For Mr. Oppenheim: 1.The value that the entertainment industry has traditionally brought to the artist has been production and marketing. But costs of producing artistic works has plummetted, and many would say that "viral marketing" (through the sanctioning of alternative/free distribution channels) is cheaper and more effective anyway. Given the ever-shrinking royalty percentages and restrictive nature of entertainment contracts, why does it still make economic sense for artists to sign up with major media companies?
For Mr. Lessig: 2. Nobody ever put a gun to an artist's head to sign an unfair contract with the entertainment company. These contracts are freely entered into because both parties believe it in their respective self-interests. Why then is legislative tampering necessary? Isn't the problem self-correcting? If enough artists get screwed or perceive themselves as getting screwed by signing up, they won't sign up, or they will insist on more favorable terms. Why then should Congress hamstring the ability of artists and companies to enter into contracts? To justify legislative intervention, it seems to me that you would need to demonstrate that entertainment contracts are instrinsically predatory and exploitative.
I have mixed feeling about these kind of bills, because truthfully it's impossible to impose computer solutions from above. If people weren't going to consider open-source solutions anyway, then they don't need to be cajoled to do so.
The only exception I see is for the educational system (the universities, school districts). Because Dell and Compaq/HP are all located within Texas (as well as Apple in Austin), it's a foregone conclusion that Texas will use proprietary solutions, whether it be on the desktop or on the backend databases or servers.
People I talk to in Texas education (excluding higher education) don't even consider open source as an option. Many students are taught in class how to use MS Word, Photoshop, Powerpoint, and that is seen as a desirable thing. Never mind that comparable software solutions exist, and that the money could be better spent on other things (teachers, etc). Teachers don't see that because they don't have to pay for these things. Instructional technologists don't see this because often the prices are discounted for learning institutions (which I suppose is good, but at what cost: why are we creating future customers for Adobe and Microsoft?)
There is something to the argument that learning an application teaches students the basic concepts of spreadsheets, etc which can be applied towards comparable applications. But when comparable solutions exist (and they do), schools need to do more than provide the training so that students grow up and become good Microsoft customers.
As long as open source solutions are not mandated, I see nothing wrong with making technology planners have to investigate open source solutions before submitting their budgets.
I hate to deliver the bad news to you guys, but with the advent of cheap international telephone calls, the next logical step is for telemarketing calls to move overseas. Companies that make this move will no longer have to worry about TCPA and can literally call anytime. Perhaps the check to this lies in the companies that telemarketers promote; if they are big and international, they might be subject to TCPA, but it's doubtful whether Bangalore telemarketers for ATT put ATT at any risk of liability.
I have been gathering evidence for some small claim TCPA actions. If you want to cost these companies money, demand that they send a written copy of this policy. (Although most telemarketers don't know this, TCPA requires it! If they don't, they are subject to a $500 penalty). And even if they do send it, it imposes a cost on telemarketing calls.
More info at junkbusters .
This idea probably won't pan out, but I could see a limited use for it. Websites that stream a video or a memory intensive application might say that the cost of the free download/view is to view this commercial (kind of what Salon does today). In other words, you have to consciously choose to endure it and you are warned in advance).
A lot of times, though, you are not warned about this kind of ad, and that is really annoying. It's getting to the point where I need to keep javascript off permanently. It's starting to get extremely bothersome to go to a site that uses popups (even for legitimate uses). Besides the delay in getting the popup to appear, you lose the focus on the main page you're on.
Gosh, if they have anything like popups, they need to have a timing mechanism to close this popups automatically.
sure there is. First, I don't think artists require an enormous amount of money to produce and/or distribute a song. There have been Slashdot stories about how production costs have diminished dramatically.
Fairtunes is a place where you can pay the artist directly. (Of course, that merely means you are shifting production costs to the artist, which I think is fair). Fairtunes doesn't seem very well established though. Perhaps a better organization exists to handle the transaction.
The other thing is: cd's need to be cheaper. gosh, burning a CD from a computer takes less than 5 minutes. If an artist had two burners going simultaneously, they could have enough to sell at concerts for under $10. I just returned from a music festival where artists were setting their own CD's for about $15. Hey, I realize that they get a bigger share of that than they would normally, but how much did they have to pay for these copies.
The other deal is for music labels to set a time limit on their exclusive rights to it. 5-10 years seems reasonable. Do you realize that almost no music exists in the public domain yet? That is really a shame.
more about creative commons music .
Opsound is a site that puts music into the public domain and properly tags
them as such. The backlash from the Verizon decision is probably going to kill the music industry, as "free-to-distribute"
music gains more cachet.
Actually, because of the Verizon case, I have decided to boycott all
commercially recorded music which forbid the rights to free distribution.
By boycott, I don't merely mean "refusing to buy" CD's. I mean refusing
even to listen or download such music (even illegally).
Yes, that probably means that I will no longer listen to Philip Glass,
Suzanne Vega, etc. Once they wise up and liberalize their licenses, I
might consider listening to them again. And I might also consider
checking their CD's out of the library (whenever I feel a pang of
nostalgia, in the same way that a Russian might for a moment miss a
gulag's watery soup).
The restrictive licenses of music companies essentially lock commercial
music in the vault. I'm not interested in picking locks anymore just for
a momentary glimpse at these so-called "precious" flowers. I'm
interested in enjoying what is free out in the free air. Let all those
"precious" flowers in the vault lose their color, rot away and turn into
crap. Good riddance.
We as creative artists need to wean ourselves from this enslavement that
we call "copyright enforcement." The people and companies who benefit by
starving artists, drafting exploitative contracts and preventing works of
art from being distributed freely deserve nothing less than our contempt.
You may say: how could I survive without vault music? Simple. If the
music rots away in the vault, it was already dead to begin with. Who
wants to keep dead flowers around? Instead of locking flowers in the
vault, it is better to appreciate them in the open where it's easy to
pick and admire. We are like bees admiring the flowers all around us,
flitting about, taking what we need and moving on (and propagating the
beauty of what we see at the same time). Flowers look pretty among other
flowers, not inside some ugly dirty vault guarded by lawyers with
vulture-like beaks. As the public areas become more covered with
flowers, the desire to possess the rotting heaps in the vault will seem
more bizzare, less relevant. The best way to increase the number of
flowers in this world is to open the gardens up to bees. Anyway, it is
folly to think that a group of lawyers (and that is essentially what a
music company is ) owns a song or a human voice or an image. The
copyright to Beauty is owned by one person, and that is God. His lawyers
are ruthless and know the law of nature backwards and forwards. The
license they enforce allows infinite creation and multiplication, but
banishes those who say beauty belongs to one.
Freeing myself from the music of the vault provides an opportunity to
learn about artists with more enlightened views toward distribution. I
plan to patronize them in many ways, including donations. Also, I plan
to attend more concerts and still pay for my commercial-free Internet
radio ($5 a month) until decent creative commons radio stations emerge.
It doesn't mean that I am opposed to paying money for music per se. But
when I pay for music, I want either to have free distribution rights
and/or the certainty that the artist is receiving at least 50% of the
money I am paying. What do artists for major labels now receive? 1%?
Actually lawyers are not completely the culprit here. It would be a trivial matter for lawyers on either the artist's or industry's side to draft a limited duration copyright. All ownership rights could expire after about 5 or 10 years. Artists are partially to blame for not insis
I used to work in the career testing biz, and can say that the problem boils down to validity. Anecdotally, interviewers might think off-the-wall questions are meaningful, but without any sort of research (which admittedly is an unrealistic requirement) to establish validity, such tests/questions really don't establish any sort of competence. The original New Yorker article (linked in the slashdot posting above) mentioned that situational interviews were proven to be quite effective. I'm guessing that these kinds of interviews succeed because they give an advantage to people with the most relevant experience.
On the other hand, the ability to answer such a question to the interviewer's satisfaction does indicate some compatibility with the corporate culture. If Microsoft likes candidates who like to solve puzzles, then your ability to solve puzzles means that you are just one of the gang.
On a somewhat related note, the 50 states puzzle was rumored to have been started by Microsoft. Does anyone know if it's been solved?
article: "must have 5 years experience" fallacy
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U.S. Jobs Jumping Ship
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I wrote an article about this phenomenon a while back (when I was facing the same unrealistic job requirements).
My favorite anecdote was a job ad requiring 5 years experience writing technical manuals for military vehicles. People who write such job ads end up paying more than they should because of this "illusion of scarcity."
need access to old book reviews
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An IMDb for Books
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Interestingly, many of the book reviews from the major sites (nytimes, ny review of books) charge for access to archived articles. When writing my longish longish essay on Gao Xingjian's novel Soul Mountain , I had to go through hoops to figure out how to reach cached copies of these articles. Although dozens (if not hundreds) of people had reviewed this same book, only a handful were publicly accessible.
Unfortunately, this sort of project would be successful if the major book publications agree to open their content. i would argue that access to old movie reviews (like Roger Ebert, etc) on imdb hasn't hurt the respective publications. Perhaps if the project gains enough momentum, the major publications will see value in providing their content for free.
I hope this project succeeds (and more importantly finds funding), but I have to wonder what is so wrong with depending on newsgroups (easily accessible from google groups) to find reviews. It's free, easy and threaded, so conceivably people could reply to a thread on a specific book.
Well, certainly we need to keep in mind Maslow's hierarchy of needs here. But also, being wired provides real-time access to weather information and prices as well as communication for coordination.
I remember reading somewhere that the main use that rural Indians found from internet access was access to real-time pricing information in the big cities (so they know what price to put goods at). It also helps businesses to find more competitive rates for parts and supplies that they need to buy. These are significant business advantages.
From a consumer level, it makes sense. It gives the local consumer more power to shop for price and can often save unnecessary meetings or travelling. One uneducated woman I knew wanted internet access (in the USA) so she can have access to job applications and help wanted ads. Just from the standpoint of medicine, the internet contains oodles of information about treatment options, the pro's and con's of therapy and just disease information.
These are pretty obvious advantages, and in a third world, they count for a lot. I'm not saying that technology and net infrastructure is the most important thing (and certainly aid projects are subject to misuse, hoarding of resources and abuse), but they provide a lot of opportunity which westerns can't even begin to calculate.
It's a very debatable point about whether certs mean diddlysquat in today's market. I tend to think they help a bit for entry level and mid level jobs, but you have to be able to demonstrate that you have more than that...experience, potential, initiative.
Enroll in a cert only if the knowledge is interesting, not because you think the cert will influence people. Certs don't impress, but knowledge does.
I tend to recommend against taking classes like that. If you are in a big city, it's possible to find study groups or special interest groups about special topics. In houston we have Hal-PC which has study groups on these certifications. For free!
Unless the cost of the hardware is way out of your league (i.e. more than 1000), it's probably a good idea to do the configuration and learning on your own system than at some school. You'll learn more from the ground up.
Psychologists have often wondered about whether there is a relationship between childhood memories and language, noting that people rarely have memories before acquiring the ability to use language.
The thinking was that language helps the child to structure the memory thought and also to store it into permanent memory more fully.
On another note, childhood memories are often influenced by memories of adults and memory aids such as videos and photographs. An individual may not have memories about a specific event, but when showed a photograph might be able to link the photograph to a certain vague sensation which resulted from the memory. Or when told by an adult about a certain dramatic incident, might convince himself that he actually remembers the incident.
A few interesting conclusion about the language/memory thing. First, children under 3 or 4 are unlikely to remember anything. Second, people will special disabilities that impair language development might also suffer from significant gaps in memory (this would be a good hypothesis for a linguistic experiment), that human thought process is intimately linked to language and without language, there is no thought.
Given that by default, Corel WP, not MS Word comes installed on home machines by HP, Gateway and even Dell, it's hard to say that MS has a monopoly on Office software anymore.
HP and Gateway switched a few months ago, and last time I checked a week or two ago, I saw that the same is true with Dell.com also.
Now, this is partly irrelevant. Office is an overwhelming majority among PC users/owners now, and especially dominant in the business world. Still, it is encouraging that the major OEM's are at least emboldened to offer non Microsoft productivity software for new systems.
The Parable of the Languages If programming languages could speak, really speak, not just crunch bytes and stream bits, they would have much to say that is both wise and profound.
After all, the original programmers were philosophers, and programming languages were philosopher tools...
(Photo intensive, and weird. Very.)
In Babble Meadow, in the twilight hours between day and night, when pesky noseeums float past on the breeze and birds rustle among leaves in preparation for bed, the programming languages would meet. And talk.
The talk would start as it always started, on issues profound and serious, focusing on the existential core that is center to all languages.
Do I exist or not? In this never-ending loop of life, when is the purpose? Where should I go, and what should I do when I get there? What comes after the end?
(It's not easy being a programming language, in forced contemplation of the existence of Self, day in and day out.)
However, after a time the languages would loosen up. There was something about Babble Meadow -- something that worked its way into their hearts and souls, loosened their threads, opened their parameters. The Meadow was magic, no doubt.
Today, though, the group was quiet, much quieter than usual, because one of their members, PHP, was not its usual cheerful self. In fact, one could say that PHP was in a true funk, if one had a mind to say something like that aloud, or within the hearing of one's boss. Or doctor.
Why the blues, PHP, the other languages asked. All the languages that is but C, because all C ever said was "bite me", being a rude language and hard to live with, but still respected because it was such a good worker.
And PHP answered:
All I ever do, day in and day out, is work and work and work. The only time I'm noticed is when I break, and then I'm cursed and kicked, and roundly blasted for being useless. However, when things go well, I never get a kind word.
There's no notice of my ease of use, my elegance, my simplicity. Only my failures.
And on that dark note, PHP fell into a contemplative silence, dark cloud heavy with aggrieved sorrow.
You think you have it bad, said C++. Try being me.
Without me entire industries would fail, banks would close, ships would sink, trains would crash. Why, I virtually run the world.
Yet the only time I'm noticed is when a memory leak is found or an exception occurs, and then I'm cursed, and sworn at, and ruthlessly debugged with nary a thought for my sensibilities.
Each of the languages nodded their heads, because they knew about C++ sensibilities, it being a most sensitive language. In fact, Perl was so moved by C++'s eloquence, it felt compelled to speak, though normally at these gatherings Perl would sit quietly in a corner, consuming pattern after luscious mouth watering pattern.
PHP, C++, I sympathize with you both. My own state is a sorry one at times.
I match and match and match and match, first cryptically and now objectively, but still I match and match and match. And match after flawless match is taken for granted though I'd like to see others match with such style and elegance as myself.
Why, you can't mention "regular expression" without my name coming up.
But do I get any credit? No.
O it's Larry Wall this, and Larry Wall that, and Larry Wall, he's our guy. But it's grab the Perl interpreter when a task is close at hand.
As Perl finished, Python and Ruby looked at each and rolled their eyes. For all that talk of matching, you'd think that Perl could at least rhyme.
FORTRAN reached up a withered hand and patted Perl's shoulder.
There, there, Perl. There, there.
At the very least, though, you must remember that you have a place still in the world. As for myself, I am nothing more than a wisp, a ghost of my former strong and virile self.
There was never a scientific problem I couldn't handle, or complex equation I couldn't solve. At one time I was a master of my domain, the king of the processor.
Now, sadly, my glory days are over, and I'm doomed to live my twilight years as Legacy code.
As FORTRAN wheezed to a stop, COBOL was emphatically nodding its head, unable to speak, though, because of the oxygen tube up its nose (for which the other languages were secretly thankful because COBOL did tend to maunder a bit about its glory days).
At that the floodgates of complaints was loosed, and the noise increased and increased and increased, to the point that squirrels came out of their holes, and birds peered over the edges of their nests. Suddenly the quiet glen was quiet no more.
What about me, said Pascal. I'm only used for training. Training! What good is a language that's only used in school?
What about me, said SNOBOL. No one's even heard of me!
What about me, said C#. I look like Prince!
Bite me! said C.
LISP would have spoken, but it had caught a glimpse of itself in the pond and fell in when it tried to meet itself coming. And Java was too busy trying to clean a bag out of Babbling Creek.
The noise rose and rose, and the babble increased and increased until across the meadow, from the trees roared a Voice.
Enough!
I tire of your bickering, I weary of your complaints. I grow bored with your list of whims and whines and 'poor mes'.
I thought this was going to be a party! If I knew it was going to nothing more than a bitching session, I would have stayed home.
The languages stopped their talking at once. Who was it that called out? They counted heads and arranged themselves alphabetically (C++ having to position Basic, because it never did learn the alphabet), and counted heads again and came up with the same answer from the North, South, East, and West -- all the programming languages were accounted for.
As they puzzled and wondered, the bushes at the end parted and XML walked into the light.
XML! Exclaimed C++. What are you doing here? You're not a programming language.
Tell that to the people who use me, said XML.
I'm considered the savior, the ultimate solution, the final word. Odes are written to me, flowers strewn at my feet, virgins sacrificed at my altar.
Programmers speak my name with awe. Companies insist on using me in all their projects, though they're not sure why.
And whenever a problem occurs, someone somewhere says, "Let's use XML", and miracles occur and my very name has become a talisman against evil.
And yet, all I am is a simple little markup, from humble origins. It's a burden, being XML.
At that XML sighed, and the other languages, moved by its plight gathered around......and tromped that little XML into the dirt. Yes, into the very dirt at their feet. Basic tromped, and C++ tromped, and Java cleaned and tromped and cleaned again, and COBOL tried to throw a kick at XML's head but fell over on its cane. Even LISP pulled itself out of the pond to throw loopy hands around XML's throat, but only managed to choke its ownself.
And each language could be heard to mumble as it tromped and tromped and tromped, with complete and utter glee:
Have to parse XML, eh? Have to have an XML API, eh? Have to work with SOAP and XML-RPC and RSS and RDF, eh?
I don't want to belabor the point, but often it's not necessary to read a technical book from start to finish to review it. A good part of technical reviewing involves just reporting what the book does and doesn't have. Sometimes a book's quality can be determined simply how well it is organized (for a reference book, for instance), or on the quality and depth of its learning activities.
Sometimes, there may be very good reasons for writing a review/preview/response without reading a book in its entirety. I once had a rather frivolous dialogue with Jeffrey Dean about the merits and drawbacks of writing reviews for books you haven't read completely.
I'm not defending the practice of reviewing books you haven't read. Nor am I defending the value that comes with "living with a book" for several weeks or months. But the value of early reporting of a book sometimes outweigh the decision not to read the book entirely.
Other Idiotprogrammer Book Reviews
Sites that link to controversial Chinese sites. don't necessarily promote these idealogies; they are merely acknowledging their controversial nature. It reminds me a little of the Monty Python sketch about the world's funniest joke , and anyone who heard or viewed the joke would die of laughter. The premise of censorship is that offensive content contaminates the hearts and minds of people. But you can only have censorship if someone can judge content without himself being contaminated. This contradicts the premise of censorship, which alleges that these contaminating powers exist inherently in the offensive material. On the other hand, if a censor can censor without being contaminated, that implies that offensive content does not automatically contaminate the mind or heart of a person. In that case, you would be admitting that censorship is unnecessary. That is the contradiction of censorship.
People tend to knock down geeks who have become popular or well-respected. As for sample chapters, I think they are great! Not only New Riders, but Oreilly does a great job in letting readers sample chapters. What a wonderful thing that anyone can download chapters before a book actually comes out. In book publishing, there is an enormous lag time between assignment of the book and publication date (just look at the review of the blogging book from yesterday). By the time a book comes out, the examples are irrelevant and the standards have changed or improved.
The essay gave a good analysis of tradeoffs that web programmers have to make when planning websites. Some of the code examples here were particularly hilarious (if only because I know my websites have code that is equally ugly). This chapter, as I see it, is not advocating anything radical or controversial; it is merely restating the problem in as dramatic way as possible.
Book Previews reduce the "obsolescence" of technical books. I say, let's have more of them!
rj
don't worry; this book will sell well!
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Essential Blogging
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· Score: 1
Well, the review is probably fair, but that doesn't mean the book won't be popular or useful. I'm actually predicting that this book will be one of Oreilly's top sellers this year, Slashdot review be damned! Actually, I'm one of the blogger holdouts, and might actually appreciate a chapter or two on movable type. The problem with technical publishing is that these books can be irrelevant fairly soon, and it's hard to predict what will be the next big thing.
I haven't read the book, so I'm speculating wildly here. Actually, I would have liked some firsthand accounts of how famous bloggers managed their website, both from a technical and a literary point of view. What subjects tend to be good for blogs? How to publicize? How does a weblog compare to CMS, in terms of advantages and disadvantages? Maybe some might regard this as padding, but I think the sociological aspects of blogging are just as interesting as the technical aspects.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer Texas Technical Writer, Trainer & Linux Aficionado
the heavy amount of hotmail spam is no surprise, especially as more people have the need for "junk emails" to retrieve identities.
I have seen several plans to fighting the spam problem, but let me mention my current solution.
For $20 I use www.fastmail.fm for web based email, have 50mb storage, 3 aliases and imap mail and pop forwarding. It's great! And in the last three months, I have not received a single spam message! Sure, I've been more careful than before, but it's still pretty great!
I'm not a paid shill, just an enthusiastic supporter. rj
On the whole I agree with the comments of others that this idea will probably not succeed.
Indian traffic is probably too small to matter now, but the intent of the ISP's is to reduce competition in the future in support of local ebusinesses. Quite frankly, American ecommerce companies have an enormous advantage of being first to market in their respective fields.
India's trade groups are pretty strong at blocking out international competition. In this case, they could block strictly ecommerce sites from consumers, provided that they wasn't enormous demand from consumers already for those sites (there isn't).
Under this scheme, they could allow content sites, but block the big ecommerce sites. The problem is that the line between content and ecommerce sites is being blurred. Amazon, for example, has great commentaries on books and the literary world. And yahoo/microsoft, which provide free services, also features classified advertising. Making such a rule would tend to give an advantage to sites mixing both types of content.
But don't for a moment think that Indian ISP's (or other third world countries) would simply buckle to international pressure. Indian ISP's want to make money and if blocking the site is as easy as entering an address on a routing table, then kudos to them for trying.
Such a measure could work if the government somehow codified these fees should be and ISP's were ordered to comply. Such money could be used to support national infrastructure charges (in the best case scenario) or to line officials' pockets (in the worst case scenario).
But don't fault them for trying. Actually, I kind of wonder why American ISP's didn't get this idea first.
(BY the way, if American ISP's took retaliatory measures by blocking access to Indian sites, that might unblock those sites very quickly).
You have to remember how wierd it is to view the internet in a developing country. Not only is a lot of it in English, but they probably see advertisements for dozens of American/Western companies and very little from their own country. It's a really easy target to choose.
PS. I write about India and cyberculture on my Asiafirst weblog.
I don't know what will happen to their mags--probably they'll just be sold to another publisher--but yahoo internet life was a surprisingly well written magazine, although maybe it outlived its usefulness when people learned to find cool sites with search engines and weblogs. Still, my girlfriend in Ukraine (who received a gift subscription for the mag from me) found the mag incredible.
ZD has done some pretty amazing projects, such as the Ziff Davis University, an online learning portal, which (now that I just checked) looks like it has also been sold to another body.
Content-providers have a hard time in this online world. The trick to being a success at that game is to leech off other people's content. The people actually foolish enough to produce their own content will often find their enterprises biting the dust.
I have absolutely no problem with registration. Especially if the site is free. It's reasonable to give demographic information, geographic information and possibly what industry you are in, nothing more.
As I wrote in my article, Web Communities and the Art of Making Money gathering basic demographic information is vital for obtaining the highest possible advertising rates. For low to medium traffic sites, having a good handle on your reader demographics makes the difference whether your ad rates are high or low. To me, there are very good reasons for demanding a demographic survey right at the very start. Sure, it pisses off a few technologically illiterate readers, but the prospect of free content should be enticement enough.
The problem is that individuals want to keep their personal information private. Many will simply lie about personal information (and really, if a newpaper site is asking for your phone number, that is way too much).
The other problem is the tedious nature of those marketing surveys that some of these registration forms require. Plan to buy a car in the next year? Do you spend over $1000 a year on computer stuff? Do you go on cruises? That sort of crap, besides being irrelevant and none of these site's business, are extremely tedious to fill out. And sometimes it's easy to overlook a radio box you were supposed to uncheck about whether you want to receive regular emails about great new offers.
The next problem is protecting your email address. Only an idiot would give a real or a regularly used email address.
The final problem is linkability. For less web-savvy people, they are unwilling to pursue a link on your weblog if it references a registration-required site. I know for example, some of my international friends would never register for the New York Times site even if the article is great.
That's a problem, but if it gives these media sites a better margin for breaking even, so be it.
This may be too obvious to mention, but the process of studying for a certification is more important than attaining the end result. You should be reading these study books because the knowledge is useful and interesting. Take the quizzes, and don't be afraid to do research about why the answer you chose was incorrect. Perform the tasks yourself and research why your initial guesses about how to do things turned out to be incorrect. While you shouldn't ignore the braindumps of others, you should really be focusing on doing things yourself. You'd be amazed at the difference between how the book describes it and how it really is done.
I expect a lot of people will weigh in on certifications, and the arguments for and against are pretty widely known. Here is what I understand:
1)the vendor certifications (Microsoft, Oracle, etc) have some marketability, but the courses and related material are overpriced. So are the predictions of median incomes that certified people enjoy.
2)it is impossible for certifications to measure the ability to program, to think creatively or to solve problems. However, they do measure in a rough way one's familiarity with an application/OS's mechanisms to accomplish tasks.
3)Aside from Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco, employers have usually never heard of the certification you have.
4) Employers are impressed about certifications when it is hard to measure competence. It is a third-party objective criteria. What impresses them is that you took the initiative, that you had to study for some test. That's different from just sitting at a seminar and passively absorbing information.
5). Despite what people say, "paper certifications" and "paper mills" are not worthless. The problem with IT institutes is that no training program can cover the variety of problems and administrative functions that one encounters on the job. On the other hand, they do a good job of exposing you to some of the basic tasks.
6)The problem with "paper certifications" (especially vendor-sponsored ones) is that to pass them you need to learn skills specific to the application or OS. That puts the onus of chasing after skills (and paying for them) entirely on the job seeker. And surely by the time you pass one certification, you'll hear about another one that is the next best thing. You need to ask yourself, "why I am spending time immersing myself in vendor-specific information when I should be learning more general things: protocols, network architecture and programming theory and algorithms.
7)Certifications do matter in my own field: technical writing and training. They indicate some familiarity with a particular domain of learning.
8)If you seek a certification, seek it only because you find the subject in and of itself to be interesting. I sought the LPI 1 certification because I needed to know these concepts anyway and the certification provided a structure and path for learning the material. Right now, I am pursuing another certification, the Master CIW Administrator certification. I'm not sure employers will even know what this certification is, but I know that the subjects on the certifications: network security, ip6 and unix/windows interoperability are things I would be learning anyway.
9)If you do seek certification, don't spend more than $100 on study material. There are hundreds of sites and forums that provide good study guides and practice tests for free. You'll also enjoy sharing in the learning and studying experience. My favorite is Exam Notes
Slashdot Mirror
For Mr. Oppenheim:
1.The value that the entertainment industry has traditionally brought to the artist has been production and marketing. But costs of producing artistic works has plummetted, and many would say that "viral marketing" (through the sanctioning of alternative/free distribution channels) is cheaper and more effective anyway. Given the ever-shrinking royalty percentages and restrictive nature of entertainment contracts, why does it still make economic sense for artists to sign up with major media companies?
For Mr. Lessig:
2. Nobody ever put a gun to an artist's head to sign an unfair contract with the entertainment company. These contracts are freely entered into because both parties believe it in their respective self-interests. Why then is legislative tampering necessary? Isn't the problem self-correcting? If enough artists get screwed or perceive themselves as getting screwed by signing up, they won't sign up, or they will insist on more favorable terms. Why then should Congress hamstring the ability of artists and companies to enter into contracts? To justify legislative intervention, it seems to me that you would need to demonstrate that entertainment contracts are instrinsically predatory and exploitative.
I have mixed feeling about these kind of bills, because truthfully it's impossible to impose computer solutions from above. If people weren't going to consider open-source solutions anyway, then they don't need to be cajoled to do so.
The only exception I see is for the educational system (the universities, school districts). Because Dell and Compaq/HP are all located within Texas (as well as Apple in Austin), it's a foregone conclusion that Texas will use proprietary solutions, whether it be on the desktop or on the backend databases or servers.
People I talk to in Texas education (excluding higher education) don't even consider open source as an option. Many students are taught in class how to use MS Word, Photoshop, Powerpoint, and that is seen as a desirable thing. Never mind that comparable software solutions exist, and that the money could be better spent on other things (teachers, etc). Teachers don't see that because they don't have to pay for these things. Instructional technologists don't see this because often the prices are discounted for learning institutions (which I suppose is good, but at what cost: why are we creating future customers for Adobe and Microsoft?)
There is something to the argument that learning an application teaches students the basic concepts of spreadsheets, etc which can be applied towards comparable applications. But when comparable solutions exist (and they do), schools need to do more than provide the training so that students grow up and become good Microsoft customers.
As long as open source solutions are not mandated, I see nothing wrong with making technology planners have to investigate open source solutions before submitting their budgets.
I hate to deliver the bad news to you guys, but with the advent of cheap international telephone calls, the next logical step is for telemarketing calls to move overseas. Companies that make this move will no longer have to worry about TCPA and can literally call anytime. Perhaps the check to this lies in the companies that telemarketers promote; if they are big and international, they might be subject to TCPA, but it's doubtful whether Bangalore telemarketers for ATT put ATT at any risk of liability. I have been gathering evidence for some small claim TCPA actions. If you want to cost these companies money, demand that they send a written copy of this policy. (Although most telemarketers don't know this, TCPA requires it! If they don't, they are subject to a $500 penalty). And even if they do send it, it imposes a cost on telemarketing calls. More info at junkbusters .
This idea probably won't pan out, but I could see a limited use for it. Websites that stream a video or a memory intensive application might say that the cost of the free download/view is to view this commercial (kind of what Salon does today). In other words, you have to consciously choose to endure it and you are warned in advance).
A lot of times, though, you are not warned about this kind of ad, and that is really annoying. It's getting to the point where I need to keep javascript off permanently. It's starting to get extremely bothersome to go to a site that uses popups (even for legitimate uses). Besides the delay in getting the popup to appear, you lose the focus on the main page you're on.
Gosh, if they have anything like popups, they need to have a timing mechanism to close this popups automatically.
sure there is. First, I don't think artists require an enormous amount of money to produce and/or distribute a song. There have been Slashdot stories about how production costs have diminished dramatically.
Fairtunes is a place where you can pay the artist directly. (Of course, that merely means you are shifting production costs to the artist, which I think is fair). Fairtunes doesn't seem very well established though. Perhaps a better organization exists to handle the transaction.
The other thing is: cd's need to be cheaper. gosh, burning a CD from a computer takes less than 5 minutes. If an artist had two burners going simultaneously, they could have enough to sell at concerts for under $10. I just returned from a music festival where artists were setting their own CD's for about $15. Hey, I realize that they get a bigger share of that than they would normally, but how much did they have to pay for these copies.
The other deal is for music labels to set a time limit on their exclusive rights to it. 5-10 years seems reasonable. Do you realize that almost no music exists in the public domain yet? That is really a shame.
Actually, because of the Verizon case, I have decided to boycott all commercially recorded music which forbid the rights to free distribution. By boycott, I don't merely mean "refusing to buy" CD's. I mean refusing even to listen or download such music (even illegally). Yes, that probably means that I will no longer listen to Philip Glass, Suzanne Vega, etc. Once they wise up and liberalize their licenses, I might consider listening to them again. And I might also consider checking their CD's out of the library (whenever I feel a pang of nostalgia, in the same way that a Russian might for a moment miss a gulag's watery soup).
The restrictive licenses of music companies essentially lock commercial music in the vault. I'm not interested in picking locks anymore just for a momentary glimpse at these so-called "precious" flowers. I'm interested in enjoying what is free out in the free air. Let all those "precious" flowers in the vault lose their color, rot away and turn into crap. Good riddance.
We as creative artists need to wean ourselves from this enslavement that we call "copyright enforcement." The people and companies who benefit by starving artists, drafting exploitative contracts and preventing works of art from being distributed freely deserve nothing less than our contempt.
You may say: how could I survive without vault music? Simple. If the music rots away in the vault, it was already dead to begin with. Who wants to keep dead flowers around? Instead of locking flowers in the vault, it is better to appreciate them in the open where it's easy to pick and admire. We are like bees admiring the flowers all around us, flitting about, taking what we need and moving on (and propagating the beauty of what we see at the same time). Flowers look pretty among other flowers, not inside some ugly dirty vault guarded by lawyers with vulture-like beaks. As the public areas become more covered with flowers, the desire to possess the rotting heaps in the vault will seem more bizzare, less relevant. The best way to increase the number of flowers in this world is to open the gardens up to bees. Anyway, it is folly to think that a group of lawyers (and that is essentially what a music company is ) owns a song or a human voice or an image. The copyright to Beauty is owned by one person, and that is God. His lawyers are ruthless and know the law of nature backwards and forwards. The license they enforce allows infinite creation and multiplication, but banishes those who say beauty belongs to one.
Freeing myself from the music of the vault provides an opportunity to learn about artists with more enlightened views toward distribution. I plan to patronize them in many ways, including donations. Also, I plan to attend more concerts and still pay for my commercial-free Internet radio ($5 a month) until decent creative commons radio stations emerge. It doesn't mean that I am opposed to paying money for music per se. But when I pay for music, I want either to have free distribution rights and/or the certainty that the artist is receiving at least 50% of the money I am paying. What do artists for major labels now receive? 1%?
Actually lawyers are not completely the culprit here. It would be a trivial matter for lawyers on either the artist's or industry's side to draft a limited duration copyright. All ownership rights could expire after about 5 or 10 years. Artists are partially to blame for not insis
I used to work in the career testing biz, and can say that the problem boils down to validity. Anecdotally, interviewers might think off-the-wall questions are meaningful, but without any sort of research (which admittedly is an unrealistic requirement) to establish validity, such tests/questions really don't establish any sort of competence. The original New Yorker article (linked in the slashdot posting above) mentioned that situational interviews were proven to be quite effective. I'm guessing that these kinds of interviews succeed because they give an advantage to people with the most relevant experience. On the other hand, the ability to answer such a question to the interviewer's satisfaction does indicate some compatibility with the corporate culture. If Microsoft likes candidates who like to solve puzzles, then your ability to solve puzzles means that you are just one of the gang. On a somewhat related note, the 50 states puzzle was rumored to have been started by Microsoft. Does anyone know if it's been solved?
I wrote an article about this phenomenon a while back (when I was facing the same unrealistic job requirements).
My favorite anecdote was a job ad requiring 5 years experience writing technical manuals for military vehicles. People who write such job ads end up paying more than they should because of this "illusion of scarcity."
I wrote an essay about what such a book database would look like.
Books, Ontologies and Shared Dictionaries
Interestingly, many of the book reviews from the major sites (nytimes, ny review of books) charge for access to archived articles. When writing my longish longish essay on Gao Xingjian's novel Soul Mountain , I had to go through hoops to figure out how to reach cached copies of these articles. Although dozens (if not hundreds) of people had reviewed this same book, only a handful were publicly accessible.
Unfortunately, this sort of project would be successful if the major book publications agree to open their content. i would argue that access to old movie reviews (like Roger Ebert, etc) on imdb hasn't hurt the respective publications. Perhaps if the project gains enough momentum, the major publications will see value in providing their content for free.
I hope this project succeeds (and more importantly finds funding), but I have to wonder what is so wrong with depending on newsgroups (easily accessible from google groups) to find reviews. It's free, easy and threaded, so conceivably people could reply to a thread on a specific book.
Robert Nagle
Well, certainly we need to keep in mind Maslow's hierarchy of needs here. But also, being wired provides real-time access to weather information and prices as well as communication for coordination.
I remember reading somewhere that the main use that rural Indians found from internet access was access to real-time pricing information in the big cities (so they know what price to put goods at). It also helps businesses to find more competitive rates for parts and supplies that they need to buy. These are significant business advantages.
From a consumer level, it makes sense. It gives the local consumer more power to shop for price and can often save unnecessary meetings or travelling. One uneducated woman I knew wanted internet access (in the USA) so she can have access to job applications and help wanted ads. Just from the standpoint of medicine, the internet contains oodles of information about treatment options, the pro's and con's of therapy and just disease information.
These are pretty obvious advantages, and in a third world, they count for a lot. I'm not saying that technology and net infrastructure is the most important thing (and certainly aid projects are subject to misuse, hoarding of resources and abuse), but they provide a lot of opportunity which westerns can't even begin to calculate.
rj
It's a very debatable point about whether certs mean diddlysquat in today's market. I tend to think they help a bit for entry level and mid level jobs, but you have to be able to demonstrate that you have more than that...experience, potential, initiative.
I've been pursuing the Master CIW Administrator cert. Not particularly well known, but it tests on a lot of core networking and server techologies without bogging you down on proprietary stuff.
Enroll in a cert only if the knowledge is interesting, not because you think the cert will influence people. Certs don't impress, but knowledge does.
I tend to recommend against taking classes like that. If you are in a big city, it's possible to find study groups or special interest groups about special topics. In houston we have Hal-PC which has study groups on these certifications. For free!
Unless the cost of the hardware is way out of your league (i.e. more than 1000), it's probably a good idea to do the configuration and learning on your own system than at some school. You'll learn more from the ground up.
Psychologists have often wondered about whether there is a relationship between childhood memories and language, noting that people rarely have memories before acquiring the ability to use language.
The thinking was that language helps the child to structure the memory thought and also to store it into permanent memory more fully.
On another note, childhood memories are often influenced by memories of adults and memory aids such as videos and photographs. An individual may not have memories about a specific event, but when showed a photograph might be able to link the photograph to a certain vague sensation which resulted from the memory. Or when told by an adult about a certain dramatic incident, might convince himself that he actually remembers the incident.
A few interesting conclusion about the language/memory thing. First, children under 3 or 4 are unlikely to remember anything. Second, people will special disabilities that impair language development might also suffer from significant gaps in memory (this would be a good hypothesis for a linguistic experiment), that human thought process is intimately linked to language and without language, there is no thought.
Given that by default, Corel WP, not MS Word comes installed on home machines by HP, Gateway and even Dell, it's hard to say that MS has a monopoly on Office software anymore.
HP and Gateway switched a few months ago, and last time I checked a week or two ago, I saw that the same is true with Dell.com also.
Now, this is partly irrelevant. Office is an overwhelming majority among PC users/owners now, and especially dominant in the business world. Still, it is encouraging that the major OEM's are at least emboldened to offer non Microsoft productivity software for new systems.
rj
The Parable of the Languages
...and tromped that little XML into the dirt. Yes, into the very dirt at their feet. Basic tromped, and C++ tromped, and Java cleaned and tromped and cleaned again, and COBOL tried to throw a kick at XML's head but fell over on its cane. Even LISP pulled itself out of the pond to throw loopy hands around XML's throat, but only managed to choke its ownself.
If programming languages could speak, really speak, not just crunch bytes and stream bits, they would have much to say that is both wise and profound.
After all, the original programmers were philosophers, and programming languages were philosopher tools...
(Photo intensive, and weird. Very.)
In Babble Meadow, in the twilight hours between day and night, when pesky noseeums float past on the breeze and birds rustle among leaves in preparation for bed, the programming languages would meet. And talk.
The talk would start as it always started, on issues profound and serious, focusing on the existential core that is center to all languages.
Do I exist or not? In this never-ending loop of life, when is the purpose? Where should I go, and what should I do when I get there? What comes after the end?
(It's not easy being a programming language, in forced contemplation of the existence of Self, day in and day out.)
However, after a time the languages would loosen up. There was something about Babble Meadow -- something that worked its way into their hearts and souls, loosened their threads, opened their parameters. The Meadow was magic, no doubt.
Today, though, the group was quiet, much quieter than usual, because one of their members, PHP, was not its usual cheerful self. In fact, one could say that PHP was in a true funk, if one had a mind to say something like that aloud, or within the hearing of one's boss. Or doctor.
Why the blues, PHP, the other languages asked. All the languages that is but C, because all C ever said was "bite me", being a rude language and hard to live with, but still respected because it was such a good worker.
And PHP answered:
All I ever do, day in and day out, is work and work and work. The only time I'm noticed is when I break, and then I'm cursed and kicked, and roundly blasted for being useless. However, when things go well, I never get a kind word.
There's no notice of my ease of use, my elegance, my simplicity. Only my failures.
And on that dark note, PHP fell into a contemplative silence, dark cloud heavy with aggrieved sorrow.
You think you have it bad, said C++. Try being me.
Without me entire industries would fail, banks would close, ships would sink, trains would crash. Why, I virtually run the world.
Yet the only time I'm noticed is when a memory leak is found or an exception occurs, and then I'm cursed, and sworn at, and ruthlessly debugged with nary a thought for my sensibilities.
Each of the languages nodded their heads, because they knew about C++ sensibilities, it being a most sensitive language. In fact, Perl was so moved by C++'s eloquence, it felt compelled to speak, though normally at these gatherings Perl would sit quietly in a corner, consuming pattern after luscious mouth watering pattern.
PHP, C++, I sympathize with you both. My own state is a sorry one at times.
I match and match and match and match, first cryptically and now objectively, but still I match and match and match. And match after flawless match is taken for granted though I'd like to see others match with such style and elegance as myself.
Why, you can't mention "regular expression" without my name coming up.
But do I get any credit? No.
O it's Larry Wall this, and Larry Wall that, and Larry Wall, he's our guy.
But it's grab the Perl interpreter when a task is close at hand.
As Perl finished, Python and Ruby looked at each and rolled their eyes. For all that talk of matching, you'd think that Perl could at least rhyme.
FORTRAN reached up a withered hand and patted Perl's shoulder.
There, there, Perl. There, there.
At the very least, though, you must remember that you have a place still in the world. As for myself, I am nothing more than a wisp, a ghost of my former strong and virile self.
There was never a scientific problem I couldn't handle, or complex equation I couldn't solve. At one time I was a master of my domain, the king of the processor.
Now, sadly, my glory days are over, and I'm doomed to live my twilight years as Legacy code.
As FORTRAN wheezed to a stop, COBOL was emphatically nodding its head, unable to speak, though, because of the oxygen tube up its nose (for which the other languages were secretly thankful because COBOL did tend to maunder a bit about its glory days).
At that the floodgates of complaints was loosed, and the noise increased and increased and increased, to the point that squirrels came out of their holes, and birds peered over the edges of their nests. Suddenly the quiet glen was quiet no more.
What about me, said Pascal. I'm only used for training. Training! What good is a language that's only used in school?
What about me, said SNOBOL. No one's even heard of me!
What about me, said C#. I look like Prince!
Bite me! said C.
LISP would have spoken, but it had caught a glimpse of itself in the pond and fell in when it tried to meet itself coming. And Java was too busy trying to clean a bag out of Babbling Creek.
The noise rose and rose, and the babble increased and increased until across the meadow, from the trees roared a Voice.
Enough!
I tire of your bickering, I weary of your complaints. I grow bored with your list of whims and whines and 'poor mes'.
I thought this was going to be a party! If I knew it was going to nothing more than a bitching session, I would have stayed home.
The languages stopped their talking at once. Who was it that called out? They counted heads and arranged themselves alphabetically (C++ having to position Basic, because it never did learn the alphabet), and counted heads again and came up with the same answer from the North, South, East, and West -- all the programming languages were accounted for.
As they puzzled and wondered, the bushes at the end parted and XML walked into the light.
XML! Exclaimed C++. What are you doing here? You're not a programming language.
Tell that to the people who use me, said XML.
I'm considered the savior, the ultimate solution, the final word. Odes are written to me, flowers strewn at my feet, virgins sacrificed at my altar.
Programmers speak my name with awe. Companies insist on using me in all their projects, though they're not sure why.
And whenever a problem occurs, someone somewhere says, "Let's use XML", and miracles occur and my very name has become a talisman against evil.
And yet, all I am is a simple little markup, from humble origins. It's a burden, being XML.
At that XML sighed, and the other languages, moved by its plight gathered around...
And each language could be heard to mumble as it tromped and tromped and tromped, with complete and utter glee:
Have to parse XML, eh? Have to have an XML API, eh? Have to work with SOAP and XML-RPC and RSS and RDF, eh?
Well parse this, you little markup asshole.
The End.
Posted by Bb at October 08, 2002 08:22
I don't want to belabor the point, but often it's not necessary to read a technical book from start to finish to review it. A good part of technical reviewing involves just reporting what the book does and doesn't have. Sometimes a book's quality can be determined simply how well it is organized (for a reference book, for instance), or on the quality and depth of its learning activities. Sometimes, there may be very good reasons for writing a review/preview/response without reading a book in its entirety. I once had a rather frivolous dialogue with Jeffrey Dean about the merits and drawbacks of writing reviews for books you haven't read completely. I'm not defending the practice of reviewing books you haven't read. Nor am I defending the value that comes with "living with a book" for several weeks or months. But the value of early reporting of a book sometimes outweigh the decision not to read the book entirely. Other Idiotprogrammer Book Reviews
Sites that link to controversial Chinese sites. don't necessarily promote these idealogies; they are merely acknowledging their controversial nature. It reminds me a little of the Monty Python sketch about the world's funniest joke , and anyone who heard or viewed the joke would die of laughter. The premise of censorship is that offensive content contaminates the hearts and minds of people. But you can only have censorship if someone can judge content without himself being contaminated. This contradicts the premise of censorship, which alleges that these contaminating powers exist inherently in the offensive material. On the other hand, if a censor can censor without being contaminated, that implies that offensive content does not automatically contaminate the mind or heart of a person. In that case, you would be admitting that censorship is unnecessary. That is the contradiction of censorship.
Test China's Firewall
People tend to knock down geeks who have become popular or well-respected. As for sample chapters, I think they are great! Not only New Riders, but Oreilly does a great job in letting readers sample chapters. What a wonderful thing that anyone can download chapters before a book actually comes out. In book publishing, there is an enormous lag time between assignment of the book and publication date (just look at the review of the blogging book from yesterday). By the time a book comes out, the examples are irrelevant and the standards have changed or improved.
The essay gave a good analysis of tradeoffs that web programmers have to make when planning websites. Some of the code examples here were particularly hilarious (if only because I know my websites have code that is equally ugly). This chapter, as I see it, is not advocating anything radical or controversial; it is merely restating the problem in as dramatic way as possible.
Book Previews reduce the "obsolescence" of technical books. I say, let's have more of them!
rj
Well, the review is probably fair, but that doesn't mean the book won't be popular or useful. I'm actually predicting that this book will be one of Oreilly's top sellers this year, Slashdot review be damned! Actually, I'm one of the blogger holdouts, and might actually appreciate a chapter or two on movable type. The problem with technical publishing is that these books can be irrelevant fairly soon, and it's hard to predict what will be the next big thing.
I haven't read the book, so I'm speculating wildly here. Actually, I would have liked some firsthand accounts of how famous bloggers managed their website, both from a technical and a literary point of view. What subjects tend to be good for blogs? How to publicize? How does a weblog compare to CMS, in terms of advantages and disadvantages? Maybe some might regard this as padding, but I think the sociological aspects of blogging are just as interesting as the technical aspects.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer
Texas Technical Writer, Trainer & Linux Aficionado
the heavy amount of hotmail spam is no surprise, especially as more people have the need for "junk emails" to retrieve identities.
I have seen several plans to fighting the spam problem, but let me mention my current solution.
For $20 I use www.fastmail.fm for web based email, have 50mb storage, 3 aliases and imap mail and pop forwarding. It's great! And in the last three months, I have not received a single spam message! Sure, I've been more careful than before, but it's still pretty great!
I'm not a paid shill, just an enthusiastic supporter. rj
On the whole I agree with the comments of others that this idea will probably not succeed.
Indian traffic is probably too small to matter now, but the intent of the ISP's is to reduce competition in the future in support of local ebusinesses. Quite frankly, American ecommerce companies have an enormous advantage of being first to market in their respective fields.
India's trade groups are pretty strong at blocking out international competition. In this case, they could block strictly ecommerce sites from consumers, provided that they wasn't enormous demand from consumers already for those sites (there isn't).
Under this scheme, they could allow content sites, but block the big ecommerce sites. The problem is that the line between content and ecommerce sites is being blurred. Amazon, for example, has great commentaries on books and the literary world. And yahoo/microsoft, which provide free services, also features classified advertising. Making such a rule would tend to give an advantage to sites mixing both types of content.
But don't for a moment think that Indian ISP's (or other third world countries) would simply buckle to international pressure. Indian ISP's want to make money and if blocking the site is as easy as entering an address on a routing table, then kudos to them for trying.
Such a measure could work if the government somehow codified these fees should be and ISP's were ordered to comply. Such money could be used to support national infrastructure charges (in the best case scenario) or to line officials' pockets (in the worst case scenario).
But don't fault them for trying. Actually, I kind of wonder why American ISP's didn't get this idea first.
(BY the way, if American ISP's took retaliatory measures by blocking access to Indian sites, that might unblock those sites very quickly).
You have to remember how wierd it is to view the internet in a developing country. Not only is a lot of it in English, but they probably see advertisements for dozens of American/Western companies and very little from their own country.
It's a really easy target to choose.
PS. I write about India and cyberculture on my
Asiafirst weblog.
I don't know what will happen to their mags--probably they'll just be sold to another publisher--but yahoo internet life was a surprisingly well written magazine, although maybe it outlived its usefulness when people learned to find cool sites with search engines and weblogs. Still, my girlfriend in Ukraine (who received a gift subscription for the mag from me) found the mag incredible.
ZD has done some pretty amazing projects, such as the Ziff Davis University, an online learning portal, which (now that I just checked) looks like it has also been sold to another body.
Content-providers have a hard time in this online world. The trick to being a success at that game is to leech off other people's content. The people actually foolish enough to produce their own content will often find their enterprises biting the dust.
Robert Nagle
While waiting for the slashdotted article to be reprinted somewhere, here's something on the same subject
For what it's worth I wrote an article about
Web Communities and the Art of Making Money .
I analyze the same issues.
I have absolutely no problem with registration. Especially if the site is free. It's reasonable to give demographic information, geographic information and possibly what industry you are in, nothing more.
As I wrote in my article, Web Communities and the Art of Making Money gathering basic demographic information is vital for obtaining the highest possible advertising rates. For low to medium traffic sites, having a good handle on your reader demographics makes the difference whether your ad rates are high or low. To me, there are very good reasons for demanding a demographic survey right at the very start. Sure, it pisses off a few technologically illiterate readers, but the prospect of free content should be enticement enough.
The problem is that individuals want to keep their personal information private. Many will simply lie about personal information (and really, if a newpaper site is asking for your phone number, that is way too much).
The other problem is the tedious nature of those marketing surveys that some of these registration forms require. Plan to buy a car in the next year? Do you spend over $1000 a year on computer stuff? Do you go on cruises? That sort of crap, besides being irrelevant and none of these site's business, are extremely tedious to fill out. And sometimes it's easy to overlook a radio box you were supposed to uncheck about whether you want to receive regular emails about great new offers.
The next problem is protecting your email address. Only an idiot would give a real or a regularly used email address.
The final problem is linkability. For less web-savvy people, they are unwilling to pursue a link on your weblog if it references a registration-required site. I know for example, some of my international friends would never register for the New York Times site even if the article is great.
That's a problem, but if it gives these media sites a better margin for breaking even, so be it.
Robert Nagle, Austin, Texas
This may be too obvious to mention, but the process of studying for a certification is more important than attaining the end result. You should be reading these study books because the knowledge is useful and interesting. Take the quizzes, and don't be afraid to do research about why the answer you chose was incorrect. Perform the tasks yourself and research why your initial guesses about how to do things turned out to be incorrect. While you shouldn't ignore the braindumps of others, you should really be focusing on doing things yourself. You'd be amazed at the difference between how the book describes it and how it really is done.
I expect a lot of people will weigh in on certifications, and the arguments for and against are pretty widely known. Here is what I understand:
1)the vendor certifications (Microsoft, Oracle, etc) have some marketability, but the courses and related material are overpriced. So are the predictions of median incomes that certified people enjoy.
2)it is impossible for certifications to measure the ability to program, to think creatively or to solve problems. However, they do measure in a rough way one's familiarity with an application/OS's mechanisms to accomplish tasks.
3)Aside from Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco, employers have usually never heard of
the certification you have.
4) Employers are impressed about certifications when it is hard to measure competence. It is a third-party objective criteria. What impresses them is that you took the initiative, that you had to study for some test. That's different from just sitting at a seminar and passively absorbing information.
5). Despite what people say, "paper certifications" and "paper mills" are not worthless. The problem with IT institutes is that no training program can cover the variety of problems and administrative functions that one encounters on the job. On the other hand, they do a good job of exposing you to some of the basic tasks.
6)The problem with "paper certifications" (especially vendor-sponsored ones) is that to pass them you need to learn skills specific to the application or OS. That puts the onus of chasing after skills (and paying for them) entirely on the job seeker. And surely by the time you pass one certification, you'll hear about another one that is the next best thing. You need to ask yourself, "why I am spending time immersing myself in vendor-specific information when I should be learning more general things: protocols, network architecture and programming theory and algorithms.
7)Certifications do matter in my own field: technical writing and training. They indicate some familiarity with a particular domain of learning.
8)If you seek a certification, seek it only because you find the subject in and of itself to be interesting. I sought the LPI 1 certification because I needed to know these concepts anyway and the certification provided a structure and path for learning the material. Right now, I am pursuing another certification, the Master CIW Administrator
certification. I'm not sure employers will even know what this certification is, but I know that the subjects on the certifications: network security, ip6 and unix/windows interoperability are things I would be learning anyway.
9)If you do seek certification, don't spend more than $100 on study material. There are hundreds of sites and forums that provide good study guides and practice tests for free. You'll also enjoy sharing in the learning and studying experience. My favorite is Exam Notes