Please. Show some data indicating that there is any possibility that total gross revenue for digital camera sales, starting since whenever they were invented, are anywhere near $1T.
I think you guys are both right - but the real problem in my experience isn't with remote work, but with having trusted workers. I've had to fire local programmers who were unreliable too. It's just easier to build trust and dedication among a local team. It's also possible to do it remotely but most people don't know how and so they skip it, and wonder why the project keeps falling apart. At least that's been my experience. If I build relationships involving on-going and future work with people remotely, things tend to work out better. That said, I've had nothing but trouble with working with off-shore remote staff, so I prefer to stick with US-based subs, who work in cheaper parts of the country.
You may be closer to the mark than anyone else. There are active conversations going on in DC about how to open up the content and learning systems markets to more competition. And OSS could be one key driver to accomplish that.. Coping with lobbyists is going to be a big challenge, and I'm surprised no one prior to your comment mentions that one reason things are fouled up is the market incentives in education. It's not just "crack parents who don't care" "lazy teachers just pulling a paycheck" and "students who fall asleep from boredom." There are some deeper financial issues at play here and a lot of different parties who may have interest in keeping things rolling in the status quo (aka easy money).
People in the trade call this org "Digital Promise" - just fyi. It's been around for a couple of years - but it just got it's first funding allocation ($500k), which is what is making news.
It's not like they're redirecting massive amounts of funding towards this. The total US K-20 education budget is $1T (bigger than Defense, FYI). It's not all controlled by the Feds of course - it's highly distributed. Even so, it seems reasonable to me that spending small amount of money on "big think" projects to develop answers for the future state of education is wise. You can't fix everything with technology but you ought to be able to improve the state of technology in education at the least, and at best improve overall education by developing totally new ways of using technology in education.
But it might provide some motivated kids and teachers with some new tools and content to get a better education despite the system they're stuck in. For example, if only four kids want to take calculus at (say) Crenshaw in LA, they're screwed b/c you can't set up a calculus class with only four kids, without Jaime Escalante-like dedication from a teacher.
But with online tools, you can potentially let those four kids learn with online programs and remote teacher interaction with less time required from local staff (who might not have the skills and definitely don't have the time to teach a dedicated AP calc class). It doesn't solve the problem for all 2000 kids at a poor high school, but you have to support achievement in order to spread achievement, which is something Mr Escalante proved quite a while ago (he's the real teacher that "Stand and Deliver" movie was based on).
Not to be too pedantic but "trillions?" Really? The US Economy is about $12T/year, Federal budget is about $2T/year. How can digital camera sales make up some measurable percentage of that whole economy? Maybe you can provide some citation on that assertion?
Recording every inch of public space is (and should be) different from policing public space. At least that's how I see it. We want to keep down crime but we also want people to carry on their lives without everything being dissected and analyzed. Public privacy/anonymity may already be a myth but we don't need to help things along by supporting universal surveillance.
I'd love to see a tax on wealth as well as income, and throw away capital gains. Taxing wealth (assets) would encourage assets to be wisely invested to generate returns. It would also prevent rich people from sitting on their money, and it would tax according to your total net worth, rather than how much money you make (rewarding smart investments).
The Atlantic had an argument a while back on taxing only the unimproved value of land, which has merits also, but would be more radical politically.
This may be pedantic, but the US political system is so corrupt as to be amazing. The US government is run by the US political system - the federal employees who work at the government have some problems with corruption but not nearly as bad as in many countries. The interesting thing about the US is that the higher up in the system you go the more corrupt it gets. In many countries (in my experience and also some research I've seen), the corruption is pretty much rife all the up and down the system, from the guys checking passports at the door, to the police, the zoning, courts and politicians.. The US has less corruption in the lower and middle layers, probably due to paying good wages to those employees.
I'd have to agree with you on one point after 7 months in/near the Federal gov't. There is a lot of deadwood - people are very hard to fire from the Federal gov't and I think this is the main problem.
However, consider the reason for this. You don't want a mass purge of people every 4-8 years when a new administration comes in and tries to fire everybody (you know GW would have tried it if his cronies could have gotten away with it).
So you need a good system of accountability. Problem there is that the top management is almost always new - every 4-8 years there is a new crop of managers and they want to make a big impact in their short time on top. So lining up a bunch of useless employees to fire for being useless isn't topping their list.
So you get what we have, a bunch of deadwood lifers who don't do any real work, with a small cadre of lifers who do *everything* and make the gov't work. Plus top leaders who push new spending lines b/c the old spending lines are taken up paying for all the lifers who are too hard to fire.
1) Mozilla has real assets, so is more vulnerable to a lawsuit than little old VLC? 2) Mozilla may be taking a political stance they don't support patented tech?
From VLC's FAQ about this, they seem to indicate that using VLC for some purposes might violate the patent in question. So it's not like VLC has uncovered an OSS loophole - they are just to small to sue.
Some earlier posters suggested that b/c VLC's implemention of h264 was cleanroom, it wouldn't be subject to the original patent. This, I believe, confuses patent and copyright. Cleanroom engineering avoids copyright suits. A patent is about a *method* for solving a problem, not about any specific piece of code. So if VLC accomplishes h264 using methods covered by the patent, it doesn't matter if the code is totally new, it is still in violation of the patent. At least that's how I understand this mess.
Yes - this is a really important point. The article seems to imply that IT as a business is paid by the hour for whatever services are worth, but don't get to take some of the credit for the efficiencies that their solutions enable the business to do. If you account for services that way, you'll definitely end up with an outsourced help desk and world of pain. Your concept is key - IT has to be able to book some of the profits associated with their solutions in order to have their balance sheet make sense to an accountant. Well said.
It's not security through obscurity - it's more like reverse honeypot. WinOS is such a sweet, widely distributed honeypot, that there's very little incentive to invest in cracking Linux to build lucrative botnets etc. Cracking an individual Linux server might yield some criminal benefit, but why bother when botnets are easier and require no/little new code..
Troll. FCC is staffed with a bunch of people from different backgrounds and beliefs - it's a pretty diverse place. FCC leadership varies and some of them from the past might be characterized along the lines you suggest.
For real. I have heard some really scary stories about his behavior (not personal, organizational) from folks inside the FCC. Most of the staff was literally cheering when Genachowski took over. They even wrote some custom xmas carols to celebrate the new leadership - which tells how bad it was before.
I don't believe FCC is obligated to act on complaints - they have to investigate investigate complaints. Whether they take action depends on the circumstances. For example penalizing the network for the wardrobe malfunction was a choice FCC made internally based on an investigation into the facts and their established rules. The investigation was sparked by the complaints. Maybe a pedantic distinction, but there you are..
I seem to remember a back door injection into the Linux codebase a few years back. But that was accomplished not by a contributor (newbie or no) but by exploiting a vulnerability in the hierarchical code repository system, which they changes afterward. So there is at least one example of folks who will go to great lengths to install backdoor vulnerabilities in F/OSS. But unfortunately the example is with the Linux kernel itself which kind of disproves GP's point..
I don't know but here's a theory: if you don't permit disk caching, perhaps the app chooses to cache more stuff in memory. That would speed things up at the cost of a fatter process.
Slashdot Mirror
Please. Show some data indicating that there is any possibility that total gross revenue for digital camera sales, starting since whenever they were invented, are anywhere near $1T.
I think you guys are both right - but the real problem in my experience isn't with remote work, but with having trusted workers. I've had to fire local programmers who were unreliable too. It's just easier to build trust and dedication among a local team. It's also possible to do it remotely but most people don't know how and so they skip it, and wonder why the project keeps falling apart. At least that's been my experience. If I build relationships involving on-going and future work with people remotely, things tend to work out better. That said, I've had nothing but trouble with working with off-shore remote staff, so I prefer to stick with US-based subs, who work in cheaper parts of the country.
Well said - thanks for posting!
You may be closer to the mark than anyone else. There are active conversations going on in DC about how to open up the content and learning systems markets to more competition. And OSS could be one key driver to accomplish that.. Coping with lobbyists is going to be a big challenge, and I'm surprised no one prior to your comment mentions that one reason things are fouled up is the market incentives in education. It's not just "crack parents who don't care" "lazy teachers just pulling a paycheck" and "students who fall asleep from boredom." There are some deeper financial issues at play here and a lot of different parties who may have interest in keeping things rolling in the status quo (aka easy money).
People in the trade call this org "Digital Promise" - just fyi. It's been around for a couple of years - but it just got it's first funding allocation ($500k), which is what is making news.
It's not like they're redirecting massive amounts of funding towards this. The total US K-20 education budget is $1T (bigger than Defense, FYI). It's not all controlled by the Feds of course - it's highly distributed. Even so, it seems reasonable to me that spending small amount of money on "big think" projects to develop answers for the future state of education is wise. You can't fix everything with technology but you ought to be able to improve the state of technology in education at the least, and at best improve overall education by developing totally new ways of using technology in education.
The current research does not support your hypothesis:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8468351.stm
Texting in shorthand actually increases literacy levels and the ability to spell "real words" correctly.
But it might provide some motivated kids and teachers with some new tools and content to get a better education despite the system they're stuck in. For example, if only four kids want to take calculus at (say) Crenshaw in LA, they're screwed b/c you can't set up a calculus class with only four kids, without Jaime Escalante-like dedication from a teacher.
But with online tools, you can potentially let those four kids learn with online programs and remote teacher interaction with less time required from local staff (who might not have the skills and definitely don't have the time to teach a dedicated AP calc class). It doesn't solve the problem for all 2000 kids at a poor high school, but you have to support achievement in order to spread achievement, which is something Mr Escalante proved quite a while ago (he's the real teacher that "Stand and Deliver" movie was based on).
Not to be too pedantic but "trillions?" Really? The US Economy is about $12T/year, Federal budget is about $2T/year. How can digital camera sales make up some measurable percentage of that whole economy? Maybe you can provide some citation on that assertion?
Recording every inch of public space is (and should be) different from policing public space. At least that's how I see it. We want to keep down crime but we also want people to carry on their lives without everything being dissected and analyzed. Public privacy/anonymity may already be a myth but we don't need to help things along by supporting universal surveillance.
I'd love to see a tax on wealth as well as income, and throw away capital gains. Taxing wealth (assets) would encourage assets to be wisely invested to generate returns. It would also prevent rich people from sitting on their money, and it would tax according to your total net worth, rather than how much money you make (rewarding smart investments).
The Atlantic had an argument a while back on taxing only the unimproved value of land, which has merits also, but would be more radical politically.
Wait till you see this year - with SCOTUS taking the door off the cage of corporate political financing.
This may be pedantic, but the US political system is so corrupt as to be amazing. The US government is run by the US political system - the federal employees who work at the government have some problems with corruption but not nearly as bad as in many countries. The interesting thing about the US is that the higher up in the system you go the more corrupt it gets. In many countries (in my experience and also some research I've seen), the corruption is pretty much rife all the up and down the system, from the guys checking passports at the door, to the police, the zoning, courts and politicians.. The US has less corruption in the lower and middle layers, probably due to paying good wages to those employees.
I'd have to agree with you on one point after 7 months in/near the Federal gov't. There is a lot of deadwood - people are very hard to fire from the Federal gov't and I think this is the main problem.
However, consider the reason for this. You don't want a mass purge of people every 4-8 years when a new administration comes in and tries to fire everybody (you know GW would have tried it if his cronies could have gotten away with it).
So you need a good system of accountability. Problem there is that the top management is almost always new - every 4-8 years there is a new crop of managers and they want to make a big impact in their short time on top. So lining up a bunch of useless employees to fire for being useless isn't topping their list.
So you get what we have, a bunch of deadwood lifers who don't do any real work, with a small cadre of lifers who do *everything* and make the gov't work. Plus top leaders who push new spending lines b/c the old spending lines are taken up paying for all the lifers who are too hard to fire.
Welcome to the US Federal gov't..
Credit to Dave Chappell please for that analogy. Though his was comparing woman who dress like hookers to people who dress like cops.
Your post would be better if you named the three you're thinking of. I wonder if they're the same ones I'm thinking of..
I'd guess there are a couple of reasons:
1) Mozilla has real assets, so is more vulnerable to a lawsuit than little old VLC?
2) Mozilla may be taking a political stance they don't support patented tech?
From VLC's FAQ about this, they seem to indicate that using VLC for some purposes might violate the patent in question. So it's not like VLC has uncovered an OSS loophole - they are just to small to sue.
Some earlier posters suggested that b/c VLC's implemention of h264 was cleanroom, it wouldn't be subject to the original patent. This, I believe, confuses patent and copyright. Cleanroom engineering avoids copyright suits. A patent is about a *method* for solving a problem, not about any specific piece of code. So if VLC accomplishes h264 using methods covered by the patent, it doesn't matter if the code is totally new, it is still in violation of the patent. At least that's how I understand this mess.
Yes - this is a really important point. The article seems to imply that IT as a business is paid by the hour for whatever services are worth, but don't get to take some of the credit for the efficiencies that their solutions enable the business to do. If you account for services that way, you'll definitely end up with an outsourced help desk and world of pain. Your concept is key - IT has to be able to book some of the profits associated with their solutions in order to have their balance sheet make sense to an accountant. Well said.
It's not security through obscurity - it's more like reverse honeypot. WinOS is such a sweet, widely distributed honeypot, that there's very little incentive to invest in cracking Linux to build lucrative botnets etc. Cracking an individual Linux server might yield some criminal benefit, but why bother when botnets are easier and require no/little new code..
Troll. FCC is staffed with a bunch of people from different backgrounds and beliefs - it's a pretty diverse place. FCC leadership varies and some of them from the past might be characterized along the lines you suggest.
For real. I have heard some really scary stories about his behavior (not personal, organizational) from folks inside the FCC. Most of the staff was literally cheering when Genachowski took over. They even wrote some custom xmas carols to celebrate the new leadership - which tells how bad it was before.
Your post got modded funny but it's not actually funny, right? It's sad. Making fun of the truth by restating it. Nice one.
I don't believe FCC is obligated to act on complaints - they have to investigate investigate complaints. Whether they take action depends on the circumstances. For example penalizing the network for the wardrobe malfunction was a choice FCC made internally based on an investigation into the facts and their established rules. The investigation was sparked by the complaints. Maybe a pedantic distinction, but there you are..
I seem to remember a back door injection into the Linux codebase a few years back. But that was accomplished not by a contributor (newbie or no) but by exploiting a vulnerability in the hierarchical code repository system, which they changes afterward. So there is at least one example of folks who will go to great lengths to install backdoor vulnerabilities in F/OSS. But unfortunately the example is with the Linux kernel itself which kind of disproves GP's point..
I don't know but here's a theory: if you don't permit disk caching, perhaps the app chooses to cache more stuff in memory. That would speed things up at the cost of a fatter process.