Normally, there's one obvious target for the mother repository - e.g. an existing Active Directory service for windows boxen, or an existing LDAP service or something.
So long as you can get at the data in this 'mother service' then, it's usually just a case of replicating the data in places where the other little apps can get at it. This means users will only be able to change their password using the mother service, but will be able to authenticate against any of the read-only daughter services.
So, if one of your legacy PC apps is hardcoded to authenticate against the user table in a database, then you write a nightly batch job that queries the mother serice (lets say it's LDAP), and writes the passwords into the legacy apps user table password column.
Of course, if different apps use different one-way encryption for their passwords, you may be a bit stuck.
You might benefit if the anti-piracy measures worked.
The fact is, piracy is limiting the availability of software for PCs. Business software is fairly safe - large companies will pay for licenses, and small companies / individuals make up a minor revenue stream.
But for 'home user' software, and games in particular it's real issue. It simply isn't true that 'the people who download wouldn't have bought it anyway'. I think PC gaming is basically going extinct. Why release for a platform where most people won't even pay you, when you've got platforms like Xbox and PS2 where there's little or no piracy?
I know people who make shareware tools. It's incredibly depressing to see posts in online forums like this:
"You want to get ACMEfoo! It's the best foo editor I've ever used, way better than Fooedit3 or Foomaker. The unregistered version is fully featured, but the nag gets really annoying, so you may as well download the cracked version, it's on bittorrent".
It's like "Hey! Someone really clever made some really good software that really helps me! But rather than rewarding them by registering it, or mailing them telling them how cool there software is, I'm just going to help my friends download the cracked version! Because that's the cool Free Software attitude that I love! And then I'll probably mail the author asking how to do something or complaining about a missing feature! Neat!"
I dislike subsidising people who download hundreds of megs everyday. I don't want to pay for someone elses pr0n/mp3/vids collection, or to subsidise some kid who plays CS for 4 hours a night while downloading wareZ in the background.
My bandwith use is remarkably consistent. If the price structure results in my monthly bill being 90% or less of what it is now, I'll take it, thanks.
Why? Why? Why not just accept the fact that lots of people who like Linux also like Windows.
"The point is, take half the money you'd spend on Windows XP and get a good console gaming system and run BSD/Linux instead of Windows. You'll have a better gaming system, and a better OS. You won't be as vulnerable to viruses/worms so your eBay and news checking can go on without problem even when your neighbors can't because they paid good money for an OS that encourages others to hijack it!"
1. Half the price of XP does not buy you anything close to a decent console system. 2. If you want to stop worms / viruses get a firewall and some virus software. A rather more moderate and sensible option than getting a whole new OS. 3. There are many, many PC games that aren't (and can't be) available for consoles. Like everything that requires high resolutions, a lot of disk space, a mouse, a... etc.
Look I know lots of people love Linux but it is not and never will be the right OS for all things.
Two of the original X-com developers have created a little game with very similar game-play, primarily to be a turn based network game. It's not nearly as grand in scope as X-com but if you liked the battles, you'll like this:
The wearing out has nothing to do with the analogy. And besides, media players wear out just like any other bit of software, and have to be replaced by the next version.
But anyway, the analogy is that a shoe is of little use without a shoelace, and that it is sensible to sell them bundled together.
Microsoft have a moderately fair point that an OS is of little use without a media player. Now, us techies might not see it that way, but the average user these days expects the ability to view a reasonable range of media formats as a basic operation of any computer.
What? Sure people would. Think of all those trainers (US: sneakers) that have velcro fastenings. Like laces you can't replace. Only better than laces because they don't snap and are easier to fasten.
Fact is, lots of people would happily sacrifice the ability to replace or upgrade a component in return for a cheaper initial solution, or some other benefit. Indeed, that's the entire trend of the last century or so.
It used to be a a shoe could be re-soled or re-heeled four or five times over its lifespan. Now, many companies make shoes that can't be re-soled at all.
It used to be that people bought separate hi-fi components from different places and integrated them with standard jack-plugs and leads. But lots of people are happy to buy all-in-one systems that don't even have a line-in or line-out.
Should we have stopped hi-fi makers from selling CD-players with built in amps and speakers, that make it impossible to replace those built-in components with ones of your own choosing?
Now, I realise that there is still a difference going on - MS is a near-monopoly, while no hi-fi maker can claim to be.
The question, though, is whether if MS only had 40% market share and they still integrated media player to the (effective) exclusion of alternative components, would people still buy their OS? If the answer is 'NO' then MS is abusing their monopoly to do things they could not otherwise do. But if the answer is 'YES' then MS are behaving just as any non-monopolistic corporation would, by modifying their product in a way that satisfies the market.
Now it seems to me that end users don't give a crap about any of this and would be happy to buy an OS that forced the use of it's own media player component or its own TCP/IP component or its own zlib library, to the exclusion of competing equivalents.
So, MS is off the hook....
Unless you say that the end users are not the customers. Instead, you could argue that the real customers are resellers like Tiny and Gateway and Dell, and corporations. Maybe this lot would refuse point blank to buy an OS that prevented you swapping out media player components. But I doubt it. If instead of one dominant OS, there were, say, 4 OSes with about 25% market each, I imagine resellers would simply offer to pre-load PCs with whatever end users asked for, thereby shifting the real market force back to end users.
So, much as I hate to say it, this whole 'integration' thing, be it media player or IE or whatever, is a complete red herring.
There are plenty of sharp practices that MS engages in such as restrictive licensing deals. They really should focus on those and drop this whole bundling argument.
I guess it sucks when those markets start getting a little _too_ free, eh?
I expect you'd like those fines to apply to clothing manufacturers too. It would be too bad if skilled professions like tailor, cobbler, milliner all got commodified and moved offshore wouldn't it? Obviously you're happy to pay three times the price for US made clothing.
And obviously we don't want other countries to know too much. I mean imagine if Finland started to acquire knowledge on how supercomputers work. Or what if Pakistan figured out 3D graphics software? That would be bad for the US.
Yes, let's have lots of trade barriers! That _will_ help the profession.
If two people with the same skills charge different amounts, the one who charges less gets the job.
All you can do is move to a job where you need a skill that you have and they don't.
Unlike everyone else in the (1st) world, I really like the way more and more IT jobs are going offshore. That's because I don't create computer software with my brain, I create it with other people's brains - in other words I'm a manager.
Now I can get my (human) resources for less. Cool!
If I want a Bayesian decision engine written, why would I get Mr Pale Skinned Programmer to do it at three times the cost of Mr Dark Skinned Programmer? I mean, I'm not too fussed about their skin colour, timezone, or mother tongue. I am fussed about their ability to write good software to spec.
But then my Bayesian engine is a highly technical component. It requires someone with fairly good maths who can follow a formal spec in detail.
When I want to attach that engine to the website that my UK based customers use, then I hire someone in the UK. Because that bit of software requires being nearby for physical meetings with end users, it requires being able to write good English, and it requires at least some understanding of, say, the medical decision support systems market.
So, if you want local jobs, specialise in something that non-local people find it hard to get experience of. Move out of the purely technical fields, into areas where an understanding of the social setting is important.
The culture of the early / mid 80's was very much individual focussed. This made it feel possible for a lone teenager to actually write produce sell and get rich from a game. And they did - lots of 8-bit platform games in the UK were complete 1 man efforts. The platform makers (commodire, BBC, Spectrum) didn't have a strangle hold over the software market, and the Sony's and Nintendos weren't in the picture.
Meanwhile in the US it took whole companies to produce games for the NES and other console systems that dominated the games market.
This resulted in a large pool of entrepreneurial UK game talent, and those individuals in the 80's went to to found studios in the 90s but still championing the individuality and freedom that had done them so well in the 80s.
It's tough isn't it? I remember when I was about 13 I started to get bored with my matchbox cars and racetrack. It used to be so much fun putting piles of books under the track so the cars would do little jumps, or seeing how big you could make the loop without the cars just falling onto their backs like little turtles.
Then it just started to get boring. I didn't want to play with my old toys any more. Oddly enough, this didn't cause me a huge friggin existential crisis. I didn't post to some Goddam website to find out if the other 13 year olds were suffering a similar confusing emotional trauma. Instead, I took the 'growing up' route, and simply grew up.
Why don't you try the same? Growing up isn't as hard as many people make out. Here are some key tips:
1. Don't idolise your lifestyle. Don't kid yourself that playing Quake II on the office LAN all night was actually some incredibly cool 'in the zone' moment of one-ness with the God of electronic entertainment. It was just being 24.
2. Realise that new things can be fun. If games no longer thrill you, try books, or maybe taking an art class. Perhaps gardening or cooking will be your new forms of relaxation in the daunting world of 'being older than you are right now'.
3. Don't make such a huge deal about it. That way, all the other people who don't give a shit, frankly, won't be disturbed. In time, you too will stop giving a shit, allowing you to simply do something new and different without worrying.
I too wish that computer games gave me as much fun as they did back when I played X-Com for 12 hours straight, or started dreaming about Baldur's Gate or Syndicate Wars.
But then, I wish getting that playing on the swings could keep me happy for 2 hours. I wish that colouring in a picture of a clown gave me a sense of achievement. I wish that I really did believe my lego men were still involved in a desperate war against my brother's lego men.
But, d00d, it ain't going to last, so stop asking where all the good times went, and find something new and fun to do. I mean, why do you think people end up having children?...
I think it's fine to have wholly evil and wholly good characters. The weakness is that these are usually portrayed unsubtly.
Games that indicate a character is evil by simply making them have some dastardly scheme to nuke the world, or by showing them killing innocent people and laughing, are just being lazy. The same goes for hereos and good characters.
So, in a game like Baldur's Gate II, I think it's fair to say that Minsk is basically a 100% good guy - but he has an interesting character so it works well.
Likewise, in a book like Brighton Rock, the character Pinky is 100% evil. He's evil for no reason ("just born that way"), and yet he's a good character because the nature of his evil is so well explored.
So, I think it's fine to have a world of Good vs Evil (see LoTR, for the most part), but there are many ways for people to be 100% good or 100% bad, not just the usual 'Lone crusader for Justice' 'Evil Genius with Plot' types that we see too often.
I wouldn't worry too much about how they work. Lots of treatments help people every day, without the doctors even knowing how they work! I'd try to find out about any proper clinical trials done - that's the best starting point for evaluating the options. Unfortunately, I've no idea what proper research has been done in this area, but I suggest you start hunting around - I'm sure there'll be info out there on the net.
The key thing is to place little credence in personal testimonies and theories. By theories I mean claims of the type 'Because our device has a foo, it will cause less irritating bar'. Assuming you know nothing about the medicine and technology involved, such claims sound perfectly reasonable, but remember they are actually as useful as claims like 'Because Intel processors run at a higher clock speed, tasks like word processing become easier', or even 'Because we use XML, our software is more intelligent'. To a non computer literate person, such claims sound reasonable.
Personal testimonies are valuable, but remember how different one human is to another. It's very tempting in a sea of uncertain research to latch on to someone saying 'My aunt Maud had a type one device for 3 years, and it caused all sorts of problems - but now she's on a type 2 device it's much better'. That's effectively a single datum, and in the larger picture it doesn't mean much. Of course once you have enough of them, then it means more...
When reading info on the net about this stuff, ALWAYS look for references (citations of journal articles etc) to back up any claims. Be suitable wary of 'expert opinion' - Medical experts as just as biased as computer experts - and think how many of those say things that you think are rubbish!
If you are really serious about this kind of research, the US Govt. provides an excellent resource:
As resident information officer for my little company, I've had both legal advice (in UK) and experience of similar situations.
First off, the paperwork you need to worry about is the stuff between you (3rd party email services provider) and your customer (the company). What the company did or didn't say to the employee isn't really your problem - although it is their problem.
Now, ideally, your contract, or your services schedule would contain something saying just what happens in this situation. If not - now's the time to add it!
I would think that if the company phoned up and said 'sorry to be thick but I've forgotten the password for account xyz can you reset it?' then you'd do that, because handling lost or forgotten passwords is what you as service provider do.
And that, basically is what has happened. Now, it _may be_ that the company actually promised the employee that it wouldn't read their old email once they'd left (a somewhat odd promise anyway). But, that's not your problem. You aren't helping the company break its promise, because you don't know about it's promise.
More importantly it's NOT YOUR PLACE to determine your customer's privacy policies. That's actually quite important because your customers are (under UK law) liable for YOUR decisions regarding privacy. In order to deal with that liability your customers need to know what you will do in a given situation, and simply turning round and saying 'sorry dude I'm not going to tell you that' isn't good enough. A privacy policy that's too strict is just as bad as one that's too loose.
That last sentence may seem odd, but consider this. Your customer is liable under the UK Data Protection Act for any personal information it holds. Now, just before Employee left the company, someone sent a copy of their CV to Employee on the off chance of getting a job. Now, that CV is sensitive personal information, and Company MUST be able to access it and/or remove it if the author of the CV so requests.
So, it's no good them saying 'sorry, we can't delete your CV from our mail server because our ISP won't let us, so I guess it'll just hang around on the hard disk for ages until some guy somewhere with a root password takes a look at it'.
No good at all, you see?
So, my advice is:
1) Don't play 'privacy hero' and decide what your customers can and can't do. 2) Get some data protection rules into your contracts asap. 3) Meanwhile act assuming that the customer is honest and decent - if they aren't it won't be your fault, but if you pre-judge them as evil spying people then it will be your fault
If you get an email selling you a $700 product for $50 and you believe it, you're stupid.
No, that's the previous guy's whole point. You are only stupid if you _know_ that the thing is normally sold for $700 quid.
If I offer you a mid eighteenth century jelly glass with a twisted stem in perfect condition for $400 am I ripping you off? Or is that way to good to be true? Go on, tell me genius...
I agree the figures sound high, but we are in statistics land..
1. People may receive mailings from a company they once did business with, offering them worthwhile products. But if they've forgotten about their original dealings, it will look like UCE.
2. Some (otherwise) reputable companies may get hold of a targetted mailing list and send spam that is actually not for sex aids and scams. I've seen a few 'honest' spams in my time.
3. People like me follow links in spams simply out of curiosity. If I get an unusually novel one, or one displaying new techniques in stealth, I often (carefully) investigate it.
Ah, another day, another XML-based 'standard' from the w3c.
Yeah, we really need a world-wide standard for describing form like interfaces - I mean with the current chaos it's a miracle anyone anyone can build a UI at all. Maybe the w3c would like to consider these additional standards:
Xcolour - an XML based standard for defining colours. Instead of conflicting standards such as RGB, CMYK, Pantone, colours will now be defined according to a really complex XML markup system.
Xconfig - an XML based configuration file standard. The many different types of configuration file used by programs around the world is confusing. All programs should now use configuration files based on this w3c standard. Because we says so and we are the w3c dammit.
Xeverything - an XML based standard for describing everything in the world from fundamental concepts such as 'entity' up through 'thing' and 'person' onto high level items such as 'employee' and '512Mb DIMM'. Yes everything. EVERYTHING. In XML. Uh-uh, really.
Ha ha! Surprise! Fooled you! The last of these is actually not a joke and is being created by the w3c under the name 'semantic web', although Xtowerofbabel, or Xjobsforw3cmembers or Xwelikethesoundofourownvoices would be more sensible names.
"GSM can't seem handle multiple providers gracefully, so many T-Mobile customers started getting "Service Unavailable" the day that AT&T or Cingular put a GSM tower on-air in their area."
GSM handles whole stacks of providers just fine. If T-Mobile screwed up that's their problem. I can access at least 5 GSM providers where I live.
In some senses, for many of us, it's an extension of our bodies and minds,
Dude, quit with the purple prose. Software is not an extension of body or mind. It's some instructions to a CPU. That's very different.
I can type really pretty fast, but the keyboard is not an exension of my body, it's well, a lump of plastic with loads of buttons on.
Software may be a tool like Photoshop, or it may be art in itself, or it may be something really frigging boring like a printer driver.
It's just not special in any way, not matter how much you personally love it.
There is nothing wrong with handing it over to proprietary interests per se. I couldn't care less who writes printer drivers and whether the code is open, I want the frigging printer to work and that requires hardware, firmware, software, mechanics and some guy in the power station making sure the electricity supply is on. Why the hell is the software the ultra-important part of this chain?
"This article presents the ImageMagick suite, a Linux toolkit for sizing..."
WTF has this got to do with Linux? AFAIK IM pre-dates any kind of wide-spread use of Linux. IM compiles on most unixes and is available for mac, win32, vms and more. It has nothing to do with Linux.
That's a very small amount of metadata. Let's say I've got a picture of mountain that has been digitised and sits on my computer. Here's some meta data I want to store against it:
a) I want to store that it's a jpg file. I am Japanese and see no reason why the file type should be indicated by a small dot shape followed by three symbols left over from the roman empire that stand for some words in a language I don't speak. File name extensions are very archaic technology.
b) I want to record when I took the photograph that this picture represents.
c) I want to record that this photograph is going in my family album
d) I want to record that this is an 'outdoor' photograph
e) I want to record that this photograph is of Mount Fuji
f) I want to record that this particular file is the high-resolution version, suitable for output onto my photo-printer.
g) get the point? I could have a lots of symlinks of this file to folders called 'my photos' and 'outdoor photos' and 'photos taken in July' but that would be a stupid ugly hack. I could call my file:
mount_fuji_july-hi_res-outdoor.jpg
but that would be even more stupid.
Now, at this point someone says "well, if you want all that then just buy a content-management application that sits ontop of the OS and lets you catalog all your stuff."
I think MS has realised that pretty much every file _should_ be in a content management system of some kind. They are simply adding a lightweight CMS to the OS, which seems perfectly sensible to me. That way, other applications can make use of the meta-data the CMS holds. The file open dialogue on all windows apps will, instead of a directory browser have the ability to query the CMS for, say 'most recent versions of my hi res outdoor photos' which seems good to me.
I never fail to be baffled at the degree of inertia in the IT world. I sometimes thing every computer person thinks technology should be frozen at whatever point they got tired of learning new stuff. "File name extensions and symbolic links were good enough for me lad!" It's a weird attitude.
Slashdot Mirror
Normally, there's one obvious target for the mother repository - e.g. an existing Active Directory service for windows boxen, or an existing LDAP service or something.
So long as you can get at the data in this 'mother service' then, it's usually just a case of replicating the data in places where the other little apps can get at it. This means users will only be able to change their password using the mother service, but will be able to authenticate against any of the read-only daughter services.
So, if one of your legacy PC apps is hardcoded to authenticate against the user table in a database, then you write a nightly batch job that queries the mother serice (lets say it's LDAP), and writes the passwords into the legacy apps user table password column.
Of course, if different apps use different one-way encryption for their passwords, you may be a bit stuck.
You might benefit if the anti-piracy measures worked.
The fact is, piracy is limiting the availability of software for PCs. Business software is fairly safe - large companies will pay for licenses, and small companies / individuals make up a minor revenue stream.
But for 'home user' software, and games in particular it's real issue. It simply isn't true that 'the people who download wouldn't have bought it anyway'. I think PC gaming is basically going extinct. Why release for a platform where most people won't even pay you, when you've got platforms like Xbox and PS2 where there's little or no piracy?
I know people who make shareware tools. It's incredibly depressing to see posts in online forums like this:
"You want to get ACMEfoo! It's the best foo editor I've ever used, way better than Fooedit3 or Foomaker. The unregistered version is fully featured, but the nag gets really annoying, so you may as well download the cracked version, it's on bittorrent".
It's like "Hey! Someone really clever made some really good software that really helps me! But rather than rewarding them by registering it, or mailing them telling them how cool there software is, I'm just going to help my friends download the cracked version! Because that's the cool Free Software attitude that I love! And then I'll probably mail the author asking how to do something or complaining about a missing feature! Neat!"
Err, because it would be cheaper?
I dislike subsidising people who download hundreds of megs everyday. I don't want to pay for someone elses pr0n/mp3/vids collection, or to subsidise some kid who plays CS for 4 hours a night while downloading wareZ in the background.
My bandwith use is remarkably consistent. If the price structure results in my monthly bill being 90% or less of what it is now, I'll take it, thanks.
Why? Why? Why not just accept the fact that lots of people who like Linux also like Windows.
"The point is, take half the money you'd spend on Windows XP and get a good console gaming system and run BSD/Linux instead of Windows. You'll have a better gaming system, and a better OS. You won't be as vulnerable to viruses/worms so your eBay and news checking can go on without problem even when your neighbors can't because they paid good money for an OS that encourages others to hijack it!"
1. Half the price of XP does not buy you anything close to a decent console system.
2. If you want to stop worms / viruses get a firewall and some virus software. A rather more moderate and sensible option than getting a whole new OS.
3. There are many, many PC games that aren't (and can't be) available for consoles. Like everything that requires high resolutions, a lot of disk space, a mouse, a... etc.
Look I know lots of people love Linux but it is not and never will be the right OS for all things.
Two of the original X-com developers have created a little game with very similar game-play, primarily to be a turn based network game. It's not nearly as grand in scope as X-com but if you liked the battles, you'll like this:
http://www.lasersquadnemesis.com/
The wearing out has nothing to do with the analogy. And besides, media players wear out just like any other bit of software, and have to be replaced by the next version.
But anyway, the analogy is that a shoe is of little use without a shoelace, and that it is sensible to sell them bundled together.
Microsoft have a moderately fair point that an OS is of little use without a media player. Now, us techies might not see it that way, but the average user these days expects the ability to view a reasonable range of media formats as a basic operation of any computer.
What? Sure people would. Think of all those trainers (US: sneakers) that have velcro fastenings. Like laces you can't replace. Only better than laces because they don't snap and are easier to fasten.
Fact is, lots of people would happily sacrifice the ability to replace or upgrade a component in return for a cheaper initial solution, or some other benefit. Indeed, that's the entire trend of the last century or so.
It used to be a a shoe could be re-soled or re-heeled four or five times over its lifespan. Now, many companies make shoes that can't be re-soled at all.
It used to be that people bought separate hi-fi components from different places and integrated them with standard jack-plugs and leads. But lots of people are happy to buy all-in-one systems that don't even have a line-in or line-out.
Should we have stopped hi-fi makers from selling CD-players with built in amps and speakers, that make it impossible to replace those built-in components with ones of your own choosing?
Now, I realise that there is still a difference going on - MS is a near-monopoly, while no hi-fi maker can claim to be.
The question, though, is whether if MS only had 40% market share and they still integrated media player to the (effective) exclusion of alternative components, would people still buy their OS? If the answer is 'NO' then MS is abusing their monopoly to do things they could not otherwise do. But if the answer is 'YES' then MS are behaving just as any non-monopolistic corporation would, by modifying their product in a way that satisfies the market.
Now it seems to me that end users don't give a crap about any of this and would be happy to buy an OS that forced the use of it's own media player component or its own TCP/IP component or its own zlib library, to the exclusion of competing equivalents.
So, MS is off the hook....
Unless you say that the end users are not the customers. Instead, you could argue that the real customers are resellers like Tiny and Gateway and Dell, and corporations. Maybe this lot would refuse point blank to buy an OS that prevented you swapping out media player components. But I doubt it. If instead of one dominant OS, there were, say, 4 OSes with about 25% market each, I imagine resellers would simply offer to pre-load PCs with whatever end users asked for, thereby shifting the real market force back to end users.
So, much as I hate to say it, this whole 'integration' thing, be it media player or IE or whatever, is a complete red herring.
There are plenty of sharp practices that MS engages in such as restrictive licensing deals. They really should focus on those and drop this whole bundling argument.
?!
I guess it sucks when those markets start getting a little _too_ free, eh?
I expect you'd like those fines to apply to clothing manufacturers too. It would be too bad if skilled professions like tailor, cobbler, milliner all got commodified and moved offshore wouldn't it? Obviously you're happy to pay three times the price for US made clothing.
And obviously we don't want other countries to know too much. I mean imagine if Finland started to acquire knowledge on how supercomputers work. Or what if Pakistan figured out 3D graphics software? That would be bad for the US.
Yes, let's have lots of trade barriers! That _will_ help the profession.
If two people with the same skills charge different amounts, the one who charges less gets the job.
:-)
All you can do is move to a job where you need a skill that you have and they don't.
Unlike everyone else in the (1st) world, I really like the way more and more IT jobs are going offshore. That's because I don't create computer software with my brain, I create it with other people's brains - in other words I'm a manager.
Now I can get my (human) resources for less. Cool!
If I want a Bayesian decision engine written, why would I get Mr Pale Skinned Programmer to do it at three times the cost of Mr Dark Skinned Programmer? I mean, I'm not too fussed about their skin colour, timezone, or mother tongue. I am fussed about their ability to write good software to spec.
But then my Bayesian engine is a highly technical component. It requires someone with fairly good maths who can follow a formal spec in detail.
When I want to attach that engine to the website that my UK based customers use, then I hire someone in the UK. Because that bit of software requires being nearby for physical meetings with end users, it requires being able to write good English, and it requires at least some understanding of, say, the medical decision support systems market.
So, if you want local jobs, specialise in something that non-local people find it hard to get experience of. Move out of the purely technical fields, into areas where an understanding of the social setting is important.
Or, become a manager
Err yes,
The culture of the early / mid 80's was very much individual focussed. This made it feel possible for a lone teenager to actually write produce sell and get rich from a game. And they did - lots of 8-bit platform games in the UK were complete 1 man efforts. The platform makers (commodire, BBC, Spectrum) didn't have a strangle hold over the software market, and the Sony's and Nintendos weren't in the picture.
Meanwhile in the US it took whole companies to produce games for the NES and other console systems that dominated the games market.
This resulted in a large pool of entrepreneurial UK game talent, and those individuals in the 80's went to to found studios in the 90s but still championing the individuality and freedom that had done them so well in the 80s.
It's tough isn't it? I remember when I was about 13 I started to get bored with my matchbox cars and racetrack. It used to be so much fun putting piles of books under the track so the cars would do little jumps, or seeing how big you could make the loop without the cars just falling onto their backs like little turtles.
Then it just started to get boring. I didn't want to play with my old toys any more. Oddly enough, this didn't cause me a huge friggin existential crisis. I didn't post to some Goddam website to find out if the other 13 year olds were suffering a similar confusing emotional trauma. Instead, I took the 'growing up' route, and simply grew up.
Why don't you try the same? Growing up isn't as hard as many people make out. Here are some key tips:
1. Don't idolise your lifestyle. Don't kid yourself that playing Quake II on the office LAN all night was actually some incredibly cool 'in the zone' moment of one-ness with the God of electronic entertainment. It was just being 24.
2. Realise that new things can be fun. If games no longer thrill you, try books, or maybe taking an art class. Perhaps gardening or cooking will be your new forms of relaxation in the daunting world of 'being older than you are right now'.
3. Don't make such a huge deal about it. That way, all the other people who don't give a shit, frankly, won't be disturbed. In time, you too will stop giving a shit, allowing you to simply do something new and different without worrying.
I too wish that computer games gave me as much fun as they did back when I played X-Com for 12 hours straight, or started dreaming about Baldur's Gate or Syndicate Wars.
But then, I wish getting that playing on the swings could keep me happy for 2 hours. I wish that colouring in a picture of a clown gave me a sense of achievement. I wish that I really did believe my lego men were still involved in a desperate war against my brother's lego men.
But, d00d, it ain't going to last, so stop asking where all the good times went, and find something new and fun to do. I mean, why do you think people end up having children?...
I think it's fine to have wholly evil and wholly good characters. The weakness is that these are usually portrayed unsubtly.
Games that indicate a character is evil by simply making them have some dastardly scheme to nuke the world, or by showing them killing innocent people and laughing, are just being lazy. The same goes for hereos and good characters.
So, in a game like Baldur's Gate II, I think it's fair to say that Minsk is basically a 100% good guy - but he has an interesting character so it works well.
Likewise, in a book like Brighton Rock, the character Pinky is 100% evil. He's evil for no reason ("just born that way"), and yet he's a good character because the nature of his evil is so well explored.
So, I think it's fine to have a world of Good vs Evil (see LoTR, for the most part), but there are many ways for people to be 100% good or 100% bad, not just the usual 'Lone crusader for Justice' 'Evil Genius with Plot' types that we see too often.
Hi,
n .h tml
I wouldn't worry too much about how they work. Lots of treatments help people every day, without the doctors even knowing how they work! I'd try to find out about any proper clinical trials done - that's the best starting point for evaluating the options. Unfortunately, I've no idea what proper research has been done in this area, but I suggest you start hunting around - I'm sure there'll be info out there on the net.
Here's one starting point:
http://www.geocities.com/cicentral/ci_compariso
The key thing is to place little credence in personal testimonies and theories. By theories I mean claims of the type 'Because our device has a foo, it will cause less irritating bar'. Assuming you know nothing about the medicine and technology involved, such claims sound perfectly reasonable, but remember they are actually as useful as claims like 'Because Intel processors run at a higher clock speed, tasks like word processing become easier', or even 'Because we use XML, our software is more intelligent'. To a non computer literate person, such claims sound reasonable.
Personal testimonies are valuable, but remember how different one human is to another. It's very tempting in a sea of uncertain research to latch on to someone saying 'My aunt Maud had a type one device for 3 years, and it caused all sorts of problems - but now she's on a type 2 device it's much better'. That's effectively a single datum, and in the larger picture it doesn't mean much. Of course once you have enough of them, then it means more...
When reading info on the net about this stuff, ALWAYS look for references (citations of journal articles etc) to back up any claims. Be suitable wary of 'expert opinion' - Medical experts as just as biased as computer experts - and think how many of those say things that you think are rubbish!
If you are really serious about this kind of research, the US Govt. provides an excellent resource:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/
Good luck with your hunt!
Hi,
As resident information officer for my little company, I've had both legal advice (in UK) and experience of similar situations.
First off, the paperwork you need to worry about is the stuff between you (3rd party email services provider) and your customer (the company). What the company did or didn't say to the employee isn't really your problem - although it is their problem.
Now, ideally, your contract, or your services schedule would contain something saying just what happens in this situation. If not - now's the time to add it!
I would think that if the company phoned up and said 'sorry to be thick but I've forgotten the password for account xyz can you reset it?' then you'd do that, because handling lost or forgotten passwords is what you as service provider do.
And that, basically is what has happened. Now, it _may be_ that the company actually promised the employee that it wouldn't read their old email once they'd left (a somewhat odd promise anyway). But, that's not your problem. You aren't helping the company break its promise, because you don't know about it's promise.
More importantly it's NOT YOUR PLACE to determine your customer's privacy policies. That's actually quite important because your customers are (under UK law) liable for YOUR decisions regarding privacy. In order to deal with that liability your customers need to know what you will do in a given situation, and simply turning round and saying 'sorry dude I'm not going to tell you that' isn't good enough. A privacy policy that's too strict is just as bad as one that's too loose.
That last sentence may seem odd, but consider this. Your customer is liable under the UK Data Protection Act for any personal information it holds. Now, just before Employee left the company, someone sent a copy of their CV to Employee on the off chance of getting a job. Now, that CV is sensitive personal information, and Company MUST be able to access it and/or remove it if the author of the CV so requests.
So, it's no good them saying 'sorry, we can't delete your CV from our mail server because our ISP won't let us, so I guess it'll just hang around on the hard disk for ages until some guy somewhere with a root password takes a look at it'.
No good at all, you see?
So, my advice is:
1) Don't play 'privacy hero' and decide what your customers can and can't do.
2) Get some data protection rules into your contracts asap.
3) Meanwhile act assuming that the customer is honest and decent - if they aren't it won't be your fault, but if you pre-judge them as evil spying people then it will be your fault
Err, so someone writes a crappy game and charges $20 for it. So, err, don't buy the game?
Where does stealing his game and paying him nothing, and then slagging him off fit in? Is that the reasoning you're advocating?
And if the game was so crappy why did you bother spending 15 minutes wading through pr0n and warez to get a copy of it?
No, that's the previous guy's whole point. You are only stupid if you _know_ that the thing is normally sold for $700 quid.
If I offer you a mid eighteenth century jelly glass with a twisted stem in perfect condition for $400 am I ripping you off? Or is that way to good to be true? Go on, tell me genius...
That is indeed true.
However, this particluar survey was by a highly reputable non-profit organisation with a long history of well regarded Internet surveys.
And their sample size was large.
The fact that the complete report is available free on the web should indicate something...
I agree the figures sound high, but we are in statistics land..
1. People may receive mailings from a company they once did business with, offering them worthwhile products. But if they've forgotten about their original dealings, it will look like UCE.
2. Some (otherwise) reputable companies may get hold of a targetted mailing list and send spam that is actually not for sex aids and scams. I've seen a few 'honest' spams in my time.
3. People like me follow links in spams simply out of curiosity. If I get an unusually novel one, or one displaying new techniques in stealth, I often (carefully) investigate it.
Ah, another day, another XML-based 'standard' from the w3c.
Yeah, we really need a world-wide standard for describing form like interfaces - I mean with the current chaos it's a miracle anyone anyone can build a UI at all. Maybe the w3c would like to consider these additional standards:
Xcolour - an XML based standard for defining colours. Instead of conflicting standards such as RGB, CMYK, Pantone, colours will now be defined according to a really complex XML markup system.
Xconfig - an XML based configuration file standard. The many different types of configuration file used by programs around the world is confusing. All programs should now use configuration files based on this w3c standard. Because we says so and we are the w3c dammit.
Xeverything - an XML based standard for describing everything in the world from fundamental concepts such as 'entity' up through 'thing' and 'person' onto high level items such as 'employee' and '512Mb DIMM'. Yes everything. EVERYTHING. In XML. Uh-uh, really.
Ha ha! Surprise! Fooled you! The last of these is actually not a joke and is being created by the w3c under the name 'semantic web', although Xtowerofbabel, or Xjobsforw3cmembers or Xwelikethesoundofourownvoices would be more sensible names.
Sigh.
"GSM can't seem handle multiple providers gracefully, so many T-Mobile customers started getting "Service Unavailable" the day that AT&T or Cingular put a GSM tower on-air in their area."
GSM handles whole stacks of providers just fine. If T-Mobile screwed up that's their problem. I can access at least 5 GSM providers where I live.
Small is beautiful
...and the ten lesser points:
All program names 4 chars please
Make each program do one thing
But provide for it to do that thing in 52 different ways.
Build a prototype as soon as possible
And then stop.
Choose portability over efficiency
Remember that you are only interested in porting to other Unix systems.
Store numerical data in flat ASCII files
So much for small being beautiful
Use software leverage to your advantage
Err, whatever.
Use shell scripts to increase leverage and portability
While simultaneously decreasing maintainability!
Avoid captive user interfaces
Preferably by not having any user interfaces.
Make every program a filter
Especially the 'shutdown' command.
Allow the user to tailor the environment:
Sure saves you having to figure out what works.
Make operating system kernels small and lightweight:
But keep them monolithic, Linus!
Use lower case and keep it short
Keep those commands under 5 characters!
Save trees
And don't bother with manuals!
Silence is golden
Don't waste time with error output. Or other human beings.
Think parallel
Yeah, don't chain those commands together with pipes, run them all at once. Oh, hang on...
Look for the 90 percent solution
And then quit your job. Heh, let the next guy finish it.
Worse is better
0 is 1, too.
"Support both Windows and Linux " ...
"The first requirement is because I wanted the results to be applicable to everyone"
My how the definition of everyone has changed. So it's bad luck Mac, Solaris, *BSD, HP-UX, VMS users...
Dude, quit with the purple prose. Software is not an extension of body or mind. It's some instructions to a CPU. That's very different.
I can type really pretty fast, but the keyboard is not an exension of my body, it's well, a lump of plastic with loads of buttons on.
Software may be a tool like Photoshop, or it may be art in itself, or it may be something really frigging boring like a printer driver.
It's just not special in any way, not matter how much you personally love it.
There is nothing wrong with handing it over to proprietary interests per se. I couldn't care less who writes printer drivers and whether the code is open, I want the frigging printer to work and that requires hardware, firmware, software, mechanics and some guy in the power station making sure the electricity supply is on. Why the hell is the software the ultra-important part of this chain?
"This article presents the ImageMagick suite, a Linux toolkit for sizing..."
WTF has this got to do with Linux? AFAIK IM pre-dates any kind of wide-spread use of Linux. IM compiles on most unixes and is available for mac, win32, vms and more. It has nothing to do with Linux.
Sigh.
That's a very small amount of metadata. Let's say I've got a picture of mountain that has been digitised and sits on my computer. Here's some meta data I want to store against it:
a) I want to store that it's a jpg file. I am Japanese and see no reason why the file type should be indicated by a small dot shape followed by three symbols left over from the roman empire that stand for some words in a language I don't speak. File name extensions are very archaic technology.
b) I want to record when I took the photograph that this picture represents.
c) I want to record that this photograph is going in my family album
d) I want to record that this is an 'outdoor' photograph
e) I want to record that this photograph is of Mount Fuji
f) I want to record that this particular file is the high-resolution version, suitable for output onto my photo-printer.
g) get the point? I could have a lots of symlinks of this file to folders called 'my photos' and 'outdoor photos' and 'photos taken in July' but that would be a stupid ugly hack. I could call my file:
mount_fuji_july-hi_res-outdoor.jpg
but that would be even more stupid.
Now, at this point someone says "well, if you want all that then just buy a content-management application that sits ontop of the OS and lets you catalog all your stuff."
I think MS has realised that pretty much every file _should_ be in a content management system of some kind. They are simply adding a lightweight CMS to the OS, which seems perfectly sensible to me. That way, other applications can make use of the meta-data the CMS holds. The file open dialogue on all windows apps will, instead of a directory browser have the ability to query the CMS for, say 'most recent versions of my hi res outdoor photos' which seems good to me.
I never fail to be baffled at the degree of inertia in the IT world. I sometimes thing every computer person thinks technology should be frozen at whatever point they got tired of learning new stuff. "File name extensions and symbolic links were good enough for me lad!" It's a weird attitude.