It's like a Star Trek episode where everything can be solved by reversing the polarity of the isolinear chips.
The problem of copyright, of encryption exportation, etc. is created by society because of political interests. One can't just play the technology trump card to eliminate those things. You have to work to understand each side of the argument. It requires communication, learning, debate, and dialogue. It takes time. Lots of time. This is the basis behind law and politics, and is why it lags behind technical progress.
One can reason (using mathematical inquiry or the scientific method) about technology. One cannot reason so easily about emotions, vested interests, traditions, law, history, and politics.
We've been so busy firewalling ourselves from each other that we're not thinking about the ways we can interoperate with each other. Draconian security policies have been a big factor in slowing the progress of the Internet's potential in making business more effective.
If one subscribes to the www.cluetrain.org view that markets are conversations, we need to think of ways to "open things up" while maintaining security. This is a paradox. It's going to be messy.
Which is why HTTP+SOAP is the ultimate messy hack from one perspective, but also a great catalyst for opportunity at the same time.
XML does ship semantics better than other structured formats, unless those formats are self-describing.
The whole point is that intead of having a data stream of
1
2
3
4
we have a described data stream:
Foo: 1
Bar: 2
Lee: 3
Loo: 4
That's more semantics than you'll usually get. The code determines how it's used, but we've decoupled the positional-dependence part of those semantics at least.
Now as for interface evolution, XML gives us the opportunity to tack on parameters without breaking the old interface. That's a big win compared to what we had before.
Besides this, everything we've learned from the COM & CORBA days still applies. One still has to apply engineering principles in evolving our XML messages. I.e. we should segregate our Schemas to have a relatively small surface area, we should keep existing tag structures as "immutable", and we should not impact existing tag structures when adding features. We should also make sure our components support multiple schema versions to allow independent evolution.
As you say, it has a different set of features / restrictions from CORBA/RMI/COM. But I think it progresses the interface evolution aspect of things somewhat. And there's always the political aspect of it: i.e. the industry actually is AGREEING about something for once.. maybe.
It just doesn't facilitate interface evolution and independent component evolution. The maintainance costs of strongly typed network endpoints do not justify the added benefits.
I think we've spent 15 to 20 years trying to retrofit strong typing on RPC They're all WAY too coupled to an object model or a specific language. It's time to move on to dynamic type checking for network components.
Taking away the hype, here's a simple look at: "Why SOAP for RPC?"
The real value comes from XML.
XML as a data representation has 2 major differences between it and the other more popular RPC protocols:
It ships semantics with the data (i.e. it's a semantic data stream)
It does not require static interface for 2 endpoints to communicate.
Let me elaborate:
Traditional RPC protocols require one to know that a method is of the form:
foobar(int a, int b, char[] c)
I.e., you need to know the positions of the parameters, and their types.
With XML, each parameter is defined by a "tag". This allows position independence -- one only has to state the name of the parameter that the piece of data is for. (Insert analogy to Smalltalk method parameters here.)
Traditional RPC protocols also require you to statically bind to an interface (.h file,.java file, IDL file). This means that when an interface changes, you need to recompile. This sucks.
With XML, the interface for an RPC is defined by an XML Schema Definition, which is just a type/structural description of an XML document. No binding. No recompiling. No registry hell due to immutable COM interfaces.
Traditional RPC's were "static first, dynamic second". One could call COM components dynamically through Automation -- but this was an afterthought, and was crufty. Similarily, CORBA had the DII -- but it too was way of "tacking on" dynamic method invocations on top of what was a static model.
XML RPC frees you from having to use a standard object model, or a standard language. You can implement an XML RPC endpoint in ANYTHING you want -- there's no model to bind to. Every call is dynamic.
SOAP's actual value (besides XML) is limited:
It's an envelope for an XML document (which can be used as an RPC call) that says "you should know these schemas in order to understand this message".
It defines a standard type encoding (for arrays, structs, etc)
Can target to specific proxies (actors) application extensions (XML namespaces & schemas)
SOAP runtimes will ease development for particular languages. Runtimes already exist for Java,.NET, and other languages.
HTTP provides the final value-add in that it's ubquitious, firewall-friendly, and clear-text.
Different quality of service needs do exist, so SOAP isn't dependent on HTTP.
The point is that these anti-business arguments often seem to be overly naive and often forget where the majority of wealth really lies. I was offtopic.
Pension funds and mutual funds own major portions of our country's wealth. They are the ones pushing for more profitability. And they are accountable to the "working poor", as you put it.
The "means of production" is owned by the workers through their pension and mutual funds. And yet we still need profit, and we still need management.
copyright is called "practicality" -- you know, the thing that keeps idealism in check?
The founding fathers put the need for copyright in the constitution for this very reason... one needs to give up freedoms for periods of time in order to promote the progress of the arts and sciences.
when the end goal is that *all* software is free software, how does one pay salaries?
The only feasible way is to charge service fees for customized work. The "product" as we know it goes away. This unfortunately puts a tremendous economic burden on those that fund innovation, or those that are early adopters -- since laggards by definition won't have to pay much for the work (since it's available free, as opposed to "not at all, it hasn't been written yet").
So if salaries go down, that means those who program are those who do it for the hobby, for the community, for "scratching the personal itch" -- leading to a supply-driven market. Last I checked, markets were supposed to be demand-driven, not supply-driven. And that means that people's needs aren't being met. All for the sake of "freedom".
People *will* give up freedom to have their needs met.
That's the whole point of a university degree. Learning 'real life' things is what you do on the job, but many time faster and better than someone without a formal education.
Yes. In Theory (ahem). The reality is that most coming out of a computer science degree learned-to-pass -- they didn't learn-to-learn. So they wind up performing rather poorly.
Now there ARE people who "learn to learn" while at school, but these people usually wind up staying in academia. If they don't, they're a great asset to the industry.
But I just see way too much elitism from CS grads who think they're king shit on turd island, yet don't understand how to design a system for time to market, maintainability, usability and performance, and think it is "beneath them" that their team leader is someone without a CS degree.
Spending $1 billion on GPL efforts is not burning $1 billion.
GDP is a balanced equation: expenditures = income.
If government expenditure is used to finance open source development efforts, that money will be included in GDP expenditure measurements. It will be balanced on the income side as wages, profits, and investment interest.
Besides this, one small nit: government expenditure is not monetary policy, it is fiscal policy (i.e. budgeting & taxes -- not interest rates or money supply).
I think the destructive thing about postmodernism is the thought that there IS no truth, or "right" as opposed to wrong -- that everything is culturally relative or subjective.
At a quantum level, that's relevant, but at larger levels it's more difficult to justify. Is the Western tradition "wrong" to assert that one shouldn't kill a living women when the husband dies, which is common in certain cultures? Or how about ciltoridectomy? What about older people having sex with young teenagers?
I think a more relevant argument to our societal problems is that if there IS an objective truth, we're never destined to know it -- it's the fundamental basis of the human condition. We have the right to choose our actions, without ever knowing what's right or wrong except by historical experimentation -- which is communicated through religion and/or cultural mores. So the whole point of existence is really a journey to converge upon limits of "rightness" as time approaches infinity..
the real problem is finding a fair way of compensating the authors for the initial development cost. That's hard.
well, that's the whole point, isn't it? These arguments about 'abundance' never really address this issue.
making everything knowledge or intellect-based a service basically puts all the economic burden on the early adopters. that makes little sense in the long run because it will reduce the incentive to adopt things early.
Making money off of packaging innovations like Redhat does (i.e. make money off the CD, printed manual and box) isn't a great business model considering the bulk of the value is in the software itself. Linux distributors have to (literally) grow the distribution to astronomical sizes (3+ cd's) to dissuade people from downloading it so they can bring in revenue.
What may be more appropriate is a 'subscription' based model, the approach Napster is looking at, and, ironically , is what MS is trying to do with Office.
Music has a lower product cost than software, so subscriptions may work better for this industry than for software. People who buy software usually like being able to pay an all-in-one price vs. a recurring price (I know I do), so it's back to the drawing board.
The number of talented programmers out there is small. The market allocate resources to them appropriately. Open source does not create zero cost. Opportunity cost is in full effect for developers developing OSS gratis. That's why most full-time open source developers *do* have a cost: a salary, benefits, etc.
Using IP protection is only one means of creating a market. It's doubtful that society will abolish IP rights completely, as I don't think that's what society wants. They do want the current system changed, though.
Usually I try to be fairly open to understanding Microsoft's position on things and even embracing their products and technologies where they are superior or warrented by the business situation.
But this article is really difficult for me to swallow.
If open source gets adopted more, that means that closed source vendors have to work *harder* to make their products superior. That means more innovation. Which is truly what open source is - another form of competition. Linux's real innovation is beyond technology - it is positioning its source code as a service to customers. Which, to some audiences, is a definite competitive advantage.
What Microsoft is really complaining about is that one would no longer get easy profits from "mass produced things" things like, oh, office suites and operating systems. Whoops.
Saying "we can build a better product than Linux" is one thing, Jim. Doing it is another. Currently, Windows 2000 is a better product as a desktop. As a server also, it definitely shines in certain areas. But if Linux DOES ever beat it, isn't that an example of innovation? Competition at it's finest?
Sure, some advocates of open source are 1960's-era anti-corporatists.
That's unfortunate. But I don't think the mainstream will swallow a stupid pill and embrace those ideals. They'll pick and choose the ideals that they can handle (for better or for worse). And it'll take time.
Napster, open source, etc. will probably not mean the end of intellectual property -- but it will probably mean a transformation of it.
Okay, we had quite an argument about SSH vs. OpenSSH just a few days ago, and now we're re-stoking the fire?
Trademark law is there to protect the consumer. Who can honestly deny that OpenSSH has been hurt SSH's business? The only point in contention is that SSH waited to long to enforce the trademark by being NICE -- by emailing the team over the period of a year, several times, at least from my interpretation of the letter in the last Slashdot piece on SSH.
Being NICE is something Slashdotters always seem to want corporations to do. And now it make have cost SSH its trademark. But we don't care, because we're so wrapped up in our own superiority and rights to entitlement that we bite back whenever it's something we disagree with, even if it's a double-standard. This attitude is no less evil than an "evil" (tongue-firmly-in-cheek) corporation.
Because 'digital music recording' means that all PC manufacturers would have to pay royalties to the RIAA. It's legally correct to state that digital music recording isn't the primary use of a PC.
Ok I'll let this one go because it's idiotic and it's a blatant lie
No, it's not. Read the article.
Beyond the rest of it, I disagree with you, and I think you're tremendously off base with your opinions and perception of reality. I think you're tremendously simplifying the situation by saying they should fight over the remains of the carcass, when no carcass exists. Obviously you've written Amazon off, but I think this is a trigger-happy conclusion. Top management has not cashed out. I don't know where you get your ideas from, but they're not of this world.
I think amazon's prospects for turning a profit are above average, considering its recent quarterly results and conservative plans that point to profitability in 2002. Some analysts agree, some don't. But to have as resolute an opinion as yours is tantamount to teenage naivity.
No, it's not resistent to supply/demand. But if you really look at what's out there, there's a big supply of moron programmers, and a trickle of good ones.
It's going to take years, if not a decade, for our CS programs to improve and the graduates to improve. Post-graduate technical programs will also have to proliferate since universities aren't going to teach applied technologies like how to administer Windows NT, Oracle, or how to program an enterprise system with EJB.
tech skills worth more and more every day.
on
The Jungle
·
· Score: 1
The easy times aren't over for those with the skill or talent to prosper. Technical people that coasted will fall -- those with the real skills will continue to prosper.
And please learn some basic economics. We were very close to a labor shortage crisis in just about *every* industry. A slowdown was immensely needed at this point, to bump up the unemployment numbers temporarily. Although no one wants a recession, a few quarters of slow-growth sure beats rocketing inflation.
Actually you're the moron.
on
The Jungle
·
· Score: 1
..If you believe Chomsky's drivel without question. I used to, but I was 16 at the time.
A business is a balance of interests between managers, investors, and employees. Corporations in the old days were often unbalanced, so a union is needed.
In Amazon's case, I don't think the corporation was unbalanced, I think the small minority of employees who wanted to unionize were a contingent of utopiasts who thought they could use a union to make a place "cool" again.
Slashdot Mirror
It's like a Star Trek episode where everything can be solved by reversing the polarity of the isolinear chips.
The problem of copyright, of encryption exportation, etc. is created by society because of political interests. One can't just play the technology trump card to eliminate those things. You have to work to understand each side of the argument. It requires communication, learning, debate, and dialogue. It takes time. Lots of time. This is the basis behind law and politics, and is why it lags behind technical progress.
One can reason (using mathematical inquiry or the scientific method) about technology. One cannot reason so easily about emotions, vested interests, traditions, law, history, and politics.
I see it as a check, or a balance.
We've been so busy firewalling ourselves from each other that we're not thinking about the ways we can interoperate with each other. Draconian security policies have been a big factor in slowing the progress of the Internet's potential in making business more effective.
If one subscribes to the www.cluetrain.org view that markets are conversations, we need to think of ways to "open things up" while maintaining security. This is a paradox. It's going to be messy.
Which is why HTTP+SOAP is the ultimate messy hack from one perspective, but also a great catalyst for opportunity at the same time.
XML does ship semantics better than other structured formats, unless those formats are self-describing.
The whole point is that intead of having a data stream of
1
2
3
4
we have a described data stream:
Foo: 1
Bar: 2
Lee: 3
Loo: 4
That's more semantics than you'll usually get. The code determines how it's used, but we've decoupled the positional-dependence part of those semantics at least.
Now as for interface evolution, XML gives us the opportunity to tack on parameters without breaking the old interface. That's a big win compared to what we had before.
Besides this, everything we've learned from the COM & CORBA days still applies. One still has to apply engineering principles in evolving our XML messages. I.e. we should segregate our Schemas to have a relatively small surface area, we should keep existing tag structures as "immutable", and we should not impact existing tag structures when adding features. We should also make sure our components support multiple schema versions to allow independent evolution.
As you say, it has a different set of features / restrictions from CORBA/RMI/COM. But I think it progresses the interface evolution aspect of things somewhat. And there's always the political aspect of it: i.e. the industry actually is AGREEING about something for once.. maybe.
In reality, SOAP doesn't matter... it's hype. XML messaging in general is what matters.
Regarding its value: DTD Specs are becoming obsolete, and namespaces are more about "scoping" then they are about type-checking or versioning.
SOAP gives you the "mustUnderstand" and "actor" semantics to target specific extensions (schema definitions). It's a marginal benefit.
The type encoding is the other benefit, and it's really just a "first attempt".
.. for distributed, coarse-grained, components.
It just doesn't facilitate interface evolution and independent component evolution. The maintainance costs of strongly typed network endpoints do not justify the added benefits.
I think we've spent 15 to 20 years trying to retrofit strong typing on RPC They're all WAY too coupled to an object model or a specific language. It's time to move on to dynamic type checking for network components.
XML as a data representation has 2 major differences between it and the other more popular RPC protocols:
- It ships semantics with the data (i.e. it's a semantic data stream)
- It does not require static interface for 2 endpoints to communicate.
Let me elaborate:foobar(int a, int b, char[] c)
I.e., you need to know the positions of the parameters, and their types.With XML, each parameter is defined by a "tag". This allows position independence -- one only has to state the name of the parameter that the piece of data is for. (Insert analogy to Smalltalk method parameters here.)
With XML, the interface for an RPC is defined by an XML Schema Definition, which is just a type/structural description of an XML document. No binding. No recompiling. No registry hell due to immutable COM interfaces.
XML RPC frees you from having to use a standard object model, or a standard language. You can implement an XML RPC endpoint in ANYTHING you want -- there's no model to bind to. Every call is dynamic.
The point is that these anti-business arguments often seem to be overly naive and often forget where the majority of wealth really lies. I was offtopic.
Hint: It's not just the rich.
Pension funds and mutual funds own major portions of our country's wealth. They are the ones pushing for more profitability. And they are accountable to the "working poor", as you put it.
The "means of production" is owned by the workers through their pension and mutual funds. And yet we still need profit, and we still need management.
ahh, so you know better than everyone else.
copyright is called "practicality" -- you know, the thing that keeps idealism in check?
The founding fathers put the need for copyright in the constitution for this very reason... one needs to give up freedoms for periods of time in order to promote the progress of the arts and sciences.
"Reaganomics" was supply-side, and arguably a pipe-dream. Clinton wasn't a supply-sider.
The federal reserve's policies have always had their roots in moneterist theories, which in turn have their roots in demand-side macroeconomics.
when the end goal is that *all* software is free software, how does one pay salaries?
The only feasible way is to charge service fees for customized work. The "product" as we know it goes away. This unfortunately puts a tremendous economic burden on those that fund innovation, or those that are early adopters -- since laggards by definition won't have to pay much for the work (since it's available free, as opposed to "not at all, it hasn't been written yet").
So if salaries go down, that means those who program are those who do it for the hobby, for the community, for "scratching the personal itch" -- leading to a supply-driven market. Last I checked, markets were supposed to be demand-driven, not supply-driven. And that means that people's needs aren't being met. All for the sake of "freedom".
People *will* give up freedom to have their needs met.
That's the whole point of a university degree. Learning 'real life' things is what you do on the job, but many time faster and better than someone without a formal education.
Yes. In Theory (ahem). The reality is that most coming out of a computer science degree learned-to-pass -- they didn't learn-to-learn. So they wind up performing rather poorly.
Now there ARE people who "learn to learn" while at school, but these people usually wind up staying in academia. If they don't, they're a great asset to the industry.
But I just see way too much elitism from CS grads who think they're king shit on turd island, yet don't understand how to design a system for time to market, maintainability, usability and performance, and think it is "beneath them" that their team leader is someone without a CS degree.
Spending $1 billion on GPL efforts is not burning $1 billion.
GDP is a balanced equation: expenditures = income.
If government expenditure is used to finance open source development efforts, that money will be included in GDP expenditure measurements. It will be balanced on the income side as wages, profits, and investment interest.
Besides this, one small nit: government expenditure is not monetary policy, it is fiscal policy (i.e. budgeting & taxes -- not interest rates or money supply).
I think the destructive thing about postmodernism is the thought that there IS no truth, or "right" as opposed to wrong -- that everything is culturally relative or subjective.
At a quantum level, that's relevant, but at larger levels it's more difficult to justify. Is the Western tradition "wrong" to assert that one shouldn't kill a living women when the husband dies, which is common in certain cultures? Or how about ciltoridectomy? What about older people having sex with young teenagers?
I think a more relevant argument to our societal problems is that if there IS an objective truth, we're never destined to know it -- it's the fundamental basis of the human condition. We have the right to choose our actions, without ever knowing what's right or wrong except by historical experimentation -- which is communicated through religion and/or cultural mores. So the whole point of existence is really a journey to converge upon limits of "rightness" as time approaches infinity..
Stu
the real problem is finding a fair way of compensating the authors for the initial development cost. That's hard.
well, that's the whole point, isn't it? These arguments about 'abundance' never really address this issue.
making everything knowledge or intellect-based a service basically puts all the economic burden on the early adopters. that makes little sense in the long run because it will reduce the incentive to adopt things early.
Making money off of packaging innovations like Redhat does (i.e. make money off the CD, printed manual and box) isn't a great business model considering the bulk of the value is in the software itself. Linux distributors have to (literally) grow the distribution to astronomical sizes (3+ cd's) to dissuade people from downloading it so they can bring in revenue.
What may be more appropriate is a 'subscription' based model, the approach Napster is looking at, and, ironically , is what MS is trying to do with Office.
Music has a lower product cost than software, so subscriptions may work better for this industry than for software. People who buy software usually like being able to pay an all-in-one price vs. a recurring price (I know I do), so it's back to the drawing board.
A Copyright license effectively will have little to do with a trademark. IANAL. Chances are they're in the right to enforce it.
Whether they waited too long is what I'm interested in hearing from the courts.
The number of talented programmers out there is small. The market allocate resources to them appropriately. Open source does not create zero cost. Opportunity cost is in full effect for developers developing OSS gratis. That's why most full-time open source developers *do* have a cost: a salary, benefits, etc.
Using IP protection is only one means of creating a market. It's doubtful that society will abolish IP rights completely, as I don't think that's what society wants. They do want the current system changed, though.
Usually I try to be fairly open to understanding Microsoft's position on things and even embracing their products and technologies where they are superior or warrented by the business situation.
But this article is really difficult for me to swallow.
If open source gets adopted more, that means that closed source vendors have to work *harder* to make their products superior. That means more innovation. Which is truly what open source is - another form of competition. Linux's real innovation is beyond technology - it is positioning its source code as a service to customers. Which, to some audiences, is a definite competitive advantage.
What Microsoft is really complaining about is that one would no longer get easy profits from "mass produced things" things like, oh, office suites and operating systems. Whoops.
Saying "we can build a better product than Linux" is one thing, Jim. Doing it is another. Currently, Windows 2000 is a better product as a desktop. As a server also, it definitely shines in certain areas. But if Linux DOES ever beat it, isn't that an example of innovation? Competition at it's finest?
Sure, some advocates of open source are 1960's-era anti-corporatists.
That's unfortunate. But I don't think the mainstream will swallow a stupid pill and embrace those ideals. They'll pick and choose the ideals that they can handle (for better or for worse). And it'll take time.
Napster, open source, etc. will probably not mean the end of intellectual property -- but it will probably mean a transformation of it.
as a server os, I'd say there are benefits on both sides, with neither being superior.
Okay, we had quite an argument about SSH vs. OpenSSH just a few days ago, and now we're re-stoking the fire?
Trademark law is there to protect the consumer. Who can honestly deny that OpenSSH has been hurt SSH's business? The only point in contention is that SSH waited to long to enforce the trademark by being NICE -- by emailing the team over the period of a year, several times, at least from my interpretation of the letter in the last Slashdot piece on SSH.
Being NICE is something Slashdotters always seem to want corporations to do. And now it make have cost SSH its trademark. But we don't care, because we're so wrapped up in our own superiority and rights to entitlement that we bite back whenever it's something we disagree with, even if it's a double-standard. This attitude is no less evil than an "evil" (tongue-firmly-in-cheek) corporation.
Let's remember that there's a trademark on LINUX.
Because 'digital music recording' means that all PC manufacturers would have to pay royalties to the RIAA. It's legally correct to state that digital music recording isn't the primary use of a PC.
...
Though this may change
Ok I'll let this one go because it's idiotic and it's a blatant lie
No, it's not. Read the article.
Beyond the rest of it, I disagree with you, and I think you're tremendously off base with your opinions and perception of reality. I think you're tremendously simplifying the situation by saying they should fight over the remains of the carcass, when no carcass exists. Obviously you've written Amazon off, but I think this is a trigger-happy conclusion. Top management has not cashed out. I don't know where you get your ideas from, but they're not of this world.
I think amazon's prospects for turning a profit are above average, considering its recent quarterly results and conservative plans that point to profitability in 2002. Some analysts agree, some don't. But to have as resolute an opinion as yours is tantamount to teenage naivity.
Good day.
No, it's not resistent to supply/demand. But if you really look at what's out there, there's a big supply of moron programmers, and a trickle of good ones.
It's going to take years, if not a decade, for our CS programs to improve and the graduates to improve. Post-graduate technical programs will also have to proliferate since universities aren't going to teach applied technologies like how to administer Windows NT, Oracle, or how to program an enterprise system with EJB.
The easy times aren't over for those with the skill or talent to prosper. Technical people that coasted will fall -- those with the real skills will continue to prosper.
And please learn some basic economics. We were very close to a labor shortage crisis in just about *every* industry. A slowdown was immensely needed at this point, to bump up the unemployment numbers temporarily. Although no one wants a recession, a few quarters of slow-growth sure beats rocketing inflation.
..If you believe Chomsky's drivel without question. I used to, but I was 16 at the time.
A business is a balance of interests between managers, investors, and employees. Corporations in the old days were often unbalanced, so a union is needed.
In Amazon's case, I don't think the corporation was unbalanced, I think the small minority of employees who wanted to unionize were a contingent of utopiasts who thought they could use a union to make a place "cool" again.