If more talk like this get's to the people in congress and the government, this could soon encompass the 'you're either with us, or against us' attitude the infects the current administration.
Why is this not good?. For quite a few reasons. Many in the free software and open source community face various uphill battles when trying to use or get others to use non-commercial, specifically, non-m$ products. Linking piracy of IP to terrorism starts sending the message that anyone interested in not buying software could be deemed a non-patriotic (think France and the Florida Freedom Fries and Liberty dressing if you don't follow me) and someone helping anyone that doesn't necessairly fall in line with the accepted point of view of what's legal and what isn't, is gonna soon be in trouble.
I'm all for supporting the software industry and making money selling software. However, the price barrier for purchasing software in other countries is sometimes so high, that the only alternative is to get a pirated copy. This monolithic view of buy our software at the price we set, period!, can only play well in economies that can support the cost. If m$ would instead take this as maybe their customers outside of wealthy countries cannot afford $199 for a version of XP and we will then adjust accordingly and fairly, then I think there would actually be less piracy. However, Bill did not become the worlds richest man being fair.
That said, when a proven monopoly, who got off scott free, links these circumstances to terrorism, it basically opens the door for the U.S. govt to now start not only being the morality police of the world, but the information police. This is not far fetched. When a company pushes the way m$ has for Palladium, Digital Restrication Management, and product activation, closed 'standards', they basically start controlling how you can and cannot access information. As time rolls on this will become more and more critical as more and more of the world hits the net and connects with other. This is textbook civics/government high school class stuff.
These issues are well documented through many writers on many sites. The connection of information, freedom to own what you buy (not a license to use it), intellectual property, and the linking of piracy to terrorism makes for a dim future for everyone who does not want to, cannot follow along (land of the free?) or cannot afford ot license every idea and process under the sun. The America for the individual will be fine as long as you play within the boundries set by the few like Valenti, Gates, Ashcroft (remember how he said the latest m$ court 'ruling' was a victory for the consumer??) - their vision of morality and what constitutes fairness.
Frankly, this persuades me more and more to let friends and family know that their use of products that these companies crank out, will restrict their freedom more and more as time rolls on. As technologies like Palladium and DRM mature and are used more widely throughout the world, these issues will be harder, if not impossible to dodge and the way the net and our machines work now, will not exist. It is up to everyone who sees this to do their part, however small. Support the FSF, Non-M$ anything, your local/fav Linux distro, contribute some code or time to a os/gpl/free project, or purchase hardware from alternate non-M$ only hardware manufacturer (are there any?). Along with our voices, our dollars will be the most significant in making sure that we will have a choice in the future.
I have a friend who is my economic guru and we talk about this quite a bit. Yes, because there is an administration that is not focused on the economy, everyone is holding on to their money. Thusly, no R&D. We've actually made the car comparison a quite a few times.
Another thing we talk about though, is the fact that as other countries 'catch up' technologically to us, there will be less and less reason for companies not to outsource all their tech needs. This already happens to a great extent in the manfacturing industry and China. For tech, we see a lot of farming out to India, especially since they're are lot of competent English speakers there.
How can U.S. firms compete with this? I don't think they can and ultimately, another industry will move more and more off shore. This doesn't mean, however, that the U.S. will not find other markets.
I think that if there are more and more highly skilled people in other countries around the world that can do the same tech work our skilled workers do here, then the next place is space. Unfortunately, we're not jumping on that and now we have a European agency headed to the moon and China talking about mining it. Welcome to the future of the transnats. Like hi-tech, the U.S. has the opportunity to drive this one for a while. The question is will they?
well, i didn't see anyone mention this as i scanned through so i might as well.
merchants of cool is a frontline show and it's pretty darn good. it, dare i say exposes, nay, since quite a few people already know of the connections with corporate marketing and the media. no, it documents several groups of 'kids' and how they sell out and love it. a really good watch.
as one who has grown up watching, through the 80's and 90's, the ever growing appetite of the mega-corp, i really can't feel sympathy much for anyone who sells their soul for an advertising buck. there's a lot of dots to connect across our various freedoms and some people have no problem relenquishing their freedom to be anonymous.
but, even though i'm not that old, i'm sure i'm considered 'old skool' to the kids who think corporate advertising like this is cool. somewhow, to me, it just seems like the ultimate loss of self-respect.
The first problem I see with this method is the lack of a powerful and flexible querying method. One of the most powerful features of SQL databases is their capability for searching. No where in the article did I see anthing about advanced querying of the objects. Even if there is, I'm sure its no where near as fast as a MySQL or Oracle.
i'd have to say that it depends on your query. i've written a search engine/indexer that translated search tearms into usable sql and it wasn't that easy. with the right data structures, i could see this actually being more powerful than using a sql search. of course, that totally depends on the search. i have to believe that an in-memory search is still going to be faster though.
Here's the issue they are trying to solve: mapping object to records. That's it. Now the problem with removing the records / database is you lose all of the searching power that is inherit in relational databases. The author states that the codebase is 350 lines of code. How can any complex search engine be implemented in 350 lines of code that also covers the persistance?
again, unless you are using a sql client, you have to 'massage' the query. i don't see that any different than searching across objects. you're still going to have to specify what information you want from what 'store'.
i also have a few issues with programming with db's that i'd like to mention.
- if relational is the bestest ever, then why seek any alternatives? when you come down to it, relational is good, but now you've added another network point of failure, language, and possible additional cost to the project. if this is ok with you, then that's fine.
- *everyone* who programs with db's has to do programming logic to sql conversion. it's an extra step. is it totally necessary? this seems to say, no. and actually, i've been working on a new project and the db stuff is always a pain in the ass.
- disk persistence. the author of the ibm article mentions a very simple persistence methodology. i'm also paranoid about losing data and would like to see some more info about clustering and this 'slave' serializer. but, just because an idea is simple doesn't mean i'm going to shoot it down.
i'm gonna read more and play with this more. i've gone through the past 10 years dealing with all kinds of db's and while it's the accepted way of thinking and tried and true, it still doesn't mean that it's the best.
the biggest table of information i've ever been responsible for had a few million rows in it - that's not huge, but still significant. however, to back up the *entire* database, the file size was maybe max, 500MB. i have more than that on the machine i'm tying this on right now. i don't think ram is a huge issue anymore.
i think a bigger issue would be java's ability do deal with datastructures and data to that extent. i've never worked with a vm on a single processor/machine that was alotted more than 512MB max. would be interesting.
This depends on what you use a computer for. I don't think gui is so much more evolved than kbd. people fumble both the kbd and gui.
i watch countless people at my work try to find which browser window they want to use. for me, my browser is always on desktop 2 (alt-2) and then a quick click on a tab and i'm there. no shuffling.
one of the powers of *nix is the term mode. why do you have to have a gui to run a dns server or web server or app server? in fact, one of windows big problems is that they've tied the gui into the bowles of the os. there's no need for a gui on a server. in fact, this will probably hurt more than help.
90% of the people use gui's because 90% of the people are not admins or programmers. i use a gui pretty much exclusively because it enables me to use other things. a lot of these things are terms. some browsers. some graphics apps. some office apps.
resource-wise, any type of non-graphical apps will always run faster in a text/term mode just because of the overhead needed to display graphics and their text representations. os x is a beautiful os, but it's slow. however it functions and looks much better than win or lin.
anyway, in the coming years, for the server mostly, linux will start gaining ground because it's not tied to the gui. it's pretty well documented that it takes less people to admin more *nix boxes than the windows equivalent. for desktop, kde/gnome will keep getting better and more people will adopt it. that's just how it is.
Cuz we can afford it. In a lot of other countries around the world where a worker only brings home $1200 a year (and that's rich for some villagers in China), how can they afford a $100-$300USD app suite? Enter the five finger or low cost piracy. Plain and simple economics, not ethics. And since when is M$ an ethical company anyway?
If some os office suite was to come out with 3d flipping menus, half the features (read: really needed and used features), half the bloat, twice the speed, etc, no one would use it.
why? cuz that's not what they're used to. look, when my parents, your parents, the 'older' office workers around us started to get familiar with pcs (remember those people that looked at a mouse and asked 'what's that?'), they got familiar with windoze & ofc. no one is going to code a new super ofc app that deviates from those lines - yet!
the current generation of users is gonna pass the torch at some point. what really needs to happen is like what ms did for all the 1-2-3 and wordperfect people: provide an emulation layer and then move on to the next step. give all the people that expect CTRL-S their keys and then provide more things on top like "See what SuperOffice offers besides MS-WORD compatibilty", etc...
then you'll get those users that wanna use the stuff (i.e. the younger users) and it'll progress from there. just like it did from DOS wp and 123.
i guess you could say office is a standard. but this whole notion of 'keeping up' or 'imitating' is not the whole story. a bad geek is someone who says 'screw you dumb end-user, this is how you're gonna do it and you're gonna like it' (hmmm, sounds like a specific software monopoly i know). a smart geek will quitely give the user what they're used to and then go beyond that. m$ ripped off the apple gui who ripped off the parc gui. so what. developing revolutionary products will come at an expense so they need to, must contain backward (and i really mean backward) compatibility, must do it seemlessly, and then and only then can they go to the next level. that's the way the backwards business world works.
To further this, Albini, actually, sounds pretty much the same across all the recordings he does. Not necessairly a bad thing at all since most of the people that wanna work with him want that sound.
Ya know, kinda tinty guitars; gated room drums; not a really fat, low-end bass - kinda bright and punchy. I mean, there's a shit load of bands he's done. Prob one of my favs was his stint with Rapeman. That had some pretty sick changes in it.
Anyway, his piece is pretty straight up. Unless you're some hugo mtv cribs regular in control of your entire destiny (incl gold teef) then you probably don't make squat on a major.
However, I've known plenty of indie bands that toured and had a great time. I mean, so, you earn as much as you would working in the service industry. But, you get to cruise around in a small, stinky van from city to city, play gigs that you hope people will show up to, get piss drunk on the cheapest ass shit you can find (since the bar prob only gives each band memeber one - *if* they're lucky), and then get up the next morning and have whoever is least hungover drive for another 8-10 hours.
Cuz this weekend I finally admitted it: I'm a mac nut now.
I've spent quite a few years figuring out what works best for me - gone thru a lot of hardware too. Right before the.con boom, I did an internet company. I ended up using all kinds of Intel boxen, including single cpu dev machines and mp servers. Half of these ran NT, half Linux. Even one ran Oracle 8i when it first hit the Linux street. After we were purchased, laptops were key to showing demos, developing on the plane, etc.
Fast fwd a few years later and I joined a consulting gig. We deployed a lot of big sites on Sparc/Solaris boxes. Around this time, I was looking for the same thing the orig poster was a settled on a 15" Tibook.
Now I'm with a company that has all their servers on Linux boxes (over 100 2-way web servers) and just hooked up a IBM 8-way Xeon Linux box for 9i (>1TB database!). We have all kinds of Dell's in the ofc.
I've seen *a lot* of things come and go and when it came time for me to purchase a machine, I saved up and bought a Tibook. This past December, I got the newer 1gz model. It rules. I like my Linux machines, but I pretty much have it all with my Apple and it's probably the most beautiful comp I've ever owned.
I have a possible business deal coming up and I've been on the hunt for figuring out what it will take to get a company up and running. I have 2 and only 2 companies in mind: Pogo Linux and Apple. Pogo Linux has the best deals on desktops and I'm really liking a lot of the Apple Xserv stuff. You can run all the server stuff I'd run on Linux. I'll pay a little more for an Xserv than maybe a Pogo server, but the company will be geared for the biotech industry and Macs still do well there.
iBooks/TiBooks are the only machines I could really justtify buying for myself. The run great, look great, have all my *nix utils I use and need every day, and also run the foofy desktop appz I need for interfacing with the biz people. For me, they were totally worth every penny.
Wow, Evan is actually my girlfriends good friend - from a little bit back. From what she's told me, he's had some tough choices to make over the few years, but it sounds like he kept the dream alive and it has paid off - if that's the goal. I guess I could think of worse companies to be purchased by. Coulda gone to M$ and been wrapped into some shitty feauture in LookOut or MSN.;)
Seriously tho, this is actually inspiring for me since I've always felt like I wanted to do my own idea(s) and there's always someone there - from the awful 'manager' to press to whatever else - putting down those ideas in favor of conformity or dissing them due to their lack of vision. That might not be Pyra's feelings, but to know someone has really stuck to their guns in face of all kinds of obstacles, gives me some hope to keep pushing forward.
Re:Java is dying
on
The Faded Sun
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· Score: 2, Insightful
So, where have you been in the last 5 or so years?! If you read Judge Mott's ruling about the Sun vs. M$ case it clearly shows that m$ abused yet another contract with another company.
The reason he is forcing them to bundle it is because they did cause harm to Java in more ways than one and that deserves a correction now instead of worrying about it later; as was the case of Netscape. Argh! Ya know, you need to get your shit straight and present the facts when posting stuff like this. Sure, someone reading your post would be like "yah, market forces dude! What are we now, commies forcing successful companies to carry stuff they don't want?"
Gee, and oh yah, weren't they already convicted of being a freaking monoploy?!?! Um...
I've been developing with Java for 7 years and while it's not perfect, I'll never go back to m$ development for many reasons. - They're a highly unethical company. for a small taste see here, here, andhere... - Like someone else said, profits first, users second - Welcome to a m$ only development world. I applaud the Mono guys and the dotGNU guys, but just wait until m$ wants to flex its patent muscle. Profits first, lock in second, whatever after - Bugs & security. Welcome to the jungle - Horrible, god awful, slave, er, customer service - Service pack # 539.. and counting.. - Worms, attacks galore and shotty patch record. Just that alone would make me steer clear of that platform.
Java isn't the holy grail and I'm not looking for that. But its developer community is much better than M$s' and has its roots in the *nix world, which frankly, I'd rather have my foot in than the DOS world.
Oh, and by the way, before I bailed from ASP/VB/<fill in other m$ crap here>, I was in a constant state of perpetual screwed-ness with M$ products!.NET, and C# for that matter, might be a better development platform than VB and such, but they still have the same 'fuck the world at everyone's expense' mentality behind it. I've learned that the hard way.. Good luck!
You can't (well you can, but I'd rather drill a hole in my hand) script an enterprise app in PHP. Yah, PHP is great for a scripting language, but it's just that.
I grow tired of everyone predicting or shouting for one thing over the other - there always has to be just one. Yah, right.
PHP is great for the non-ASP/*nix programmer. ASP (and I'm choking a little here when I say this) is great for the m$ programmer. C is good. Java is good. Jeeze, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I'd much rather have a CHOICE when using a particular technology than not.
The Java VM exists for a reason. Just because PHP doesn't have one doesn't mean much. They're both written in C too - so what!
In the end, sure the user wants the most responsive app. But I'll say this, get a big project and try to have multiple devlopers script it and it'll probably die on the vine. You can do just as bad of a job with JSP (and believe me, I've seen it) but there are some really great frameworks out there that help fix problems like this.
Plus, with PHP and the like, they're tied to HTTP. It wouldn't be a very good idea to script a server app in PHP with multiple different types of clients accessing it. It's possible, but I can't see someone writing a Win or Linux native client that accesses a PHP server app. Java works well with the web, but is not build solely for it.
Plus there are other things, if you wanna compare (I don't know even why I'm doing this). There is no PHP message queueing, no or little 'enterprise features', no 'compile PHP to a console application', no PHP 'enterprise' transactional components, etc. Anyway, anyone who's ever had to really use both knows what I'm talkin about.
And besides that, for me, *nix and network programming are still like wide open spaces to me. There are still plenty of things to discover out on the Montana plains and I'm not gonna get all bent outta shape about a rock not being a tree and a tree not being a clear blue sky.:)
Actually, if I could get a Linux laptop that did everything my Tibook does, I would. But there aren't any and most of the x86 laptops out there are trash.
Apple's desktops are the sleekest or sexiest, but unless you home build you own whacked case with neon and shit, x86 desktops look like crap too.
So I think his "Bill's boxes to Steve's elegant machines" hits the nail on the head. I still love my Linux boxen, but my Macs, for overall design and availibility of all the software I need, are better.
It has facilities in its IL compiler to spit out jvm bytecode.
Quote from this link: Oct 02-10-2002: Java Bytecode Output for Portable.Net
Sylvain Pasche has fixed up the Portable.Net assembler to generate the correct java bytecode. Now the C# compiler sports a nice JVM output backend. The results become really interesting when the whole pnetlib can be compiled into JVM code. Read full details here.
And, from what I know of these guys, they will go to all lengths not just to get the M$ stuff working correctly, but *all* supported languages. They're really a smart bunch.
If you're a hacker, then, yah you'll get busted. However, if you're protecting your IP, then all the sympathetic biz types will smile in your direction.
Remember, there is a huge difference between law for the common man - you and I - and law for the corporate man/company, i.e. Enron, etc. We've already got Berman leaning in that direction and I don't see the RIAA sweating it. When people are faced with extinction, they'll do anything.
And frankly, for everyone that says it's impossible to do this, well I ask why? And think of this, no one is mentioning anything along the lines of numbers of possible infected files. The latest Britney hit only has a worm for Windows? Well, then we'll just tuck one into -Song X- here for all you Xmms users; albiet there are probably not nearly the numbers as Win users. Point is is that there are millions of files on p2p networks. Why assume just one is infected? I could see the RIAA uploading entire catalogs for each and every platform. I dunno, I'm not dismissing this yet; I think it's very possible.
there are no cheap 120GB backup systems yet. I asked our IT guy at work what he said, "well, just buy another hard drive and back it up with that."
I dunno, I feel much better with tape. So, this begs a bigger issue: with the cost and corner cutting going into todays hard drives, how safe are your gobs of music and video files? And what do u do to keep that info safe?
is not whether you will use WM9, but whether or not the content providers use will it? And that answer, unfortunately, is yes, the content providers will be swayed by the monopoly and use the largest installed base media player. In fact, they already are.
Just to see where these things were going, last weekend I watched a few movies from movielink and cinema(something) and they had a 'few' requirements: 1. Windows 2. Either Real or WM
Regardless if we choose to use either of those, the content providers definitely will not, so we'll all be relegated to watching Quicktime trailers and definitely not DRM stuff, which both Movielink and the Cinema(something) site had.
Personally, I'd much rather log onto a site and watch a movie that way instead of going to the video store. And either of the sites will let you download the movie and watch it. I think they both last for 24hrs.
One thing about the 'service' tho that I thought sucked was that I paid $10 for a month of 'premium' access, but all the new movies were 'pay-per-view' which has an additional $3.95. That was pretty inconvenient. Actually kinda pissed me off. In that case, I'm better off going to the video store and freeing up my bandwidth.
Anyway, back to the players; remember they're just the client and are the keys to the really bigger things: the content on the back end. Unfortunately, 95% of the computing world runs Windoze and their path of least resistance, monopoly pushed apps. These are always gonna be the people that the content providers will cater to. So I don't know what there is to do about that since it won't matter to the providers one bit if the Linux folks can't watch their movies.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the Real Helix stuff or even Quicktime pick up some steam. Apple has stated that they think that DRM as it exists for content now is not the way to go. So maybe they can use our support too.
One other note, the only way I see the content providers backing away from WM9 is if it is found as insecure as IE. This could persuade them to go for something else. But then again, once you have a big catalog of digital flix that you have to re-encode for another platform, that decision to just ship, even in the wake of security concerns, seems highly unlikely. Or maybe not..
You have a $200 walmart pc that will still have shaky support for a wide variety of devices. There will definately not be any of this plug and play nonsense.
Consumers will continue to buy macs just as they do BMWs or Mercedes - because they're willing to pay more money for something better. Apple will never nose out the Wintel duopoly, but it will always (hopefully) have a following of loyal users. I should know, I bought my second Tibook this year. My old one I sold to my friend to replace his iBook.
I've had, literally, dozens of x86 servers at home and have over the past 10 years. So, it's not that I don't know what cheap is. True, lets go down and buy the newest fastest video card or lets get some cheap drives and upgrade to raid. However tho, now I just want something portable that works.
The DVD playback on a Tibook has no equal. AND, since I can make movies and DVDs on my Tibook, the Fujitsu equivalent - the Celcius - (which is the only x86 laptop company I'd ever consider buying from after constant crap from Dell, Compaq, HP), doesn't even have DVD burning. But it does have 1/2 the ram costs $600 more. Laptops vs. desktops are different; true. But Apple designs machines, not commodities. Wintel is all about commodities. And there you have it.
Yah, and for compensation for the deaths, UC only paid out around $300-$400 each. Beyond sad.
Of course, you have to wonder what part the Indian govt. had to do with all this. I mean, they closed the case in '91 or whenever it was and stated that they thought it was fair.
Dow's corporate free speech thing is a load of garbage. However, one has to wonder, even tho they aren't the best, they bought someone else that did something and i'm not sure how i feel about them having to do deal with it. On the other hand, it only seems natural and a way to make them look like they really do care if they went in and pre-emptively made things better..
But of course, they is rarely the case for any global entity.
Not true at all. I've been following Struts for a *long* time and depending on the project it can make a huge difference. Sure, you can code page to page, embed the logic wherever and move on your merry way. But adverse things will definitely start to happen when:
1. you are no longer 'the man' and the mgmt rolls in the html guy(s)/gal(s). most html people can deal with <xml style markup> than <%java scriptlet%> stlye <%blocks%> (i won't even get into logic flow in scriptlet blocks). separation of presentation logic from biz logic; speaks for itself. and it's possible with scripting languages, but tough.
2. you want to extend the app. 'oh, but marketing want's to have their server also come in on that url that you did last year'. true, you could accomplish extension well with scripting language, but the delegation with struts/MVC us much cleaner and more maintainable.
3. you want to debug/qa. struts is tested and kid approved. i'm going thru something right now where our system has bugs and no one really knows cuz different people have worked on each others code and did everything differently. and even on a huge project in the past i had done, it was still hard for me to figure out flows and such when they were scripted from page to page. a unified framework helps resolve those differences in coding and thusly, easier to debug.
And I'm sure there's even more things that I haven't listed. One issue to really consider is do you want a page to page thing - which is good for proof of concept, quick and dirty. Or do you want something you can live with for the next year or so? Using a framework like struts will make your long term much easier.
For the biggest project I worked on, a major airline portal, we rolled our own MVC framework. This was prior to struts and yet in the end, the code was very similar. Their system runs on over 100 Sun CPUs and has been cranking away since they launched a few years back, without a major crash or anything.
This stuff does work and the bigger the project, the better. It's a little tough to get in the beginning, but after you implement it, you start to see that it makes sense. I feel tho, it's definitely more of an 'enterprise' thing than a small 20 page site; altho, u could use it for a small site if you wanted, no problem.
that the drug thing is pretty true. I tried bm a few years back and it was definitely an experience. i liked a lot of the crazy shit. and i think there were a lot of genuine people there for the community and the art and the whole 'journey'. i can definitely understand just wanting to get the hell away from 'civilization' as one can.
but on the other hand, i felt a huge disconnect there. i'm not the raver type and just wanted to hang out with people, check stuff out, but there was definitely much more of a non-stop party than i really wanted. all party and no one to share it with i suppose.
however, one cool thing i did was to walk across the playa, find some friends, who in turn followed some dj in a big rolling fish bowl with speakers and monitors all over back to some 'club' in the middle of nowhere. it was interesting, but i didn't care much for the music so i headed back the way i came. the dust storm was incredible. i would just see people and vehicles and weird shit come out of no where. luckily i wasn't run over cuz people are all over the place in their art cars.
anyway, off in the distance i heard motors and drumming. i walked by and there were these mad max cars circling this big artsy wooden thing (no it wasn't the man), shooting flames at it, torching it. also lined up next to one of the cars that stopped were these drummers banging out a steady tribal rythm on their drums. pretty surreal.
so, yah, i guess you can take whatever you want from that place. there were definitely dorks, but also cool people and whatever else you wanted there. for me, it was definitely an experince and i like weird shit, but i'll probably never go back. just not my thing, really.
India is different! They have a lot of brain/man power over there. And they are still a very poor country. That will change tho, and when it does, would you rather them be pushing m$ or something free? It's not about performance or source code, it's completely about economics and control of ones own future and brain power.
Besides, not every country in the world can pay ridiculous license fees for shotty software just to make a few people in some other country richer. Argh, ya know, instead of bitching about other countries, people should go there and check it out first hand. You'll see things in a completely different light and probably realize the whole high-priced, disposable 'american way' can't fly everywhere. jeeze, this is so obvious!
As far as complaing about jobs, sorry man (really!), but remember, those of you lower on the ladder were sacraficed for those higher up. How many bosses took pay cuts or forfeited their vacation so you could stay on board? Absolutely none! So before you go complaing about those bad immigrants or bad people in other countries taking your jobs just remember, someone had to make that decision here at home. And it was your ex-boss/superstar management team. We won't have to worry about a terrorist attack or the like ruining our economy because we're doing it to ourselves. Give the middle guy a decent wage and get some creative management not selling their souls for the all mighty dollar and we'll go far. Of course, this is completely unrealistic today, but hey, some of us still have to keep thinking ahead..
+2 by default. And behind because we're not interested in the micro like other parts of the world (SUVs vs. Japanese/European 'compacts'); desktop internet vs. cell phone internet, etc. And because our corporations find it much more lucrative to stifle new technology for 'just good enough' stuff. If you don't think this is true, you should read some of the articles available on how the FCC screws the public over by pandering to the every wish of the media and phone companies, which have no desire to create better networks for their subscribers. We're behind, and that's a fact! We get very little for our spectrum that the FCC just gives away..
It's 10000% the cool factor. Why have 'just a phone' when u can have one that plays your favorite tunes, has a anime cat waving a letter when u get email, a scroll wheel, fat full color screens (yah i know, we're just getting them now), or letting u answer a call and then switch to video mode (the video mode thing is coming soon, if not already there). This is all stuff I've seen in Japan where they're all into personalizing the cool stuff. And it was some fat shit. Who want's to ride in a Audi TT when u can cruise in a souped up, 'average' Civic with 3-D GPS display, CD/DVD, heads up on the windshield and tv screens for the people in the back seats?! Guess that's not the US approach tho..
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If more talk like this get's to the people in congress and the government, this could soon encompass the 'you're either with us, or against us' attitude the infects the current administration.
Why is this not good?. For quite a few reasons. Many in the free software and open source community face various uphill battles when trying to use or get others to use non-commercial, specifically, non-m$ products. Linking piracy of IP to terrorism starts sending the message that anyone interested in not buying software could be deemed a non-patriotic (think France and the Florida Freedom Fries and Liberty dressing if you don't follow me) and someone helping anyone that doesn't necessairly fall in line with the accepted point of view of what's legal and what isn't, is gonna soon be in trouble.
I'm all for supporting the software industry and making money selling software. However, the price barrier for purchasing software in other countries is sometimes so high, that the only alternative is to get a pirated copy. This monolithic view of buy our software at the price we set, period!, can only play well in economies that can support the cost. If m$ would instead take this as maybe their customers outside of wealthy countries cannot afford $199 for a version of XP and we will then adjust accordingly and fairly, then I think there would actually be less piracy. However, Bill did not become the worlds richest man being fair.
That said, when a proven monopoly, who got off scott free, links these circumstances to terrorism, it basically opens the door for the U.S. govt to now start not only being the morality police of the world, but the information police. This is not far fetched. When a company pushes the way m$ has for Palladium, Digital Restrication Management, and product activation, closed 'standards', they basically start controlling how you can and cannot access information. As time rolls on this will become more and more critical as more and more of the world hits the net and connects with other. This is textbook civics/government high school class stuff.
These issues are well documented through many writers on many sites. The connection of information, freedom to own what you buy (not a license to use it), intellectual property, and the linking of piracy to terrorism makes for a dim future for everyone who does not want to, cannot follow along (land of the free?) or cannot afford ot license every idea and process under the sun. The America for the individual will be fine as long as you play within the boundries set by the few like Valenti, Gates, Ashcroft (remember how he said the latest m$ court 'ruling' was a victory for the consumer??) - their vision of morality and what constitutes fairness.
Frankly, this persuades me more and more to let friends and family know that their use of products that these companies crank out, will restrict their freedom more and more as time rolls on. As technologies like Palladium and DRM mature and are used more widely throughout the world, these issues will be harder, if not impossible to dodge and the way the net and our machines work now, will not exist. It is up to everyone who sees this to do their part, however small. Support the FSF, Non-M$ anything, your local/fav Linux distro, contribute some code or time to a os/gpl/free project, or purchase hardware from alternate non-M$ only hardware manufacturer (are there any?). Along with our voices, our dollars will be the most significant in making sure that we will have a choice in the future.
whoops, forgot the delete key. doh!
I have a friend who is my economic guru and we talk about this quite a bit. Yes, because there is an administration that is not focused on the economy, everyone is holding on to their money. Thusly, no R&D. We've actually made the car comparison a quite a few times.
Another thing we talk about though, is the fact that as other countries 'catch up' technologically to us, there will be less and less reason for companies not to outsource all their tech needs. This already happens to a great extent in the manfacturing industry and China. For tech, we see a lot of farming out to India, especially since they're are lot of competent English speakers there.
How can U.S. firms compete with this? I don't think they can and ultimately, another industry will move more and more off shore. This doesn't mean, however, that the U.S. will not find other markets.
I think that if there are more and more highly skilled people in other countries around the world that can do the same tech work our skilled workers do here, then the next place is space. Unfortunately, we're not jumping on that and now we have a European agency headed to the moon and China talking about mining it. Welcome to the future of the transnats. Like hi-tech, the U.S. has the opportunity to drive this one for a while. The question is will they?
well, i didn't see anyone mention this as i scanned through so i might as well.
merchants of cool is a frontline show and it's pretty darn good. it, dare i say exposes, nay, since quite a few people already know of the connections with corporate marketing and the media. no, it documents several groups of 'kids' and how they sell out and love it. a really good watch.
as one who has grown up watching, through the 80's and 90's, the ever growing appetite of the mega-corp, i really can't feel sympathy much for anyone who sells their soul for an advertising buck. there's a lot of dots to connect across our various freedoms and some people have no problem relenquishing their freedom to be anonymous.
but, even though i'm not that old, i'm sure i'm considered 'old skool' to the kids who think corporate advertising like this is cool. somewhow, to me, it just seems like the ultimate loss of self-respect.
The first problem I see with this method is the lack of a powerful and flexible querying method. One of the most powerful features of SQL databases is their capability for searching. No where in the article did I see anthing about advanced querying of the objects. Even if there is, I'm sure its no where near as fast as a MySQL or Oracle.
i'd have to say that it depends on your query. i've written a search engine/indexer that translated search tearms into usable sql and it wasn't that easy. with the right data structures, i could see this actually being more powerful than using a sql search. of course, that totally depends on the search. i have to believe that an in-memory search is still going to be faster though.
Here's the issue they are trying to solve: mapping object to records. That's it. Now the problem with removing the records / database is you lose all of the searching power that is inherit in relational databases. The author states that the codebase is 350 lines of code. How can any complex search engine be implemented in 350 lines of code that also covers the persistance?
again, unless you are using a sql client, you have to 'massage' the query. i don't see that any different than searching across objects. you're still going to have to specify what information you want from what 'store'.
i also have a few issues with programming with db's that i'd like to mention.
- if relational is the bestest ever, then why seek any alternatives? when you come down to it, relational is good, but now you've added another network point of failure, language, and possible additional cost to the project. if this is ok with you, then that's fine.
- *everyone* who programs with db's has to do programming logic to sql conversion. it's an extra step. is it totally necessary? this seems to say, no. and actually, i've been working on a new project and the db stuff is always a pain in the ass.
- disk persistence. the author of the ibm article mentions a very simple persistence methodology. i'm also paranoid about losing data and would like to see some more info about clustering and this 'slave' serializer. but, just because an idea is simple doesn't mean i'm going to shoot it down.
i'm gonna read more and play with this more. i've gone through the past 10 years dealing with all kinds of db's and while it's the accepted way of thinking and tried and true, it still doesn't mean that it's the best.
the biggest table of information i've ever been responsible for had a few million rows in it - that's not huge, but still significant. however, to back up the *entire* database, the file size was maybe max, 500MB. i have more than that on the machine i'm tying this on right now. i don't think ram is a huge issue anymore.
i think a bigger issue would be java's ability do deal with datastructures and data to that extent. i've never worked with a vm on a single processor/machine that was alotted more than 512MB max. would be interesting.
This depends on what you use a computer for. I don't think gui is so much more evolved than kbd. people fumble both the kbd and gui.
i watch countless people at my work try to find which browser window they want to use. for me, my browser is always on desktop 2 (alt-2) and then a quick click on a tab and i'm there. no shuffling.
one of the powers of *nix is the term mode. why do you have to have a gui to run a dns server or web server or app server? in fact, one of windows big problems is that they've tied the gui into the bowles of the os. there's no need for a gui on a server. in fact, this will probably hurt more than help.
90% of the people use gui's because 90% of the people are not admins or programmers. i use a gui pretty much exclusively because it enables me to use other things. a lot of these things are terms. some browsers. some graphics apps. some office apps.
resource-wise, any type of non-graphical apps will always run faster in a text/term mode just because of the overhead needed to display graphics and their text representations. os x is a beautiful os, but it's slow. however it functions and looks much better than win or lin.
anyway, in the coming years, for the server mostly, linux will start gaining ground because it's not tied to the gui. it's pretty well documented that it takes less people to admin more *nix boxes than the windows equivalent.
for desktop, kde/gnome will keep getting better and more people will adopt it. that's just how it is.
Cuz we can afford it. In a lot of other countries around the world where a worker only brings home $1200 a year (and that's rich for some villagers in China), how can they afford a $100-$300USD app suite? Enter the five finger or low cost piracy. Plain and simple economics, not ethics. And since when is M$ an ethical company anyway?
If some os office suite was to come out with 3d flipping menus, half the features (read: really needed and used features), half the bloat, twice the speed, etc, no one would use it.
why? cuz that's not what they're used to. look, when my parents, your parents, the 'older' office workers around us started to get familiar with pcs (remember those people that looked at a mouse and asked 'what's that?'), they got familiar with windoze & ofc. no one is going to code a new super ofc app that deviates from those lines - yet!
the current generation of users is gonna pass the torch at some point. what really needs to happen is like what ms did for all the 1-2-3 and wordperfect people: provide an emulation layer and then move on to the next step. give all the people that expect CTRL-S their keys and then provide more things on top like "See what SuperOffice offers besides MS-WORD compatibilty", etc...
then you'll get those users that wanna use the stuff (i.e. the younger users) and it'll progress from there. just like it did from DOS wp and 123.
i guess you could say office is a standard. but this whole notion of 'keeping up' or 'imitating' is not the whole story. a bad geek is someone who says 'screw you dumb end-user, this is how you're gonna do it and you're gonna like it' (hmmm, sounds like a specific software monopoly i know). a smart geek will quitely give the user what they're used to and then go beyond that. m$ ripped off the apple gui who ripped off the parc gui. so what. developing revolutionary products will come at an expense so they need to, must contain backward (and i really mean backward) compatibility, must do it seemlessly, and then and only then can they go to the next level. that's the way the backwards business world works.
To further this, Albini, actually, sounds pretty much the same across all the recordings he does. Not necessairly a bad thing at all since most of the people that wanna work with him want that sound.
Ya know, kinda tinty guitars; gated room drums; not a really fat, low-end bass - kinda bright and punchy. I mean, there's a shit load of bands he's done. Prob one of my favs was his stint with Rapeman. That had some pretty sick changes in it.
Anyway, his piece is pretty straight up. Unless you're some hugo mtv cribs regular in control of your entire destiny (incl gold teef) then you probably don't make squat on a major.
However, I've known plenty of indie bands that toured and had a great time. I mean, so, you earn as much as you would working in the service industry. But, you get to cruise around in a small, stinky van from city to city, play gigs that you hope people will show up to, get piss drunk on the cheapest ass shit you can find (since the bar prob only gives each band memeber one - *if* they're lucky), and then get up the next morning and have whoever is least hungover drive for another 8-10 hours.
Ahhh, memories....
Cuz this weekend I finally admitted it: I'm a mac nut now.
.con boom, I did an internet company. I ended up using all kinds of Intel boxen, including single cpu dev machines and mp servers. Half of these ran NT, half Linux. Even one ran Oracle 8i when it first hit the Linux street. After we were purchased, laptops were key to showing demos, developing on the plane, etc.
I've spent quite a few years figuring out what works best for me - gone thru a lot of hardware too. Right before the
Fast fwd a few years later and I joined a consulting gig. We deployed a lot of big sites on Sparc/Solaris boxes. Around this time, I was looking for the same thing the orig poster was a settled on a 15" Tibook.
Now I'm with a company that has all their servers on Linux boxes (over 100 2-way web servers) and just hooked up a IBM 8-way Xeon Linux box for 9i (>1TB database!). We have all kinds of Dell's in the ofc.
I've seen *a lot* of things come and go and when it came time for me to purchase a machine, I saved up and bought a Tibook. This past December, I got the newer 1gz model. It rules. I like my Linux machines, but I pretty much have it all with my Apple and it's probably the most beautiful comp I've ever owned.
I have a possible business deal coming up and I've been on the hunt for figuring out what it will take to get a company up and running. I have 2 and only 2 companies in mind: Pogo Linux and Apple. Pogo Linux has the best deals on desktops and I'm really liking a lot of the Apple Xserv stuff. You can run all the server stuff I'd run on Linux. I'll pay a little more for an Xserv than maybe a Pogo server, but the company will be geared for the biotech industry and Macs still do well there.
iBooks/TiBooks are the only machines I could really justtify buying for myself. The run great, look great, have all my *nix utils I use and need every day, and also run the foofy desktop appz I need for interfacing with the biz people. For me, they were totally worth every penny.
Wow, Evan is actually my girlfriends good friend - from a little bit back. From what she's told me, he's had some tough choices to make over the few years, but it sounds like he kept the dream alive and it has paid off - if that's the goal. I guess I could think of worse companies to be purchased by. Coulda gone to M$ and been wrapped into some shitty feauture in LookOut or MSN. ;)
Seriously tho, this is actually inspiring for me since I've always felt like I wanted to do my own idea(s) and there's always someone there - from the awful 'manager' to press to whatever else - putting down those ideas in favor of conformity or dissing them due to their lack of vision. That might not be Pyra's feelings, but to know someone has really stuck to their guns in face of all kinds of obstacles, gives me some hope to keep pushing forward.
So, where have you been in the last 5 or so years?! If you read Judge Mott's ruling about the Sun vs. M$ case it clearly shows that m$ abused yet another contract with another company.
.NET, and C# for that matter, might be a better development platform than VB and such, but they still have the same 'fuck the world at everyone's expense' mentality behind it. I've learned that the hard way.. Good luck!
The reason he is forcing them to bundle it is because they did cause harm to Java in more ways than one and that deserves a correction now instead of worrying about it later; as was the case of Netscape. Argh! Ya know, you need to get your shit straight and present the facts when posting stuff like this. Sure, someone reading your post would be like "yah, market forces dude! What are we now, commies forcing successful companies to carry stuff they don't want?"
Gee, and oh yah, weren't they already convicted of being a freaking monoploy?!?! Um...
I've been developing with Java for 7 years and while it's not perfect, I'll never go back to m$ development for many reasons.
- They're a highly unethical company. for a small taste see here, here, and here...
- Like someone else said, profits first, users second
- Welcome to a m$ only development world. I applaud the Mono guys and the dotGNU guys, but just wait until m$ wants to flex its patent muscle. Profits first, lock in second, whatever after
- Bugs & security. Welcome to the jungle
- Horrible, god awful, slave, er, customer service
- Service pack # 539.. and counting..
- Worms, attacks galore and shotty patch record. Just that alone would make me steer clear of that platform.
Java isn't the holy grail and I'm not looking for that. But its developer community is much better than M$s' and has its roots in the *nix world, which frankly, I'd rather have my foot in than the DOS world.
Oh, and by the way, before I bailed from ASP/VB/<fill in other m$ crap here>, I was in a constant state of perpetual screwed-ness with M$ products!
You can't (well you can, but I'd rather drill a hole in my hand) script an enterprise app in PHP. Yah, PHP is great for a scripting language, but it's just that.
:)
I grow tired of everyone predicting or shouting for one thing over the other - there always has to be just one. Yah, right.
PHP is great for the non-ASP/*nix programmer. ASP (and I'm choking a little here when I say this) is great for the m$ programmer. C is good. Java is good. Jeeze, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I'd much rather have a CHOICE when using a particular technology than not.
The Java VM exists for a reason. Just because PHP doesn't have one doesn't mean much. They're both written in C too - so what!
In the end, sure the user wants the most responsive app. But I'll say this, get a big project and try to have multiple devlopers script it and it'll probably die on the vine. You can do just as bad of a job with JSP (and believe me, I've seen it) but there are some really great frameworks out there that help fix problems like this.
Plus, with PHP and the like, they're tied to HTTP. It wouldn't be a very good idea to script a server app in PHP with multiple different types of clients accessing it. It's possible, but I can't see someone writing a Win or Linux native client that accesses a PHP server app. Java works well with the web, but is not build solely for it.
Plus there are other things, if you wanna compare (I don't know even why I'm doing this). There is no PHP message queueing, no or little 'enterprise features', no 'compile PHP to a console application', no PHP 'enterprise' transactional components, etc. Anyway, anyone who's ever had to really use both knows what I'm talkin about.
And besides that, for me, *nix and network programming are still like wide open spaces to me. There are still plenty of things to discover out on the Montana plains and I'm not gonna get all bent outta shape about a rock not being a tree and a tree not being a clear blue sky.
Actually, if I could get a Linux laptop that did everything my Tibook does, I would. But there aren't any and most of the x86 laptops out there are trash.
Apple's desktops are the sleekest or sexiest, but unless you home build you own whacked case with neon and shit, x86 desktops look like crap too.
So I think his "Bill's boxes to Steve's elegant machines" hits the nail on the head. I still love my Linux boxen, but my Macs, for overall design and availibility of all the software I need, are better.
It has facilities in its IL compiler to spit out jvm bytecode.
Quote from this link: Oct 02-10-2002: Java Bytecode Output for Portable.Net
Sylvain Pasche has fixed up the Portable.Net assembler to generate the correct java bytecode. Now the C# compiler sports a nice JVM output backend. The results become really interesting when the whole pnetlib can be compiled into JVM code. Read full details here.
And, from what I know of these guys, they will go to all lengths not just to get the M$ stuff working correctly, but *all* supported languages. They're really a smart bunch.
If you're a hacker, then, yah you'll get busted. However, if you're protecting your IP, then all the sympathetic biz types will smile in your direction.
Remember, there is a huge difference between law for the common man - you and I - and law for the corporate man/company, i.e. Enron, etc. We've already got Berman leaning in that direction and I don't see the RIAA sweating it. When people are faced with extinction, they'll do anything.
And frankly, for everyone that says it's impossible to do this, well I ask why? And think of this, no one is mentioning anything along the lines of numbers of possible infected files. The latest Britney hit only has a worm for Windows? Well, then we'll just tuck one into -Song X- here for all you Xmms users; albiet there are probably not nearly the numbers as Win users. Point is is that there are millions of files on p2p networks. Why assume just one is infected? I could see the RIAA uploading entire catalogs for each and every platform. I dunno, I'm not dismissing this yet; I think it's very possible.
Think it's time to look at the 'ol source..
there are no cheap 120GB backup systems yet. I asked our IT guy at work what he said, "well, just buy another hard drive and back it up with that."
I dunno, I feel much better with tape. So, this begs a bigger issue: with the cost and corner cutting going into todays hard drives, how safe are your gobs of music and video files? And what do u do to keep that info safe?
is not whether you will use WM9, but whether or not the content providers use will it? And that answer, unfortunately, is yes, the content providers will be swayed by the monopoly and use the largest installed base media player. In fact, they already are.
Just to see where these things were going, last weekend I watched a few movies from movielink and cinema(something) and they had a 'few' requirements:
1. Windows
2. Either Real or WM
Regardless if we choose to use either of those, the content providers definitely will not, so we'll all be relegated to watching Quicktime trailers and definitely not DRM stuff, which both Movielink and the Cinema(something) site had.
Personally, I'd much rather log onto a site and watch a movie that way instead of going to the video store. And either of the sites will let you download the movie and watch it. I think they both last for 24hrs.
One thing about the 'service' tho that I thought sucked was that I paid $10 for a month of 'premium' access, but all the new movies were 'pay-per-view' which has an additional $3.95. That was pretty inconvenient. Actually kinda pissed me off. In that case, I'm better off going to the video store and freeing up my bandwidth.
Anyway, back to the players; remember they're just the client and are the keys to the really bigger things: the content on the back end. Unfortunately, 95% of the computing world runs Windoze and their path of least resistance, monopoly pushed apps. These are always gonna be the people that the content providers will cater to. So I don't know what there is to do about that since it won't matter to the providers one bit if the Linux folks can't watch their movies.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the Real Helix stuff or even Quicktime pick up some steam. Apple has stated that they think that DRM as it exists for content now is not the way to go. So maybe they can use our support too.
One other note, the only way I see the content providers backing away from WM9 is if it is found as insecure as IE. This could persuade them to go for something else. But then again, once you have a big catalog of digital flix that you have to re-encode for another platform, that decision to just ship, even in the wake of security concerns, seems highly unlikely. Or maybe not..
A few things:
You have a $200 walmart pc that will still have shaky support for a wide variety of devices. There will definately not be any of this plug and play nonsense.
Consumers will continue to buy macs just as they do BMWs or Mercedes - because they're willing to pay more money for something better. Apple will never nose out the Wintel duopoly, but it will always (hopefully) have a following of loyal users. I should know, I bought my second Tibook this year. My old one I sold to my friend to replace his iBook.
I've had, literally, dozens of x86 servers at home and have over the past 10 years. So, it's not that I don't know what cheap is. True, lets go down and buy the newest fastest video card or lets get some cheap drives and upgrade to raid. However tho, now I just want something portable that works.
The DVD playback on a Tibook has no equal. AND, since I can make movies and DVDs on my Tibook, the Fujitsu equivalent - the Celcius - (which is the only x86 laptop company I'd ever consider buying from after constant crap from Dell, Compaq, HP), doesn't even have DVD burning. But it does have 1/2 the ram costs $600 more. Laptops vs. desktops are different; true. But Apple designs machines, not commodities. Wintel is all about commodities. And there you have it.
Yah, and for compensation for the deaths, UC only paid out around $300-$400 each. Beyond sad.
Of course, you have to wonder what part the Indian govt. had to do with all this. I mean, they closed the case in '91 or whenever it was and stated that they thought it was fair.
Dow's corporate free speech thing is a load of garbage. However, one has to wonder, even tho they aren't the best, they bought someone else that did something and i'm not sure how i feel about them having to do deal with it. On the other hand, it only seems natural and a way to make them look like they really do care if they went in and pre-emptively made things better..
But of course, they is rarely the case for any global entity.
Not true at all. I've been following Struts for a *long* time and depending on the project it can make a huge difference. Sure, you can code page to page, embed the logic wherever and move on your merry way. But adverse things will definitely start to happen when:
1. you are no longer 'the man' and the mgmt rolls in the html guy(s)/gal(s). most html people can deal with <xml style markup> than <%java scriptlet%> stlye <%blocks%> (i won't even get into logic flow in scriptlet blocks). separation of presentation logic from biz logic; speaks for itself. and it's possible with scripting languages, but tough.
2. you want to extend the app. 'oh, but marketing want's to have their server also come in on that url that you did last year'. true, you could accomplish extension well with scripting language, but the delegation with struts/MVC us much cleaner and more maintainable.
3. you want to debug/qa. struts is tested and kid approved. i'm going thru something right now where our system has bugs and no one really knows cuz different people have worked on each others code and did everything differently. and even on a huge project in the past i had done, it was still hard for me to figure out flows and such when they were scripted from page to page. a unified framework helps resolve those differences in coding and thusly, easier to debug.
And I'm sure there's even more things that I haven't listed. One issue to really consider is do you want a page to page thing - which is good for proof of concept, quick and dirty. Or do you want something you can live with for the next year or so? Using a framework like struts will make your long term much easier.
For the biggest project I worked on, a major airline portal, we rolled our own MVC framework. This was prior to struts and yet in the end, the code was very similar. Their system runs on over 100 Sun CPUs and has been cranking away since they launched a few years back, without a major crash or anything.
This stuff does work and the bigger the project, the better. It's a little tough to get in the beginning, but after you implement it, you start to see that it makes sense. I feel tho, it's definitely more of an 'enterprise' thing than a small 20 page site; altho, u could use it for a small site if you wanted, no problem.
that the drug thing is pretty true. I tried bm a few years back and it was definitely an experience. i liked a lot of the crazy shit. and i think there were a lot of genuine people there for the community and the art and the whole 'journey'. i can definitely understand just wanting to get the hell away from 'civilization' as one can.
but on the other hand, i felt a huge disconnect there. i'm not the raver type and just wanted to hang out with people, check stuff out, but there was definitely much more of a non-stop party than i really wanted. all party and no one to share it with i suppose.
however, one cool thing i did was to walk across the playa, find some friends, who in turn followed some dj in a big rolling fish bowl with speakers and monitors all over back to some 'club' in the middle of nowhere. it was interesting, but i didn't care much for the music so i headed back the way i came. the dust storm was incredible. i would just see people and vehicles and weird shit come out of no where. luckily i wasn't run over cuz people are all over the place in their art cars.
anyway, off in the distance i heard motors and drumming. i walked by and there were these mad max cars circling this big artsy wooden thing (no it wasn't the man), shooting flames at it, torching it. also lined up next to one of the cars that stopped were these drummers banging out a steady tribal rythm on their drums. pretty surreal.
so, yah, i guess you can take whatever you want from that place. there were definitely dorks, but also cool people and whatever else you wanted there. for me, it was definitely an experince and i like weird shit, but i'll probably never go back. just not my thing, really.
India is different! They have a lot of brain/man power over there. And they are still a very poor country. That will change tho, and when it does, would you rather them be pushing m$ or something free? It's not about performance or source code, it's completely about economics and control of ones own future and brain power.
Besides, not every country in the world can pay ridiculous license fees for shotty software just to make a few people in some other country richer. Argh, ya know, instead of bitching about other countries, people should go there and check it out first hand. You'll see things in a completely different light and probably realize the whole high-priced, disposable 'american way' can't fly everywhere. jeeze, this is so obvious!
As far as complaing about jobs, sorry man (really!), but remember, those of you lower on the ladder were sacraficed for those higher up. How many bosses took pay cuts or forfeited their vacation so you could stay on board? Absolutely none! So before you go complaing about those bad immigrants or bad people in other countries taking your jobs just remember, someone had to make that decision here at home. And it was your ex-boss/superstar management team.
We won't have to worry about a terrorist attack or the like ruining our economy because we're doing it to ourselves. Give the middle guy a decent wage and get some creative management not selling their souls for the all mighty dollar and we'll go far. Of course, this is completely unrealistic today, but hey, some of us still have to keep thinking ahead..
+2 by default. And behind because we're not interested in the micro like other parts of the world (SUVs vs. Japanese/European 'compacts'); desktop internet vs. cell phone internet, etc.
And because our corporations find it much more lucrative to stifle new technology for 'just good enough' stuff. If you don't think this is true, you should read some of the articles available on how the FCC screws the public over by pandering to the every wish of the media and phone companies, which have no desire to create better networks for their subscribers. We're behind, and that's a fact! We get very little for our spectrum that the FCC just gives away..
It's 10000% the cool factor. Why have 'just a phone' when u can have one that plays your favorite tunes, has a anime cat waving a letter when u get email, a scroll wheel, fat full color screens (yah i know, we're just getting them now), or letting u answer a call and then switch to video mode (the video mode thing is coming soon, if not already there). This is all stuff I've seen in Japan where they're all into personalizing the cool stuff. And it was some fat shit. Who want's to ride in a Audi TT when u can cruise in a souped up, 'average' Civic with 3-D GPS display, CD/DVD, heads up on the windshield and tv screens for the people in the back seats?! Guess that's not the US approach tho..