The CRTC does not seem to represent the general citizen's interest. The costs are going up and not down. We will be getting less upload/download data for the money each citizen pays. Simply look at what the telecom companies are doing to make profit with mobile UBB services business model: 2GB quota plans for a month + cost/GB. That is the biggest rip-off scheme almost resembling the costly 1-976-FOR-XFUN $/call phone UBB numbers. However it's more subtle in approach because consumers aren't aware of it and we don't naturally count in terms of Gigabytes(GB). Try using Google maps in satellite mode for a week and you'll end up using your entire Mobile UBB 2GB monthly quota. For the rest of the 3 weeks you use your internet you'll be paying extra fees $$$ and you won't know it until you receive your statement in the mail if you're like me. In China, it's less subtle, when you hit the 2GB limit on your dataplan at 80RMB a month, not only does your mobile internet get cut off, but your normal mobile service gets cut off until you pay the extra service fees for the month. One thing you need to know about Chinese Mobile/Landline Voice and Data providers is that BELL advise them on how to institute their next-generation service infrastructure. I'm not criticizing China here. That's just the way their service operates thanks to the wonderful advice BELL has given them. All I can say is BELL loves their the mobile UBB price model so much that they want some excuse to move that UBB model from the mobile domain to the landline domain. BELL has the CRTC in the pockets it seems. It's about time the Mr. Harper and Mr. Clement public investigates what Mr. Von Finckenstein(Chairman, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission)'s salary and all the other CRTC people. Something doesn't feel right.
Why is the CRTC the one guiding the Business Model for this? PRIME MINISTER HARPER AND HON. M.P. CLEMENT SHOULD STIPULATE "MOBILE/LANDLINE FLAT-RATE UN-CAPPED USAGE PLANS" as a requirement from the get-go. CANADIANS SHOULD NEVER ACCEPTED MOBILE UBB IN THE FIRST PLACE EITHER.
Network hardware infrastructure is on public land because this is for the entire Canadian public. Bell wishes to artificially augment network prices and institute to "usage-based billing" and is dreaming up ways of justifying it to the public. Get smart people! The government should ask how much the Network hardware infrastructure costs. The markup is huge! We could just do this hardware infrastructure ourselves without Bell's intervention, there would be no mark up. There would be no intervention from CRTC. We could buy our network hardware once, get the unlimited bandwidth upload and download. It's possible the quality of service would vary, but the network would be highly utilized at the most reasonable fee. When the network gets too sluggish, the network hardware infrastructure on public land could be upgraded, but at a service fee which would be much lower than BELL alone has the monopoly to offer. OUR CURRENT GOVERNMENT SHOULD DO WHAT'S RIGHT AND CORRECT THIS BEFORE THEY SEE GRASSROOTS ORGANIZATIONS MAKING THEIR OWN DO-IT-YOURSELF NETWORK PEER-TO-PEER NEIGHBOUR TO NEIGHBOUR, CITY TO CITY NETWORK COME INTO EXISTENCE. Hardware is getting cheaper and the know-how is out there in open-source land and it's growing.
It doesn't have to be a complicated system. Have a web server somewhere with a well-known static ip serving up SunDeNS hostnames and ip addresses. Have some kind of script retrieving frequently requested hostnames and placing a local.hosts file. Prioritze looking up the.hosts file before the regular DNS and voila SunDeNS is alive and coexisting with regular DNS. By that I mean if the SunDeNS doesn't have the hostname requested, it will look into the regular dns for the hostname.
The coder/programmer/software engineer job market is in a glut because there are so many skilled coders out there and so few employers that want to hire experienced coders right now. The reality is the employers continue to want to hire fresh out of college university people because they cost peanuts while the other more experienced coders usually demand a respectable salary because of all the personal time they have sacrificed to learn the coders skills. Because of this lack of appreciation for the experienced coder skills, and because the universities continue to churn out more coders, there will always be an oversupply of coders all over the world. This is certainly a blessing for employers, but these are hard times for experienced coders.
If you enjoy coding, you will find a way to code no matter what other job you do in the meantime to pay the bills. That is if you can find a job. In the meantime, you'll have to resort to doing exercise and getting out of the house in order to avoid going crazy.
For as long as you don't own the business, there will always be the risk of losing your employment. If you do have your own business, you already know business is always a yoyo going up and down and you hope that the up time will bring in enough revenue to get your through the down periods. From what I can see, employers everywhere are going through a down period with a few exceptions with respect to those that got government taxpayer bailout money somehow. The system is unfair in that way because everyone should be getting taxpayer bailout money equally. The government however always likes to use the "It's for the greater good." slogan to justify these bailouts which aren't agreeable to most taxpayers. Government policies are at fault everywhere in the world. I observe protectionist attitudes from many countries. The worst part of it is many countries have placed many constraints to restrict people from working elsewhere unless they have the required paperwork. For the great majority of people, the required paperwork is too difficult to obtain which ultimately stops them from having the right of mobility which is the right to work anywhere in the world. Eventually this is going to have to change. Everyone in the world should have the right to work anywhere in the world and that is presently not the case. The paperwork proves the worlds' government immigration and work policies are shameful. Not everyone has the privilege to have a degree and most govs/businesses require one to work everywhere. It makes mobility a privilege and not a right which is shameful. It's a given everyone can learn a skill given the guidance, but gov's and businesses everywhere don't care. Gov's and businesses everywhere are shameful in that respect.
If the gov's and business changed these policies to "degree-less skill mentorship work anywhere in the world" policies, the economy would spark up.
Move to another city or country for a meaningful job opportunity. My father gave me one piece of advice which was handed down from his father. "You go wherever you need to in order to get a job."
The other piece of advice that I recently acquired from someone special is: "Once you do have a job, do everything you must to keep the job as if it is your last job opportunity."
Don't let these MPEG LA devils fool you. Use something completely open developed by guys who care about things being open: Theora video and Vorbis audio.
Don't forget they may say you can use h264, but the ownership of h264 still remains under their control. By continuing to use h264, you support the developers who support intellectual property and DRM protected hardware. Do you really want to do that? I don't want to support developers who stand behind "intellectual property" and "Digital Rights Management" software and hardware. It stifles innovation and widens the disparity between the rich and the poor because the poor will have less opportunity to learn how all of this hardware works in order to create and innovate similar products.
Don't let all those intellectual assholes "smoke and mirrors" confuse you and and distract you by saying there are other codecs "technically superior" to Theora. Wikipedia took the leadership stance by adopting Theora. Everyone should follow in their footsteps. There is hardware that already supports Theora and more will follow. I prefer to support the hardware manufacturers that support this kind of hardware for all the right reasons.
I've been witness to all this video intellectual property crapola since the mid 1990's. All these different audio/video formats to obfuscate, divide and conquer the open-source world: mpeg, mp4, aac, nmr-nb, nmr-wb, 3gp, 3gp2. dirac, matroska, wav, mp3, flac. Not to mention the price to purchase the hardware had been quite exclusive for the longest time for the cameras and the encoder cards.
Vote for open-source with your buying power. Buy open source hardware that supports Theora. It would be nice to see a TV-Tuner/Capture card that hardware encodes directly to Theora. The closest thing out there is www.pchdtv.com, but they encode to mpg/mp4. The default video editor in ubuntu is pitivi which edits theora videos, but what hardware do we have to give us those theora videos. Openshot edits mpeg/mp4 videos', but it's in a grey area legally because of all this MPEG LA legalese stuff found in all the cameras/video cameras using their "intellectual property". Even the Android phones capture video in mp4 format which is MPEG LA Intellectual Property. There should be a phone on the market using all open-source technology. The phone makers and the MID makers should be supporting the open-source route because it makes their hardware less expensive to buy in the long-run. Why is it they are still selling stuff with mp4/mpeg chipsets? Why are they supporting these intellectual property guys?
Consumers have buying power. They will vote for open-source with their money if well-informed.
I think PDF is the format to go with. The evince pdf reader application works well and runs on windows and linux these days. It adapts well to reading A4 paper format or 8.5X11 inch format. There are "fit to screen width", "fit to page", zoom-in, zoom-out services available that can be bound to the new multi-touch pads or to standard mouse or keyboard accelerators.
I tried reading and creating a pdf document on smartdevices smartq 7 a while ago and it works well, but it's a bit slow to display a page because it's focused on saving battery power. Most portable first-generation e-book readers are slow to render a page to save on device battery life.
If I want to print a page, evince and cups printer device drivers work well with epson, hp, lexmark printers from my own personal experience.
I think the publishers are just looking for an excuse to build-in some kind of DRM(digital rights management) into some kind of new format. Good luck with that. Consumers won't go for it.
I read somewhere that BP’s oil spill disaster is a perfect example of the complete failure of self regulating capitalism. Currently, the US government allows oil companies to regulate themselves. The U.S. government is demanding more accountability from BP with regards to the the cleanup. Throughout history, engineers and scientists make mistakes and it has always been that everyone else pays for those mistakes. These guys have to be held more accountable for the SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES of their mistakes, because they didn't reflect enough before executing an action plan. Engineers do have some courses in university that train them to reflect about engineering impact. I guess there wasn't enough training. I'm disappointed about the banking industry also, but they are also engineers in the financial sense. The banking industry managed to experiment with the oldest ways of bartering, buying, selling, and borrowing and managed to get everyone else pay for those mistakes. I also read somewhere the OIL SPILL CONSEQUENCES: 150 MILE DAMAGE AND GROWING AND IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE This disaster's environmental and economic consequences are at this point immeasurable. The spill's impact now stretches across a 150-mile swath, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La. Once the spill enters the Gulf loop current, it enters the Atlantic Ocean and heads for Europe. An oil spill plume 10 miles long and 3 miles wide is heading for the Gulf of Mexico loop current. The loop current is a ribbon of warm water that begins in the Gulf of Mexico and wraps around Florida. Like the oil, the loop's position is constantly changing based on winds and currents. The Coast Guard forecasts the oil arriving in the Florida Keys Monday May 24th, 2010. ***The effect on wildlife and the economy will be catastrophic. ***The gooey oil washing into the marshes along the Gulf Coast proves IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife.
If something is impossible to remove and is caused by a human mistake in offshore drilling, it is reason enough to make it law. We're human after all. We will make mistakes and nothing is going to stop that. One good way to prevent these mistakes from happening is to ensure the presidents, owners and shareholders live on the oil rig 24/7 offshore and onshore. I would like to see their reaction to this. It would also imply their families would also live there. I would love to see them share in the joy of having an oil rig in their backyard and swimming beach.
As a result, BIG OIL companies do merit anti-offshore drilling laws because if we let them continue making catastrophies like this, regular citizens won't have free places to enjoy the natural coastline with ducks, marshes, frogs, pelicans, shrimp etc...
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ clearly discusses why Digital Rights Management(DRM) is not good for society and everyone's DIGITAL FREEDOMS.
Lately, GOOGLE seems to be associating itself with all sorts of DRM-infected companies. DRM suppresses every user's Digital Freedoms.
DRM RADAR ALERT #1: Sony is notorious for this if you've been reading about Sony taking about the ability to use Linux on PS3. Has everyone already forgotten about the Sony CD-Writer installing a ROOTKIT on everyone's PC? That was a form of DRM. DRM RADAR ALERT #2:The Intel SOC is full of security stuff to clearly support the DRM. I certainly am pessimistic that the security api was developed to protect everyone's privacy. It was clearly developed to protect multinationals' interest to ensure they protect their intellectual property.
Does anyone else foresee Google infecting their core web search web page with DRM?
Connecting the dots, notice this google tv event also coincides with the introduction of ipv6 everywhere which introduces new so-called security api's. We should rename these to ipv6 DRM api's.
I'll be using ipv4 for a while. I'll be avoiding google tv. The schtick and the hype don't work on me. Go find some other suckers.
Hulu certainly does not represent the viewers interests or the internet's interest. If Hulu says they represent their "customers' needs", well, their definition of customer is certainly not the viewer.
Securing content slows down the internet because it takes up more bandwidth to happen. Where's the net-neutrality friendly approach here? Handling reporting to the advertisers is certainly something viewers don't care about. Can't they just use their web/media server logs and submit the data without creating direct connections from the viewers' web browser? I find all this advertiser functionality just excuses for prying on viewer privacy. Again it takes up needless bandwidth. Where's the net-neutrality friendly approach here? Rendering video with a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality is absurd because it implies the viewer having premium quality hardware which is exclusively expensive. I'm sure many people are perfectly content with normal NTSC resolution and quality. Rendering should be more in line with the lowest common denominator in order to catch the widest possible viewer audience on the widest possible number of devices.
HULU also discriminates against viewers not residing in the U.S.A. What's the point of having an internet if you are not going to extend your audience to the entire internet's reach? HULU are a bunch of idiots and don't have a clue as to what viewer audience they are losing.
I won't be using HULU until they get their act together and acknowledge viewers that 1)use Linux 2)use non-FLASH html5 alternatives and 3)are located in elsewhere on the internet, NOT IN THE U.S.A..
wifi is getting more and more interesting. Eventually there will be combo of fiber/wifi/laser crossing the borders and this kind of crap monopoly will disappear.
CRTC no longer represents the interests of the consumers so maybe it would be best to dissolve such institutions.
Anomos' Key Features: -------------------- 1)UNLIKE BITTORRENT, NO PEERS DIRECTLY UPLOAD/DOWNLOAD TO OTHER PEERS. Every peer relays to other peers just like Tor. This makes it more difficult for the prying eyes. 2)The more peers connecting to the same tracker, the stronger the anonymity for everyone. 3)runs on windows, mac os x, and linux 4)Based on the original python-based bittorrent sources 5)Tweaked to be tor-friendly
I have been using Google since the days they were still deja.com and were doing stuff like a shopping wizard which kicked butt against anything else out there.
Whenever I need some information about stuff, the first place I look is Google. The results I have found from Google are better than anything out there by far for many reasons: 1)fastest response time, 2)relevance 3)redundant web sites having identical information and mentioning it as so 4)the ending result pages presented did not necessarily match all the keywords requested, but I always appreciated the content presented anyways and with time and patience I have found many perls of wisdom hidden on page 10+ when most people would abandon the quest probably after page 3. 5)Perhaps Google does place the paid-to-Google-ad-pages higher in terms of relevance on the Google results pages, but the fact remains non-paid result web pages are still presented in the Google results pages. I have a few questions to ask the so-called "WATCHDOG ADVOCACY GROUPS": Do you buy your car at the first dealer you shop at? Do you buy your food at only one grocery store? Do you only look at the links on just the first page of Google results? If the answer to this is yes, you guys are morons and shouldn't be representing anyone.
Microsoft's pre-html MSDN search engine was actually quite refined 18 years ago with their ability to use the keyword "near" and defining it with a distance of number of words between the keywords. When they made the switch to html however, MSDN search engine lost their mojo. The results returned were less relevant and the response time was atrocious considering the msdn data was on a local disk and had access to the net apart from that. GOOGLE saw the opportunity and grabbed it...end of story.
With respect to censorship, the Google team are doing a wonderful job. They do their best all things considered. If I don't like the filtered results from Google China, no problem...I go to Google Canada or Google U.S.A. When there is a wall, there is always a way around it. That's a Chinese proverb by the way.
With respect to PRIVACY and logging of keywords or other stuff, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!!! THAT'S WHAT SOFTWARE DOES! It's a learning process to make the entire search engine process better. Google can't make it better if it doesn't accumulate statistics. I can see privacy advocates bringing it up as a concern, but I'm on Google's side with respect to this. GOOGLE doesn't give personal emails to the highest bidder. GOOGLE doesn't give personal keywords to the highest bidder either.
With respect to security breaches within Google, I'm sure they are doing their best. Every company has issues with this so the PRIVACY ADVOCATES can go jump in a lake now.
Google have been constantly doing their best. I suspect the advocacy groups are in bed with other search engine competitors because my bullshit indicator is BLINKING VERY BRIGHT RED at the moment.
While the GOOGLE PHONE is USB wired to the computer, not only could the phone get recharged, but it could: -use the computer's ISP network to make wired VOIP voice calls without using the expensive 3G network. -act as an adjustable WEB CAMERA. This would eliminate the need for a microphone/webcam accessories because they are built into the phone already. -act a secondary adjustable hands-free conference speaker. This would eliminate the need to use the stereo speakers because there's a LOUD RINGTONE speaker built into the phone already. -stand on its own. No stand required.
I recall turning on the volume normalizer feature in "xine" and other media players. If the volume cranks up in the movie, xine gracefully lowers/limits the volume to what I consider acceptable. Something like this could be simply implemented as a value-add feature in new televisions.
The Skiff platform is not applicable...We have p2p web sites for that.
The unseen Skiff device may be enticing but smartdevices.com.cn SMARTQ7/SMARTQ5 Mobile Internet Devices allow you to read/create.pdf files. Can the skiff device allow you do create a.pdf file of your own? I would bet that it doesn't because Media Content Creator's focus is for its consumer to JUST CONSUME. www.hearst.com has a page mentioning their skiff services are "...all optimized for wireless delivery to dedicated e-readers..." which backs up my point. Hearst isn't interested in encouraging the "Do-it-yourself" revolution; Hearst is only interested in keeping their media content empire status quo. Good luck with that;)
I read the October 14th, 2009 letter to Chairman Julius Genachowski, Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Commissioner Michael J. Copps, and Commissioner Robert M. McDowell regarding "Broadband Industry Practices (WC Docket No. 07-52), National Broadband Plan Notice of Inquiry (WC Docket 09-51)".
This letter shows concern about the net-neutrality policies and implementation rather than out and out disapproval. The letter simply wants to delay any approval until the actual policies are clarified from what I understand.
Ok if that's the problem, to make everyone comfortable about net-neutrality, the pro net-neutrality gurus should respond with another letter proposing a vision showing the steps to spur off a business model which supports bridging the digital divide putting the minority groups on equal footing in terms of internet access, bandwidth and quality of service.
I think the best vision of what net-neutrality business model would look like is the google implementation which free-service in exchange for in-your-face advertising on your monitor. You go to google for a search, google provides the information proxied through access and bandwidth paying advertising banners connections.
The trick here is that not only google is entitled to do this, but everybody is. The only difference is instead of internet service providers going directly to the subscribers for internet access/bandwidth/quality of service fees, the government could instill a business model whereby the connection and hardware maintenance setups are all paid for by the government, the advertisement firms paying for the national internet bandwidth/quality of service structure in exchange for the privilege of proxying/framing all traffic content through advertising banner connections. The advertising firms win with all the revenue generated by the loyal customers buying their products because they are thankful for their partnership in providing the synergetic-equal-opportunity-generating internet services.
I think google is very close to being "THE ONE" to make this happen. Apart from the existence of google's awesome search engine achievements, they encourage the synergy of open-source software development demonstrating google's will to provide equal-opportunities for all and to encourage rewards for all based on merit. That said, google can't be the only one to make net-neutrality happen. All citizens should participate and encourage net-neutrality considering the importance to their future generations' opportunities.
The ad revenues from internet co-opete(coopetition) with the legacy media. As a result, they all have an opportunity here to do the right thing and win business in return. A government estabilished internet advertising monthly license fee could help build the infrastructure from scratch. The added government internet advertising license could be encouraged by providing tax kickbacks somehow. The trick here is that the actual license fee would need to be accessible for all keeping in mind all the little players wanting to get into the internet advertising business.
Are there any business-minded people here that could back all this up with numbers? Any ways this is all just brainstorming to get your ideas rolling and making net-neutrality a reality without all the back-room secret government deals we've been seeing for the net-neutrality policies and the ACTA internet copyright infringement spying policies.
I would like to see the 44 companies listed against net neutrality in order to not buy their products. I will only buy products from companies that are pro-net-neutrality. It's obvious, the consumer needs to participate in structuring the future by speaking with his buying power. Buying power is a very important voice. I also intend on using my buying power when buying my next PC, TV, MP3 player ensuring the manufacturers are pro-digital-freedom and have clear ANTI-DRM(Digital Rights Management) positions. This implies that I won't be buying the "Kindle ebook reader"(built-in DRM), and the Sony TV(built-in DRM), and the Sony Playstation(built-in DRM).
Mr. Stallman deserves the utmost respect from all developers because he truly wishes to protect the right of all users/developers alike by ensuring we have the freedom to tinker with whatever we buy and by ensuring we have the freedom to adapting whatever we buy to our on-going requirements without having to pay surprise unexpected fees on an ongoing basis. Mr. Icaza has his point of view to make some MS stuff work in Linux. The effort he has placed deserves respect also I give him that.
The problem is that developers need to remember the kind of under-handed tactics MS has done to developers and to users as a whole to make money. My favourites are: 1)When Windows NT Workstation was discovered to be LIMITED with 64 TCP/IP connections, while Linux had no such limitations and the source and binaries were freely available for your perusal. One needs to recall the prices for Windows 95/NT Workstation/NT Server. Both NT Workstation and NT were starting to become highly exclusive(1000$+) while the Win95 was around 99$. Linux 0$-20$:). This is not to mention the prices for the developer kits entry level MSDN 99$(TECHNET/DEVNET Knowledge BASE), Professional over 500$, and Enterprise over $1500 on a yearly basis. Mind you the value as respectable for the number of CDs/DVD's they send you. The problem is we have only so much time in the day to learn all the api's they created or unveiled to us. DOS, MFC, DIRECTX, DDK, DirectMedia, ODBC, DAO, ODB, VBA, OLE, ACTIVEX, COM, ATL to mention a few. Depending on what level of MSDN subscription you had, the more information they unveiled to you about each of these apis. Sometimes, you wouldn't know an api existed because you didn't have the Enterprise level subscription. The entry-level and Pro level would make no mention of the DirectMedia SDK, Enterprise DATABASE API/Enterprise DATABASE tools available through DevStudio GUI for example. By purchasing the Enterprise level MSDN, you had THE EDGE if you discovered its MSDN's existence. The internet was still in its infancy and not everyone knew what was going on or had money to access Special-Interest-Groups Bulletin-Board-Systems through a modem. Even if you did, the data you received would take forever to get because the average modem then was 56Kbps and the average user/wannabe developer couldn't afford to get the T1 1Mbps connection which was over 500$ a month. 2)The UNDOCUMENTED DOS/WINDOWS book describing all the different API calls discovered being used by MS software products that no other company previously knew existed. The fact is the undocumented apis gave MS an edge of the competition. Once this was discovered, this created a market for non-microsoft debuggers. The sanctioned MS debugger Nu-Mega Softice was respected, but IDA pro came to fill a necessary void to ensure the developers were getting the whole picture when debugging their software or when trying to understand how other software worked in order to gain inspiration. 3)Internet Explorer and Netscape web page HTML/javascript code incompatibilities. 4)Microsoft Java JVM and Sun Java JVM incompatibilities. Simply by the existence of incompatibilities, the user didn't know so they would just opt with what was installed by MS, because that was the easy route to take and especially for updates. This in turn greatly hurt Netscape and Sun until they brought Microsoft to court, but the damage was done. 5)Doublespace. Here's a company that created a disk compression technology that doubled the amount of data your hard drive could hold, but MS put them out of business by adding in a tool to their windows offering that did exactly the same thing. If you bought MS-Dos 6, you would get this disk compression tool from MS. The disk compression product competitor went out of business because MS squeezed them out of the market niche. Note this is similar to what happened to Netscape. Originally Netscape sold their web browser product, but then MS added in their Internet Explorer tool as part of the Windows O
The governments ought to do is like you said. Have the directors live where the majority of the employees live. It makes sense. It's a great way to ensure that the workers have a respectable working conditions and a decent quality of life considering that's where the directors will have to spend a decent amount of their time.
I'm of the persuasion that when you speak to your higher ups, it's important for you to propose to them "how would you feel if you were in my place?" For example, if you work in a four foot by four foot cubicle by five foot cubicle and would like someone to improve your working conditions, I suggest you propose your higher-ups to try working in that cubicle for a year to see how they would feel. The same argument may be used for all the furniture in the office and everything else.
Be forewarned, the higher-ups always have a quick and witty way of making you look silly for asking such unreasonable requests. The only recommendation I have is to remind that the government/companies first and foremost should have a sense of obligation to make EVERYONE in the workplace and in the community they serve to feel welcome. The true test is to see higher-ups ready to get their hands dirty in every position of the company. If they can't do the work the position entails, the higher-ups should provide what the employees ask for, if within reason of course.
Here is another proposal for governments: for every employee turnover(let go, fired, moved on, whatever reason you may think of) , have the government fine the company a respectable amount. This will make the message loud and clear: governments and the community don't like turnover. Employees everywhere like stability in their life situation. Everybody can grow within a company given the long-term commitment from all parties concerned.
Since stockholders have their hands on corporations, let have the corporations institute regulations fining those accountable for employee turnover a significant amount from their yearly salary. Say 40% of the hiring staff's/the firing staff's and the turnover staff's salary. That will send a message to those that hire and fire. When the corporation hires individuals, it's like a wedding. It's for the long-term. If you want a divorce, it's going to be the last resort and it's going to hurt everyone concerned employer and employee. The fines will go straight to a local community charity.
Java plugins in the Web browser may be considered as "Vulnerable software" because it provides the "system" API among many other APIs which enables your so-called "smarter client" which people in 1994 called "fat client". We had the power to use serversockets then but we didn't. Javascript BY-DESIGN is not permitted to use the "system" api because it is part of the "thin client" design. As a result, artsy web page designers got tools that could use javascript, but not java because everyone concerned agreed it was safe-enough. That's why Java/Javascript has been mostly disabled on my browser since 1994. The combination of these two enabled is quite dangerous on a localhost.
The primary reason for http has been and always will be simply a way to link web pages to other pages. Keeping the web browser design simple allows mostly everyone a better opportunity to learn how the tools work. When everything is obfuscated, you make everything about it look like magic and exclusive to the technocrats. With SMARTER CLIENT ideas like this proposed topic, firefox and all the web browsers are all risking slowly becoming like "MS-Internet Explorer" which is plastered with undocumented vulnerabilities/opportunities open to a select illuminated few.
Popularity for software depends on its merit. Since Linux has merits, it has become popular. The different packages in linux are different in popularity because there are "different strokes for different folks". Simple to use, but sophisticated software is popular like vi, emacs, gedit, postit-notes, calendar, evince, wget, firefox, thunderbird, mplayer, ffmpeg2theora, audacity, lame, apache, shorewall, gimp and openoffice. Vulnerably complex software is not popular like MPI, PVM, Plan9, SCALA, flash-plugins. I've experimented with flash/ming and discovered first hand the flash engine can crash not only the application, but also the OS. I understand the politics of flash being used is to somehow protect the media industry because it is proprietary technology geared to provide a pay per use intenet business model for the entertainment industry. It is important to be aware that flash technology is used on most movie DVD's sold today for the menu subsystems along with helping with the obfuscation to reduce the dvd-ripping piracy. I also understand that the movie industry does everything to undermine the trend to use open-source theora format video files and ogg format audio files. Thankfully theora/ogg are the defaults in all the current Linux distributions.
You have a take a leap of faith to use a lot of these more advanced pieces of software, but if you're in a position where you need to guarantee something works and you use internet explorer with java/flash and your so-called smarter client api plugins, GOOD LUCK with that and I'll be looking for news about your company's bankruptcy notice in the following months.
Think one tool, one job. Hammer the nail. Not everything is a nail. For example you search for stuff by starting your firefox, going to google and typing the key words. You expect a response with links to other pages. That's it. There's nothing in this recipe that demands a web server in your web browser. Not everything needs to be a hammer. Not everything needs to be in the cloud either. The one tool is firefox being the client. The other tool is google being the web page server. An email agent sends/receives email to the email server. That's one tool for one job. If you want a web page server, install apache. That's the one tool for the one job.
I'm a strong believer in a clear separation of concerns because my private family pictures, although I am very proud of them are none of anyone's concern and should not ever accidently find themselves on the net. If a web browser somehow becomes a web server with your ideas, my pictures might accidently fall into unintended audiences. It's not a big deal but the fact that this accident could happen because of a software vulnerability really would piss me off. I
Use Google-WAVE and you embrace the dependence on WEB-SERVICES and eventually all the tasks on the devices you buy will be available only through "pay-per-use". You've been warned.
GOOGLE, ORACLE, MICROSOFT and IBM have all been intending to confuse all computer/mobile internet device/PIM/smart phone users into a state of dependence of web-services through VERY SUBTLE steps. THEY LURE with the WORM(office, maps, sketch, wave, voice), WE WANT THE WORM, WE EAT/install the WORM, and voilà VENDOR-LOCKED-IN CATCH! But the LURE for it sounds like a miracle tincture to heal everything that ails you...we must have it: Google Wave is "a personal communication and collaboration tool" announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009.[1][2] It is a web based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking.[3] It has a strong collaborative and real-time[4] focus supported by robust spelling/grammar checking, automated translation between 40 languages[2], and numerous other extensions.[4]
The subtleties of forcing people to go web-service are there. The younger generation know only the web browser/twitter/QQ/MSN/SKYPE. WAVE is asking everyone to move from the simplicity of thunderbird for email and firefox for browsing, open office for editing docs/spreadsheets/etc.. to the complex jack-of-all-trades WAVE. If it's too good to be true, then it probably is.
I choose not to use WAVE. GOOGLE and MS are both too big now. They control too much of the world's knowledge. They must be kept in control by limiting our use of their product. For example, you can use their search engines and MS/GOOGLE can display their advertisements, but THAT's all you want. Don't install their office products on your device. Don't use their mapping products on your device. Just use/install simple open-source software on your device. This will reduce everyone's probability of being "vendor locked-in" to one alternative(risk of dependence to one-sole company GOOGLE/MS).
It's so important for people to understand how "vendor lock-in" is so evil. It's so important for people to understand that GNU/Linux and all it's flavors provide alternatives to "vendor lock-in" NOW. Whatever happened to the "one tool, one job" philosophy? This wave stuff seems to add complexity everywhere. It's adding complexity in the maintenance of the server. It's adding complexity in the maintenance of the devices that connect to the server. If WAVE breaks, everything breaks. Not a nice situation to be in. Worse even, if WAVE asks us to pay for using it then we won't be able to use our devices for anything. LINUX is becoming almost essential for digital freedom.
SEE THE LIGHT PEOPLE! -Google and Microsoft will eventually reach a point of no return in terms of complexity. Move to simpler Do-It-Yourself strategies if these techie big boys don't get their act together. -Create your own ways of collaborating together in order to further increase your independence from IBM/MS/ORACLE/GOOGLE in your lives. -Constrain your google/baidu/yahoo/bing/QQ internet diet: view anything with advertisements via the browser, but don't install stuff via the browser as a general rule of thumb. This will make the internet experience safer with no chance of vendor lock-in from the big IBM/MS/ORACLE/GOOGLE/FLASH/ADOBE/MOVIE COMPANIES/MUSIC COMPANIES.
I'm not a crazy hard drive filler like a lot of people but here's my attempt to make my life simple. Try not to fill your personal hard-drive with media you didn't create yourself: all sorts of movies, books, and mp3's. If you truly must have this stuff in archives, then put it on another hard-drive not mixed up with your personal stuff. Your personal stuff: ----------------------- 1)do keep your emails in a dedicated directory named with the date of creation i.e. from20July2009email 2)do keep your personal pictures in another directory...ditto 3)do keep your personal videos in another directory 4)do keep your work related projects in another directory
There now we've got it simplified down to 4 main directories to backup. I've successfully backup to external hard drive by simple directory copy because I don't have that many directories to deal with. It takes about 20 minutes to backup while attending and observing it closely. I've tried "pybackpack" recently which is in the ubuntu repositories. It's a gui for selecting the directories and keeping them in a backup project file. It's worth a look.
Now with regards to backup of your computer's customized "just for you" settings, well from what I've seen for Linux recently is partimage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partimage They've even got an article recently published a couple of weeks ago in the Chinese weekly computer newspaper called "Dian Nao Bao" which has dedicated half-page to Ubuntu every week. I can't understand a word of it except they do publish the english buzzwords in it like 3g, android, partimage, wardriving, and mplayer.
prefixsuffix is cool. It's a little tool that changes groups of file names quickly. It might be useful for your backups.
Slashdot Mirror
The CRTC does not seem to represent the general citizen's interest. The costs are going up and not down. We will be getting less upload/download data for the money each citizen pays. Simply look at what the telecom companies are doing to make profit with mobile UBB services business model: 2GB quota plans for a month + cost/GB. That is the biggest rip-off scheme almost resembling the costly 1-976-FOR-XFUN $/call phone UBB numbers. However it's more subtle in approach because consumers aren't aware of it and we don't naturally count in terms of Gigabytes(GB). Try using Google maps in satellite mode for a week and you'll end up using your entire Mobile UBB 2GB monthly quota. For the rest of the 3 weeks you use your internet you'll be paying extra fees $$$ and you won't know it until you receive your statement in the mail if you're like me. In China, it's less subtle, when you hit the 2GB limit on your dataplan at 80RMB a month, not only does your mobile internet get cut off, but your normal mobile service gets cut off until you pay the extra service fees for the month. One thing you need to know about Chinese Mobile/Landline Voice and Data providers is that BELL advise them on how to institute their next-generation service infrastructure. I'm not criticizing China here. That's just the way their service operates thanks to the wonderful advice BELL has given them. All I can say is BELL loves their the mobile UBB price model so much that they want some excuse to move that UBB model from the mobile domain to the landline domain. BELL has the CRTC in the pockets it seems. It's about time the Mr. Harper and Mr. Clement public investigates what Mr. Von Finckenstein(Chairman, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission)'s salary and all the other CRTC people. Something doesn't feel right.
Why is the CRTC the one guiding the Business Model for this? PRIME MINISTER HARPER AND HON. M.P. CLEMENT SHOULD STIPULATE "MOBILE/LANDLINE FLAT-RATE UN-CAPPED USAGE PLANS" as a requirement from the get-go.
CANADIANS SHOULD NEVER ACCEPTED MOBILE UBB IN THE FIRST PLACE EITHER.
Network hardware infrastructure is on public land because this is for the entire Canadian public. Bell wishes to artificially augment network prices and institute to "usage-based billing" and is dreaming up ways of justifying it to the public. Get smart people! The government should ask how much the Network hardware infrastructure costs. The markup is huge! We could just do this hardware infrastructure ourselves without Bell's intervention, there would be no mark up. There would be no intervention from CRTC. We could buy our network hardware once, get the unlimited bandwidth upload and download. It's possible the quality of service would vary, but the network would be highly utilized at the most reasonable fee. When the network gets too sluggish, the network hardware infrastructure on public land could be upgraded, but at a service fee which would be much lower than BELL alone has the monopoly to offer. OUR CURRENT GOVERNMENT SHOULD DO WHAT'S RIGHT AND CORRECT THIS BEFORE THEY SEE GRASSROOTS ORGANIZATIONS MAKING THEIR OWN DO-IT-YOURSELF NETWORK PEER-TO-PEER NEIGHBOUR TO NEIGHBOUR, CITY TO CITY NETWORK COME INTO EXISTENCE.
Hardware is getting cheaper and the know-how is out there in open-source land and it's growing.
I prefer this definition of the internet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
Text search "elders" and "internet" and you'll find the funny parts:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd
It's hilarious. Must see.
It doesn't have to be a complicated system. Have a web server somewhere with a well-known static ip serving up SunDeNS hostnames and ip addresses. .hosts file. .hosts file before the regular DNS and voila SunDeNS is alive and coexisting with regular DNS.
Have some kind of script retrieving frequently requested hostnames and placing a local
Prioritze looking up the
By that I mean if the SunDeNS doesn't have the hostname requested, it will look into the regular dns for the hostname.
It is crucial that video creation and video editing for webm be delivered at the same time, if you want it to be adopted.
Theora video-editing/encoding/Firefox-playing is currently supported in ubuntu 9 and 10 in the standard ubuntu repositories.
CURRENTLY webm vp8 video-editing/encoding/firefox-playing is not in the ubuntu 9 and 10 standard ubuntu repos.
As it stands, theora has better support. I can even run theora videos I created on Android using the Rockplayer.
Until then no vp8 for me.
The coder/programmer/software engineer job market is in a glut because there are so many skilled coders out there and so few employers that want to hire experienced coders right now. The reality is the employers continue to want to hire fresh out of college university people because they cost peanuts while the other more experienced coders usually demand a respectable salary because of all the personal time they have sacrificed to learn the coders skills. Because of this lack of appreciation for the experienced coder skills, and because the universities continue to churn out more coders, there will always be an oversupply of coders all over the world. This is certainly a blessing for employers, but these are hard times for experienced coders.
If you enjoy coding, you will find a way to code no matter what other job you do in the meantime to pay the bills. That is if you can find a job. In the meantime, you'll have to resort to doing exercise and getting out of the house in order to avoid going crazy.
For as long as you don't own the business, there will always be the risk of losing your employment. If you do have your own business, you already know business is always a yoyo going up and down and you hope that the up time will bring in enough revenue to get your through the down periods. From what I can see, employers everywhere are going through a down period with a few exceptions with respect to those that got government taxpayer bailout money somehow. The system is unfair in that way because everyone should be getting taxpayer bailout money equally. The government however always likes to use the "It's for the greater good." slogan to justify these bailouts which aren't agreeable to most taxpayers. Government policies are at fault everywhere in the world. I observe protectionist attitudes from many countries. The worst part of it is many countries have placed many constraints to restrict people from working elsewhere unless they have the required paperwork. For the great majority of people, the required paperwork is too difficult to obtain which ultimately stops them from having the right of mobility which is the right to work anywhere in the world. Eventually this is going to have to change. Everyone in the world should have the right to work anywhere in the world and that is presently not the case. The paperwork proves the worlds' government immigration and work policies are shameful. Not everyone has the privilege to have a degree and most govs/businesses require one to work everywhere. It makes mobility a privilege and not a right which is shameful. It's a given everyone can learn a skill given the guidance, but gov's and businesses everywhere don't care. Gov's and businesses everywhere are shameful in that respect.
If the gov's and business changed these policies to "degree-less skill mentorship work anywhere in the world" policies, the economy would spark up.
Move to another city or country for a meaningful job opportunity. My father gave me one piece of advice which was handed down from his father. "You go wherever you need to in order to get a job."
The other piece of advice that I recently acquired from someone special is: "Once you do have a job, do everything you must to keep the job as if it is your last job opportunity."
Don't let these MPEG LA devils fool you. Use something completely open developed by guys who care about things being open: Theora video and Vorbis audio.
Don't forget they may say you can use h264, but the ownership of h264 still remains under their control. By continuing to use h264, you support the developers who support intellectual property and DRM protected hardware. Do you really want to do that? I don't want to support developers who stand behind "intellectual property" and "Digital Rights Management" software and hardware. It stifles innovation and widens the disparity between the rich and the poor because the poor will have less opportunity to learn how all of this hardware works in order to create and innovate similar products.
Don't let all those intellectual assholes "smoke and mirrors" confuse you and and distract you by saying there are other codecs "technically superior" to Theora. Wikipedia took the leadership stance by adopting Theora. Everyone should follow in their footsteps. There is hardware that already supports Theora and more will follow. I prefer to support the hardware manufacturers that support this kind of hardware for all the right reasons.
I've been witness to all this video intellectual property crapola since the mid 1990's. All these different audio/video formats to obfuscate, divide and conquer the open-source world: mpeg, mp4, aac, nmr-nb, nmr-wb, 3gp, 3gp2. dirac, matroska, wav, mp3, flac. Not to mention the price to purchase the hardware had been quite exclusive for the longest time for the cameras and the encoder cards.
Vote for open-source with your buying power. Buy open source hardware that supports Theora. It would be nice to see a TV-Tuner/Capture card that hardware encodes directly to Theora. The closest thing out there is www.pchdtv.com, but they encode to mpg/mp4.
The default video editor in ubuntu is pitivi which edits theora videos, but what hardware do we have to give us those theora videos. Openshot edits mpeg/mp4 videos', but it's in a grey area legally because of all this MPEG LA legalese stuff found in all the cameras/video cameras using their "intellectual property". Even the Android phones capture video in mp4 format which is MPEG LA Intellectual Property. There should be a phone on the market using all open-source technology. The phone makers and the MID makers should be supporting the open-source route because it makes their hardware less expensive to buy in the long-run. Why is it they are still selling stuff with mp4/mpeg chipsets? Why are they supporting these intellectual property guys?
Consumers have buying power. They will vote for open-source with their money if well-informed.
I think PDF is the format to go with. The evince pdf reader application works well and runs on windows and linux these days. It adapts well to reading A4 paper format or 8.5X11 inch format. There are "fit to screen width", "fit to page", zoom-in, zoom-out services available that can be bound to the new multi-touch pads or to standard mouse or keyboard accelerators.
I tried reading and creating a pdf document on smartdevices smartq 7 a while ago and it works well, but it's a bit slow to display a page because it's focused on saving battery power. Most portable first-generation e-book readers are slow to render a page to save on device battery life.
If I want to print a page, evince and cups printer device drivers work well with epson, hp, lexmark printers from my own personal experience.
I think the publishers are just looking for an excuse to build-in some kind of DRM(digital rights management) into some kind of new format. Good luck with that. Consumers won't go for it.
I read somewhere that BP’s oil spill disaster is a perfect example of the complete failure of self regulating capitalism. Currently, the US government allows oil companies to regulate themselves. The U.S. government is demanding more accountability from BP with regards to the the cleanup.
Throughout history, engineers and scientists make mistakes and it has always been that everyone else pays for those mistakes. These guys have to be held more accountable for the SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES of their mistakes, because they didn't reflect enough before executing an action plan. Engineers do have some courses in university that train them to reflect about engineering impact. I guess there wasn't enough training. I'm disappointed about the banking industry also, but they are also engineers in the financial sense. The banking industry managed to experiment with the oldest ways of bartering, buying, selling, and borrowing and managed to get everyone else pay for those mistakes.
I also read somewhere the OIL SPILL CONSEQUENCES: 150 MILE DAMAGE AND GROWING AND IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE
This disaster's environmental and economic consequences are at this point immeasurable.
The spill's impact now stretches across a 150-mile swath, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.
Once the spill enters the Gulf loop current, it enters the Atlantic Ocean and heads for Europe. An oil spill plume 10 miles long and 3 miles wide is heading for the Gulf of Mexico loop current. The loop current is a ribbon of warm water that begins in the Gulf of Mexico and wraps around Florida. Like the oil, the loop's position is constantly changing based on winds and currents. The Coast Guard forecasts the oil arriving in the Florida Keys Monday May 24th, 2010.
***The effect on wildlife and the economy will be catastrophic.
***The gooey oil washing into the marshes along the Gulf Coast proves IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife.
If something is impossible to remove and is caused by a human mistake in offshore drilling, it is reason enough to make it law. We're human after all. We will make mistakes and nothing is going to stop that. One good way to prevent these mistakes from happening is to ensure the presidents, owners and shareholders live on the oil rig 24/7 offshore and onshore. I would like to see their reaction to this. It would also imply their families would also live there. I would love to see them share in the joy of having an oil rig in their backyard and swimming beach.
As a result, BIG OIL companies do merit anti-offshore drilling laws because if we let them continue making catastrophies like this, regular citizens won't have free places to enjoy the natural coastline with ducks, marshes, frogs, pelicans, shrimp etc...
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/
clearly discusses why Digital Rights Management(DRM) is not good for society and everyone's DIGITAL FREEDOMS.
Lately, GOOGLE seems to be associating itself with all sorts of DRM-infected companies. DRM suppresses every user's Digital Freedoms.
DRM RADAR ALERT #1: Sony is notorious for this if you've been reading about Sony taking about the ability to use Linux on PS3. Has everyone already forgotten about the Sony CD-Writer installing a ROOTKIT on everyone's PC? That was a form of DRM.
DRM RADAR ALERT #2:The Intel SOC is full of security stuff to clearly support the DRM. I certainly am pessimistic that the security api was developed to protect everyone's privacy. It was clearly developed to protect multinationals' interest to ensure they protect their intellectual property.
Does anyone else foresee Google infecting their core web search web page with DRM?
Connecting the dots, notice this google tv event also coincides with the introduction of ipv6 everywhere which introduces new so-called security api's. We should rename these to ipv6 DRM api's.
I'll be using ipv4 for a while. I'll be avoiding google tv. The schtick and the hype don't work on me. Go find some other suckers.
Hulu certainly does not represent the viewers interests or the internet's interest. If Hulu says they represent their "customers' needs", well, their definition of customer is certainly not the viewer.
Securing content slows down the internet because it takes up more bandwidth to happen. Where's the net-neutrality friendly approach here?
Handling reporting to the advertisers is certainly something viewers don't care about. Can't they just use their web/media server logs and submit the data without creating direct connections from the viewers' web browser? I find all this advertiser functionality just excuses for prying on viewer privacy. Again it takes up needless bandwidth. Where's the net-neutrality friendly approach here?
Rendering video with a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality is absurd because it implies the viewer having premium quality hardware which is exclusively expensive. I'm sure many people are perfectly content with normal NTSC resolution and quality. Rendering should be more in line with the lowest common denominator in order to catch the widest possible viewer audience on the widest possible number of devices.
HULU also discriminates against viewers not residing in the U.S.A. What's the point of having an internet if you are not going to extend your audience to the entire internet's reach? HULU are a bunch of idiots and don't have a clue as to what viewer audience they are losing.
I won't be using HULU until they get their act together and acknowledge viewers that 1)use Linux 2)use non-FLASH html5 alternatives and 3)are located in elsewhere on the internet, NOT IN THE U.S.A..
wifi is getting more and more interesting. Eventually there will be combo of fiber/wifi/laser crossing the borders and this kind of crap monopoly will disappear.
CRTC no longer represents the interests of the consumers so maybe it would be best to dissolve such institutions.
Maybe you'll be happy to know there are other alternatives that are very interesting appearing on the CPU manufacturer radar:
1)Godson 3A(4-core) and 3B(8-core).
http://translate.google.ca/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gmw.cn%2Fcontent%2F2010-04%2F21%2Fcontent_1099818.htm&sl=zh-CN&tl=en
www.lemote.com will also have a 3A offering in August.
2)Nivida Tegra T20 seems to also be a 4-cores among other cool features.
http://www.clonedinchina.com/2010/01/viewsonic-vtablet-101-android-tablet.html
Anomos' Key Features:
--------------------
1)UNLIKE BITTORRENT, NO PEERS DIRECTLY UPLOAD/DOWNLOAD TO OTHER PEERS.
Every peer relays to other peers just like Tor. This makes it more difficult for the prying eyes.
2)The more peers connecting to the same tracker, the stronger the anonymity for everyone.
3)runs on windows, mac os x, and linux
4)Based on the original python-based bittorrent sources
5)Tweaked to be tor-friendly
For more information:
http://anomos.info/
Anomos torrent sites are on their way. Seek and you shall find.
I have been using Google since the days they were still deja.com and were doing stuff like a shopping wizard which kicked butt against anything else out there.
Whenever I need some information about stuff, the first place I look is Google.
The results I have found from Google are better than anything out there by far for many reasons:
1)fastest response time,
2)relevance
3)redundant web sites having identical information and mentioning it as so
4)the ending result pages presented did not necessarily match all the keywords requested, but I always appreciated the content presented anyways and with time and patience I have found many perls of wisdom hidden on page 10+ when most people would abandon the quest probably after page 3.
5)Perhaps Google does place the paid-to-Google-ad-pages higher in terms of relevance on the Google results pages, but the fact remains non-paid result web pages are still presented in the Google results pages. I have a few questions to ask the so-called "WATCHDOG ADVOCACY GROUPS":
Do you buy your car at the first dealer you shop at?
Do you buy your food at only one grocery store?
Do you only look at the links on just the first page of Google results?
If the answer to this is yes, you guys are morons and shouldn't be representing anyone.
Microsoft's pre-html MSDN search engine was actually quite refined 18 years ago with their ability to use the keyword "near" and defining it with a distance of number of words between the keywords. When they made the switch to html however, MSDN search engine lost their mojo. The results returned were less relevant and the response time was atrocious considering the msdn data was on a local disk and had access to the net apart from that. GOOGLE saw the opportunity and grabbed it...end of story.
With respect to censorship, the Google team are doing a wonderful job. They do their best all things considered.
If I don't like the filtered results from Google China, no problem...I go to Google Canada or Google U.S.A.
When there is a wall, there is always a way around it. That's a Chinese proverb by the way.
With respect to PRIVACY and logging of keywords or other stuff, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!!!
THAT'S WHAT SOFTWARE DOES! It's a learning process to make the entire search engine process better.
Google can't make it better if it doesn't accumulate statistics.
I can see privacy advocates bringing it up as a concern, but I'm on Google's side with respect to this.
GOOGLE doesn't give personal emails to the highest bidder.
GOOGLE doesn't give personal keywords to the highest bidder either.
With respect to security breaches within Google, I'm sure they are doing their best.
Every company has issues with this so the PRIVACY ADVOCATES can go jump in a lake now.
Google have been constantly doing their best. I suspect the advocacy groups are in bed with other search engine competitors because my bullshit indicator is BLINKING VERY BRIGHT RED at the moment.
While the GOOGLE PHONE is USB wired to the computer, not only could the phone get recharged, but it could:
-use the computer's ISP network to make wired VOIP voice calls without using the expensive 3G network.
-act as an adjustable WEB CAMERA. This would eliminate the need for a microphone/webcam accessories because they are built into the phone already.
-act a secondary adjustable hands-free conference speaker. This would eliminate the need to use the stereo speakers because there's a LOUD RINGTONE speaker built into the phone already.
-stand on its own. No stand required.
I recall turning on the volume normalizer feature in "xine" and other media players. If the volume cranks up in the movie, xine gracefully lowers/limits the volume to what I consider acceptable. Something like this could be simply implemented as a value-add feature in new televisions.
"Privacy worries are for those using disruptive technologies."
Oops, then it seems most users will then have become part of this witch-hunt.
The Skiff platform is not applicable...We have p2p web sites for that.
The unseen Skiff device may be enticing but smartdevices.com.cn SMARTQ7/SMARTQ5 Mobile Internet Devices allow you to read/create .pdf files. Can the skiff device allow you do create a .pdf file of your own? I would bet that it doesn't because Media Content Creator's focus is for its consumer to JUST CONSUME. www.hearst.com has a page mentioning their skiff services are "...all optimized for wireless delivery to dedicated e-readers..." which backs up my point. Hearst isn't interested in encouraging the "Do-it-yourself" revolution; Hearst is only interested in keeping their media content empire status quo. Good luck with that ;)
I read the October 14th, 2009 letter to Chairman Julius Genachowski, Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Commissioner Michael J. Copps, and Commissioner Robert M. McDowell regarding "Broadband Industry Practices (WC Docket No. 07-52), National Broadband Plan Notice of Inquiry (WC Docket 09-51)".
This letter shows concern about the net-neutrality policies and implementation rather than out and out disapproval. The letter simply wants to delay any approval until the actual policies are clarified from what I understand.
Ok if that's the problem, to make everyone comfortable about net-neutrality, the pro net-neutrality gurus should respond with another letter proposing a vision showing the steps to spur off a business model which supports bridging the digital divide putting the minority groups on equal footing in terms of internet access, bandwidth and quality of service.
I think the best vision of what net-neutrality business model would look like is the google implementation which free-service in exchange for in-your-face advertising on your monitor. You go to google for a search, google provides the information proxied through access and bandwidth paying advertising banners connections.
The trick here is that not only google is entitled to do this, but everybody is. The only difference is instead of internet service providers going directly to the subscribers for internet access/bandwidth/quality of service fees, the government could instill a business model whereby the connection and hardware maintenance setups are all paid for by the government, the advertisement firms paying for the national internet bandwidth/quality of service structure in exchange for the privilege of proxying/framing all traffic content through advertising banner connections. The advertising firms win with all the revenue generated by the loyal customers buying their products because they are thankful for their partnership in providing the synergetic-equal-opportunity-generating internet services.
I think google is very close to being "THE ONE" to make this happen. Apart from the existence of google's awesome search engine achievements, they encourage the synergy of open-source software development demonstrating google's will to provide equal-opportunities for all and to encourage rewards for all based on merit. That said, google can't be the only one to make net-neutrality happen. All citizens should participate and encourage net-neutrality considering the importance to their future generations' opportunities.
The ad revenues from internet co-opete(coopetition) with the legacy media. As a result, they all have an opportunity here to do the right thing and win business in return.
A government estabilished internet advertising monthly license fee could help build the infrastructure from scratch. The added government internet advertising license could be encouraged by providing tax kickbacks somehow. The trick here is that the actual license fee would need to be accessible for all keeping in mind all the little players wanting to get into the internet advertising business.
Are there any business-minded people here that could back all this up with numbers? Any ways this is all just brainstorming to get your ideas rolling and making net-neutrality a reality without all the back-room secret government deals we've been seeing for the net-neutrality policies and the ACTA internet copyright infringement spying policies.
I would like to see the 44 companies listed against net neutrality in order to not buy their products. I will only buy products from companies that are pro-net-neutrality.
It's obvious, the consumer needs to participate in structuring the future by speaking with his buying power. Buying power is a very important voice. I also intend on using my buying power when buying my next PC, TV, MP3 player ensuring the manufacturers are pro-digital-freedom and have clear ANTI-DRM(Digital Rights Management) positions. This implies that I won't be buying the "Kindle ebook reader"(built-in DRM), and the Sony TV(built-in DRM), and the Sony Playstation(built-in DRM).
Mr. Stallman deserves the utmost respect from all developers because he truly wishes to protect the right of all users/developers alike by ensuring we have the freedom to tinker with whatever we buy and by ensuring we have the freedom to adapting whatever we buy to our on-going requirements without having to pay surprise unexpected fees on an ongoing basis.
Mr. Icaza has his point of view to make some MS stuff work in Linux. The effort he has placed deserves respect also I give him that.
The problem is that developers need to remember the kind of under-handed tactics MS has done to developers and to users as a whole to make money. :). This is not to mention the prices for the developer kits entry level MSDN 99$(TECHNET/DEVNET Knowledge BASE), Professional over 500$, and Enterprise over $1500 on a yearly basis. Mind you the value as respectable for the number of CDs/DVD's they send you. The problem is we have only so much time in the day to learn all the api's they created or unveiled to us. DOS, MFC, DIRECTX, DDK, DirectMedia, ODBC, DAO, ODB, VBA, OLE, ACTIVEX, COM, ATL to mention a few. Depending on what level of MSDN subscription you had, the more information they unveiled to you about each of these apis. Sometimes, you wouldn't know an api existed because you didn't have the Enterprise level subscription. The entry-level and Pro level would make no mention of the DirectMedia SDK, Enterprise DATABASE API/Enterprise DATABASE tools available through DevStudio GUI for example. By purchasing the Enterprise level MSDN, you had THE EDGE if you discovered its MSDN's existence. The internet was still in its infancy and not everyone knew what was going on or had money to access Special-Interest-Groups Bulletin-Board-Systems through a modem. Even if you did, the data you received would take forever to get because the average modem then was 56Kbps and the average user/wannabe developer couldn't afford to get the T1 1Mbps connection which was over 500$ a month.
My favourites are:
1)When Windows NT Workstation was discovered to be LIMITED with 64 TCP/IP connections, while Linux had no such limitations and the source and binaries were freely available for your perusal. One needs to recall the prices for Windows 95/NT Workstation/NT Server. Both NT Workstation and NT were starting to become highly exclusive(1000$+) while the Win95 was around 99$. Linux 0$-20$
2)The UNDOCUMENTED DOS/WINDOWS book describing all the different API calls discovered being used by MS software products that no other company previously knew existed. The fact is the undocumented apis gave MS an edge of the competition. Once this was discovered, this created a market for non-microsoft debuggers. The sanctioned MS debugger Nu-Mega Softice was respected, but IDA pro came to fill a necessary void to ensure the developers were getting the whole picture when debugging their software or when trying to understand how other software worked in order to gain inspiration.
3)Internet Explorer and Netscape web page HTML/javascript code incompatibilities.
4)Microsoft Java JVM and Sun Java JVM incompatibilities.
Simply by the existence of incompatibilities, the user didn't know so they would just opt with what was installed by MS, because that was the easy route to take and especially for updates. This in turn greatly hurt Netscape and Sun until they brought Microsoft to court, but the damage was done.
5)Doublespace. Here's a company that created a disk compression technology that doubled the amount of data your hard drive could hold, but MS put them out of business by adding in a tool to their windows offering that did exactly the same thing. If you bought MS-Dos 6, you would get this disk compression tool from MS. The disk compression product competitor went out of business because MS squeezed them out of the market niche. Note this is similar to what happened to Netscape. Originally Netscape sold their web browser product, but then MS added in their Internet Explorer tool as part of the Windows O
The governments ought to do is like you said. Have the directors live where the majority of the employees live. It makes sense. It's a great way to ensure that the workers have a respectable working conditions and a decent quality of life considering that's where the directors will have to spend a decent amount of their time.
I'm of the persuasion that when you speak to your higher ups, it's important for you to propose to them "how would you feel if you were in my place?" For example, if you work in a four foot by four foot cubicle by five foot cubicle and would like someone to improve your working conditions, I suggest you propose your higher-ups to try working in that cubicle for a year to see how they would feel. The same argument may be used for all the furniture in the office and everything else.
Be forewarned, the higher-ups always have a quick and witty way of making you look silly for asking such unreasonable requests. The only recommendation I have is to remind that the government/companies first and foremost should have a sense of obligation to make EVERYONE in the workplace and in the community they serve to feel welcome. The true test is to see higher-ups ready to get their hands dirty in every position of the company. If they can't do the work the position entails, the higher-ups should provide what the employees ask for, if within reason of course.
Here is another proposal for governments: for every employee turnover(let go, fired, moved on, whatever reason you may think of) , have the government fine the company a respectable amount. This will make the message loud and clear: governments and the community don't like turnover. Employees everywhere like stability in their life situation.
Everybody can grow within a company given the long-term commitment from all parties concerned.
Since stockholders have their hands on corporations, let have the corporations institute regulations fining those accountable for employee turnover a significant amount from their yearly salary. Say 40% of the hiring staff's/the firing staff's and the turnover staff's salary. That will send a message to those that hire and fire. When the corporation hires individuals, it's like a wedding. It's for the long-term. If you want a divorce, it's going to be the last resort and it's going to hurt everyone concerned employer and employee. The fines will go straight to a local community charity.
Java plugins in the Web browser may be considered as "Vulnerable software" because it provides the "system" API among many other APIs which enables your so-called "smarter client" which people in 1994 called "fat client". We had the power to use serversockets then but we didn't. Javascript BY-DESIGN is not permitted to use the "system" api because it is part of the "thin client" design. As a result, artsy web page designers got tools that could use javascript, but not java because everyone concerned agreed it was safe-enough. That's why Java/Javascript has been mostly disabled on my browser since 1994. The combination of these two enabled is quite dangerous on a localhost.
The primary reason for http has been and always will be simply a way to link web pages to other pages. Keeping the web browser design simple allows mostly everyone a better opportunity to learn how the tools work. When everything is obfuscated, you make everything about it look like magic and exclusive to the technocrats. With SMARTER CLIENT ideas like this proposed topic, firefox and all the web browsers are all risking slowly becoming like "MS-Internet Explorer" which is plastered with undocumented vulnerabilities/opportunities open to a select illuminated few.
Popularity for software depends on its merit. Since Linux has merits, it has become popular. The different packages in linux are different in popularity because there are "different strokes for different folks". Simple to use, but sophisticated software is popular like vi, emacs, gedit, postit-notes, calendar, evince, wget, firefox, thunderbird, mplayer, ffmpeg2theora, audacity, lame, apache, shorewall, gimp and openoffice. Vulnerably complex software is not popular like MPI, PVM, Plan9, SCALA, flash-plugins. I've experimented with flash/ming and discovered first hand the flash engine can crash not only the application, but also the OS. I understand the politics of flash being used is to somehow protect the media industry because it is proprietary technology geared to provide a pay per use intenet business model for the entertainment industry. It is important to be aware that flash technology is used on most movie DVD's sold today for the menu subsystems along with helping with the obfuscation to reduce the dvd-ripping piracy. I also understand that the movie industry does everything to undermine the trend to use open-source theora format video files and ogg format audio files. Thankfully theora/ogg are the defaults in all the current Linux distributions.
You have a take a leap of faith to use a lot of these more advanced pieces of software, but if you're in a position where you need to guarantee something works and you use internet explorer with java/flash and your so-called smarter client api plugins, GOOD LUCK with that and I'll be looking for news about your company's bankruptcy notice in the following months.
Think one tool, one job. Hammer the nail. Not everything is a nail. For example you search for stuff by starting your firefox, going to google and typing the key words. You expect a response with links to other pages. That's it. There's nothing in this recipe that demands a web server in your web browser. Not everything needs to be a hammer. Not everything needs to be in the cloud either.
The one tool is firefox being the client.
The other tool is google being the web page server.
An email agent sends/receives email to the email server. That's one tool for one job.
If you want a web page server, install apache. That's the one tool for the one job.
I'm a strong believer in a clear separation of concerns because my private family pictures, although I am very proud of them are none of anyone's concern and should not ever accidently find themselves on the net. If a web browser somehow becomes a web server with your ideas, my pictures might accidently fall into unintended audiences. It's not a big deal but the fact that this accident could happen because of a software vulnerability really would piss me off. I
Use Google-WAVE and you embrace the dependence on WEB-SERVICES and eventually all the tasks on the devices you buy will be available only through "pay-per-use". You've been warned.
GOOGLE, ORACLE, MICROSOFT and IBM have all been intending to confuse all computer/mobile internet device/PIM/smart phone users into a state of dependence of web-services through VERY SUBTLE steps. THEY LURE with the WORM(office, maps, sketch, wave, voice), WE WANT THE WORM, WE EAT/install the WORM, and voilà VENDOR-LOCKED-IN CATCH! But the LURE for it sounds like a miracle tincture to heal everything that ails you...we must have it:
Google Wave is "a personal communication and collaboration tool" announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009.[1][2] It is a web based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking.[3] It has a strong collaborative and real-time[4] focus supported by robust spelling/grammar checking, automated translation between 40 languages[2], and numerous other extensions.[4]
The subtleties of forcing people to go web-service are there. The younger generation know only the web browser/twitter/QQ/MSN/SKYPE. WAVE is asking everyone to move from the simplicity of thunderbird for email and firefox for browsing, open office for editing docs/spreadsheets/etc..
to the complex jack-of-all-trades WAVE. If it's too good to be true, then it probably is.
I choose not to use WAVE. GOOGLE and MS are both too big now. They control too much of the world's knowledge. They must be kept in control by limiting our use of their product. For example, you can use their search engines and MS/GOOGLE can display their advertisements, but THAT's all you want.
Don't install their office products on your device. Don't use their mapping products on your device. Just use/install simple open-source software on your device. This will reduce everyone's probability of being "vendor locked-in" to one alternative(risk of dependence to one-sole company GOOGLE/MS).
It's so important for people to understand how "vendor lock-in" is so evil. It's so important for people to understand that GNU/Linux and all it's flavors provide alternatives to "vendor lock-in" NOW. Whatever happened to the "one tool, one job" philosophy? This wave stuff seems to add complexity everywhere. It's adding complexity in the maintenance of the server. It's adding complexity in the maintenance of the devices that connect to the server. If WAVE breaks, everything breaks. Not a nice situation to be in. Worse even, if WAVE asks us to pay for using it then we won't be able to use our devices for anything. LINUX is becoming almost essential for digital freedom.
SEE THE LIGHT PEOPLE!
-Google and Microsoft will eventually reach a point of no return in terms of complexity. Move to simpler Do-It-Yourself strategies if these techie big boys don't get their act together.
-Create your own ways of collaborating together in order to further increase your independence from IBM/MS/ORACLE/GOOGLE in your lives.
-Constrain your google/baidu/yahoo/bing/QQ internet diet: view anything with advertisements via the browser, but don't install stuff via the browser as a general rule of thumb. This will make the internet experience safer with no chance of vendor lock-in from the big IBM/MS/ORACLE/GOOGLE/FLASH/ADOBE/MOVIE COMPANIES/MUSIC COMPANIES.
I'm not a crazy hard drive filler like a lot of people but here's my attempt to make my life simple. Try not to fill your personal hard-drive with media you didn't create yourself: all sorts of movies, books, and mp3's. If you truly must have this stuff in archives, then put it on another hard-drive not mixed up with your personal stuff.
Your personal stuff:
-----------------------
1)do keep your emails in a dedicated directory named with the date of creation i.e. from20July2009email
2)do keep your personal pictures in another directory...ditto
3)do keep your personal videos in another directory
4)do keep your work related projects in another directory
There now we've got it simplified down to 4 main directories to backup.
I've successfully backup to external hard drive by simple directory copy because I don't have that many directories to deal with.
It takes about 20 minutes to backup while attending and observing it closely.
I've tried "pybackpack" recently which is in the ubuntu repositories. It's a gui for selecting the directories and keeping them in a backup project file. It's worth a look.
Now with regards to backup of your computer's customized "just for you" settings, well from what I've seen for Linux recently is partimage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partimage
They've even got an article recently published a couple of weeks ago in the Chinese weekly computer newspaper called "Dian Nao Bao" which has dedicated half-page to Ubuntu every week. I can't understand a word of it except they do publish the english buzzwords in it like 3g, android, partimage, wardriving, and mplayer.
prefixsuffix is cool. It's a little tool that changes groups of file names quickly. It might be useful for your backups.