-felt and honest.
Nice to see someone who had an early acting career not show up as one of those 'and they found him in his car, stoned out of his mind, with 17 sheep and a bottle of vodka' sorts of stories. Wil seems to be a decent guy, and I hope he succeeds enough with his writing to make that his profession, if he chooses.
Your degree isn't dull, but was never a guarantee of employment in any time. No degree is, for very long if at all. You are employable because of what you can do, and a degree is just one way to illustrate an aspect of your abilities. You can fill up your resume with acronym after acronym, but bear in mind that those are fads that people less aware (being kind) than most in the geek sector cling to for understanding. Any recruiter who depends entirely on seeing ERP/BAM-BAM/R++ on a resume will be needing another kind of job when that acronym set falls out of favor.
The best programmers I know have English degrees, and the best network folks learned it outside formal instruction channels.
A degree is a nice place to indulge your desire to focus on a given area, and to pick up the context within which you hope to work one day, but is no more or less than you make it by your talent, creativity, and ability to communicate.
Best of luck! Regardless of this doom-saying article, the industry has legs. Hunting is more difficult (realistic) now, but can always be fruitful if you put the passion into hunting that you did while in school.
Two things to remember: 1) The Silicon Valley is not The Software Industry 2) The fortunes of a handful of companies do not define an entire industry
Software is a lovely new tool, without much history (as compared to things like structural engineering, agriculture, political science). As such, there will be widely-differing approaches to using this accretion of abstract thought that makes machines do things in the real world. Once unleashed, a technology is almost never removed from the world, for good or ill.
Remember how the automobile industry looked before WWII - there were literally hundreds of varieties of automobile you could purchase, from companies largeish and small. Though the number of companies making them has decreased, the industry as a whole is quite active (and has a large hand in controlling most aspects of how we live, at least in most places).
Software, and the related technologies that keep evolving, is an important asset to our species. What would remove it from our considerations would likely also remove us from this rock.
Music sales don't depend on variable costs. If record 'A' costs less than record 'B', there is no modification in the wholesale pricing of record 'A'.
The distribution companies will charge what the average teenager is willing to spend per album, whether it be via electronic distribution or otherwise. Remember when CDs first came out, and the music industry said 'the price will drop as these things get less expensive to make'? Last I checked the discs were less than a quarter each, and the price per unit keeps rising.
For another model, please see Starbucks Coffee. Wholesale coffee bean prices dropped last year to a 20-year low (less than half of what it had been per pound the year before), and not a single store dropped the price of their coffee-based drinks a penny. They have found out that people will pay their prices because they don't think anything else is possible, so what incentive do they have to change?
The answer is stop supporting companies who behave without ethical considerations, who keep their accounting methods so secret that not even the musicians can get an clear picture of where their money is going, who scream 'foul' every time somebody wants to even attempt to question their pricing models, etc. If a musician sells 5 million albums, and are still unable to clear a penny, there is something fundamentally wrong.
Oh a side note: just because recording software is relatively inexpensive doesn't mean that a wave of incredible music will sweep forth from every spare bedroom and cottage in the land. Skill at songwriting and musicianship are still not available at the Apple Store, or through Sweetwater. OTOH, we still seem to have Ms. Spears and her ilk being hurled at us from every radio station in the country, so who knows? Perhaps we're just numb, and can't recognize good music when we hear it any longer.
That is the funniest thing i've read all day, by far!!!
As to why it's there, what do you expect when you have a seemingly endless project (decades, not months) populated by very talented and creative people? Little things like Darth Vader, some of the windows tucked in the upper reaches, little details everywhere.
i've been above the main ceiling - what an astonishing structure!! You could literally wander around there for days, and always find new cool little bits to explore.
I don't disagree on several of your comments - we do have obligations to many countries who chose not to get involved in this action. I do think, though, that diplomacy was rendered meaningless over the last decade or so of having the process mocked by a street thug.
Don't want us to be there, either, but can understand the purpose. World opinion counts for a great deal, but shouldn't guide all of our actions. Perhaps a consistency in our actions, regardless of the countries involved, would earn us a little more credibility (Israel/Palestine, Ireland/England, any number of African and South American war zones). Lots of places have nasty men murdering populations, and I'm honestly a little puzzled why this guy is so much more difficult to bear.
Now, how to get the CIA to stop setting up dictators in other countries, so this sort of thing stops happening...
This is regurgitation of the current rants popular in some media channels. Not even well-considered.
Let's see: we, as a country with an obligation to many other countries, obtained a promise from a sovereign nation to stop doing what it was doing, which included murdering the people living inside that nation, attacking other nearby nations, and preparing weapons that include a weaponized version of a very potent carcinogen (as non-military as you can get - a weapon of sheer thuggery and malice).
Not saying we should have disregarded what our allies were saying, but we had a responsibility to act within a reasonable span of time. Our allies initially agreed with us, then grew reluctant to do anything but wait for some magical reversal of nature on the part of a dictator. Wasn't likely to happen based on the world's experience with him.
I'll stop troll-feeding now. Just had to get that out.
From Google's perspective (so I gather), it's better to have some of the huge compilation of information available to people within a given repressive political system than none at all, so they edit as requested and keep on doing their thing. Lots of avenues are left open for exploration that way, and information can still be found.
As far as Germany goes - they're still trying to come to terms with what happened 65 years ago, as a culture and as a political entity, especially since Reunification. Banning 'hate-speech' is certainly an important part of that. Wouldn't be applicable everywhere, though.
If you look closely on your tires, they're likely already stamped with a unique ID. I bought some last year that had an ID the clerk at the store had to record, ostensibly for recall purposes.
Please remember that this zone we call 'habitable' wasn't always this way. When life probably began, as several theories ponder, the most protected places on this rock were where there was persistent warmth, shelter, and food - in a few spots on the floor of the early ocean, away from life-destroying solar radiation, bombardment from space objects, and with a temperature stable enough to promote any kind of complexity.
I think it might be that most people were introduced to good anime with this film, and it holds a special place in their hearts. Not to discount it - Akira's a pretty amazing piece of visual art, but not necessarily one that may be considered 'great' in 50 years.
When I first saw it, I was amazed by the imagery, fascinated by the idea that drove the characters through the story. Didn't find out until later that it had been a collection of graphic novels first, but that did explain the leaps the storyline or characters made from time to time.
Still have it on VHS and DVD, though. Beats most of what gets passed off as cinema these days.
Re:I dont understand how they could have missed th
on
Generation Wrecked
·
· Score: 1
I couldn't agree more to that last bit - complaining about how rough this generation has it is terribly arrogant.
Having said that, I must include that my friends and co-workers, most from this arbitrarily-defined 'generation', don't complain about how rough they have it, and how the 'baby-boomers wrecked it for us'. Most of that is a small collective in California and Washington State, amplified beyond all balance by magazines and newspapers looking to increase circulation. The majority of people seem to believe that they still hold the keys to their own destiny, regardless of which named generation they belong to. To assume otherwise is a disservice to those who have let a drive other than pure greed guide their decisions.
We may well be part of a definable sociological cluster, but that doesn't mean that what applies to one fragment applies to all.
I can see it now - all those busines-class air travelers sitting with their laptops open, little puffs of steam bubbling out every few minutes...
That being said: This could be a boon to the more adventurous computer users. Instead of having to drag a solar pack around, and a bag of spare batteries, a jug of methanol and you'll be set for weeks!
It's simple: a little box, with as many blinking lights as we might need to give us connection information, with ethernet ports for accessing it; a simple OS on the box, running connectivity software and a basic firewall; and a Modem Admin utility, much like that of an Airport Base Station or other device, that can be accessed via browser from the internal network only.
Why is this difficult for the marketplace to produce? How many versions of M$ operating systems do they truly want to support?
Make it easy to integrate with everything that wants a connection, regardless of OS, by putting it on the local network.
Without commenting on your recent conviction, I am curious what you think regarding software evolution. It's clear that the current nature of software 'licensing' is flawed, given the rampant mistrust and disregard for EULAs by the general software-consuming public.
What kind of environment should software exist within? Is the corporate model doomed to fail as protective measures become more and more draconian, alienating nearly all software purchasers except those in the Fortune 100?
It's nice to think that I can have a long career of creating good software for people who need it (since the effort of creating it is not inconsequential). How can the desire to own software without purchasing it (or obtaining it legally under GPL or other open license) exist in conjunction with what is likely the goal of many on this list?
How many variations of 'standards' should one have to comply with to make a usable, functional, Web-based information node? That I have to test against huge numbers of browser/platform/OS variations is a massive waste of time and energy, when I should instead be able to focus on making the information clear and the functionality flawless.
I'm not saying that we as a collective need to move back to HTML 1.0, but there has got to be a solution to increasing complexity in Web information spaces. Companies that intentionally cripple some browser/OS combinations are doing the greater community a vast disservice.
The majority of Web pages are not necessarily broken, but reflect limits on the time and energy of those who create them to keep up with 'standards' that seem to shift every other week. It's harder to play one note and have it be perfect than it is to play a thousand and have them be close. Most people choose the latter, and hope that one note hits home.
I've read recently that some bands are experimenting with a more indie approach, and effeective licensing their distribution rights to a distributor for a specific time period, while retaining full copyright themselves. (Marillion is one example of this, and they also pre-sold an album in order to fund the recording of it. Works for them, since they're a known entity at this point.)
This is almost a requirement for very low-level bands, without a large corporation there to write checks, but do you think this might work with a more established group, who required significant time in an expensive studio as well as larger marketing efforts?
As a musician and writer, this idea of retaining ownership of my work appeals to me, while finding a partner for distribution and marketing efforts. Would you consider this approach? Would larger companies possibly back it?
Journalistic integrity lacking at Salon
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 1
A fine illustration of the nature of contemporary journalism, at least how it's practiced far too often. Make it flash, mention two-headed calves, and put in a picture of Elvis so people will buy it.
Salon: What happens when USAToday and The National Enquirer have a child.
Perhaps the more that writing like this gets attention, the more power Weblogs will have. After all, they're democratically-propogated, aren't they?
Slashdot Mirror
As a QA guy, this is something I wrestle with constantly. There's a compromise, almost without exception, made on every project/product between having it done fast and cheap vs. having it being done properly (proper CMM technique, full documentation, usability testing, user acceptance, design reviews, etc.).
QA is a study in compromise between these two points, as well as a balance between the needs of the user and the needs of the development organization (money/time, interface design, platforms, etc.). I can provide a certain level of quality assurance on any project, no matter what the timeline looks like, but those who lay out that timeline have to be willing to accept the risks that poses for the organization. A fast project often does equal a much higher level of risk.
Something to consider, though: programmers, being creative people, often are at their best under the pressure of a tight timeline. It keeps them from drowning in the details, and can lead to some very elegant solutions. It can also reduce the amount of PHB micro-management, which has a whole string of benefits.
Compromises have a way of staying around longer than we expect, waiting for a chance to come out and say hello in disturbing ways. A shorcut may just mean massive amounts of rework when porting to a new platform, database, etc. Remember all those old COBOL programs that were supposed to be obsolete a few years back?
Seems to be an artifact of a culture that views a concrete language rather dimly, I'm afraid. After all, some deep understanding it might *gasp* result in intellectual thought, and endanger the 30-second attention-span most contemporary marketing is struggling hard to reduce to 15 seconds.
Every noun isn't a verb. If you're an architect, you design things. A plumber is one who plumbs, since the word 'plumber' indicates profession. Architecture, however, is the study and practice of structural design.
No, English isn't consistent, but there are definite structures of acceptable language (which, admittedly, shift over time). This is likely to become a term we'll see more commonly used as time passes. Remember 'normalcy'? That took hold fairly quickly.
Was in a meeting the other week, and our Fearless Leader told us we had to "systematize everything we do". 'Nuff said.
Actually, the creative aspects of that 'industry' are doing just fine, but are hampered by a multi-gazillion-dollar corporation-controlled financing and distribution network. People with money don't want to lose that money, they think people are sheep, they keep funding Nightmare on Elm St. XXVII and the like.
If we as their audience stop attending movies and buying recordings they release, then something will happen. Until that point, when the huge numbers of people stop thinking that Top 40 Radio is all there is, when they stop heading in to see Dumb and Dumberer and the latest Rocky franchise, then they will continue reaping huge profits and controlling what we see and hear.
If it really bothers you, do a couple of things:
- Go see local bands, and support them directly.
- Watch movies at your local art-movie house, made by someone other than Sony, Fox, etc.
- Write to your elected representatives with your concerns about copyright and ownership. Be clear, intelligent, and specific.
Karl Schroeder has some interesting ideas on something called the Rights Economy in Permanence. Amazon carries it.
If we cannot step our little feet out of the basket, then we will just have to enjoy things as the trip gets warmer and warmer.
Good points here, but what is the suggested resolution? Basing copyright time on creation time is wildly difficult at best, and would be a complete farce at worst.
In a world that isn't completely controlled by a totalitarian government, the wealthy will always find ways to take advantage of ownership, and the less astute will always be taken advantage of. That is not, however, license to do nothing to stop the astonishing erosion of the public domain we've seen for the last 20 years or so. We have to do something, and this sounds like a meaningful way to start.
Besides, in utopian societies without disparity, the art sucks, since there's no dissonance to drive it. Ever look at the wall art on Star Trek?
Has anyone tried using Snort, as part of Henwen for the Mac world? How much more control does the Henwen wrapping give you than using Snort alone?
I'm glad to see some of Wil's writing make it into print after having read his blog for so long. His style online, while not always what one would consider highly-polished (an asset, actually) is very heart-felt and honest.
Nice to see someone who had an early acting career not show up as one of those 'and they found him in his car, stoned out of his mind, with 17 sheep and a bottle of vodka' sorts of stories. Wil seems to be a decent guy, and I hope he succeeds enough with his writing to make that his profession, if he chooses.
Cheers, Uncle Wil.
Your degree isn't dull, but was never a guarantee of employment in any time. No degree is, for very long if at all.
You are employable because of what you can do, and a degree is just one way to illustrate an aspect of your abilities. You can fill up your resume with acronym after acronym, but bear in mind that those are fads that people less aware (being kind) than most in the geek sector cling to for understanding. Any recruiter who depends entirely on seeing ERP/BAM-BAM/R++ on a resume will be needing another kind of job when that acronym set falls out of favor.
The best programmers I know have English degrees, and the best network folks learned it outside formal instruction channels.
A degree is a nice place to indulge your desire to focus on a given area, and to pick up the context within which you hope to work one day, but is no more or less than you make it by your talent, creativity, and ability to communicate.
Best of luck! Regardless of this doom-saying article, the industry has legs. Hunting is more difficult (realistic) now, but can always be fruitful if you put the passion into hunting that you did while in school.
Two things to remember:
1) The Silicon Valley is not The Software Industry
2) The fortunes of a handful of companies do not define an entire industry
Software is a lovely new tool, without much history (as compared to things like structural engineering, agriculture, political science). As such, there will be widely-differing approaches to using this accretion of abstract thought that makes machines do things in the real world. Once unleashed, a technology is almost never removed from the world, for good or ill.
Remember how the automobile industry looked before WWII - there were literally hundreds of varieties of automobile you could purchase, from companies largeish and small. Though the number of companies making them has decreased, the industry as a whole is quite active (and has a large hand in controlling most aspects of how we live, at least in most places).
Software, and the related technologies that keep evolving, is an important asset to our species. What would remove it from our considerations would likely also remove us from this rock.
Music sales don't depend on variable costs. If record 'A' costs less than record 'B', there is no modification in the wholesale pricing of record 'A'.
The distribution companies will charge what the average teenager is willing to spend per album, whether it be via electronic distribution or otherwise. Remember when CDs first came out, and the music industry said 'the price will drop as these things get less expensive to make'? Last I checked the discs were less than a quarter each, and the price per unit keeps rising.
For another model, please see Starbucks Coffee. Wholesale coffee bean prices dropped last year to a 20-year low (less than half of what it had been per pound the year before), and not a single store dropped the price of their coffee-based drinks a penny. They have found out that people will pay their prices because they don't think anything else is possible, so what incentive do they have to change?
The answer is stop supporting companies who behave without ethical considerations, who keep their accounting methods so secret that not even the musicians can get an clear picture of where their money is going, who scream 'foul' every time somebody wants to even attempt to question their pricing models, etc. If a musician sells 5 million albums, and are still unable to clear a penny, there is something fundamentally wrong.
Oh a side note: just because recording software is relatively inexpensive doesn't mean that a wave of incredible music will sweep forth from every spare bedroom and cottage in the land. Skill at songwriting and musicianship are still not available at the Apple Store, or through Sweetwater. OTOH, we still seem to have Ms. Spears and her ilk being hurled at us from every radio station in the country, so who knows? Perhaps we're just numb, and can't recognize good music when we hear it any longer.
That is the funniest thing i've read all day, by far!!!
As to why it's there, what do you expect when you have a seemingly endless project (decades, not months) populated by very talented and creative people? Little things like Darth Vader, some of the windows tucked in the upper reaches, little details everywhere.
i've been above the main ceiling - what an astonishing structure!! You could literally wander around there for days, and always find new cool little bits to explore.
Consider writers, designers, etc. Piece of paper and a fertile mind, work anywhere.
Including on the couch in pajamas.
I don't disagree on several of your comments - we do have obligations to many countries who chose not to get involved in this action. I do think, though, that diplomacy was rendered meaningless over the last decade or so of having the process mocked by a street thug.
Don't want us to be there, either, but can understand the purpose. World opinion counts for a great deal, but shouldn't guide all of our actions. Perhaps a consistency in our actions, regardless of the countries involved, would earn us a little more credibility (Israel/Palestine, Ireland/England, any number of African and South American war zones). Lots of places have nasty men murdering populations, and I'm honestly a little puzzled why this guy is so much more difficult to bear.
Now, how to get the CIA to stop setting up dictators in other countries, so this sort of thing stops happening...
Trolling, and not well.
This is regurgitation of the current rants popular in some media channels. Not even well-considered.
Let's see: we, as a country with an obligation to many other countries, obtained a promise from a sovereign nation to stop doing what it was doing, which included murdering the people living inside that nation, attacking other nearby nations, and preparing weapons that include a weaponized version of a very potent carcinogen (as non-military as you can get - a weapon of sheer thuggery and malice).
Not saying we should have disregarded what our allies were saying, but we had a responsibility to act within a reasonable span of time. Our allies initially agreed with us, then grew reluctant to do anything but wait for some magical reversal of nature on the part of a dictator. Wasn't likely to happen based on the world's experience with him.
I'll stop troll-feeding now. Just had to get that out.
From Google's perspective (so I gather), it's better to have some of the huge compilation of information available to people within a given repressive political system than none at all, so they edit as requested and keep on doing their thing. Lots of avenues are left open for exploration that way, and information can still be found.
As far as Germany goes - they're still trying to come to terms with what happened 65 years ago, as a culture and as a political entity, especially since Reunification. Banning 'hate-speech' is certainly an important part of that. Wouldn't be applicable everywhere, though.
So, metal files are now illegal circumvention devices prohibited by the DMCA?
If you look closely on your tires, they're likely already stamped with a unique ID. I bought some last year that had an ID the clerk at the store had to record, ostensibly for recall purposes.
Please remember that this zone we call 'habitable' wasn't always this way. When life probably began, as several theories ponder, the most protected places on this rock were where there was persistent warmth, shelter, and food - in a few spots on the floor of the early ocean, away from life-destroying solar radiation, bombardment from space objects, and with a temperature stable enough to promote any kind of complexity.
I think it might be that most people were introduced to good anime with this film, and it holds a special place in their hearts. Not to discount it - Akira's a pretty amazing piece of visual art, but not necessarily one that may be considered 'great' in 50 years.
When I first saw it, I was amazed by the imagery, fascinated by the idea that drove the characters through the story. Didn't find out until later that it had been a collection of graphic novels first, but that did explain the leaps the storyline or characters made from time to time.
Still have it on VHS and DVD, though. Beats most of what gets passed off as cinema these days.
I couldn't agree more to that last bit - complaining about how rough this generation has it is terribly arrogant.
Having said that, I must include that my friends and co-workers, most from this arbitrarily-defined 'generation', don't complain about how rough they have it, and how the 'baby-boomers wrecked it for us'. Most of that is a small collective in California and Washington State, amplified beyond all balance by magazines and newspapers looking to increase circulation. The majority of people seem to believe that they still hold the keys to their own destiny, regardless of which named generation they belong to. To assume otherwise is a disservice to those who have let a drive other than pure greed guide their decisions.
We may well be part of a definable sociological cluster, but that doesn't mean that what applies to one fragment applies to all.
I can see it now - all those busines-class air travelers sitting with their laptops open, little puffs of steam bubbling out every few minutes...
That being said:
This could be a boon to the more adventurous computer users. Instead of having to drag a solar pack around, and a bag of spare batteries, a jug of methanol and you'll be set for weeks!
What will the new measurement be - MIPS/liter?
It's simple: a little box, with as many blinking lights as we might need to give us connection information, with ethernet ports for accessing it; a simple OS on the box, running connectivity software and a basic firewall; and a Modem Admin utility, much like that of an Airport Base Station or other device, that can be accessed via browser from the internal network only.
Why is this difficult for the marketplace to produce? How many versions of M$ operating systems do they truly want to support?
Make it easy to integrate with everything that wants a connection, regardless of OS, by putting it on the local network.
Without commenting on your recent conviction, I am curious what you think regarding software evolution. It's clear that the current nature of software 'licensing' is flawed, given the rampant mistrust and disregard for EULAs by the general software-consuming public.
What kind of environment should software exist within? Is the corporate model doomed to fail as protective measures become more and more draconian, alienating nearly all software purchasers except those in the Fortune 100?
It's nice to think that I can have a long career of creating good software for people who need it (since the effort of creating it is not inconsequential). How can the desire to own software without purchasing it (or obtaining it legally under GPL or other open license) exist in conjunction with what is likely the goal of many on this list?
How many variations of 'standards' should one have to comply with to make a usable, functional, Web-based information node? That I have to test against huge numbers of browser/platform/OS variations is a massive waste of time and energy, when I should instead be able to focus on making the information clear and the functionality flawless.
I'm not saying that we as a collective need to move back to HTML 1.0, but there has got to be a solution to increasing complexity in Web information spaces. Companies that intentionally cripple some browser/OS combinations are doing the greater community a vast disservice.
The majority of Web pages are not necessarily broken, but reflect limits on the time and energy of those who create them to keep up with 'standards' that seem to shift every other week.
It's harder to play one note and have it be perfect than it is to play a thousand and have them be close. Most people choose the latter, and hope that one note hits home.
Janis,
I've read recently that some bands are experimenting with a more indie approach, and effeective licensing their distribution rights to a distributor for a specific time period, while retaining full copyright themselves. (Marillion is one example of this, and they also pre-sold an album in order to fund the recording of it. Works for them, since they're a known entity at this point.)
This is almost a requirement for very low-level bands, without a large corporation there to write checks, but do you think this might work with a more established group, who required significant time in an expensive studio as well as larger marketing efforts?
As a musician and writer, this idea of retaining ownership of my work appeals to me, while finding a partner for distribution and marketing efforts. Would you consider this approach? Would larger companies possibly back it?
A fine illustration of the nature of contemporary journalism, at least how it's practiced far too often. Make it flash, mention two-headed calves, and put in a picture of Elvis so people will buy it.
Salon: What happens when USAToday and The National Enquirer have a child.
Perhaps the more that writing like this gets attention, the more power Weblogs will have. After all, they're democratically-propogated, aren't they?