Yeah, countries within the EU for the moment are still for the most part self-determining nations. Hell, even though Canada and Australia revere the British monarchy, they're independant entities. Become a State of the Union however, and the Federal apparatus will emasculate that real quick. Probably why Puerto Rico keeps waffling. Can't say I blame them.
I think what is going wrong with the copyright and IP is that the situation shifts towards rewarding not the actual inventors or creators but corporations they work for. And that might become similar to the situation in the communist countries, where everything one invented was State's property - just change State to Company.
Bingo. I've been feeling for a while now that we're drifting towards a sort of corporate communism... And it's not just in "intellectual property". When a small number of corporations own everything and all we are allowed to do is rent, is there much practical difference between that and Stalinist socialism from the perspective of the individual?
The same PHBs who are likely to gather nine women in a room and announce that they've comitted to producing a baby by the end of the month, I'd gather.
Well, somebody certainly did some heavy selling at around 10 A.M. EDT... Volume up, price spiked low... It's climbed a bit in the past hour or so, but... *shrug* Draw yer own conclusions.
Hate replying to myself, but I just remembered the other point I was going to make and forgot what it was (it's early in the morning, I haven't done any caffeine yet)...
My other insight regarding the way corporate IT works is that they would much rather pay someone else to develop software than pay their own people to do it. It doesn't matter if it costs more in the end or means more effort to keep running... And it comes down, no surprise, to accounting.
When you pay someone else to build something for you, it's a capital investment.
When you pay your own people to build something for you, it's pure expense.
"Large companies end up paying tons in license fees for a plethora of different software products that fit individual needs. They could instead find a few open source products and pay the salaries of a few programmers to customize them to their needs, or outright integrate them."
From my experience in IT, trying to change anything based on rational arguments of cost efficiency are useless. Microsoft solutions are "good enough" no matter how kludgy, no matter how balky, no matter how expensive. Management won't change anything until it all blows up in their faces, and then they'll blame their underlings for not preventing the inevitable consequences of their own chain of decisions.
"Splinter Cell -- a game where you're supposed to avoid hurting people! Owes a lot to Thief, though."
I must be an incredibly sick bastard... If I had to knock out an enemy to keep from alerting others, I'd usually put one in his head after I'd dragged him out of earshot.
*shrug* At least nobody was going to wake him up and ask which way I went...
Although as I recall, it was designed because certain berzerk Fillipino natives hopped up on drugs (ref. the Morro Rebellion) couldn't be stopped in time by the standard.38 Special... It was never intended to be a cavalry-elimination measure.
Now that I think about it, your assertion is pretty silly. If firearm tech was going to be the death of horse-mounted cavalry, it would have happened with the introduction of the lever-action carbine. A little more bulky, but just as portable and packing quite a bit more punch... No, I think the horse was phased out in the military for the same reason it was phased out in the civilian world... Automotive tech can carry more stuff without keeling over dead, doesn't get tired until it runs out of fuel, and you only have to feed it as much fuel as you actually use.
Better yet, how about selling an advanced warning subscription? You buy the subscription and they email you before the link goes up for the reader subscribers to warn you that you're about to get nuked...
Y'know... Just in case something were to... happen.
Sadly, it already did go into a death spiral once. Then it got bought by an upstart called Worldcom (you may have heard of them), who got a little creative about dealing with the situation... And now the same fucktards are back at the helm for another go. Cute, huh?
Yes, I need out bad. I'm being set up for failure. My point is, with all the discussion in this article about the job market, I'm in a state of techno-slavery. I'd love to have the satisfaction of storming out, but that won't pay off my student loans... Finally, with all the job postings I see requiring years of experience in the newest technologies (which I haven't been allowed to apply to my work which means I have zero), it's pretty clear that most places aren't any more clueful, and I'd rather not jump out of the frying pan to fall face-first into the coals.
What I need is out of IT. I need to be developing a product, not providing an unappreciated in-house service where everyone wants something done and but wants someone else to pay for the development work. I'm open to suggestions, I'm just feeling rather powerless about the whole thing at the moment.
Let's just say I'm somewhere between those figures, 3 years experience and lead developer on a project. Batchelor's in CS. Living in the U.S. and a born citizen. With H1Bs in my group pulling 20K more than me. Putting up with some really ridiculous shit because management wants to play money games while the codebase is in real danger of catastrophic collapse because they keep bolting more stuff on top of a piece of shit that got slapped together by a bunch of monkeys and then thrown at me. Yeah, I'm reaaaal happy.
Glad I was born into a lower-middle class family and am of a pragmatic bent or I'd really be pitching a hissy fit.
Maybe, maybe not. I'm willing to concede that Iraq may have had WMD before the "liberation". So where is it all?
Put yourself in Hussein's shoes. You see Bush waffling in public on whether or not he's gonna invade, but U.S. Forces are streaming into the region on a daily basis. Hussein was (is?) evil, not stupid...
Where's the WMD? Al Quaeda's got it all. My bet is that Hussein said, "Well, fuck. I'm not going to get to use any of this stuff. Here, go nuts. Give 'em hell." Which wouldn't have happened if Bush hadn't been so all-fired eager to keep the shit out of the hands of terrorists.
Bet you dimes to donuts. We're orange-alert now, let's see if some of it shows up.
Tell ya what. You tell me what the result of asserting my rights at this point would be. I'll give you some hints to get started.
1) Freedom from surveillance pretty much means freedom from communicating with just about anyone else.
2) Things are bought and sold where there are concentrations of people.
3) Power comes from the barrel of a gun.
4) Individual targets are easier to take on than large groups.
My take on it is that most Americans are too cowardly or too "above that" to remind the government that 3) is the fourth check and balance (or is that seventh?), and until a critical mass decides otherwise, anyone who isn't is just a lone nut. The math doesn't work for me as an individual.
Just to back this one up, I can second the DHS angle from reporting on Public Radio Monday morning. If anyone's got any doubts about this crap, this is the example to use to press the point.
PAWFIPFPC? Hrm... Only problem is that it doesn't resolve to a cute acronym. You know standard ops these days is to come up with the acronym first, then try to figure out what each letter stands for...
There was some Bob the Angry Flower linkage that I was going to throw in here, but it looks like the server's croaked. Probably a good thing; I'm getting worried at how often I've been finding opportunities to sing the praises of St. Notley lately...
Yeah, but the virus part is the crucial distinction because it's what determines the element of choice and control. You use the GPL, the "contamination" is your informed choice. Some company virally infests your computer in a scheme to bleed you dry, you have no control over the situation (you could hardly have been expected to know that the virus was lurking in their software).
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Yeah, countries within the EU for the moment are still for the most part self-determining nations. Hell, even though Canada and Australia revere the British monarchy, they're independant entities. Become a State of the Union however, and the Federal apparatus will emasculate that real quick. Probably why Puerto Rico keeps waffling. Can't say I blame them.
I think what is going wrong with the copyright and IP is that the situation shifts towards rewarding not the actual inventors or creators but corporations they work for. And that might become similar to the situation in the communist countries, where everything one invented was State's property - just change State to Company.
Bingo. I've been feeling for a while now that we're drifting towards a sort of corporate communism... And it's not just in "intellectual property". When a small number of corporations own everything and all we are allowed to do is rent, is there much practical difference between that and Stalinist socialism from the perspective of the individual?
The same PHBs who are likely to gather nine women in a room and announce that they've comitted to producing a baby by the end of the month, I'd gather.
Well, somebody certainly did some heavy selling at around 10 A.M. EDT... Volume up, price spiked low... It's climbed a bit in the past hour or so, but... *shrug* Draw yer own conclusions.
Hate replying to myself, but I just remembered the other point I was going to make and forgot what it was (it's early in the morning, I haven't done any caffeine yet)...
My other insight regarding the way corporate IT works is that they would much rather pay someone else to develop software than pay their own people to do it. It doesn't matter if it costs more in the end or means more effort to keep running... And it comes down, no surprise, to accounting.
When you pay someone else to build something for you, it's a capital investment.
When you pay your own people to build something for you, it's pure expense.
Gotta love them double standards...
"Large companies end up paying tons in license fees for a plethora of different software products that fit individual needs. They could instead find a few open source products and pay the salaries of a few programmers to customize them to their needs, or outright integrate them."
From my experience in IT, trying to change anything based on rational arguments of cost efficiency are useless. Microsoft solutions are "good enough" no matter how kludgy, no matter how balky, no matter how expensive. Management won't change anything until it all blows up in their faces, and then they'll blame their underlings for not preventing the inevitable consequences of their own chain of decisions.
"Splinter Cell -- a game where you're supposed to avoid hurting people! Owes a lot to Thief, though."
I must be an incredibly sick bastard... If I had to knock out an enemy to keep from alerting others, I'd usually put one in his head after I'd dragged him out of earshot.
*shrug* At least nobody was going to wake him up and ask which way I went...
Now I know where I got my twisted sense of humor from... I'm a quarter Carpatho-Rusyn. If this is from that part of the Czech republic... 'Nuff said.
Right on, guy. Total agreement.
Although as I recall, it was designed because certain berzerk Fillipino natives hopped up on drugs (ref. the Morro Rebellion) couldn't be stopped in time by the standard .38 Special... It was never intended to be a cavalry-elimination measure.
Now that I think about it, your assertion is pretty silly. If firearm tech was going to be the death of horse-mounted cavalry, it would have happened with the introduction of the lever-action carbine. A little more bulky, but just as portable and packing quite a bit more punch... No, I think the horse was phased out in the military for the same reason it was phased out in the civilian world... Automotive tech can carry more stuff without keeling over dead, doesn't get tired until it runs out of fuel, and you only have to feed it as much fuel as you actually use.
Better yet, how about selling an advanced warning subscription? You buy the subscription and they email you before the link goes up for the reader subscribers to warn you that you're about to get nuked...
Y'know... Just in case something were to... happen.
Sadly, it already did go into a death spiral once. Then it got bought by an upstart called Worldcom (you may have heard of them), who got a little creative about dealing with the situation... And now the same fucktards are back at the helm for another go. Cute, huh?
Yes, I need out bad. I'm being set up for failure. My point is, with all the discussion in this article about the job market, I'm in a state of techno-slavery. I'd love to have the satisfaction of storming out, but that won't pay off my student loans... Finally, with all the job postings I see requiring years of experience in the newest technologies (which I haven't been allowed to apply to my work which means I have zero), it's pretty clear that most places aren't any more clueful, and I'd rather not jump out of the frying pan to fall face-first into the coals.
What I need is out of IT. I need to be developing a product, not providing an unappreciated in-house service where everyone wants something done and but wants someone else to pay for the development work. I'm open to suggestions, I'm just feeling rather powerless about the whole thing at the moment.
Let's just say I'm somewhere between those figures, 3 years experience and lead developer on a project. Batchelor's in CS. Living in the U.S. and a born citizen. With H1Bs in my group pulling 20K more than me. Putting up with some really ridiculous shit because management wants to play money games while the codebase is in real danger of catastrophic collapse because they keep bolting more stuff on top of a piece of shit that got slapped together by a bunch of monkeys and then thrown at me. Yeah, I'm reaaaal happy.
Glad I was born into a lower-middle class family and am of a pragmatic bent or I'd really be pitching a hissy fit.
Tell me to find another job. I dare ya.
Ya know, the thought of pr0n stars frantically googling for pictures of me at three in the morning is oddly appealing...
What's that sound? It's like a whistle, kinda... Getting louder... Seems to be coming from above...
*reality crashes down like 10 tons of bricks*
Maybe, maybe not. I'm willing to concede that Iraq may have had WMD before the "liberation". So where is it all?
Put yourself in Hussein's shoes. You see Bush waffling in public on whether or not he's gonna invade, but U.S. Forces are streaming into the region on a daily basis. Hussein was (is?) evil, not stupid...
Where's the WMD? Al Quaeda's got it all. My bet is that Hussein said, "Well, fuck. I'm not going to get to use any of this stuff. Here, go nuts. Give 'em hell." Which wouldn't have happened if Bush hadn't been so all-fired eager to keep the shit out of the hands of terrorists.
Bet you dimes to donuts. We're orange-alert now, let's see if some of it shows up.
Tell ya what. You tell me what the result of asserting my rights at this point would be. I'll give you some hints to get started.
1) Freedom from surveillance pretty much means freedom from communicating with just about anyone else.
2) Things are bought and sold where there are concentrations of people.
3) Power comes from the barrel of a gun.
4) Individual targets are easier to take on than large groups.
My take on it is that most Americans are too cowardly or too "above that" to remind the government that 3) is the fourth check and balance (or is that seventh?), and until a critical mass decides otherwise, anyone who isn't is just a lone nut. The math doesn't work for me as an individual.
Just to back this one up, I can second the DHS angle from reporting on Public Radio Monday morning. If anyone's got any doubts about this crap, this is the example to use to press the point.
PAWFIPFPC? Hrm... Only problem is that it doesn't resolve to a cute acronym. You know standard ops these days is to come up with the acronym first, then try to figure out what each letter stands for...
Isn't strong cryptography regulated as a munition? I think the Feds know precisely what they're doing wrt information...
*chuckle* That's the other half of the joke.
Satire is often hard to recognise for what it is.
Hell, not even Clinton is. Look up the presidency of Ulysses. S. Grant. Makes these two sound like Sunday-schoolers.
There was some Bob the Angry Flower linkage that I was going to throw in here, but it looks like the server's croaked. Probably a good thing; I'm getting worried at how often I've been finding opportunities to sing the praises of St. Notley lately...
*sobs* I have no life...
*shameless copyright violation*
Gonzo: I want to go to Bombay India and become a movie star!
Fozzie: You don't go to Bombay India to become a movie star! You go to Hollywood, like us!
Gonzo: Well, sure... If you want to do it the easy way...
Which would indicate to me that the seed that this farmer grew cannot possibly be Monsanto's. Case closed!
*sigh* Yeah, right.
Yeah, but the virus part is the crucial distinction because it's what determines the element of choice and control. You use the GPL, the "contamination" is your informed choice. Some company virally infests your computer in a scheme to bleed you dry, you have no control over the situation (you could hardly have been expected to know that the virus was lurking in their software).