I read every day about how Apple has won and everyone had an android phone, but in the real world, the people who say "what's slashdot?" also don't remember Windows ME or Microsoft Bob. And a computer is a Windows machine and you write Word docs, and you "make a PowerPoint" for a presentation.
Sure, people complain about Windows, but macs are just too weird and, after all, it's just a tool.
At least in this school district, they've trained another generation who thinks that computer == Windows.
I observed just yesterday, at an event, how Americans (ie, rich people, by most if the worlds standards) won't steal laptops, cameras, phones, etc., laying out in plain view, unguarded. I would never leave something sitting on a table at a public event like that, for even a minute, in Nairobi. But there were tens of thousands of dollars worth of electronics sitting out between events at this particular gathering as people wandered around looking at the other tables.
So perhaps the rich are just immoral about different things.
I'll bet this threat sells a million copies of the app. I hadn't heard of it yesterday. Now I've bought it. It was only $0.99 How many more of you did that?
I see a business plan here. What other of the default apps can I copy...
I was with you, Eric, right up until you called the media industry execs "stupid" and "dimwits". Your arguments were clear and well stated right up to that point. However, when you call your audience dimwits, they stop listening and discount anything you've said up to that point. This is a great shame, because your letter was incredibly persuasive and non-ranty up to that moment.
I'm proud to have voted for him. I will continue to vote for him in the future. We need more senators like him who care about civil liberties, who listen to their constituents, and who understand that he is there working for me, and not for corporations.
I am perplexed by equating "e-learning" with "give every kid an iPad". If you give a kid a screen and make it under their control they will find the games. If someone is unaware of this, they probably dont have kids. But this is not unique to electronics. If you give them a stack of text books and no supervision, they'll make paper airplanes. Education requires supervision at that age. Putting an e- in front of things doesn't change human nature.
I avoided getting a smart phone for a long time, even though I'm surrounded by people with smart phones, because I knew that as soon as I had one it would become indispensable, just like my Visor did, and my Palm, and my iPod, and... so on.
Now, I have an iPhone, and it's indispensable. Sure, I could manage without it, but I use it all day, every day, and I feel I would be lost without it. And while I know that's an illusion, I also know how my brain works.... which is why I don't have an iPad yet...
No, it's just there to indicate that I'm an employee of a discount company, and therefore anything I say can be discounted as simply kowtowing to my corporate overlords. Or something like that.
However, I'm involved in the LiteracyBridge project (documentation) and the founder of it, Cliff Schmidt, is a long-time colleague at the Apache Software Foundation, and one of my heroes.
I know folks who go to the hospital for that and things even more trivial. Like - I am not making this up - heartburn. For me I have to be just about dying before I go to the ER and wait 4 hours to be told to go home and rest and drink plenty of fluids.
They have exclusive for 90 days. That's all. After that, you can do what you like. 90 days isn't very long.
With a traditional publisher, you typically have an exclusive contract for a much longer time, but of course you can sell the resulting book in any venue.
Mr. Bezos' next step will be to extend such an offer to a big name author.
Note that Stephen King (perhaps you've heard of him) released the book Ur exclusively on the Kindle. Granted, it's *about* the Kindle, so that sort of made sense.
Then, the 90 day exclusivity clause ran out, and it was re-released on paper, and did quite well there, too.
I have not read anything by the authors mentioned but I bet their books are not of the scope of yours. I'm guessing 100-200 pages of light reading fiction, not carefully researched tech books, written at the rate of several a year.
My publishers don't give me stats that distinguish what ebook readers are purchasing my books, so I really don't know what percentage the kindle accounts for. However I also have a few Kindle books (ie exclusively Kindle) and they aren't exactly flying off the (virtual) shelves.
I would guess that with the Amazon marketing machine working for you, any book is going to sell better than without it. I expect that would be strong enough incentive to be willing to experiment with a book or two.
Here's a little more information from our legal folks:
A: Earlier this year, we went through a pretty robust process to receive our Truste certification which covers privacy, security and safe harbor (our privacy policy is located at ADD LINK). We are continuing to look for ways to improve our security controls and protect user personal information. We did fully disclose an incident early in 2001 and the details and what we did about can be found at: http://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-attack-full-report/
Yeah, on calm reflection later, I always come back to that conclusion myself. When I'm wallowing in the petri dish with my stack of forms, I want to be able to tell them to go look it up.
It's equally annoying when I have to fill out a form when crossing the border, so that a customs agent can compare what I wrote down with what's in my passport and then toss the form in a heap. What happens with all those forms?
I've long thought that government software should be software of the people, by the people, for the people (to be a little over-poetic). If I pay for the development of software that's used to run, say, the TSA, then I should have access to that code. And if the IRS is using software to store my data, I should have access to that code so that I can verify that it's secure, and is calculating my tax refund correctly.
I'm not sure, as a non-lawyer who has never worked as a government contractor, whether such demands are at all realistic or probable, but I still think it's worth making the demands. While I'm confident that *my* congress critter didn't understand the letter I sent him on the subject (at least, based on his content-free response), I would encourage you to contact yours, and maybe there's one out there that would understand.
The medical data issue is a little less clear-cut, depending on whether medecine is socialized in your particular country.
Putting medical data in a shared data pool *promises* big things, certainly.
Every time I go to a doctor's office and have to fill out all the same data, yet again, or when I have to fill out yet another government form with all the same information that they already have, often two or three times on the same set of forms, I think, why, in 2011, do I have to fill out these forms at all, when they already have so much information on me that should be readily accessible? A retinal scan, or even an ID number, should be sufficient to avoid this. Why haven't we solved this problem yet? (Yes, that's a very naive position, largely inspired by the frustration of filling out the 8th form while other peoples' kids run around screaming and sneezing on me.)
But who do we trust to be that central repository of data, and not sell it to the highest bidder?
As I posted here: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2563666&cid=38303250 - I've seen servers at hospitals, local governments, and various other supposedly-secure places (fire stations, airports, etc) in my years as a network security auditor. And I frequently peek under the keyboards in doctors' offices while I'm waiting for them. It's hard to imagine that storing data on someone else's server instead of their own is going to make any substantive difference in their data security posture.
Yes, to me this is a much bigger concern than something intrinsically secure/insecure about cloud computing. By entrusting my data to a third party vendor, I make it one step easier for the government to sieze it. With the kinds of legislation that's being debated even this week, I worry that any data I entrust to a vendor might eventually be subpoenaed, and I wouldn't have any recourse.
And hosting that data elsewhere (ie, outside of my country) doesn't necessarily solve anything.
On the other hand, the benefits of the cloud - a scalability that I can never achieve "at home" - enormously outweigh this concern in most cases. When it comes to confidential data, however, the question becomes much less obvious.
What does Source Forge do that is above and beyond the call of duty to protect user information? Have you guys had any data breaches that you haven't disclosed, or fully disclosed? What would you have done differently in hindsight?
As with any company, these sorts of things have a procedure that we have to follow, and I'm checking with the people along that trail to see what I should say in response. There haven't been any compromises or attacks during my time at SF, so I don't have any personal experience as to how we respond to this, but I've asked some of the guys on our engineering team to help me put together a response to this question.
Slashdot Mirror
I read every day about how Apple has won and everyone had an android phone, but in the real world, the people who say "what's slashdot?" also don't remember Windows ME or Microsoft Bob. And a computer is a Windows machine and you write Word docs, and you "make a PowerPoint" for a presentation.
Sure, people complain about Windows, but macs are just too weird and, after all, it's just a tool.
At least in this school district, they've trained another generation who thinks that computer == Windows.
I observed just yesterday, at an event, how Americans (ie, rich people, by most if the worlds standards) won't steal laptops, cameras, phones, etc., laying out in plain view, unguarded. I would never leave something sitting on a table at a public event like that, for even a minute, in Nairobi. But there were tens of thousands of dollars worth of electronics sitting out between events at this particular gathering as people wandered around looking at the other tables.
So perhaps the rich are just immoral about different things.
I'll bet this threat sells a million copies of the app. I hadn't heard of it yesterday. Now I've bought it. It was only $0.99 How many more of you did that?
I see a business plan here. What other of the default apps can I copy ...
I was with you, Eric, right up until you called the media industry execs "stupid" and "dimwits". Your arguments were clear and well stated right up to that point. However, when you call your audience dimwits, they stop listening and discount anything you've said up to that point. This is a great shame, because your letter was incredibly persuasive and non-ranty up to that moment.
I'm proud to have voted for him. I will continue to vote for him in the future. We need more senators like him who care about civil liberties, who listen to their constituents, and who understand that he is there working for me, and not for corporations.
More power to him.
So much for driving to California next summer. It'll be farther away by then.
I guess I'm special. I've been seeing this "new" look for a couple of weeks now.
I am perplexed by equating "e-learning" with "give every kid an iPad". If you give a kid a screen and make it under their control they will find the games. If someone is unaware of this, they probably dont have kids. But this is not unique to electronics. If you give them a stack of text books and no supervision, they'll make paper airplanes. Education requires supervision at that age. Putting an e- in front of things doesn't change human nature.
I avoided getting a smart phone for a long time, even though I'm surrounded by people with smart phones, because I knew that as soon as I had one it would become indispensable, just like my Visor did, and my Palm, and my iPod, and ... so on.
Now, I have an iPhone, and it's indispensable. Sure, I could manage without it, but I use it all day, every day, and I feel I would be lost without it. And while I know that's an illusion, I also know how my brain works. ... which is why I don't have an iPad yet ...
It's fascinating what autocorrect can come up with. An employee of THE PARENT COMPANY. Sheesh.
No, it's just there to indicate that I'm an employee of a discount company, and therefore anything I say can be discounted as simply kowtowing to my corporate overlords. Or something like that.
However, I'm involved in the LiteracyBridge project (documentation) and the founder of it, Cliff Schmidt, is a long-time colleague at the Apache Software Foundation, and one of my heroes.
Www.LiteracyBridge.org - effective use of technology to make life better for real people. Worth your time (they're open source) and money.
I know folks who go to the hospital for that and things even more trivial. Like - I am not making this up - heartburn. For me I have to be just about dying before I go to the ER and wait 4 hours to be told to go home and rest and drink plenty of fluids.
They have exclusive for 90 days. That's all. After that, you can do what you like. 90 days isn't very long.
With a traditional publisher, you typically have an exclusive contract for a much longer time, but of course you can sell the resulting book in any venue.
Mr. Bezos' next step will be to extend such an offer to a big name author.
Note that Stephen King (perhaps you've heard of him) released the book Ur exclusively on the Kindle. Granted, it's *about* the Kindle, so that sort of made sense.
Then, the 90 day exclusivity clause ran out, and it was re-released on paper, and did quite well there, too.
Having gone both ways I think I can answer this.
1. Editing services
2. Typesetting and layout
3. Marketing
Most authors, even good ones, need these and don't do them well themselves.
Most folks can figure out the first to but it's very hard to market a book yourself, especially for a first book.
Also, the "for at least 90 days" in the program description, left out of the summary, rather changes the risk level quite a bit.
I have not read anything by the authors mentioned but I bet their books are not of the scope of yours. I'm guessing 100-200 pages of light reading fiction, not carefully researched tech books, written at the rate of several a year.
My publishers don't give me stats that distinguish what ebook readers are purchasing my books, so I really don't know what percentage the kindle accounts for. However I also have a few Kindle books (ie exclusively Kindle) and they aren't exactly flying off the (virtual) shelves.
I would guess that with the Amazon marketing machine working for you, any book is going to sell better than without it. I expect that would be strong enough incentive to be willing to experiment with a book or two.
Here's a little more information from our legal folks:
A: Earlier this year, we went through a pretty robust process to receive our Truste certification which covers privacy, security and safe harbor (our privacy policy is located at ADD LINK). We are continuing to look for ways to improve our security controls and protect user personal information. We did fully disclose an incident early in 2001 and the details and what we did about can be found at: http://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-attack-full-report/
They also recommended that I point you to our corporate privacy policy, here: http://geek.net/privacy-statement
Yeah, on calm reflection later, I always come back to that conclusion myself. When I'm wallowing in the petri dish with my stack of forms, I want to be able to tell them to go look it up.
It's equally annoying when I have to fill out a form when crossing the border, so that a customs agent can compare what I wrote down with what's in my passport and then toss the form in a heap. What happens with all those forms?
I've long thought that government software should be software of the people, by the people, for the people (to be a little over-poetic). If I pay for the development of software that's used to run, say, the TSA, then I should have access to that code. And if the IRS is using software to store my data, I should have access to that code so that I can verify that it's secure, and is calculating my tax refund correctly.
I'm not sure, as a non-lawyer who has never worked as a government contractor, whether such demands are at all realistic or probable, but I still think it's worth making the demands. While I'm confident that *my* congress critter didn't understand the letter I sent him on the subject (at least, based on his content-free response), I would encourage you to contact yours, and maybe there's one out there that would understand.
The medical data issue is a little less clear-cut, depending on whether medecine is socialized in your particular country.
Putting medical data in a shared data pool *promises* big things, certainly.
Every time I go to a doctor's office and have to fill out all the same data, yet again, or when I have to fill out yet another government form with all the same information that they already have, often two or three times on the same set of forms, I think, why, in 2011, do I have to fill out these forms at all, when they already have so much information on me that should be readily accessible? A retinal scan, or even an ID number, should be sufficient to avoid this. Why haven't we solved this problem yet? (Yes, that's a very naive position, largely inspired by the frustration of filling out the 8th form while other peoples' kids run around screaming and sneezing on me.)
But who do we trust to be that central repository of data, and not sell it to the highest bidder?
As I posted here: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2563666&cid=38303250 - I've seen servers at hospitals, local governments, and various other supposedly-secure places (fire stations, airports, etc) in my years as a network security auditor. And I frequently peek under the keyboards in doctors' offices while I'm waiting for them. It's hard to imagine that storing data on someone else's server instead of their own is going to make any substantive difference in their data security posture.
Yes, to me this is a much bigger concern than something intrinsically secure/insecure about cloud computing. By entrusting my data to a third party vendor, I make it one step easier for the government to sieze it. With the kinds of legislation that's being debated even this week, I worry that any data I entrust to a vendor might eventually be subpoenaed, and I wouldn't have any recourse.
And hosting that data elsewhere (ie, outside of my country) doesn't necessarily solve anything.
On the other hand, the benefits of the cloud - a scalability that I can never achieve "at home" - enormously outweigh this concern in most cases. When it comes to confidential data, however, the question becomes much less obvious.
What does Source Forge do that is above and beyond the call of duty to protect user information? Have you guys had any data breaches that you haven't disclosed, or fully disclosed? What would you have done differently in hindsight?
When we have attacks, and compromises (which has happened in the the past) we report in detail on it in the blog. Here's one example: https://sourceforge.net/blog/update-sourceforgenet-attack/
As with any company, these sorts of things have a procedure that we have to follow, and I'm checking with the people along that trail to see what I should say in response. There haven't been any compromises or attacks during my time at SF, so I don't have any personal experience as to how we respond to this, but I've asked some of the guys on our engineering team to help me put together a response to this question.