Depends on the skillset that you include in 'developer'. I know I suck at interface design, but I'm clearly a developer and I've been doing that successfully for 25+ years so I can't be that bad at it. I am colourblind which doesn't help things though;)
There are people out there who specialise in interface design. In an ideal world we'd get them to design all our interfaces. Just like in an ideal world the customer would be able to describe their requirements accurately and completely, and not change them during the development project......sorry, had to take a breather there, nearly died laughing. Or crying, one of the two.
Except that this isn't about 'rights', this is about a business model.
If your business model is to produce music files and sell them, in this marketplace where the vast bulk of music files are not paid for, then you're an idiot and the market will quickly drive you bankrupt. This isn't about morals, or ethics, but simple business sense. The old business model of producing recordings of music and selling them is broken. It was enabled by the technology to record music, and it has been broken by the technology to share music. It was a viable business model for about a century, but now it's gone and musicians will need to either revert to the pre-recording-industry model of performing for a fee, or find a new viable business model. Attempting to make the old business model work in this new marketplace is never going to work, even if God Himself decrees that anyone who shares a file is going straight to Hell.
To rephrase your straw man argument: If a musician says "I have created this song, how do I make money from it?" then there are an infinite number of scenarios. Creating an easily-shareable mp3 of the song, and then putting it on the Internet where such things are effectively worthless, and then trying to insist that everyone who copies it owes you $1 seems to me to be one of the least-effective methods of making money from it.
We don't let the passengers design the flight control panel. Why do we let marketing design web applications?
Partly because developers can be really bad at designing web applications too. We tend to think of how the site is constructed, not how it's used, and design nice, orderly, awkward, unfriendly interfaces.
but, yes, it seemed like a reasonable post. I'd like to have seen some examples of non-toll solutions, and less random assertion of Gubmint uselessness, but it certainly wasn't trolling.
maybe/. needs a "-1 disagree" mod option that feeds into a different rating *shrug*
It was abandoned as being inefficient and the responsibility for the roads turned over to local government. So yes, roads 'should' be run by the state, but not as a natural monopoly, but just because it's actually more efficient to fund the roads through taxes than tolls.
The average cost of a lead miniature is ridiculous. The cost of a full army is easily > $1500, so you could recoup the investment after just one army. You can 3-D scan existing miniatures to create the blueprint.
So we just started pirating real physical objects. I wonder how long until there's a Manufacturer's *IAA demanding a levy on all 3d-printers because they're primarily being used to breach copyright?
NOW can we just collectively pat ourselves on the back for Y2K?
I still talk to people who believe Y2K was all a hoax perpetrated by computer consultancy companies to scare upgrade cash from large customers. Now at least I have some ammunition to shoot back with:) And hopefully we can start getting people to take the coming 32-bit epoch end seriously too
having played a few online games recently, I'd be more concerned about the other kids out there than the 'inappropriate content' sites. I learned some new words and I'm over 40.
Also, while I utterly respect your right to bring up your kids in a manner that seems right to you, you may want to consider just allowing them to view porn and deal with the questions. There are several countries that have no (or very lax) restrictions on children's access to porn (Denmark and Sweden for example) compared to the UK, and their kids seem to be much less messed up about sex than British kids as a result. The other thing to consider here is that your kids will spend the rest of their lives with open access to any information they want, at the touch of a screen. Their attitudes to information are going to be different. Screening them from the bad things is obviously only a short-term solution. Sooner or later they're going to get access to everything, and you may want to teach them some suitable strategies for dealing with that, rather than just pretending it doesn't exist.
You are aware, of course, that knowingly disabling the filter in a household that contains under-18's is almost certainly neglect of a minor.
This.
But to be honest, they don't even need to enact this legislation. Just allow the rumour to spread that Social Services will take into account whether you've disabled the child safety features provided by your ISP should they ever consider your children's care situation. Risk of having kids taken into care vs internet porn. Easy decision.
And from here to the next step, websites containing 'terrorist' material, such as that promoting student protests or non-violent demonstrations.
And from there to the next step, denialist blogs, anti-EU blogs, sites talking about true regional independence...
Can we go back and have the Child Pornography discussion again, please? If we'd known it would have ended up here we might not have been so quick to agree to blocking that.
'When we evolved the taskbar we saw awesome adoption of pinning [applications] on the taskbar,' said Sareen. 'We are seeing people pin like crazy. And so we saw the Start menu usage dramatically dropping, and that gave us an option. We're saying "look, Start menu usage is dropping, what can we do about it? What can we do with the Start menu to revive it, to give it some new identity, give it some new power?"'"
Is it just me that finds this kind of use of language intensely, massively, irritating? I've seen a few Microsoft interviews where they talk like this. Is it just a MS corporate thing, or is this the new American BusinessSpeak?
We're saying 'look, we've heard how you're using the language, and we've listened to you, and we'd really, really like you to go ahead and use this super-amazing language we all share in a way that doesn't empower and inspire these very valued conversation partners to acts of what we call 'homicidal rage'.
Also the Wizard of Earthsea series (Ursula LeGuin) are very readable and the character is (or at least starts the adventure as a) kid, which I think is necessary for kid-suitable fiction.
It's heartbreaking to say it, because they've given me so much pleasure over so many years, but we may as a civilisation be moving away from Plain Old Books and into other forms of storytelling. It might be more useful in the long run to teach him how to discern between mass-market crap and good, meaningful stories in whatever form they take.
The value in a startup is not the idea. Ideas are cheap and abundant.
of course it's the idea, think VCs are handing out millions to kids because "hey, your idea blows, but i like you, here's a few million"
nope, it's not.
VC's will hand out millions to people they respect without even seeing an idea. VC's won't invest in a great idea if they don't like/respect the team. See $any_successful_VC-funded_company's list of funding rejections for details.
you probably need to rethink that 'loser' mentality a bit.
Every successful entrepreneur made lots and lots of mistakes. The trick is not to get everything right first time, but to accept when you're doing something wrong and work out how to get it right before it kills the business.
So hearing how you're doing it wrong from a VC is good feedback. Presuming you already know what you're doing wrong is really really stupid.
Also, as well as referring a startup team to another VC, I've seen pitches accepted by VC's on the third or fourth attempt (over a few years). The VC basically saying that the team has matured and their understanding of the business and market has improved to the point where they're worth investing in.
And yes, the first casualty of every startup is the business plan;) I think it was Napoleon who first said something like that...
Is it the hard truth though? Or just somebody's snap judgment? It's possible that the perception of one VC is way off.
It's the VC's money. If you don't like how they decide the invest their money, that's your problem.
This isn't some 'fairness award' where the people who deserve it the most get the funding. This is someone making an investment decision with their money based on the facts of the pitch and their experience. If their perception is way off, then that's their problem and they'll deal with the consequences.
"you lack experience and leadership skills and your team is weak" = Thx Captain Obvious, think every startup is started by the guy with 20+ yrs experience and a terrific team willing to work for ZERO pay?
But hang on... a startup goes to a VC and says 'can I have a lot of your money please?'. The VC has to make a decision not about whether the founding team are nice people or whether they 'deserve' a break. The team has to have enough experience and the necessary skills to carry off the idea, if they don't then they're a bad investment and the VC should save their money for a team that does have the experience. You can get the experience by working for startups and small businesses. Bonus: it's fun too.
Then just buy the idea. Facebook would have survived without zuckerberg and all the other great startups out there probably didn't need the person that originally started it. Once the ball is rolling you just need people with the experience and a great team to keep it going.
But VC's aren't there to buy ideas and build teams. Remember, the startup came to them and said 'we've got this great idea and the team to make it work, can we have a chunk of your money to make this happen, please?' There was no option for 'we've got this great idea but we're pretty clueless about how to make it work, so do you want to do all the hard work and provide all the funding and we'll just have some money?'.
The value in a startup is not the idea. Ideas are cheap and abundant. Making an idea (any idea) into a profitable business takes skill, hard work and luck. All the value is in the implementation.
The massive innovation that they're scared of is that the market changes so that musicians and their customers don't need music labels.
The music labels formed to deal with the inherent complexity and risk of recording music onto vinyl. Now we don't need vinyl, do we need the recording industry?
Can we (please!) go back to lots of musicians making an average living from playing music, rather than a very few musicians making vast fortunes and the overwhelming majority making nothing?
In that world, there's no room for huge bloated recording and distribution companies, and no need for the *IAA.
Be interesting to see how this applies to movies though... pre-film we had itinerant groups of players who staged performances. Wonder if that could work for film if the technology makes the sets cheap enough?
While I agree with your points, actually in my post I was using the term 'pedo' in the same sense that you mean (someone who is sexually attracted to children).
I wasn't drawing a distinction between someone who is sexually attracted to kids but who doesn't consume CP, and someone who does. Maybe there should be a distinction there (non-practising pedophile? that almost sounds worse)
Hmm, yeah, I see where you're coming from... but Dude! NO!
A young teenage girl may well be making all the come-ons, noises, faces, etc. That doesn't mean fucking her is the right thing to do. Kids going through puberty are unsure of their sexuality and will act out situations that they're actually not at all ready for. In other words, they're incapable of deciding on 'informed consent' because they're dealing with a completely new, strange hormonal territory and don't have the experience with those emotions to be informed about them yet.
I don't really understand the problem here. I understand you like young girls, and want them to be loved and cherished, and so that includes fucking them how? Surely some kind of non-selfish, adult, empathic understanding kicks in here to say 'woah, she's just a kid, let's not go there'?
The points about CP being always there, and 99% of abuse not being filmed are well made.
Because the demand is a mental condition that is not caused by CP.
If you're not a pedo, you don't want to look at pictures of children being raped. If you are, you do. The pictures don't cause the condition, so reducing the availability of the pictures is not going to reduce the demand for them.
However, reducing availability of the pictures could cause people with the condition to go and rape children because they can't get their jollies from the pictures.
So clamping down on CP will have no impact on the numbers of pedos, and could conceivably increase the occurrence of child rape. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
But they DID listen to the developers and backed down on the boneheaded move of making Studio 2012 express Metro-only. That's what matters. Many companies lock-into their bad decisions until it's over for the company.
There is no backlash from Windows 7. It's an excellent OS.
Maybe you've been spending too much time with knee-jerk boneheads, and internalized some nonsense.
I'd agree with that. From where I'm sat Win7 is the new XP and Win8 is heading into ME/Vista territory.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on the skillset that you include in 'developer'. I know I suck at interface design, but I'm clearly a developer and I've been doing that successfully for 25+ years so I can't be that bad at it. I am colourblind which doesn't help things though ;)
There are people out there who specialise in interface design. In an ideal world we'd get them to design all our interfaces. Just like in an ideal world the customer would be able to describe their requirements accurately and completely, and not change them during the development project... ...sorry, had to take a breather there, nearly died laughing. Or crying, one of the two.
Except that this isn't about 'rights', this is about a business model.
If your business model is to produce music files and sell them, in this marketplace where the vast bulk of music files are not paid for, then you're an idiot and the market will quickly drive you bankrupt. This isn't about morals, or ethics, but simple business sense.
The old business model of producing recordings of music and selling them is broken. It was enabled by the technology to record music, and it has been broken by the technology to share music. It was a viable business model for about a century, but now it's gone and musicians will need to either revert to the pre-recording-industry model of performing for a fee, or find a new viable business model.
Attempting to make the old business model work in this new marketplace is never going to work, even if God Himself decrees that anyone who shares a file is going straight to Hell.
To rephrase your straw man argument:
If a musician says "I have created this song, how do I make money from it?" then there are an infinite number of scenarios. Creating an easily-shareable mp3 of the song, and then putting it on the Internet where such things are effectively worthless, and then trying to insist that everyone who copies it owes you $1 seems to me to be one of the least-effective methods of making money from it.
We don't let the passengers design the flight control panel. Why do we let marketing design web applications?
Partly because developers can be really bad at designing web applications too. We tend to think of how the site is constructed, not how it's used, and design nice, orderly, awkward, unfriendly interfaces.
nope, he made some valid points and you're just trolling now
maybe they meant '-1 toll'?
but, yes, it seemed like a reasonable post. I'd like to have seen some examples of non-toll solutions, and less random assertion of Gubmint uselessness, but it certainly wasn't trolling.
maybe /. needs a "-1 disagree" mod option that feeds into a different rating *shrug*
Actually, the UK's road system started off as private toll roads maintained by the people who charged tolls on them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnpike_trust
It was abandoned as being inefficient and the responsibility for the roads turned over to local government. So yes, roads 'should' be run by the state, but not as a natural monopoly, but just because it's actually more efficient to fund the roads through taxes than tolls.
Depends: do you consider the future portrayed by Brave New World good or bad?
about 12% good, with some bad, also a modicum of mediocre, a little 'could do better' and a dash of awful.
Life is a little more complicated than you're giving me options for...
Wargamers.
The average cost of a lead miniature is ridiculous. The cost of a full army is easily > $1500, so you could recoup the investment after just one army.
You can 3-D scan existing miniatures to create the blueprint.
So we just started pirating real physical objects. I wonder how long until there's a Manufacturer's *IAA demanding a levy on all 3d-printers because they're primarily being used to breach copyright?
NOW can we just collectively pat ourselves on the back for Y2K?
I still talk to people who believe Y2K was all a hoax perpetrated by computer consultancy companies to scare upgrade cash from large customers. :)
Now at least I have some ammunition to shoot back with
And hopefully we can start getting people to take the coming 32-bit epoch end seriously too
I like it :) douche-speak it is :)
having played a few online games recently, I'd be more concerned about the other kids out there than the 'inappropriate content' sites. I learned some new words and I'm over 40.
Also, while I utterly respect your right to bring up your kids in a manner that seems right to you, you may want to consider just allowing them to view porn and deal with the questions. There are several countries that have no (or very lax) restrictions on children's access to porn (Denmark and Sweden for example) compared to the UK, and their kids seem to be much less messed up about sex than British kids as a result.
The other thing to consider here is that your kids will spend the rest of their lives with open access to any information they want, at the touch of a screen. Their attitudes to information are going to be different. Screening them from the bad things is obviously only a short-term solution. Sooner or later they're going to get access to everything, and you may want to teach them some suitable strategies for dealing with that, rather than just pretending it doesn't exist.
You are aware, of course, that knowingly disabling the filter in a household that contains under-18's is almost certainly neglect of a minor.
This.
But to be honest, they don't even need to enact this legislation. Just allow the rumour to spread that Social Services will take into account whether you've disabled the child safety features provided by your ISP should they ever consider your children's care situation. Risk of having kids taken into care vs internet porn. Easy decision.
And from here to the next step, websites containing 'terrorist' material, such as that promoting student protests or non-violent demonstrations.
And from there to the next step, denialist blogs, anti-EU blogs, sites talking about true regional independence...
Can we go back and have the Child Pornography discussion again, please? If we'd known it would have ended up here we might not have been so quick to agree to blocking that.
spoilers!
'When we evolved the taskbar we saw awesome adoption of pinning [applications] on the taskbar,' said Sareen. 'We are seeing people pin like crazy. And so we saw the Start menu usage dramatically dropping, and that gave us an option. We're saying "look, Start menu usage is dropping, what can we do about it? What can we do with the Start menu to revive it, to give it some new identity, give it some new power?"'"
Is it just me that finds this kind of use of language intensely, massively, irritating?
I've seen a few Microsoft interviews where they talk like this. Is it just a MS corporate thing, or is this the new American BusinessSpeak?
We're saying 'look, we've heard how you're using the language, and we've listened to you, and we'd really, really like you to go ahead and use this super-amazing language we all share in a way that doesn't empower and inspire these very valued conversation partners to acts of what we call 'homicidal rage'.
Good call on Alan Garner, I'd second that.
Also the Wizard of Earthsea series (Ursula LeGuin) are very readable and the character is (or at least starts the adventure as a) kid, which I think is necessary for kid-suitable fiction.
It's heartbreaking to say it, because they've given me so much pleasure over so many years, but we may as a civilisation be moving away from Plain Old Books and into other forms of storytelling.
It might be more useful in the long run to teach him how to discern between mass-market crap and good, meaningful stories in whatever form they take.
The value in a startup is not the idea. Ideas are cheap and abundant.
of course it's the idea, think VCs are handing out millions to kids because "hey, your idea blows, but i like you, here's a few million"
nope, it's not.
VC's will hand out millions to people they respect without even seeing an idea.
VC's won't invest in a great idea if they don't like/respect the team. See $any_successful_VC-funded_company's list of funding rejections for details.
you probably need to rethink that 'loser' mentality a bit.
Every successful entrepreneur made lots and lots of mistakes. The trick is not to get everything right first time, but to accept when you're doing something wrong and work out how to get it right before it kills the business.
So hearing how you're doing it wrong from a VC is good feedback. Presuming you already know what you're doing wrong is really really stupid.
Also, as well as referring a startup team to another VC, I've seen pitches accepted by VC's on the third or fourth attempt (over a few years). The VC basically saying that the team has matured and their understanding of the business and market has improved to the point where they're worth investing in.
And yes, the first casualty of every startup is the business plan ;) I think it was Napoleon who first said something like that...
Is it the hard truth though? Or just somebody's snap judgment? It's possible that the perception of one VC is way off.
It's the VC's money. If you don't like how they decide the invest their money, that's your problem.
This isn't some 'fairness award' where the people who deserve it the most get the funding. This is someone making an investment decision with their money based on the facts of the pitch and their experience. If their perception is way off, then that's their problem and they'll deal with the consequences.
"you lack experience and leadership skills and your team is weak" = Thx Captain Obvious, think every startup is started by the guy with 20+ yrs experience and a terrific team willing to work for ZERO pay?
But hang on... a startup goes to a VC and says 'can I have a lot of your money please?'. The VC has to make a decision not about whether the founding team are nice people or whether they 'deserve' a break. The team has to have enough experience and the necessary skills to carry off the idea, if they don't then they're a bad investment and the VC should save their money for a team that does have the experience.
You can get the experience by working for startups and small businesses. Bonus: it's fun too.
Then just buy the idea. Facebook would have survived without zuckerberg and all the other great startups out there probably didn't need the person that originally started it. Once the ball is rolling you just need people with the experience and a great team to keep it going.
But VC's aren't there to buy ideas and build teams. Remember, the startup came to them and said 'we've got this great idea and the team to make it work, can we have a chunk of your money to make this happen, please?' There was no option for 'we've got this great idea but we're pretty clueless about how to make it work, so do you want to do all the hard work and provide all the funding and we'll just have some money?'.
The value in a startup is not the idea. Ideas are cheap and abundant. Making an idea (any idea) into a profitable business takes skill, hard work and luck. All the value is in the implementation.
The massive innovation that they're scared of is that the market changes so that musicians and their customers don't need music labels.
The music labels formed to deal with the inherent complexity and risk of recording music onto vinyl. Now we don't need vinyl, do we need the recording industry?
Can we (please!) go back to lots of musicians making an average living from playing music, rather than a very few musicians making vast fortunes and the overwhelming majority making nothing?
In that world, there's no room for huge bloated recording and distribution companies, and no need for the *IAA.
Be interesting to see how this applies to movies though... pre-film we had itinerant groups of players who staged performances. Wonder if that could work for film if the technology makes the sets cheap enough?
While I agree with your points, actually in my post I was using the term 'pedo' in the same sense that you mean (someone who is sexually attracted to children).
I wasn't drawing a distinction between someone who is sexually attracted to kids but who doesn't consume CP, and someone who does. Maybe there should be a distinction there (non-practising pedophile? that almost sounds worse)
Hmm, yeah, I see where you're coming from... but Dude! NO!
A young teenage girl may well be making all the come-ons, noises, faces, etc. That doesn't mean fucking her is the right thing to do. Kids going through puberty are unsure of their sexuality and will act out situations that they're actually not at all ready for. In other words, they're incapable of deciding on 'informed consent' because they're dealing with a completely new, strange hormonal territory and don't have the experience with those emotions to be informed about them yet.
I don't really understand the problem here. I understand you like young girls, and want them to be loved and cherished, and so that includes fucking them how? Surely some kind of non-selfish, adult, empathic understanding kicks in here to say 'woah, she's just a kid, let's not go there'?
The points about CP being always there, and 99% of abuse not being filmed are well made.
Because the demand is a mental condition that is not caused by CP.
If you're not a pedo, you don't want to look at pictures of children being raped. If you are, you do.
The pictures don't cause the condition, so reducing the availability of the pictures is not going to reduce the demand for them.
However, reducing availability of the pictures could cause people with the condition to go and rape children because they can't get their jollies from the pictures.
So clamping down on CP will have no impact on the numbers of pedos, and could conceivably increase the occurrence of child rape. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
But they DID listen to the developers and backed down on the boneheaded move of making Studio 2012 express Metro-only. That's what matters. Many companies lock-into their bad decisions until it's over for the company.
There is no backlash from Windows 7. It's an excellent OS.
Maybe you've been spending too much time with knee-jerk boneheads, and internalized some nonsense.
I'd agree with that.
From where I'm sat Win7 is the new XP and Win8 is heading into ME/Vista territory.