[disclaimer: I'm a Sun paid engineer on a Sun sponsored open source project, JXTA]
You musn't have been paying attention if you haven't seen Sun's contributions to open systems.
See Sun Open Source for info on quite a number of non-dead open source projects either initiated or sponsored by Sun. Many are significant efforts like OpenOffice, Sun Grid Engine, the Gnome contributions, JXTA, etc.
In addition to the dozen or so on that page you can add NFSv4, ChorusOS, and others to the list of Sun involved open source projects.
This decision ensures that organized crime and others who pirate for profit will continue to have a niche.
After all, consumers will have no direct ability to share content, even when they have a legal right to do so. They will have to go the marketplace to get the content they desire. In most cases consumers unintentionally patronize pirates whether it be for knock-off Microsoft products or for mod chips and duped CDs. They simply aren't aware they not using legitimate products. High quality knock-offs are going to be easy to create given the digital content and lack of encryption.
Scene in a fleamarket in 2009:
child: Wow mom! It's a DVD of Treehouse of Horror XX! I haven't seen that yet! Can we get it!?! Can we get it!?!
mom: Hmmm.. $5? That's pretty cheap... sure.
I am sure there people in <insert usual suspect countries> rubbing their hands with glee. Thanks FCC, you just created a market for them.
Every time I go back to Canada I am stunned at the difference in quality between the US Discovery Channel and the Canadian edition. While the US version seems to focus on UFOs, John Edwards, Junkyard wars and other hocus pocus, the Canadian version has real content, interviews and articles about real science.
In particular the US version has NOTHING like the Daily Planet program. I don't know why it is that the Canadian version of Discovery Channel is SOOOOO much better.
It's depressing that there is no market incentive to produce a real science channel. With the Discovery channel and affiliates as part of basic cable and covering (squatting on actually) the "science beat" there is little hope that we will see competition.
PCI-X may be great (it seems to be), but I am worried that we are going to see years and years of machines with both old PCI slots (both 32 bit and 64 bit), AGP slots AND PCI-X.
My current motherboard (EPoX 8K3A+) is the first motherboard I have owned that does NOT have ISA slots and it STILL has a parallel and 2 serial ports and PS/2 ports. I don't want any of this crap! I wish they had just put it all on a dual header PCI card I could rip out and burn.
I really hope that the motherboard manufacturers make a break from the past with PCI-X. The more legacy junk they include, the slower the adoption rate will be. REALLY !
And there is of course the assumption that if you aren't a freak then you obviously have no credibility. It's amazing to watch people cultivate their excentricity in a futile attempt to translate it into coolness. Posers are part of every culture, even the mass media mono-culture, and they are uniformly boring.
I wish people could just be OK with who they actually are.
There is not governmental obligation that laws be made to ensure that telemarketting/junk mailing/spaming remain a viable business.
While I probably agree that it would be wrong to make telemarketting/junk mailing/spaming illegal, I do support every effort to remove their ability to contact me.
The easier it is for me to opt out, the better. Heck, I would prefer to see an opt in system that I could happily ignore and never hear from these bottom feeders again.
Benford's endings are horrible. Often it seems that things are moving along with the plot and then suddenly the writer hit a deadline so wrote 5 more pages to conclude the book.
In one case, after 3 books of a series he introduced a tie-in to his other series in the last 2 pages.
But then again, a good book with a bad ending is better than a bad book any day.
I agree that it should be 6 PCI slots, but beyond that, Abit should sell an addon $20 PCI card for the knuckle draggers that includes the PS/2 ports, a parallel and a 9 pin serial port.
I don't want or need all those extra ports. Ethernet, USB, FireWire is already 2 too many it seems. Have you looked at a Sony VAIO laptop lately? Sheesh! Its got so many fricking ports, I'd bet most owners can't even tell you what they are all for.
The GPL is just creative use of copyright law to create a regime not too dissimilar to the patent system so strongly opposed by the FSF. Difference being that the patent system is designed to protect patent holders profits and the GPL system ensures that there are no profits. Both stink if you ask me.
The BSD license is the real freedom. If Micro$oft or anyone else uses BSD code and doesn't add any real value in their commercial product, well then others are free to undercut them. The less value they add, the easier it should be for others to do so. BSD licenses are "the rising tide that raises all boats".
Re:Sun does not respect nor fully support Linux
on
Sun Launches JXTA
·
· Score: 1
I am not sure what any of this has to do with JXTA? JXTA is not tied to any OS or Language and is released under a very broad Apache license.
I'm not sure what relation you are trying to make between JXTA and Linux. You might as well be commenting that "Who cares if General Electric makes good lightbulbs, their jet engines suck.".
Lest you think that Sun has a Microsoft fixation, the reality check column on Sun's home page has applied the same microscope to SGI, HP, EMC and others in the past. There is an archive of past columns at :
http://www.sun.com/dot-com/realitycheck/archive. html
As you can see, Microsoft is the target only slightly more frequently than SGI or HP.
I am currently working in the US on H1B visa and have been for 4 years with two different companies. When I moved to the valley from abroad my starting salary was probably $25K under what it should have been. Most of this was my own ignorance and what I was willing to accept. Yes, the employer took advantage of me, but it was not something they could expect to last. I was only here a few weeks before I clued in and let my boss know I knew I was being underpaid. I saw 30%+ increases each year until my salary was more market equitable.
When I applied at my second employer there was no question that I would be paid "going rate". I believe I am now paid the same as a American worker would be paid. Talking to many other H1-B workers I have found that most are paid going rate in their current jobs, though some have had to change jobs to get fair pay.
I think the whole issue of "cheap foreign labour" in the H1-B debate is a red herring. There really is high demand, employees very quickly after arriving learn what the going rate is for their skills and employers want to retain them -- net result, most H1-B workers are paid market rates.
The real bottom line is that silicon valley is, in part, successful because it is a concentration of skills and a "brain drain" on the entire world. Should the US government not support this and limit its growth by limiting the number of workers, those people will be working in places other than silicon valley. Eventually silicon valley won't matter as much.
I had to respond, this knuckle dragger doesn't deserve such a high score.
I think you really don't have enough context or understanding of the ADA to be as critical of it as you are. As is usually the case, you also appear to confuse the provisions of ADA with the entitlements of SSI. For the most part, ADA doesn't cost anyone anything. Damages awarded in civil suits against those who fail to comply cannot be considered a spending provision.
Fundamentally, the premise behind this law is that if each and every person can't have something, nobody should have it.
There is simply nothing in the legislation which offers this opinion. If you are implying that the Muni PDF case does, you are wrong. The problem there is that Muni was unwilling to provide the PDF documents in any other format. Had a text only format had been available there would be no court case. period. No one asked them to get rid of PDF.
There are many other examples of this type of bonehead intransigence by government/ semi-government/ big companies who serve the public. You say that this type of law is another example of big brother, I say the opposite: it enables people to fight big brother. Do you imagine that these byzantine bureaucratic agencies would change their policies without the law suits?
With few exceptions nobody but lawyers makes any money from the lawsuits, but that rarely is the point for the people pursuing them. The Muni elevator's lawsuit settled last year resulted in a settlement of approx. $14000 for each of the complainants. For the two and half years of work they put into the suit, that's peanuts -- even for the supposed welfare bums you imply most of the disabled are.
BTW, curb cuts were not invented as part of the ADA legislation -- guess what -- it took a lawsuit. Before the lawsuit had even reached trial it had become standard practice for city engineers all over, not just in the US to specify them in construction projects. As is obvious to anyone, they don't cost more, but why was it that they had not been implemented earlier? It took a little fear to spur the actions of the otherwise good thinking city engineers.
The disabled advocates demand that (often hurling vicious insults that would never be tolerated from anyone else at government officials who won't do what they demand. I know, I've sat through public meeting on this)
That's some people. I don't like the way that some open source advocates behave either. What you said would been immediately unacceptable to most people if you had used the word "black" or "Jew" or "Gay" instead of "disabled". Stereotyping the disabled as a bunch of whining freeloaders is offensive to me.
Don't get me wrong, for those people who are truly disabled...charity and kindness...
If you are not happy with the criteria by which disability is defined then work to change it. (I also think it is too broad and this dilutes people's respect for the measures which are meant to provide equality). Most of the disabled don't want your charity. (Many who would want it probably would still want it if they weren't disabled--it has nothing to do with being disabled). Next time you are at one of those public meetings, offer $50 to the loudest disabled advocate. Get back to me if you survive.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/
and your wish shall be granted...
The Memory Hole has lots of goodies. The following was of particular personal interest:
DOJ Attorney Diversity
[disclaimer: I'm a Sun paid engineer on a Sun sponsored open source project, JXTA]
You musn't have been paying attention if you haven't seen Sun's contributions to open systems.
See Sun Open Source for info on quite a number of non-dead open source projects either initiated or sponsored by Sun. Many are significant efforts like OpenOffice, Sun Grid Engine, the Gnome contributions, JXTA, etc.
In addition to the dozen or so on that page you can add NFSv4, ChorusOS, and others to the list of Sun involved open source projects.
http://www.alvabraille.com/mpo/
After all, consumers will have no direct ability to share content, even when they have a legal right to do so. They will have to go the marketplace to get the content they desire. In most cases consumers unintentionally patronize pirates whether it be for knock-off Microsoft products or for mod chips and duped CDs. They simply aren't aware they not using legitimate products. High quality knock-offs are going to be easy to create given the digital content and lack of encryption.
Scene in a fleamarket in 2009 :
child: Wow mom! It's a DVD of Treehouse of Horror XX! I haven't seen that yet! Can we get it!?! Can we get it!?!
mom: Hmmm.. $5? That's pretty cheap... sure.
I am sure there people in <insert usual suspect countries> rubbing their hands with glee. Thanks FCC, you just created a market for them.
Every time I go back to Canada I am stunned at the difference in quality between the US Discovery Channel and the Canadian edition. While the US version seems to focus on UFOs, John Edwards, Junkyard wars and other hocus pocus, the Canadian version has real content, interviews and articles about real science.
:
In particular the US version has NOTHING like the Daily Planet program. I don't know why it is that the Canadian version of Discovery Channel is SOOOOO much better.
It's depressing that there is no market incentive to produce a real science channel. With the Discovery channel and affiliates as part of basic cable and covering (squatting on actually) the "science beat" there is little hope that we will see competition.
compare
Discovery Channel (USA)
Discovery Channel (Canada)
...yar
Appears to have been long since resolved. See:
discuss@openoffice.org
My current motherboard (EPoX 8K3A+) is the first motherboard I have owned that does NOT have ISA slots and it STILL has a parallel and 2 serial ports and PS/2 ports. I don't want any of this crap! I wish they had just put it all on a dual header PCI card I could rip out and burn.
I really hope that the motherboard manufacturers make a break from the past with PCI-X. The more legacy junk they include, the slower the adoption rate will be. REALLY !
And there is of course the assumption that if you aren't a freak then you obviously have no credibility. It's amazing to watch people cultivate their excentricity in a futile attempt to translate it into coolness. Posers are part of every culture, even the mass media mono-culture, and they are uniformly boring.
I wish people could just be OK with who they actually are.
There is not governmental obligation that laws be made to ensure that telemarketting/junk mailing/spaming remain a viable business.
While I probably agree that it would be wrong to make telemarketting/junk mailing/spaming illegal, I do support every effort to remove their ability to contact me.
The easier it is for me to opt out, the better. Heck, I would prefer to see an opt in system that I could happily ignore and never hear from these bottom feeders again.
Benford's endings are horrible. Often it seems that things are moving along with the plot and then suddenly the writer hit a deadline so wrote 5 more pages to conclude the book.
In one case, after 3 books of a series he introduced a tie-in to his other series in the last 2 pages.
But then again, a good book with a bad ending is better than a bad book any day.
The auditory version of Doom is called "Shades of Doom" and can be found here:
http://www.gmagames.com/sod.html
There is another company in Boston also developing auditory only FPS games.
I agree that it should be 6 PCI slots, but beyond that, Abit should sell an addon $20 PCI card for the knuckle draggers that includes the PS/2 ports, a parallel and a 9 pin serial port.
I don't want or need all those extra ports. Ethernet, USB, FireWire is already 2 too many it seems. Have you looked at a Sony VAIO laptop lately? Sheesh! Its got so many fricking ports, I'd bet most owners can't even tell you what they are all for.
Useless, redundant mostly obsolete ports == bad.
The GPL is just creative use of copyright law to create a regime not too dissimilar to the patent system so strongly opposed by the FSF. Difference being that the patent system is designed to protect patent holders profits and the GPL system ensures that there are no profits. Both stink if you ask me.
The BSD license is the real freedom. If Micro$oft or anyone else uses BSD code and doesn't add any real value in their commercial product, well then others are free to undercut them. The less value they add, the easier it should be for others to do so. BSD licenses are "the rising tide that raises all boats".
I am not sure what any of this has to do with JXTA? JXTA is not tied to any OS or Language and is released under a very broad Apache license.
I'm not sure what relation you are trying to make between JXTA and Linux. You might as well be commenting that "Who cares if General Electric makes good lightbulbs, their jet engines suck.".
Bondolo
Lest you think that Sun has a Microsoft fixation, the reality check column on Sun's home page has applied the same microscope to SGI, HP, EMC and others in the past. There is an archive of past columns at :
. html
http://www.sun.com/dot-com/realitycheck/archive
As you can see, Microsoft is the target only slightly more frequently than SGI or HP.
I am currently working in the US on H1B visa and have been for 4 years with two different companies. When I moved to the valley from abroad my starting salary was probably $25K under what it should have been. Most of this was my own ignorance and what I was willing to accept. Yes, the employer took advantage of me, but it was not something they could expect to last. I was only here a few weeks before I clued in and let my boss know I knew I was being underpaid. I saw 30%+ increases each year until my salary was more market equitable.
When I applied at my second employer there was no question that I would be paid "going rate". I believe I am now paid the same as a American worker would be paid. Talking to many other H1-B workers I have found that most are paid going rate in their current jobs, though some have had to change jobs to get fair pay.
I think the whole issue of "cheap foreign labour" in the H1-B debate is a red herring. There really is high demand, employees very quickly after arriving learn what the going rate is for their skills and employers want to retain them -- net result, most H1-B workers are paid market rates.
The real bottom line is that silicon valley is, in part, successful because it is a concentration of skills and a "brain drain" on the entire world. Should the US government not support this and limit its growth by limiting the number of workers, those people will be working in places other than silicon valley. Eventually silicon valley won't matter as much.
If I said I was heading North, East, West and South you'd say I was going nowhere, not a direction.
I don't think they have a chance of real success with any of them unless they choose to dump at least two.
I had to respond, this knuckle dragger doesn't deserve such a high score.
I think you really don't have enough context or understanding of the ADA to be as critical of it as you are. As is usually the case, you also appear to confuse the provisions of ADA with the entitlements of SSI. For the most part, ADA doesn't cost anyone anything. Damages awarded in civil suits against those who fail to comply cannot be considered a spending provision.
Fundamentally, the premise behind this law is that if each and every person can't have something, nobody should have it.
There is simply nothing in the legislation which offers this opinion. If you are implying that the Muni PDF case does, you are wrong. The problem there is that Muni was unwilling to provide the PDF documents in any other format. Had a text only format had been available there would be no court case. period. No one asked them to get rid of PDF.
There are many other examples of this type of bonehead intransigence by government/ semi-government/ big companies who serve the public. You say that this type of law is another example of big brother, I say the opposite: it enables people to fight big brother. Do you imagine that these byzantine bureaucratic agencies would change their policies without the law suits?
With few exceptions nobody but lawyers makes any money from the lawsuits, but that rarely is the point for the people pursuing them. The Muni elevator's lawsuit settled last year resulted in a settlement of approx. $14000 for each of the complainants. For the two and half years of work they put into the suit, that's peanuts -- even for the supposed welfare bums you imply most of the disabled are.
BTW, curb cuts were not invented as part of the ADA legislation -- guess what -- it took a lawsuit. Before the lawsuit had even reached trial it had become standard practice for city engineers all over, not just in the US to specify them in construction projects. As is obvious to anyone, they don't cost more, but why was it that they had not been implemented earlier? It took a little fear to spur the actions of the otherwise good thinking city engineers.
The disabled advocates demand that (often hurling vicious insults that would never be tolerated from anyone else at government officials who won't do what they demand. I know, I've sat through public meeting on this)
That's some people. I don't like the way that some open source advocates behave either. What you said would been immediately unacceptable to most people if you had used the word "black" or "Jew" or "Gay" instead of "disabled". Stereotyping the disabled as a bunch of whining freeloaders is offensive to me.
Don't get me wrong, for those people who are truly disabled...charity and kindness...
If you are not happy with the criteria by which disability is defined then work to change it. (I also think it is too broad and this dilutes people's respect for the measures which are meant to provide equality). Most of the disabled don't want your charity. (Many who would want it probably would still want it if they weren't disabled--it has nothing to do with being disabled). Next time you are at one of those public meetings, offer $50 to the loudest disabled advocate. Get back to me if you survive.
BTW, they are coming to get your guns too.
Sounds a little paranoid to me.