Bose are NOT good speakers. that is the reason that bose always requires a seperate listening room - so that you cannot compare their speakers side by side with other brands.
Personally I am loving my Klipsch speakers. Really good for any music that runs into a harsher sound (NIN, Rage, Tool).
Your best bet is to go to SoundTrack (No, not best buy, no not circuit city, soundtrack). They are the only company I know of that have the quality speakers. Consumer speakers you find at best buy et al. are crap compared the the brands you see at Soundtrack.
interestingly - you almost cannot even find the same brands between the two places. The high end of the stuff at best buy is ower then the low end at soundtrack.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree with you on that point - Corperatism is really nasty. But then again, corperatism is not fully capitalism either.
I like to see capitalism as a system where companies maximize profit by competeting to best server the customer.
Corperatism is a system where capitalism is broken to the point that instead of companies seeing themselves as serving customers, they instead view the customers to be serving the company's needs.
Corperatism is not a far shot from a collectivly run fudalism
Personally I would say Microsoft = Corperatism, Open Source = Something that wasn't really described by 19th century philosophers.
Open Source has strong elements of both capitalism and communism.
It's communist in nature, because it creates stuff that is in the end owned by everyone. That is really where it's similarities to communism end.
It's capitalist in nature, because it is VERY competetive (KDE/GNOME, VI/EMACS, BSD/LINUX, PERL/PYTHON), but instead of just competeting for dollars, the people involved are competeting for a more valuable resource - mind share. It is deffinitly also a 'best product wins' scenario - which is strongly capitalistic.
Communism had some efficiency because it was better at allocating resources then some previous models (such as fudalism), but because people had no real incentive to work (other then the mythical good of the whole) it turned out to be way more inefficient then capitalism. Also, since there is by necessity a central authority that determins what is created, and what is consumed - it makes it very hard for things to compete - which also leads to inefficiency, because the bad is not effectivly weeded out.
Capitalism is more efficient then communism in most ways because it forces people to be effective, or be left behind. it also promotes competetion - which weeds out the chaff. On the other hand, capitalism promotes 'trade secrets', and so the state of the art is held back in may ways, because people are not as easily able to 'stand on the shoulders of giants' as they may be in other systems. So far, this has been a small price to pay for capitalism's benefits.
The problem here, is that all these systems are based upon scarce resources. If you instead have resources (like software) that do not lose value as people use them, you are allowed a new paradigm, that was not possible in the 19th century to predict.
Open Source may well be the echos of a new model. One that draws upon the strengths of multiple systems. From Communism, we get the benefit that work does not have to be duplicated many times over (buy in large, it appears that Open Source seems to collapse into 2 major projects, with perhaps a half dozen minor projects that are mostly for experimentation's sake). From Capitalism, we get competetion (Anyone who wants to argure that there is no competetion in open source need just read/. for a week or two), and we also get motivated people (because most projects are based upon merit - so only motivated individuals need apply & also there IS an opportunity to make money, and lots of it - you just have to be more creative then - lets make 500,000 of this widgit, and sell them!)
It is for these reasons, that I think this argument is moot, because Open Source draws upon the strengths of both the capitalistic and the communistic models.
Yes, I DO think it is bribary, and foolish at that. The absolute last thing we need right now is more money in the economy - considering that greenspan is fighting tooth and nail to slow the economy down - to prevent a large crash.
I'm less scared of Social Security and Medicare - hell, the only thing I am concerned about is rights - just remember, the last time the republicans had control of the entire government was '52.
What did we get then?
McCarthyism - The closest the country ever came to Stalinism (What, you speak against the state? What someone even _accused_ you of being a communist - arrest them!) No time before had we ever had something like the gestapo.
A disrespect of every citizen who is nto christian (Adding "God" the the Pledge of Allegiance, and the dollar bill (which used to say "Mind Your Business"))
I for one don't want to live under a regieme of a party that clearly has no respect for our rights (accept to own guns)
In software, we call that bad user interface design. To consider that it is the fault of the people, and not the bad design is the worst kind of hubris.
Right, basically the hicks won this election, in a time where the country really needs to be run by the people who exist in the information age, not the agrigatian age.
"Farmers, people of the earth, the common clay of the New West, you know....Morons"
-- Blazing Saddles
It's like dealing with the IRA - if an inch is given to the peaceful groups after the terrorists bomb somethign, there is no way the terrorists won't feel they are effective - which just re-enforces their behavior.
Therefore, the only way to have reasonable peace talks is for the anti-choice side to force the radical wing of their movement to a standstill.
And no - you are absolutely wrong, there are high profile people (Like Pat Robertson) who have said things like - well, it's wrong - but they deserved it - not exactly a condemnation.
Ummm, right, like we should listen to fascist abortion terrorists like the people on your side of this issue.
I never recall any news of Pro-Choice activists bombing anti-choice buildings, or pulling guns on doctors who are performing LEGAL procedures.
if you want to be taken seriously, then remove the portions of your cause that are murdering terrorists - then maybe I'll listen to what you have to say.
My bad - that is specifically the passage which I am speaking of. I have read it before, but it had been a while - so I just paraphrased what was said about it on www.religioustolerance.org.
Do you thing Atheists, Agnostics, and Humanists should be protected by the constitution as are members of religion, and should teh be considered citizens?
Specifically, do you agree with the statement make by George Bush Sr. - "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God."?
Sure - we have freedom OF religion, but we in no way have freedom FROM religion. I can be any faith I want to - but if I am an Atheist I LOSE RIGHTS. Period, End of story.
For Example - The Predident of the United States - and Father of current Presidential Candidate George W. Bush said:
"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God." George Bush
And Americans in general do not even agree that Atheists have ANY religious rights: (Taken from religioustolerance.org)
'Although adults in North America exhibit reasonable tolerance towards persons of different denominations and different religions, this acceptance does not necessarily extend to Atheism. Some older surveys published in the 1980's, showed that almost 70% of Americans agreed that freedom of religion applies "to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme their ideas are." But only 26% agreed that Atheists should be given freedom of speech to ridicule religion and God, no matter who might be offended." 71% believed that Atheists "who preach against God and religion" should not be permitted to use civic auditoriums.'
Hell - the constitution of Texas (the state of George W. Bush's governership) explicitly states that Atheists are not citizens of the state of texas, and my be discriminated against - luckily the US Constitution superceeds this.
Finally - may states are trying to take away my ability to keep my money from being spent DIRECTLY on the church - by sneaking in bills that allow for the use of 'school vouchers' - which are nothing more then a way to circumvent the inability for the state to give money directly to religious institutions.
So don't EVEN start to tell me that Atheists, Agnostics, and Humanists enjoy the same protection as everyone else in the US.
honestly - I think you CAN make plenty of money and not have a restrictive system that locks away culture from those who are supposed to be living in it. Granted, you are correct - we didn't HAVE recorded music up until the last century, but the recording of music has meant that more poeple, not less attend concerts then ever before. Brahms didn't get 50,000 people to come see him at Mile High Stadium - Dave Matthews did - because people could hear the recordings - so to mee, it seems counter productive for the artists to want to restrict who can listen to theri music. I would think that it wold be better for them instead to want as many people as possible to hear it. So really recordings - even if unprotected from people copying it - would tend to make being a musician more profitable, not less.
As far as:
"Welcome to capitalism. Which has been based upon the creative process to achieve a better life."
I have no problem with the idea of capitalism - Hell, I consider myself to be an Objectivist (Philosophy of Ayn Rand - a VERY capitalist philosopher), but I don't think that money is the end all be all - Most musicians create music because it is who they are from stem to stern. So if you are going out to be the best musician you can be - I don't think the goal of that is to make the most money, I think the goal is to make the best and most artistically challenging music that you can. Money just happens to result from that in may cases. Unfortunatly, capitalism has slowly been twisted into corperatism, which is an entirely different beast. Corperatism is not about competing in the market, it is about establishing a monopoly (or near monopoly, or oligopoly), then removing threats to you bottom line by using the political weapons at your disposal. Corperatism is NOT about competeting with the best product, and corperatism is not about the marketplace. What I fight when I fight the RIAA's attempt to steal our culture, I am fighting a Corprate entity that will use any and all means to destroy threats to it's bottom line - moral or not. Corperatism is NOT about using the creative process to achieve a better life, it is about producing the best quarterly results, and if that means damaging the quality of life of all of your consumers (by say eliminating technology that makes life better, but could hurt profits), then so be it.
In a captialist society, there would be companies with all the newest technologies that competed against the old guard without having to weather countless lawsuits and other attempts to bury a disruptive technology. When I look at the marketplace today - lemme tell you - that is NOT what I see.....
You are absolutely correct, this is about theft, but not as you portray it. This is about theft of culture. The RIAA represents an industry founded upon the idea that it is ok, to steal our culture from all of us, then sell it back to us in a neatly shrinkwrapped package. For thousands of years people have made music, and only recently have people fooled the public into thinking that it is morally justifiable to say to all of us that we no longer have a right to participate in our culture, unless we pay a tax to Sony or BMG.
You constantly say that musicians will not make music anymore if they are not guaranteed return. Well, newsflash, they aren't guaranteed that now, never have been, never will be. That is not the mindset of a true artist. That is the mindset of a businessperson. Many musicians make music because they like to make music, and will continue to make music, just as they have since we lived in caves. Music is art, and our art is our culture. Sure, somebody can 'own' the Mona Lisa, but they can't charge people to appreciating it. Mozart made music, because that was who he was in and out - no other way around it - he was going to make music whether there was profit or not.
One way or another, we WILL take back out culture from corporations that seek to rape it for all the profits they can get, and when we do, the artists who produce the rich tapestry of art, literature, music and movies will STILL be able to put food on their table. Why, because people care about the musicians and authors, and they will tip them, and they will pay to see them live, and to own their merchandise, even the CDs - but the music will flow unrestricted as it did before corporations chained it behind an artificial wall of copyright.
You represent the amoral corporations who only have one goal - to make money. And that is counterproductive to the creative process. When the corporations no longer have direct control over the music, the biggest benefit will be to the creativity of the individuals who weave the tapestry of our culture - because they will no longer have to bend their creativity towards what makes the most money, they can once again bend it towards what is most artistically pleasing to them - which make a higher quality for us all (AKA no more backstreet boys).
Fight us all you will, but one day we will liberate our culture from you.
The judge has clearly left an open hole that can be used in the future to make a Linux DVD player
Defendants would be in no stronger position even if they had authored DeCSS. The right to make the information available extends only to issemination "solely for the purpose" of achieving interoperability as defined in the statute. It does not apply to public dissemination of means
of circumvention, as the legislative history confirms.151 These defendants, however, did not post DeCSS "solely" to achieve interoperability with Linux or anything else.
Effectivly what he is saying is that if a group were to set about reverse engineering CSS (Hell - it may not even be a problem to yank code from DeCSS) with the explicit aim of creating an unencumbered linux dvd player - that the player would deffinitly fall under the reverse engineering claim. IANAL, but I think this opens the door to such activity.
1 - Spam should be outlawed, while source code is speech.
The overall sentiment is that although the advertisers should be fully allowed to speak in any form (A la free speech), they have no right to force me to pay for them to send me ads. I pay for my bandwidth, and every e-mail I get has a real cost. It's like sending you a postage due letter (that for some reason you have NO choice but to pay for) to tell you my opinions. Is that fair? No. So this is a seperate issue from freedom of speech - they can talk all they want, but they have no right to FORCE me to pay for them talking to me.
2 - Music is just bits, and should not afforded any protection, yet again, source code is a constitutional right.
A) I think most people around here would be happy to apply the same rules rules across both. 1. Allow copying of both music and source code. 2. Allow the author of both music and source code to express themselves freely.
You are comparing apples and oranges in both cases.
So I work 40 hours in my workshop and end up with a oak table. Someone pays me $100 for it. If someone just came and took it without paying me, that would be staeling.
So I work 40 hours in my studio and end up with a song on DAT. I offer to sell the rights for $100. If someone came along and took it from me without paying, that would be "liberating the information that wants to be free"?
This is not the distinction that make it hard for people to view copying as theft. So what is happening here? In a normal case, you work for 40 hours, make a table or a song, and sell it for $100. In the end you have $100, and the consumer has a table.
So what happened in your first case? You spend 40 hours working on the table, and plan to sell it for $100. Person B comes and steals the table. In the end you have nothing, and he has the table, and your consumer has nothing as well.
In the second case, You spend 40 hours working on the song, and plan to sell it for $100. Person B comes and steals the tape. In the end you have nothing, and he has the tape, and your consumer has nothing as well. The case that fits with this model follows: You spend 40 hours working on a song. Person B comes and copies the tape. You sell the tape to the consumer for $100. In the end you have $100, Person B has a copy of the tape, and the consumer has the tape.
Where is the stealing in this case? who lost something? The consumer gets his goods, the supplier makes his money, and person B has a copy. So at most, what you have lost is the percentage chance that Person B WOULD have paid for a copy of the tape. Copyright industry will always state that the amount taken is $100, but if person B was never willing to buy the material (0% chance of buying it) then the supplier loses nothing.
The difference comes in when you look how the intellectual economy works - If you make a table, you can only sell it to one person. Period. End of story. If you make a song, you can sell that one song to everyone - so making a copy won't affect my revenue stream (in real world terms), but stealing a table will.
Of course - It should be clear that all the large problems in modern society are caused by the atheists.
Seriously - why to we need dogma for morality? I consider myself a decently moral person - and I hold to no faith whatsoever. Morality can be found just by looking at what is positive & negative human interaction. Many people have proposed what can be considered very high minded morality - and do not need a god to back it up. Two examples are the humanist movement (Human interaction that causes negative repercussions is probably bad, actions that make people's lives (and perhaps the world as a whole) better are porbably good.), and the writings of Ayn Rand (basically - don't steal - murder is stealing a body, fraud is stealing, etc...)
But I honestly resent the implication that the reason society is becoming more impersonal, and life is being devalued - is that soceity is increasingly filled with godless masses..... Ya know.....Atheists can be moral too.....
Sorry - I hit submit like a dumbass - I guess I need mroe sleep. Ok - the points in the other letter
and yes - I did respond, I just misintreped it, but all that is in the first message.
ok - Legacy systems: Yes, trust me - I know - porting a lagacy system to the web is a pain in the ass, but it sure would be easier if I could make libraries (which I can do with PHP among others) I like cold fusion, but when you are doing this type of stuff (and no - we can't use pipes, this is IBM mainframe w/ cobol or AS/400 w/ RPG)
Custom tags, and my fixation: custom tags (or just using CFINCLUDE - which is just wrong) are the only way I have found to make functions that I can call arbitrarily in code (even if that code is all in the same directory) Mayhap I am just missing something, but I can't find any reference to any other method of making a reusable component (and we have alot of them - about 200 - I said the exact amount in an earlier post) If you have another method that invalidates my whole argument, PLEASE tell me, because I REALLY want to know. I an not being snyde, it would really change the way we do what we do.
The reason I think that doing Custom Tags is valid, where as including is not - is it is very unclear lookin at your example what the interface to those 'functions' is. However, with custom tags, when you call the tag, it is VERY clear with the interface is for example:
with this it is very clear what parameters need to be sent to the function. And actually, for single functions this is REALLY nice, but the problems with it are twofold:
1. I don't think this was the intention of Custom Tags, so it's not in any documentation (in fact, I find that lots of CF developers don't even know you can make Custom Tags at all. On top of that, because it's not really widly used, even if you have a tag that accomplishes what you want, you have to brow beat developers to use the functions, instead of just writing the functionality again & again in each page.
2. you can only have one function per file, so making a library is impossible.
So - I hope this addresses your code example - the tags are better IMHO because at least they have a clear interface of future coders to use.
Skip to IS Depts: Yes, to a certain degree you are right, it is a problem with the IS depts, but the tool does make the problem worse by not defining a clear defined way to make functions
and no - of course they are not code cranking automatons, and frankly I'm not even sure what your point is here...
Applications: First off - well EXCUSE ME - what the hell do a few mistakes in a quickly written note have to do with my arguement? Yes, my spelling sucks,and normally I will just copy this stuff from something that has a spell check, but I have already devoted more time that I should.....
as far as the application conundrum, I think I aleady addressed what I meant when I talked about our apps.
and My distinction on legacy systems is this: it interfaces wonderfully, however recreating the functionality of that system is what is more of a problem. subtle, but BIG difference.
as far as your closing comments, ignoring the rude ad hominen (I know - mispelled) I hope now you see the scope of the projects I am talking about - and when dealing with a 10,000 line application, you are right, your method (or ours) is maintainable, but when dealing with 100,000 lines, the story starts to change. Why? Because doing 'tricks' or 'hacks' to create something like functions becomes harder to maintain.
Alright - this is getting somewhat complex on two threads, so I will respond here:
From this post: IIS: I did say that this was in my experience, and the customers where this has held true are ABB (Vetco Gray & one other operating unit), GM (except we finally got them off of NT/IIS to Apache), and all of the companies we are talking to about useing our systems work have thus far at least initially wanted NT/IIS. I attribute this to the fact that most of the companies we are working with are manufacturing/Engineering companies, who don't have much in the way of computer experience, or are learning, or perhaps for another reason that I have jsut missed. These comapnies have just as much right to participate in e-comm type of things, but most of their computer experience has panned out to be with mainframes, and recently adding NT to modenize (some have UNIX, some do not). So I admint that my employer's market taints my point of view, and because of that, your milage may vary.
Response to me not denying it: Yes, but I do feel that for making a database backed web site (which I still maintain is different from a web application - more on that later) the previously mentioned modularity issues do not plague the system as much, because it is easy to tear out sections if you don't have a very deep site. most websites are written without much reuse (Again, this is PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, if you find it is different in California, that is wonderful, that doesn't change that I have to deal with customers who don't), and so that web site can be greatly enhanced with CF, because CF doesn't encourage much code reuse (It's possible, but I still argue that it is not encouraged by the environment - we may just have to disagree) And no - I never said it's IMPOSSIBLE, I said it is not encouraged, and the path to do so is obfuscated - look through some of ben forta's books - I have yet to find any refrence in them as to how to make a reusable function - perhaps I am missing something, but the one we found was custom tags (which is why i harp on them)
Your Code: ok - I missed the point, but I'll address the application thing here - yes, at a technical level these are ALL applications, hell, even some purely HTML websites could be referred to as applications. However the customers we deal with (and it's my impression that with REALLY large companies this is more the rule then the exception) have huge (Million + lines of COBOL or RPG or something else that's nasty (Personal op)) systems that basically run the company - these systems are things like the ERP system, and the PDM system (Those are not buzzwords, they are just the names of the type of system) These customers are getting sick of the sometimes 30+ years that they have been using terminals on these systems, on top of that, they REALLY want to tie their data together from different systems (in our case mostly ERP & PDM (PDM systems are for engineering revision control)). Now- we need some way o make this avlaible on the web, and to have the web system take over some of the business rules from the legacy systems. For this we have used coldfusion - and it has performed well, but there is a constant struggle to keep people from just coding stuff instead of making a custom tag that can be generalized (as I said, that was the way WE found to make functions, perhaps you have a differnt one, and if so - I want to hear it (Other then usng CFINCLUDE - cause that is even worse.)) We need this generalization, cause we are dealing with (hold on...wc *.cfm) 126487 lines of cold fusion - this may sound like overkill, but it removes at least twice that in cobol & rpg code, AND it provides new functionality - but when you are writing an application of this girth, you MUST write libraries & such - even if the functions are only called in one place - because I can't count the times I have used a tag in new code - even though when initially writing it - it seemed to be something that might be pretty specific. Perhaps I am wrong, mayber most CF programs are this size, but i seriously doubt it. So after breaking 100,000 lines, the people on the projet have started REALLY lamenting that you cannot create cold fusion libraries - and yes - we are mostly coding this in CFML, because there are people who we HAVE to let code on it who would NEVER be able to touch C code - so we have to keep the environment as easy as possible.
Yes, it's just a scripting language, and a useful one at that, but when a project gets to this size, Cold Fusion can be a pain in the ass for making the code maintainable (I feel we have done it - I think it's good code, but I also feel like we had to fight CF every step of the way to have good results like that....)
ok - on to your other message - I may skip points that I feel have been addressed above - if you feel I missed something, I apologize - just call me on it.
You attempt to defile Allaire's Win32 product by saying that "servers should never be IIS," in the process you ignore O'Reilly WebSite, OmniHTTPd, Netscape's web server (I don't remember what it's called), and Apache!
Correct, as a matter of a fact, the computer I type this from is Win NT/Apache/CF 4.5. However, I have found thus far, that if an IS department requires that you run the web server on Win32, they will invariably requite that you use IIS. This is my personal experience tainting this, but so far I have yet to find a counter example. So from the enterprise point of view, if CF is run on Windows, it runs on IIS.
Right, so, after all of that I guess my point is just that ColdFusion is a useful product and can save a LOT of time when it's used as it was intended to be used (it does require a different approach than traditional procedural or object-oriented programming demands)
And I don't deny that. What you refered to was as far as I could tell basically a database backed website. And I am perfectly happy saying that ColdFusion may well be the best environment in which to solve that problem on the market. However, the area I am dealing with, where I find ColdFusion falls down is creating full fledged business applications - the type of web business applications that a person might be doing their entire job in.
Yep, they are not the type of application I am reffering to.
Their system is a sales system, where CF shines, but if you want to take an existing application, (such as a legacy system) and supply all of it's functionality on the web, cold fusion is not a good language for that. Reason? Because it is counter intuative as to how you make functions (Custom Tags).
If the language obfuscates how you functionally decompose the problem, most people who are workign on it won't do it. Why? Because the reality is that most people who program are sittign in IS departments, and because of the way it is managed they don't try to do things right, but instead try to do them as fast as possible. Because of this, they will not investigate how to make functions in Cold Fusion - because frankly it is not immediatly clear as to what you have to do.
Back the the subject at hand - Yes, Toys-R-Us has an e-commerce web site, but I would aregue (unless there are vast parts that are unseen) that it is not truely an application - The area I am talking is b2b (business to business) ecommerce applications, where you have to create business rules based upon the processes of a business, interface with all of their legacy systems, and do it an a clearly maintainable way. Cold Fusion does the first one ok, the second one wonderfully, and falls down on the third.
I'm not saying it's a junk platform, but I don't think it is suited for creating full fledged e-commerce applications. And yes it can talk to corba, com & Active X, (it's connectivity is better on win32, which sucks, because frankly servers should NEVER be IIS.....) but even if you want to create something complicated it's function model blows.... (back to the Tags thing....)
The problem you get there is if you are trying not to create a DB backed web site, but instead a real web application.
The company I work for has created a program in ColdFusion to allow certain unnamed companies to exchange Purchase Orders, Quotes, and get back end access to part inventory & part information (including drawings & models), and for that, you need functions, or you have a terribly unmaintainable code base - our app has over 166 seperate 'custom tags' because when you design a web application instead of a web page, you need to start worrying about functional decomposition, coupling, code reuse, et al. And for this, ColdFusion can be really annoying. Espaically since it has SUCH a web page metaphore embedded in it, it's REALLY hard to get team members to call functions instead of just rewriting everything on each page.
ColdFusion I have finally determined is NOT a tool that should be used for business processes, complex issues, or really anything that is covered under the idea of an 'Application', instead of just making a database avalible on the web.
I wholeheartedly agree, coldfusion is far easier, but I find that it has serious maintainability issues.
Sure, you can make 'functions' by creating custom tags, but I find that most people who just pick up ColdFusion and start coding don't even know that you CAN create custom tags - so as a result, they create no functions, and maintainability quickly can become a nightmare (unless someone who actually KNOWS how to program can direct the other coders, and slap them on the hand when they don't code any damn functions)
just a personal rant about CF...I also wish there was a way to put more then one 'custom tag' in a file, so that I could group my functions, but instead - each and every function needs to be in a seperate file... and that sucks.
Slashdot Mirror
Bose are NOT good speakers. that is the reason that bose always requires a seperate listening room - so that you cannot compare their speakers side by side with other brands.
Personally I am loving my Klipsch speakers. Really good for any music that runs into a harsher sound (NIN, Rage, Tool).
Your best bet is to go to SoundTrack (No, not best buy, no not circuit city, soundtrack). They are the only company I know of that have the quality speakers. Consumer speakers you find at best buy et al. are crap compared the the brands you see at Soundtrack.
interestingly - you almost cannot even find the same brands between the two places. The high end of the stuff at best buy is ower then the low end at soundtrack.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree with you on that point - Corperatism is really nasty. But then again, corperatism is not fully capitalism either.
I like to see capitalism as a system where companies maximize profit by competeting to best server the customer.
Corperatism is a system where capitalism is broken to the point that instead of companies seeing themselves as serving customers, they instead view the customers to be serving the company's needs.
Corperatism is not a far shot from a collectivly run fudalism
Personally I would say Microsoft = Corperatism, Open Source = Something that wasn't really described by 19th century philosophers.
/. for a week or two), and we also get motivated people (because most projects are based upon merit - so only motivated individuals need apply & also there IS an opportunity to make money, and lots of it - you just have to be more creative then - lets make 500,000 of this widgit, and sell them!)
Open Source has strong elements of both capitalism and communism.
It's communist in nature, because it creates stuff that is in the end owned by everyone. That is really where it's similarities to communism end.
It's capitalist in nature, because it is VERY competetive (KDE/GNOME, VI/EMACS, BSD/LINUX, PERL/PYTHON), but instead of just competeting for dollars, the people involved are competeting for a more valuable resource - mind share. It is deffinitly also a 'best product wins' scenario - which is strongly capitalistic.
Communism had some efficiency because it was better at allocating resources then some previous models (such as fudalism), but because people had no real incentive to work (other then the mythical good of the whole) it turned out to be way more inefficient then capitalism. Also, since there is by necessity a central authority that determins what is created, and what is consumed - it makes it very hard for things to compete - which also leads to inefficiency, because the bad is not effectivly weeded out.
Capitalism is more efficient then communism in most ways because it forces people to be effective, or be left behind. it also promotes competetion - which weeds out the chaff. On the other hand, capitalism promotes 'trade secrets', and so the state of the art is held back in may ways, because people are not as easily able to 'stand on the shoulders of giants' as they may be in other systems. So far, this has been a small price to pay for capitalism's benefits.
The problem here, is that all these systems are based upon scarce resources. If you instead have resources (like software) that do not lose value as people use them, you are allowed a new paradigm, that was not possible in the 19th century to predict.
Open Source may well be the echos of a new model. One that draws upon the strengths of multiple systems. From Communism, we get the benefit that work does not have to be duplicated many times over (buy in large, it appears that Open Source seems to collapse into 2 major projects, with perhaps a half dozen minor projects that are mostly for experimentation's sake). From Capitalism, we get competetion (Anyone who wants to argure that there is no competetion in open source need just read
It is for these reasons, that I think this argument is moot, because Open Source draws upon the strengths of both the capitalistic and the communistic models.
Yes, I DO think it is bribary, and foolish at that. The absolute last thing we need right now is more money in the economy - considering that greenspan is fighting tooth and nail to slow the economy down - to prevent a large crash.
I'm less scared of Social Security and Medicare - hell, the only thing I am concerned about is rights - just remember, the last time the republicans had control of the entire government was '52.
What did we get then?
McCarthyism - The closest the country ever came to Stalinism (What, you speak against the state? What someone even _accused_ you of being a communist - arrest them!) No time before had we ever had something like the gestapo.
A disrespect of every citizen who is nto christian (Adding "God" the the Pledge of Allegiance, and the dollar bill (which used to say "Mind Your Business"))
I for one don't want to live under a regieme of a party that clearly has no respect for our rights (accept to own guns)
In software, we call that bad user interface design. To consider that it is the fault of the people, and not the bad design is the worst kind of hubris.
Right, basically the hicks won this election, in a time where the country really needs to be run by the people who exist in the information age, not the agrigatian age.
"Farmers, people of the earth, the common clay of the New West, you know....Morons"
-- Blazing Saddles
It's like dealing with the IRA - if an inch is given to the peaceful groups after the terrorists bomb somethign, there is no way the terrorists won't feel they are effective - which just re-enforces their behavior.
Therefore, the only way to have reasonable peace talks is for the anti-choice side to force the radical wing of their movement to a standstill.
And no - you are absolutely wrong, there are high profile people (Like Pat Robertson) who have said things like - well, it's wrong - but they deserved it - not exactly a condemnation.
so stop the killing, then we will talk.
Ummm, right, like we should listen to fascist abortion terrorists like the people on your side of this issue.
I never recall any news of Pro-Choice activists bombing anti-choice buildings, or pulling guns on doctors who are performing LEGAL procedures.
if you want to be taken seriously, then remove the portions of your cause that are murdering terrorists - then maybe I'll listen to what you have to say.
My bad - that is specifically the passage which I am speaking of. I have read it before, but it had been a while - so I just paraphrased what was said about it on www.religioustolerance.org.
scary isn't it?
Do you thing Atheists, Agnostics, and Humanists should be protected by the constitution as are members of religion, and should teh be considered citizens?
Specifically, do you agree with the statement make by George Bush Sr. - "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God."?
Sure - we have freedom OF religion, but we in no way have freedom FROM religion. I can be any faith I want to - but if I am an Atheist I LOSE RIGHTS. Period, End of story.
For Example - The Predident of the United States - and Father of current Presidential Candidate George W. Bush said:
"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God." George Bush
And Americans in general do not even agree that Atheists have ANY religious rights: (Taken from religioustolerance.org)
'Although adults in North America exhibit reasonable tolerance towards persons of different denominations and different religions, this acceptance does not necessarily extend to Atheism. Some older surveys published in the 1980's, showed that almost 70% of Americans agreed that freedom of religion applies "to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme their ideas are." But only 26% agreed that Atheists should be given freedom of speech to ridicule religion and God, no matter who might be offended." 71% believed that Atheists "who preach against God and religion" should not be permitted to use civic auditoriums.'
Hell - the constitution of Texas (the state of George W. Bush's governership) explicitly states that Atheists are not citizens of the state of texas, and my be discriminated against - luckily the US Constitution superceeds this.
Finally - may states are trying to take away my ability to keep my money from being spent DIRECTLY on the church - by sneaking in bills that allow for the use of 'school vouchers' - which are nothing more then a way to circumvent the inability for the state to give money directly to religious institutions.
So don't EVEN start to tell me that Atheists, Agnostics, and Humanists enjoy the same protection as everyone else in the US.
As far as:
"Welcome to capitalism. Which has been based upon the creative process to achieve a better life."
I have no problem with the idea of capitalism - Hell, I consider myself to be an Objectivist (Philosophy of Ayn Rand - a VERY capitalist philosopher), but I don't think that money is the end all be all - Most musicians create music because it is who they are from stem to stern. So if you are going out to be the best musician you can be - I don't think the goal of that is to make the most money, I think the goal is to make the best and most artistically challenging music that you can. Money just happens to result from that in may cases. Unfortunatly, capitalism has slowly been twisted into corperatism, which is an entirely different beast. Corperatism is not about competing in the market, it is about establishing a monopoly (or near monopoly, or oligopoly), then removing threats to you bottom line by using the political weapons at your disposal. Corperatism is NOT about competeting with the best product, and corperatism is not about the marketplace. What I fight when I fight the RIAA's attempt to steal our culture, I am fighting a Corprate entity that will use any and all means to destroy threats to it's bottom line - moral or not. Corperatism is NOT about using the creative process to achieve a better life, it is about producing the best quarterly results, and if that means damaging the quality of life of all of your consumers (by say eliminating technology that makes life better, but could hurt profits), then so be it.
In a captialist society, there would be companies with all the newest technologies that competed against the old guard without having to weather countless lawsuits and other attempts to bury a disruptive technology. When I look at the marketplace today - lemme tell you - that is NOT what I see.....
Mrs. Rosen,
You are absolutely correct, this is about theft, but not as you portray it. This is about theft of culture. The RIAA represents an industry founded upon the idea that it is ok, to steal our culture from all of us, then sell it back to us in a neatly shrinkwrapped package. For thousands of years people have made music, and only recently have people fooled the public into thinking that it is morally justifiable to say to all of us that we no longer have a right to participate in our culture, unless we pay a tax to Sony or BMG.
You constantly say that musicians will not make music anymore if they are not guaranteed return. Well, newsflash, they aren't guaranteed that now, never have been, never will be. That is not the mindset of a true artist. That is the mindset of a businessperson. Many musicians make music because they like to make music, and will continue to make music, just as they have since we lived in caves. Music is art, and our art is our culture. Sure, somebody can 'own' the Mona Lisa, but they can't charge people to appreciating it. Mozart made music, because that was who he was in and out - no other way around it - he was going to make music whether there was profit or not.
One way or another, we WILL take back out culture from corporations that seek to rape it for all the profits they can get, and when we do, the artists who produce the rich tapestry of art, literature, music and movies will STILL be able to put food on their table. Why, because people care about the musicians and authors, and they will tip them, and they will pay to see them live, and to own their merchandise, even the CDs - but the music will flow unrestricted as it did before corporations chained it behind an artificial wall of copyright.
You represent the amoral corporations who only have one goal - to make money. And that is counterproductive to the creative process. When the corporations no longer have direct control over the music, the biggest benefit will be to the creativity of the individuals who weave the tapestry of our culture - because they will no longer have to bend their creativity towards what makes the most money, they can once again bend it towards what is most artistically pleasing to them - which make a higher quality for us all (AKA no more backstreet boys).
Fight us all you will, but one day we will liberate our culture from you.
Defendants would be in no stronger position even if they had authored DeCSS. The right to make the information available extends only to issemination "solely for the purpose" of achieving interoperability as defined in the statute. It does not apply to public dissemination of means of circumvention, as the legislative history confirms.151 These defendants, however, did not post DeCSS "solely" to achieve interoperability with Linux or anything else.
Effectivly what he is saying is that if a group were to set about reverse engineering CSS (Hell - it may not even be a problem to yank code from DeCSS) with the explicit aim of creating an unencumbered linux dvd player - that the player would deffinitly fall under the reverse engineering claim. IANAL, but I think this opens the door to such activity.
The overall sentiment is that although the advertisers should be fully allowed to speak in any form (A la free speech), they have no right to force me to pay for them to send me ads. I pay for my bandwidth, and every e-mail I get has a real cost. It's like sending you a postage due letter (that for some reason you have NO choice but to pay for) to tell you my opinions. Is that fair? No. So this is a seperate issue from freedom of speech - they can talk all they want, but they have no right to FORCE me to pay for them talking to me.
2 - Music is just bits, and should not afforded any protection, yet again, source code is a constitutional right.
A) I think most people around here would be happy to apply the same rules rules across both. 1. Allow copying of both music and source code. 2. Allow the author of both music and source code to express themselves freely.
You are comparing apples and oranges in both cases.
So I work 40 hours in my studio and end up with a song on DAT. I offer to sell the rights for $100. If someone came along and took it from me without paying, that would be "liberating the information that wants to be free"?
This is not the distinction that make it hard for people to view copying as theft. So what is happening here? In a normal case, you work for 40 hours, make a table or a song, and sell it for $100. In the end you have $100, and the consumer has a table.
So what happened in your first case? You spend 40 hours working on the table, and plan to sell it for $100. Person B comes and steals the table. In the end you have nothing, and he has the table, and your consumer has nothing as well.
In the second case, You spend 40 hours working on the song, and plan to sell it for $100. Person B comes and steals the tape. In the end you have nothing, and he has the tape, and your consumer has nothing as well. The case that fits with this model follows: You spend 40 hours working on a song. Person B comes and copies the tape. You sell the tape to the consumer for $100. In the end you have $100, Person B has a copy of the tape, and the consumer has the tape.
Where is the stealing in this case? who lost something? The consumer gets his goods, the supplier makes his money, and person B has a copy. So at most, what you have lost is the percentage chance that Person B WOULD have paid for a copy of the tape. Copyright industry will always state that the amount taken is $100, but if person B was never willing to buy the material (0% chance of buying it) then the supplier loses nothing.
The difference comes in when you look how the intellectual economy works - If you make a table, you can only sell it to one person. Period. End of story. If you make a song, you can sell that one song to everyone - so making a copy won't affect my revenue stream (in real world terms), but stealing a table will.
Of course - It should be clear that all the large problems in modern society are caused by the atheists.
Seriously - why to we need dogma for morality? I consider myself a decently moral person - and I hold to no faith whatsoever. Morality can be found just by looking at what is positive & negative human interaction. Many people have proposed what can be considered very high minded morality - and do not need a god to back it up. Two examples are the humanist movement (Human interaction that causes negative repercussions is probably bad, actions that make people's lives (and perhaps the world as a whole) better are porbably good.), and the writings of Ayn Rand (basically - don't steal - murder is stealing a body, fraud is stealing, etc...)
But I honestly resent the implication that the reason society is becoming more impersonal, and life is being devalued - is that soceity is increasingly filled with godless masses..... Ya know.....Atheists can be moral too.....
Sorry - I hit submit like a dumbass - I guess I need mroe sleep. Ok - the points in the other letter
and yes - I did respond, I just misintreped it, but all that is in the first message.
ok - Legacy systems:
Yes, trust me - I know - porting a lagacy system to the web is a pain in the ass, but it sure would be easier if I could make libraries (which I can do with PHP among others) I like cold fusion, but when you are doing this type of stuff (and no - we can't use pipes, this is IBM mainframe w/ cobol or AS/400 w/ RPG)
Custom tags, and my fixation:
custom tags (or just using CFINCLUDE - which is just wrong) are the only way I have found to make functions that I can call arbitrarily in code (even if that code is all in the same directory) Mayhap I am just missing something, but I can't find any reference to any other method of making a reusable component (and we have alot of them - about 200 - I said the exact amount in an earlier post) If you have another method that invalidates my whole argument, PLEASE tell me, because I REALLY want to know. I an not being snyde, it would really change the way we do what we do.
The reason I think that doing Custom Tags is valid, where as including is not - is it is very unclear lookin at your example what the interface to those 'functions' is. However, with custom tags, when you call the tag, it is VERY clear with the interface is for example:
with this it is very clear what parameters need to be sent to the function. And actually, for single functions this is REALLY nice, but the problems with it are twofold:
1. I don't think this was the intention of Custom Tags, so it's not in any documentation (in fact, I find that lots of CF developers don't even know you can make Custom Tags at all. On top of that, because it's not really widly used, even if you have a tag that accomplishes what you want, you have to brow beat developers to use the functions, instead of just writing the functionality again & again in each page.
2. you can only have one function per file, so making a library is impossible.
So - I hope this addresses your code example - the tags are better IMHO because at least they have a clear interface of future coders to use.
Skip to IS Depts:
Yes, to a certain degree you are right, it is a problem with the IS depts, but the tool does make the problem worse by not defining a clear defined way to make functions
and no - of course they are not code cranking automatons, and frankly I'm not even sure what your point is here...
Applications:
First off - well EXCUSE ME - what the hell do a few mistakes in a quickly written note have to do with my arguement? Yes, my spelling sucks,and normally I will just copy this stuff from something that has a spell check, but I have already devoted more time that I should.....
as far as the application conundrum, I think I aleady addressed what I meant when I talked about our apps.
and My distinction on legacy systems is this:
it interfaces wonderfully, however recreating the functionality of that system is what is more of a problem. subtle, but BIG difference.
as far as your closing comments, ignoring the rude ad hominen (I know - mispelled) I hope now you see the scope of the projects I am talking about - and when dealing with a 10,000 line application, you are right, your method (or ours) is maintainable, but when dealing with 100,000 lines, the story starts to change. Why? Because doing 'tricks' or 'hacks' to create something like functions becomes harder to maintain.
Alright - this is getting somewhat complex on two threads, so I will respond here:
From this post:
IIS:
I did say that this was in my experience, and the customers where this has held true are ABB (Vetco Gray & one other operating unit), GM (except we finally got them off of NT/IIS to Apache), and all of the companies we are talking to about useing our systems work have thus far at least initially wanted NT/IIS. I attribute this to the fact that most of the companies we are working with are manufacturing/Engineering companies, who don't have much in the way of computer experience, or are learning, or perhaps for another reason that I have jsut missed. These comapnies have just as much right to participate in e-comm type of things, but most of their computer experience has panned out to be with mainframes, and recently adding NT to modenize (some have UNIX, some do not). So I admint that my employer's market taints my point of view, and because of that, your milage may vary.
Response to me not denying it:
Yes, but I do feel that for making a database backed web site (which I still maintain is different from a web application - more on that later) the previously mentioned modularity issues do not plague the system as much, because it is easy to tear out sections if you don't have a very deep site. most websites are written without much reuse (Again, this is PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, if you find it is different in California, that is wonderful, that doesn't change that I have to deal with customers who don't), and so that web site can be greatly enhanced with CF, because CF doesn't encourage much code reuse (It's possible, but I still argue that it is not encouraged by the environment - we may just have to disagree) And no - I never said it's IMPOSSIBLE, I said it is not encouraged, and the path to do so is obfuscated - look through some of ben forta's books - I have yet to find any refrence in them as to how to make a reusable function - perhaps I am missing something, but the one we found was custom tags (which is why i harp on them)
Your Code:
ok - I missed the point, but I'll address the application thing here - yes, at a technical level these are ALL applications, hell, even some purely HTML websites could be referred to as applications. However the customers we deal with (and it's my impression that with REALLY large companies this is more the rule then the exception) have huge (Million + lines of COBOL or RPG or something else that's nasty (Personal op)) systems that basically run the company - these systems are things like the ERP system, and the PDM system (Those are not buzzwords, they are just the names of the type of system) These customers are getting sick of the sometimes 30+ years that they have been using terminals on these systems, on top of that, they REALLY want to tie their data together from different systems (in our case mostly ERP & PDM (PDM systems are for engineering revision control)). Now- we need some way o make this avlaible on the web, and to have the web system take over some of the business rules from the legacy systems. For this we have used coldfusion - and it has performed well, but there is a constant struggle to keep people from just coding stuff instead of making a custom tag that can be generalized (as I said, that was the way WE found to make functions, perhaps you have a differnt one, and if so - I want to hear it (Other then usng CFINCLUDE - cause that is even worse.)) We need this generalization, cause we are dealing with (hold on...wc *.cfm) 126487 lines of cold fusion - this may sound like overkill, but it removes at least twice that in cobol & rpg code, AND it provides new functionality - but when you are writing an application of this girth, you MUST write libraries & such - even if the functions are only called in one place - because I can't count the times I have used a tag in new code - even though when initially writing it - it seemed to be something that might be pretty specific. Perhaps I am wrong, mayber most CF programs are this size, but i seriously doubt it. So after breaking 100,000 lines, the people on the projet have started REALLY lamenting that you cannot create cold fusion libraries - and yes - we are mostly coding this in CFML, because there are people who we HAVE to let code on it who would NEVER be able to touch C code - so we have to keep the environment as easy as possible.
Yes, it's just a scripting language, and a useful one at that, but when a project gets to this size, Cold Fusion can be a pain in the ass for making the code maintainable (I feel we have done it - I think it's good code, but I also feel like we had to fight CF every step of the way to have good results like that....)
ok - on to your other message - I may skip points that I feel have been addressed above - if you feel I missed something, I apologize - just call me on it.
Correct, as a matter of a fact, the computer I type this from is Win NT/Apache/CF 4.5. However, I have found thus far, that if an IS department requires that you run the web server on Win32, they will invariably requite that you use IIS. This is my personal experience tainting this, but so far I have yet to find a counter example. So from the enterprise point of view, if CF is run on Windows, it runs on IIS.
Right, so, after all of that I guess my point is just that ColdFusion is a useful product and can save a LOT of time when it's used as it was intended to be used (it does require a different approach than traditional procedural or object-oriented programming demands)
And I don't deny that. What you refered to was as far as I could tell basically a database backed website. And I am perfectly happy saying that ColdFusion may well be the best environment in which to solve that problem on the market. However, the area I am dealing with, where I find ColdFusion falls down is creating full fledged business applications - the type of web business applications that a person might be doing their entire job in.
Devon Jones
Yep, they are not the type of application I am reffering to.
Their system is a sales system, where CF shines, but if you want to take an existing application, (such as a legacy system) and supply all of it's functionality on the web, cold fusion is not a good language for that. Reason? Because it is counter intuative as to how you make functions (Custom Tags).
If the language obfuscates how you functionally decompose the problem, most people who are workign on it won't do it. Why? Because the reality is that most people who program are sittign in IS departments, and because of the way it is managed they don't try to do things right, but instead try to do them as fast as possible. Because of this, they will not investigate how to make functions in Cold Fusion - because frankly it is not immediatly clear as to what you have to do.
Back the the subject at hand - Yes, Toys-R-Us has an e-commerce web site, but I would aregue (unless there are vast parts that are unseen) that it is not truely an application - The area I am talking is b2b (business to business) ecommerce applications, where you have to create business rules based upon the processes of a business, interface with all of their legacy systems, and do it an a clearly maintainable way. Cold Fusion does the first one ok, the second one wonderfully, and falls down on the third.
I'm not saying it's a junk platform, but I don't think it is suited for creating full fledged e-commerce applications. And yes it can talk to corba, com & Active X, (it's connectivity is better on win32, which sucks, because frankly servers should NEVER be IIS.....) but even if you want to create something complicated it's function model blows.... (back to the Tags thing....)
The problem you get there is if you are trying not to create a DB backed web site, but instead a real web application.
The company I work for has created a program in ColdFusion to allow certain unnamed companies to exchange Purchase Orders, Quotes, and get back end access to part inventory & part information (including drawings & models), and for that, you need functions, or you have a terribly unmaintainable code base - our app has over 166 seperate 'custom tags' because when you design a web application instead of a web page, you need to start worrying about functional decomposition, coupling, code reuse, et al. And for this, ColdFusion can be really annoying. Espaically since it has SUCH a web page metaphore embedded in it, it's REALLY hard to get team members to call functions instead of just rewriting everything on each page.
ColdFusion I have finally determined is NOT a tool that should be used for business processes, complex issues, or really anything that is covered under the idea of an 'Application', instead of just making a database avalible on the web.
just my 2c
I wholeheartedly agree, coldfusion is far easier, but I find that it has serious maintainability issues.
Sure, you can make 'functions' by creating custom tags, but I find that most people who just pick up ColdFusion and start coding don't even know that you CAN create custom tags - so as a result, they create no functions, and maintainability quickly can become a nightmare (unless someone who actually KNOWS how to program can direct the other coders, and slap them on the hand when they don't code any damn functions)
just a personal rant about CF...I also wish there was a way to put more then one 'custom tag' in a file, so that I could group my functions, but instead - each and every function needs to be in a seperate file... and that sucks.