but I guess it'd take a developer more than 50k worth of time to do it.
He wasn't trivializing. He was, in a somewhat roundabout way, saying that 50k is a lot cheaper than what it would cost to implement the same solution yourself. The summary (don't know about the article, didn't read it) was trivializing the difficulty, the GP was refuting the summary.
It's also relevant to note that, as far as I can tell, I have never signed a contract with any broadband provider indicating that any particular service would be provided for any length of time in the future - other than the month that I've already paid for. I'm fairly sure the agreement states that I'm not even guaranteed that - they just have to give me my money back if they discontinue my service.
Yes, that's what I want. A combination of an ineffective, bitter company and a government agency managing my internet connection. That could only improve our service, right?
I have several email lists that the recipients cannot remove themselves from, and they're hardly magic. They're saved in my mail client, and thankfully nobody else has access to modify them. If I were repeatedly petitioning congressmen, I'd most likely use one of those for that purpose.
I see no reason that a government run by majority rule, by definition, would prevent you from getting arrested for your opinion. Democracy does not necessarily mean freedom, or liberty. It could be argued that freedom and liberty cannot exist without a democracy, but it is certainly possible for the people to vote their freedom away.
I'm not sure what you mean. The complaints seem to indicate that you'll get things such as "NoClassDefFoundError" and the like, rather than the more appropriate "SecurityException". As to which one actually happens, I don't know. The point is that a developer, developing an application for Java, should not have to concern himself whatsoever with NoClassDefFoundErrors when interacting with standard jvm classes. He SHOULD however, be concerned with potentially encountering SecurityExceptions.
My point was that (from a cursory glance) for all of Google's restrictions, the Java spec already defines the proper way to indicate that those features are not available. Given that there is a "right" way to do this, there's very little reason for Google not to do it the right way.
You can accomplish the same thing in vanilla Java with a security manager. (Which for all we know, they did. I haven't tried yet.) If the security manager doesn't allow it, you're not using it. Period, end of story.
I'd really like to know if this is the case. Everything I've read in the list seems to me to be something a security manager could potentially block anyways. I'd like to know if they're throwing a SecurityException in these situations or not.
I thougth the a key feature of java was "write once - run anywhere".
It is. Although "write properly once - run anywhere" would probably be more accurate.
Dont blame the developer if a new JVM breaks a java app.
Most issues I have seen with a new JVM breaking a java app is because the app developer was doing something they weren't supposed to. (using com.sun classes, relying on undocumented, "undefined" behavior, etc) If you code to the spec, and only expect methods to do what they say they'll do in the documentation, chances of a new JVM breaking your application are very slim.
As a disclaimer, note that I use terms like "most" and "chances are very slim". There have been exceptions, where a new JVM did break things, but the majority of broken applications are not due to those exceptions.
Well yes, it does. From reading that list, it seems that all of these things that they want to "change" already allow for the changing through a security manager (as the GP mentioned). See, the whole point of Java is that you shouldn't be coding to each custom environment. And, security restrictions are something that any competent developer should be taking into account when writing his code. Therefore, if the environment fails in a somewhat expected, valid manner, developers can (and should) account for that in their code.
I usually find that there is plentiful recognition in the form that, next time something like this should come up, they'll remember your name as somebody who's done a good job and you'll get to go through the entire experience again. (including the everybody being pissed at you part)
To start, let me say that I agree with the monopoly issue. Monopolies should either be heavily regulated or abolished.
What I'm confused about is this whole "contract" argument. I've purchased broadband service from 5 different companies over the past 10 or so years. I don't recall ever agreeing to any length of service - I could cancel at any time I liked. I also don't recall ever seeing any promise from these companies to maintain their current offerings. What contracts are you wanting them to honor?
Also on the "unlimited" level. Sure, I don't recall reading all of the advertisements in detail, but what I recall is a promise of "never having to disconnect". I never remember "download as much data as you want". In my experience, the "unlimited" promise was always in comparison to "pay by time" dial-up ISPs. Was there some other implication of unlimited?
Hence the whole "If you gave up secret voting". So long as we agree that secret voting is necessary (and I would, in fact, agree to that), then this won't work as a solution for our voting problem. But your comment is largely irrelevant to the context in which this solution was presented.
Or, it's a direct message to the citizenry that misconduct by government agents will not be tolerated. If the prosecution is simply allowed to "try again", there is no incentive to behave appropriately in the future. Place the full blame for the lack of justice on the heads of the prosecutors and the justice department. They are the ones who did us wrong.
Actually, people do mind. My city (Nashville) recently held a special election with the attempt to mandate that our city government only do business (and provide services, with a few exceptions) in English. We minded a great deal and successfully voted the bigoted, short-sighted bill down.
My father often told us growing up that he only passed his French class after making a solemn vow to the teacher that he would never attempt to speak the language again.
I know I'm late, but I needed to clarify. I see the difference between the two. I don't see the relevance.
The issue is that they are pictures the children take of themselves, without "coercion" from adults. The law should have no involvement whatsoever with children taking pictures of themselves and doing whatever they'd like with them. Parents on the other hand, probably should be involved.
Maybe not for RIAA stuff, but for the first time in a DECADE (I'm including Mediaone, Roadrunner, AT&T, and Comcast- ie all the various incarnations of the same cable company here) they're suddenly strictly enforcing their policies regarding hosting services. If you have any incoming SMTP or WWW traffic, expect to be canned if you haven't been already...even if it is for personal use.
While I have definitely seen restrictions on running "servers" in Comcast's TOS, I am consistently unable to find them in AT&T's. This is one of the major reasons that I am currently an AT&T customer, and not a Comcast customer (my two choices at the moment).
I don't have the DSL service anymore, but at the time I read through the TOS and was unable to find "no server" clauses. I currently have uVerse, and am likewise unable to find any "no server" clauses in that TOS.
Fiber != FiOS. FiOS is a brand name service offered by Verizon. As far as I know (at least in my area), AT&T's "fiber" offering is uVerse. It differs slightly from FiOS in that it is (usually) fiber to the node, then VDSL to the home, rather than fiber to the home as FiOS does.
That being said, I recently switched to uVerse and I'd say it's worth at least looking into. Personally, I was delighted at having a non-satellite alternative to Comcast, which I've been dying to get rid of.
Granted, IANAL, but my understanding is that part of the legal tradition in this country is that laws are not cut and dry. The spirit of the law is actually legally relevant, and as such should be taken into account in this case.
How exactly did an alleged DUI offender not abide by the terms of a driver's license? Is one of the terms, "I will not be accused of driving under the influence." ?
I don't see any real issues with the concept of the cloud in your list.
The provider could go out of business.
This is the closest to a viable objection in your list. Unfortunately, this is true of any vendor in business. You have to make a business decision of whether or not this risk is worth the savings from using the vendor.
The provider could get hacked.
Yes, they could. So could your data center. Which one is more likely? What's the risk if they do get hacked? What's the risk if your data center gets hacked? Is mitigating that risk worth the cost?
The provider could change their pricing or other restrictions.
The provider could add nasty adware or other annoying stuff.
The provider could dramatically change the behavior of the app.
Features you depend on could be removed, or made useless.
All of these are covered by contracts and service agreements. Sure, they can force the issue at renewal time. I suggest, as is prudent in selecting any vendor, that you have an exit plan. Or are at least aware of some possibility for exit.
And...what happens when the net goes down?
You can't work. Yes, I know this is the nightmare scenario. Again, I point you to the cost of risk mitigation. How likely is it that you'll lose your connection? If you do lose your connection, would you still be able to do business if you weren't using a cloud vendor? How much does it cost to mitigate this risk?
I know that I use very few cloud services. Primarily Google Apps for email, im, and scheduling. It's not my ideal solution, but it's a good price for where I'm at right now. It costs less that maintaining a server myself. If I lose connection, yes, there's a problem. But...even if I were running these services locally, I'm going to have a similar problem. When I worked in a large development shop, much of my job was undoable when we lost the net connection, and we didn't rely on any cloud apps whatsoever.
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but I guess it'd take a developer more than 50k worth of time to do it.
He wasn't trivializing. He was, in a somewhat roundabout way, saying that 50k is a lot cheaper than what it would cost to implement the same solution yourself. The summary (don't know about the article, didn't read it) was trivializing the difficulty, the GP was refuting the summary.
It's also relevant to note that, as far as I can tell, I have never signed a contract with any broadband provider indicating that any particular service would be provided for any length of time in the future - other than the month that I've already paid for. I'm fairly sure the agreement states that I'm not even guaranteed that - they just have to give me my money back if they discontinue my service.
Yes, that's what I want. A combination of an ineffective, bitter company and a government agency managing my internet connection. That could only improve our service, right?
I have several email lists that the recipients cannot remove themselves from, and they're hardly magic. They're saved in my mail client, and thankfully nobody else has access to modify them. If I were repeatedly petitioning congressmen, I'd most likely use one of those for that purpose.
I see no reason that a government run by majority rule, by definition, would prevent you from getting arrested for your opinion. Democracy does not necessarily mean freedom, or liberty. It could be argued that freedom and liberty cannot exist without a democracy, but it is certainly possible for the people to vote their freedom away.
I'm not sure what you mean. The complaints seem to indicate that you'll get things such as "NoClassDefFoundError" and the like, rather than the more appropriate "SecurityException". As to which one actually happens, I don't know. The point is that a developer, developing an application for Java, should not have to concern himself whatsoever with NoClassDefFoundErrors when interacting with standard jvm classes. He SHOULD however, be concerned with potentially encountering SecurityExceptions.
My point was that (from a cursory glance) for all of Google's restrictions, the Java spec already defines the proper way to indicate that those features are not available. Given that there is a "right" way to do this, there's very little reason for Google not to do it the right way.
You can accomplish the same thing in vanilla Java with a security manager. (Which for all we know, they did. I haven't tried yet.) If the security manager doesn't allow it, you're not using it. Period, end of story.
I'd really like to know if this is the case. Everything I've read in the list seems to me to be something a security manager could potentially block anyways. I'd like to know if they're throwing a SecurityException in these situations or not.
I thougth the a key feature of java was "write once - run anywhere".
It is. Although "write properly once - run anywhere" would probably be more accurate.
Dont blame the developer if a new JVM breaks a java app.
Most issues I have seen with a new JVM breaking a java app is because the app developer was doing something they weren't supposed to. (using com.sun classes, relying on undocumented, "undefined" behavior, etc) If you code to the spec, and only expect methods to do what they say they'll do in the documentation, chances of a new JVM breaking your application are very slim.
As a disclaimer, note that I use terms like "most" and "chances are very slim". There have been exceptions, where a new JVM did break things, but the majority of broken applications are not due to those exceptions.
Well yes, it does. From reading that list, it seems that all of these things that they want to "change" already allow for the changing through a security manager (as the GP mentioned). See, the whole point of Java is that you shouldn't be coding to each custom environment. And, security restrictions are something that any competent developer should be taking into account when writing his code. Therefore, if the environment fails in a somewhat expected, valid manner, developers can (and should) account for that in their code.
I usually find that there is plentiful recognition in the form that, next time something like this should come up, they'll remember your name as somebody who's done a good job and you'll get to go through the entire experience again. (including the everybody being pissed at you part)
To start, let me say that I agree with the monopoly issue. Monopolies should either be heavily regulated or abolished.
What I'm confused about is this whole "contract" argument. I've purchased broadband service from 5 different companies over the past 10 or so years. I don't recall ever agreeing to any length of service - I could cancel at any time I liked. I also don't recall ever seeing any promise from these companies to maintain their current offerings. What contracts are you wanting them to honor?
Also on the "unlimited" level. Sure, I don't recall reading all of the advertisements in detail, but what I recall is a promise of "never having to disconnect". I never remember "download as much data as you want". In my experience, the "unlimited" promise was always in comparison to "pay by time" dial-up ISPs. Was there some other implication of unlimited?
Hence the whole "If you gave up secret voting". So long as we agree that secret voting is necessary (and I would, in fact, agree to that), then this won't work as a solution for our voting problem. But your comment is largely irrelevant to the context in which this solution was presented.
Isn't that basically the relationship we all have with the government?
Or, it's a direct message to the citizenry that misconduct by government agents will not be tolerated. If the prosecution is simply allowed to "try again", there is no incentive to behave appropriately in the future. Place the full blame for the lack of justice on the heads of the prosecutors and the justice department. They are the ones who did us wrong.
Actually, people do mind. My city (Nashville) recently held a special election with the attempt to mandate that our city government only do business (and provide services, with a few exceptions) in English. We minded a great deal and successfully voted the bigoted, short-sighted bill down.
My father often told us growing up that he only passed his French class after making a solemn vow to the teacher that he would never attempt to speak the language again.
How about none of the above? Preferably, could you just put them all in someone else's backyard and pipe the power over to me? Thanks.
I know I'm late, but I needed to clarify. I see the difference between the two. I don't see the relevance.
The issue is that they are pictures the children take of themselves, without "coercion" from adults. The law should have no involvement whatsoever with children taking pictures of themselves and doing whatever they'd like with them. Parents on the other hand, probably should be involved.
Maybe not for RIAA stuff, but for the first time in a DECADE (I'm including Mediaone, Roadrunner, AT&T, and Comcast- ie all the various incarnations of the same cable company here) they're suddenly strictly enforcing their policies regarding hosting services. If you have any incoming SMTP or WWW traffic, expect to be canned if you haven't been already...even if it is for personal use.
While I have definitely seen restrictions on running "servers" in Comcast's TOS, I am consistently unable to find them in AT&T's. This is one of the major reasons that I am currently an AT&T customer, and not a Comcast customer (my two choices at the moment).
I don't have the DSL service anymore, but at the time I read through the TOS and was unable to find "no server" clauses. I currently have uVerse, and am likewise unable to find any "no server" clauses in that TOS.
Fiber != FiOS. FiOS is a brand name service offered by Verizon. As far as I know (at least in my area), AT&T's "fiber" offering is uVerse. It differs slightly from FiOS in that it is (usually) fiber to the node, then VDSL to the home, rather than fiber to the home as FiOS does.
That being said, I recently switched to uVerse and I'd say it's worth at least looking into. Personally, I was delighted at having a non-satellite alternative to Comcast, which I've been dying to get rid of.
Granted, IANAL, but my understanding is that part of the legal tradition in this country is that laws are not cut and dry. The spirit of the law is actually legally relevant, and as such should be taken into account in this case.
I really don't see the relevance of that differentiation.
How exactly did an alleged DUI offender not abide by the terms of a driver's license? Is one of the terms, "I will not be accused of driving under the influence." ?
Sadly, there seem to be very few people who feel this way. I more often hear sentiments along the lines of "freedom is a luxury we can ill afford".
The provider could go out of business.
This is the closest to a viable objection in your list. Unfortunately, this is true of any vendor in business. You have to make a business decision of whether or not this risk is worth the savings from using the vendor.
The provider could get hacked.
Yes, they could. So could your data center. Which one is more likely? What's the risk if they do get hacked? What's the risk if your data center gets hacked? Is mitigating that risk worth the cost?
The provider could change their pricing or other restrictions.
The provider could add nasty adware or other annoying stuff.
The provider could dramatically change the behavior of the app.
Features you depend on could be removed, or made useless.
All of these are covered by contracts and service agreements. Sure, they can force the issue at renewal time. I suggest, as is prudent in selecting any vendor, that you have an exit plan. Or are at least aware of some possibility for exit.
And...what happens when the net goes down?
You can't work. Yes, I know this is the nightmare scenario. Again, I point you to the cost of risk mitigation. How likely is it that you'll lose your connection? If you do lose your connection, would you still be able to do business if you weren't using a cloud vendor? How much does it cost to mitigate this risk?
I know that I use very few cloud services. Primarily Google Apps for email, im, and scheduling. It's not my ideal solution, but it's a good price for where I'm at right now. It costs less that maintaining a server myself. If I lose connection, yes, there's a problem. But...even if I were running these services locally, I'm going to have a similar problem. When I worked in a large development shop, much of my job was undoable when we lost the net connection, and we didn't rely on any cloud apps whatsoever.