A faded photo is still viewable. An inaccessible digital file is not.
30 years ago files were stored on 5.25 floppies and cassette tapes. 15 years ago they were stored on zip drives. Now they are stored on USB drives. What makes you think USB drives will still be in common use years from now? Even if they are still in use, what makes you think any individual device is still functional?
Digital files (for regular people) are in no way permanent. The require constant maintenance (moving to new devices, etc).
Cloud services like Amazon and Google are fine, but what happens if they go out of business, start charging for a service you don't want to pay for, etc? More maintenance (if you even remember to do it).
What happens if you die, become incapacitated, etc (the events that often make people want to look at old photos)? Is your cloud provider going to allow your estate to access your files? What if (as everyone on here knows you should) you have encrypted the files? Does anyone know the key? Does anyone even know you have these files in the cloud? Does anyone know what is in the fireproof safe they can't get into? Is someone else going to want custodial responsibility of your files? With physical prints, all your photos might get shoved into a box and stored in somebodies attic, where they can be rediscovered years later. With digital storage, they are gone forever.
So in this magical place there are not going to be any disputes between parties? There will be no crime? There will be no external threats?
There will be no restrictions on who or how many can come on board?
There will be no heath or safety rules?
Seems to me if you have any of those (and many more) problems (and you certainly will) you are going to need a way to resolve them. All you will be doing is creating your own government (something you apparently abhor).
Face it, this is not some escape from some supposedly oppressive government, it is a tax dodge and immigration scam.
Well, obviously the most glaring flaw is that a camera is a physical object which is sold for the purpose of taking pictures. You OWN the camera, you can do what you want with it. The API on the other hand, is not a physical object, it is a copyright-protected work. It is LICENSED for the purpose of writing programs that run on JVMs, not competing platforms. It is OWNED by Oracle, not you.
Oh, it's about 'interoperability' is it? So, how well do those dex files (that Android creates) interoperate with a real JVM? How well does AWT or Swing 'interoperate' on Android? How does Dalvik 'interoperate' with Oracle's systems?
The problem IBM has is not too much staff, it is that the staff is shall we say 'mature'. They had a huge hiring boom in the late 70's through middle 80's. In the 90's it was apparent that they had too much staff, so they cut a whole lot. However, they only cut people who were no longer needed, they did not cut older people and replace them with younger ones (which would open up a whole different set of problems).
In spite of some things you read from bitter people, working at IBM is a pretty good job. Once people have been there a few years they tend to stick around forever. This leads to very low turnover.
So, the problem they are now facing is that much of their US workforce is nearing retirement, but nobody really knows when or if people are going to retire. Those people have wealth of knowledge about the company, it's products, it's customers, it's way of doing business, etc. They can not afford to lose all that knowledge.
This causes too much uncertainty in the company. If they hire new staff, and the older people do not retire, they have too much staff. If they don't hire new staff and people do retire, they lose all of the knowledge those people have.
So, they approach this in different ways. One way is to hire in countries other than the US, and when those hires come up to speed they transfer the workload to the other country. Now less people are needed in the US, and they have a layoff. Because the workload has moved, it is harder for someone to claim age discrimination as the reason they were let go. The new approach seems to be to encourage people to consider retirement, and transition to it with a plan such as this one. While the to-be retiree is working part-time they can hire someone to replace him, and he can use the time he is working to train the new hire. Where those new hires will be is of course another question.
The question was not whether or not private industry could have constructed a road system. The statement made by the OP implied that if the government owned the ISPs, there would be no slowdown of speeds and that capacity would be sufficient. He gave roads as an example. My point is that the roads suck. They do not have enough capacity, and they are in terrible shape in many places. If the government-owned roads are so awful (and they are), what makes anyone think a government-owned ISP is going to be any better?
And guess what? Those toll roads that suck? Also owned/maintained by the government! Of course, if the government was running the ISPs there would be no throttling or other attempts to get you to cut back on your usage, right? I mean, those $12 tolls to get into NYC have nothing at all to do with encouraging people not to use the roads, do they?
Ah, yes. The glory of paid-for-with-taxes roads. It must be because they are paid for with taxes that the capacity of the roads is unlimited. I can't recall the last time I heard of a 'traffic jam' or a 'rush hour'. And the roads are always in perfect condition.
I can't tell if that is supposed to be humor or not, but 'die in this house' simply means that you do not intend to sell the house. All money spent on a house you are going to 'die' in is for your benefit, not resale value.
I don't think that is a good idea. Refrigerators are designed to cool the warm air that comes in when the door is open briefly, overcome any leakage through the insulation, and cool a few warmish things when they are put in. They are not designed to remove heat that is being generated inside them. I would think anything that is generating even a little heat in there is going to quickly overwhelm the cooling capacity of the fridge, and then you have an oven.
How, exactly, is a failure in a city management system going to cause significant death and destruction? What failure mode could possibly lead to that (that doesn't already exist without such a system)? Failure of the system may mean it does not prevent death and destruction, but cause them?
There are loads of places where automation has been used to supplement or replace human decision making where death and destruction is a possibility. Everything from simple traffic lights to the avionics in commercial and military jets. Which of them cause more problems than the old way that was replaced?
The problem with the article is that it starts off in reality, heads into fantasy, then jumps headlong into tinfoil hat land.
Reality - IBM and Cisco built a city management center in Rio. This system allows the department heads to know what is going on in the city and respond as appropriate. IBM and Cisco aren't running the city, they just provided some tools.
Fantasy - The department heads will be replaced by automation. An example they give is ordering factories to slow down if there is bad air quality. OK, maybe. But so what? If the city has decided that the appropriate action to take when there is heavy smog, what difference does it make if the order to slow down is given by a person looking at a report that says air quality is bad, or if a computer is doing it? As long as you trust the automation, what is the problem?
Tinfoil hat - automation means that private companies (oh, the horror) will be the ones running the city and making all the decisions. Where does that come from? I am guessing that the IRS uses some IBM systems to kick out returns for audit, but it would be quite a stretch to say that IBM is deciding who gets audited.
Couldn't even bother to read the first paragraph of the article, eh?
Today, the police arrived with a court order that allowed them to create a forensic disk image of the austria remailer. This apparently was on request of the US authorities, related to the Pittsburgh bomb threats. (emphasis mine)
It was the Austrian police who had a valid court order who 'intruded'. As for the 'added a backdoor': Depending on how paranoid you are, you may assume the machine is
backdoored, since the authorities have had access.
Doesn't say the FBI ever had access. Doesn't say there IS a backdoor, just that if you're paranoid yo umay assume there is one.
How is that a cartel? If a farmer goes to market to sell milk, and he runs into another farmer with eggs, he can swap some milk for some eggs. He then runs into another farmer with some potatoes, and he swaps some milk for some potatoes. Along comes a city guy, and the farmer asks what he has to swap, and the city guy says 'nothing'. The farmer says 'ok, I'll take cash'. Is that a cartel?
A cartel fixes prices and production. It has nothing to do with cross-licensing patents.
Google makes it's money selling ads. A free and open web is beneficial to them because they can use that free and open web to sell their product.
The other companies make their money selling hardware and software. To them, free and open means nothing but a race to the bottom, something which no-one wants.
Javascript was originally developed by Netscape, a company which no longer exists.
It is funny that you think companies worked together to benefit the industry, and use PowerPC as an example of that. PowerPC was not done for some altruistic reason like 'benefit the industry', it was done to hurt Intel. It failed at that.
It is even funnier that you think IBM of old had great leaders (I am guessing you are including the PowerPC decision in that greatness). The Apple-Motorola-IBM deal was done by John Akers, who led the company to it's near destruction. Hardly a great leader. On the other hand, their really great leaders were the Watsons, and they had several antitrust suits against them to force licensing of their patents. Today IBM has an enormous patent portfolio which they license as they see fit.
No, I am not saying that. I am saying that there is a difference between "computer troubleshooter" and "computer troubleshooting business operator". If you want to simply be a computer troubleshooter without bothering with the legal aspects of running a business, work for someone else. If, however, you are operating a business (and getting paid for your time is operating a business), then it is your responsibility to know the legal requirements of that. Are there any licensing requirements? What is your liability if you trash their computer? What are your options if the customer does not pay? What is your obligation if you see evidence of illegal activities? If you can't be bothered to find the answers to questions such as those, you shouldn't be running a business.
He did not write a book, etc. He is providing a service. If you read a book and find your symptoms in it and decide to do what the book says, that is YOU making your own diagnosis and treatment plan. It may be stupid, but it is not illegal. However, in this case, people would go to his website and enter their symptoms, and HE would make a diagnosis and treatment plan. The two are not the same.
If you don't know enough about a profession to even know the most basic laws (such as licensing requirements) involving that profession, you don't know enough to practice said profession.
The thing is, nowhere does it say that anyone was actually fired. The excerpts that are quoted don't say anything about dismissal, termination, firing, etc. All of the quoted things look like perfectly normal things that would be said to a person who was leaving the company voluntarily - don't forget your obligations, turn in company property, thanks for your service, best wishes, etc.
If you read the article, you will see that nobody was fired. Someone was leaving the company, and they got a note reminding of them of contractual obligations, procedures to be followed, and a thanks for years of service. That person would have found nothing odd at all about receiving the note. It was the people who weren't expecting the note who assumed they were fired.
Just like that, except for the part where IBM sells off all the low-margin, no-profit stuff like POS, printers, disks, PCs, and keeps the high-profit, cash cow stuff like mainframes, servers, software, and services.
Slashdot Mirror
A faded photo is still viewable. An inaccessible digital file is not.
30 years ago files were stored on 5.25 floppies and cassette tapes. 15 years ago they were stored on zip drives. Now they are stored on USB drives. What makes you think USB drives will still be in common use years from now? Even if they are still in use, what makes you think any individual device is still functional?
Digital files (for regular people) are in no way permanent. The require constant maintenance (moving to new devices, etc).
Cloud services like Amazon and Google are fine, but what happens if they go out of business, start charging for a service you don't want to pay for, etc? More maintenance (if you even remember to do it).
What happens if you die, become incapacitated, etc (the events that often make people want to look at old photos)? Is your cloud provider going to allow your estate to access your files? What if (as everyone on here knows you should) you have encrypted the files? Does anyone know the key? Does anyone even know you have these files in the cloud? Does anyone know what is in the fireproof safe they can't get into? Is someone else going to want custodial responsibility of your files? With physical prints, all your photos might get shoved into a box and stored in somebodies attic, where they can be rediscovered years later. With digital storage, they are gone forever.
So in this magical place there are not going to be any disputes between parties? There will be no crime? There will be no external threats?
There will be no restrictions on who or how many can come on board?
There will be no heath or safety rules?
Seems to me if you have any of those (and many more) problems (and you certainly will) you are going to need a way to resolve them. All you will be doing is creating your own government (something you apparently abhor).
Face it, this is not some escape from some supposedly oppressive government, it is a tax dodge and immigration scam.
Well, obviously the most glaring flaw is that a camera is a physical object which is sold for the purpose of taking pictures. You OWN the camera, you can do what you want with it. The API on the other hand, is not a physical object, it is a copyright-protected work. It is LICENSED for the purpose of writing programs that run on JVMs, not competing platforms. It is OWNED by Oracle, not you.
Oh, it's about 'interoperability' is it? So, how well do those dex files (that Android creates) interoperate with a real JVM? How well does AWT or Swing 'interoperate' on Android? How does Dalvik 'interoperate' with Oracle's systems?
Those APIs are providing access to a service. They are not charging for using the API, they are charging for the service. Not the same thing at all.
The problem IBM has is not too much staff, it is that the staff is shall we say 'mature'. They had a huge hiring boom in the late 70's through middle 80's. In the 90's it was apparent that they had too much staff, so they cut a whole lot. However, they only cut people who were no longer needed, they did not cut older people and replace them with younger ones (which would open up a whole different set of problems).
In spite of some things you read from bitter people, working at IBM is a pretty good job. Once people have been there a few years they tend to stick around forever. This leads to very low turnover.
So, the problem they are now facing is that much of their US workforce is nearing retirement, but nobody really knows when or if people are going to retire. Those people have wealth of knowledge about the company, it's products, it's customers, it's way of doing business, etc. They can not afford to lose all that knowledge.
This causes too much uncertainty in the company. If they hire new staff, and the older people do not retire, they have too much staff. If they don't hire new staff and people do retire, they lose all of the knowledge those people have.
So, they approach this in different ways. One way is to hire in countries other than the US, and when those hires come up to speed they transfer the workload to the other country. Now less people are needed in the US, and they have a layoff. Because the workload has moved, it is harder for someone to claim age discrimination as the reason they were let go. The new approach seems to be to encourage people to consider retirement, and transition to it with a plan such as this one. While the to-be retiree is working part-time they can hire someone to replace him, and he can use the time he is working to train the new hire. Where those new hires will be is of course another question.
The question was not whether or not private industry could have constructed a road system. The statement made by the OP implied that if the government owned the ISPs, there would be no slowdown of speeds and that capacity would be sufficient. He gave roads as an example. My point is that the roads suck. They do not have enough capacity, and they are in terrible shape in many places. If the government-owned roads are so awful (and they are), what makes anyone think a government-owned ISP is going to be any better?
And guess what? Those toll roads that suck? Also owned/maintained by the government! Of course, if the government was running the ISPs there would be no throttling or other attempts to get you to cut back on your usage, right? I mean, those $12 tolls to get into NYC have nothing at all to do with encouraging people not to use the roads, do they?
Ah, yes. The glory of paid-for-with-taxes roads. It must be because they are paid for with taxes that the capacity of the roads is unlimited. I can't recall the last time I heard of a 'traffic jam' or a 'rush hour'. And the roads are always in perfect condition.
I can't tell if that is supposed to be humor or not, but 'die in this house' simply means that you do not intend to sell the house. All money spent on a house you are going to 'die' in is for your benefit, not resale value.
I don't think that is a good idea. Refrigerators are designed to cool the warm air that comes in when the door is open briefly, overcome any leakage through the insulation, and cool a few warmish things when they are put in. They are not designed to remove heat that is being generated inside them. I would think anything that is generating even a little heat in there is going to quickly overwhelm the cooling capacity of the fridge, and then you have an oven.
How, exactly, is a failure in a city management system going to cause significant death and destruction? What failure mode could possibly lead to that (that doesn't already exist without such a system)? Failure of the system may mean it does not prevent death and destruction, but cause them?
There are loads of places where automation has been used to supplement or replace human decision making where death and destruction is a possibility. Everything from simple traffic lights to the avionics in commercial and military jets. Which of them cause more problems than the old way that was replaced?
The problem with the article is that it starts off in reality, heads into fantasy, then jumps headlong into tinfoil hat land.
Reality - IBM and Cisco built a city management center in Rio. This system allows the department heads to know what is going on in the city and respond as appropriate. IBM and Cisco aren't running the city, they just provided some tools.
Fantasy - The department heads will be replaced by automation. An example they give is ordering factories to slow down if there is bad air quality. OK, maybe. But so what? If the city has decided that the appropriate action to take when there is heavy smog, what difference does it make if the order to slow down is given by a person looking at a report that says air quality is bad, or if a computer is doing it? As long as you trust the automation, what is the problem?
Tinfoil hat - automation means that private companies (oh, the horror) will be the ones running the city and making all the decisions. Where does that come from? I am guessing that the IRS uses some IBM systems to kick out returns for audit, but it would be quite a stretch to say that IBM is deciding who gets audited.
Couldn't even bother to read the first paragraph of the article, eh?
Today, the police arrived with a court order that allowed them to
create a forensic disk image of the austria remailer. This apparently
was on request of the US authorities, related to the Pittsburgh bomb
threats. (emphasis mine)
It was the Austrian police who had a valid court order who 'intruded'. As for the 'added a backdoor':
Depending on how paranoid you are, you may assume the machine is
backdoored, since the authorities have had access.
Doesn't say the FBI ever had access. Doesn't say there IS a backdoor, just that if you're paranoid yo umay assume there is one.
How is that a cartel? If a farmer goes to market to sell milk, and he runs into another farmer with eggs, he can swap some milk for some eggs. He then runs into another farmer with some potatoes, and he swaps some milk for some potatoes. Along comes a city guy, and the farmer asks what he has to swap, and the city guy says 'nothing'. The farmer says 'ok, I'll take cash'. Is that a cartel?
A cartel fixes prices and production. It has nothing to do with cross-licensing patents.
Google makes it's money selling ads. A free and open web is beneficial to them because they can use that free and open web to sell their product.
The other companies make their money selling hardware and software. To them, free and open means nothing but a race to the bottom, something which no-one wants.
Javascript was originally developed by Netscape, a company which no longer exists.
It is funny that you think companies worked together to benefit the industry, and use PowerPC as an example of that. PowerPC was not done for some altruistic reason like 'benefit the industry', it was done to hurt Intel. It failed at that.
It is even funnier that you think IBM of old had great leaders (I am guessing you are including the PowerPC decision in that greatness). The Apple-Motorola-IBM deal was done by John Akers, who led the company to it's near destruction. Hardly a great leader. On the other hand, their really great leaders were the Watsons, and they had several antitrust suits against them to force licensing of their patents. Today IBM has an enormous patent portfolio which they license as they see fit.
No, I am not saying that. I am saying that there is a difference between "computer troubleshooter" and "computer troubleshooting business operator". If you want to simply be a computer troubleshooter without bothering with the legal aspects of running a business, work for someone else. If, however, you are operating a business (and getting paid for your time is operating a business), then it is your responsibility to know the legal requirements of that. Are there any licensing requirements? What is your liability if you trash their computer? What are your options if the customer does not pay? What is your obligation if you see evidence of illegal activities? If you can't be bothered to find the answers to questions such as those, you shouldn't be running a business.
He did not write a book, etc. He is providing a service. If you read a book and find your symptoms in it and decide to do what the book says, that is YOU making your own diagnosis and treatment plan. It may be stupid, but it is not illegal. However, in this case, people would go to his website and enter their symptoms, and HE would make a diagnosis and treatment plan. The two are not the same.
If you don't know enough about a profession to even know the most basic laws (such as licensing requirements) involving that profession, you don't know enough to practice said profession.
Quite a common phrase. See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/all_the_best
The thing is, nowhere does it say that anyone was actually fired. The excerpts that are quoted don't say anything about dismissal, termination, firing, etc. All of the quoted things look like perfectly normal things that would be said to a person who was leaving the company voluntarily - don't forget your obligations, turn in company property, thanks for your service, best wishes, etc.
If you read the article, you will see that nobody was fired. Someone was leaving the company, and they got a note reminding of them of contractual obligations, procedures to be followed, and a thanks for years of service. That person would have found nothing odd at all about receiving the note. It was the people who weren't expecting the note who assumed they were fired.
Nobody was fired. RTFA. It was nothing more than a final note to a person who was leaving the company.
Just like that, except for the part where IBM sells off all the low-margin, no-profit stuff like POS, printers, disks, PCs, and keeps the high-profit, cash cow stuff like mainframes, servers, software, and services.
Yeah, a ghost that just today announced first quarter profits of $3B on revenue of $25B.
Let me guess, the IT circles you move in consists of that really cool server with a glowing case you built in Mom's basement?