In Massachusetts we have a system in place that provides better health care to the poor than anyone in the middle class could ever afford. It is called MassHealth.
But the safety net for the poor wasn't what original poster was complaining about. He was talking about how we are being reamed by a health insurance system that has inflated prices and reduced benefits over the last 30 years and how that system has been propped up and promoted by government regulations which were designed by the insurance companies in order to benefit insurance companies. Those regulations and tax incentives were put in place because of promises made to the public that insurance companies could better manage costs through collective bargaining with hospitals. It is an experiment in a form of collectivizing medicine that has clearly failed, and has clearly failed for reasons that are apparent and the poster rightly points them out. The idea of the insurance companies being able to drive down costs through negotiating "deals" for their customers has been proven false... Hospitals and Doctors simply inflated prices in response to these "negotiations" so they could then give "discounts" to the insurance companies. So hospitals and doctors are being contractually forced to screw over people that don't have good insurance or pay out of pocket, because they can't charge on a sliding scale anymore because it would risk their bread and butter insurance payments. It is a race to the bottom, with greed on the part of hospitals, clinics and doctors competing with the greed of insurance industry.
I am a libertarian and I think that government can play a role in providing a safety net for some basic level of health care. But what it shouldn't be doing, like it is doing in Massachusetts is driving up prices to support the bloated health insurance companies that take 1 out of every 3 health care dollars and put it in their own pockets.
I wouldn't think that to criticize the current "health care system" in the US and criticize the role the government has played in driving up health care prices artificially is to imply that we should have people dying on the streets. There are simply too many people on the take.
Many types of health care are by their nature charitable. Palliative care for instance, there is really no way the free market working purely on supply and demand can control costs when the person has the choice of dying in pain and indignity or giving you whatever you want to make it more bearable. The difference in these cases between thievery and the necessary expense for compassionate care should be something that is regulated by government. It is the definition of a free market that there needs to be a government authority to arbitrate what are fair agreements between people. If you are facing imminent pain or death, then that is the equivalent of having a gun to your head and nobody should be allowed to negotiate for their health care under those conditions. This is especially true under a system where the most effective pain medications are strictly controlled by the government, so that our government requires us to pay for a doctor to simply alleviate our pain with what would be otherwise naturally occurring and readily available substances.
So here is a simple solution: an additional 3% flat income tax for universal basic government managed health care, about the equivalent of what we pay for Medicare now. From this fund simply define a list of things that you can afford to pay for and set the price that hospitals and doctors can charge for those things. Don't use this health care tax to supplement any particular treatment, because this will simply drive up prices. Make it all or nothing. Pay for all the costs of a treatment or drug or not at all (with a small co-pay or rationing simply to prevent abuse). Focus on those things that are life threatening and more easily treatable and don't pay for those things that are life threatening, but too expensive. Yes, let people die when they have
I'm not a "greenie". I can, however, use proper capitalization, grammar, and spelling. Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, pot.
No misunderstand the program. I no misunderstand.
You'd think a Enterprise admin would be okay with just Windows, Linux, Solaris, some BSD, AIX... But no! Now it's OS X too! And "uh I dunno... just restart it" seems to work for all of them.
as they are only as reliable as the network structure you use to access them Which is why you should only use a hosted application architecture for applications that are useless without the network anyway. Many web applications are good examples, what is the point of having your chat or message board application still working locally if you can't communicate with other people? Also, what is the point of having a document repository locally if other people can't collaborate over the network. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have a local copy of your documents and data in order to do the things that you can do locally, such as editing or reviewing the document.
In that way, I think Google docs should provide a better more natural way to keep a local working copy of documents which then syncs with the central service when you are done editing. Probably only possible with a client outside the web browser, perhaps a good open office or ms office plugin would do it.
That is how i work with my Concurrent Versions System (CVS) local working copy with central repository with version information.
So, basically the best rule of thumb of architecture for applications on the network is that it is good to have network accessible services for those requirements that are network dependent, but your applications should allow for the user to still be productive and "gracefully degrade" when the network or central servers go away for a little while.
Unfortunately, what is best for the user doesn't always coincide with what is best for the software provider, who will often want to increase user reliance on the central provider in order to exercise more market control rather than for technical reasons. But there is no way in hell that any business should relinquish in-house control of data that are key to its business. Sure you can primarily host that data elsewhere, but only as long as you can quickly physically recover that data and use it after a disaster. A disaster that could be a fire or a business or other contract failure at that provider.
I worked at a company that hastily grabbed its own hardware from the server collocation provider one weekend, because there was a great fear that the place was going to go bankrupt abruptly and just lock the doors and turn off the power. A serious concern when you have a million dollars worth of equipment and data critical to your business that could go dark during business hours while you have to go seek an emergency order to unlock the doors. Things happen, seemingly strong businesses and business relationships can go bad very quickly and you need to insulate your business from disruptions as much as practical.
It is a simple variation on an old lesson: don't put all your eggs in someone else's basket.
Another way that a critical web based application such as google docs could become enterprise ready, would be for google to distribute it like they do with their Google Search Server, that you can purchase for your enterprise. This, along with a client for syncing documents you need regularly to that repository, would make google docs a better document repository than Oracle's Stellent or other document and content management products, especially combined with their search technology. Combine that with a plugin for open office and ms office and you might have a killer and enterprise worthy app.
Why is it that techs cannot be trained on multiple OSes? They are trained on multiple software packages, so why wouldn't the OS just be treated as software, that is what it is after all. Companies seem to have no problem getting different models of PCs from a few different vendors... it makes sense to diversify your vendors to prevent vendor lockin and to get the best price, so why not do that at the OS level also? I know there is sometimes a short term savings standardizing on hardware and software, familiarity also creates its own type of comfort, but this usually comes at the expense of longer term growth and flexibility... companies can literally grind to a halt when they cut IT to the bone a couple years after a standardization push that was supposed to create bigger savings than it does.
I would think that liability, if any, would be with whomever is actually distributing the public domain software. Being that it is in the public domain, someone could take it and redistribute the software without the disclaimer. But the person distributing could simply have the receiver of the software agree to the disclaimer. I would be skeptical that a liability claim could be made successfully against the original writer of the software even if the person distributing the software failed to include the disclaimer. I think most courts would use the 'you get what you pay for' criteria for determining liability.
I'm just kind of amazed that there is a market for these web based office applications. I mean, if you've got a computer with you....don't you generally have your document processing software with you too? I think that's what google docs got right, they aren't trying to replace a desktop app so much as adding collaboration functionality with versioning to a document repository. Businesses need document repositories and it just makes sense that you would be able to edit some documents web based without having to do a check in or check out. But you also want to be able to take a document with you to edit on the plane or if you just want less lag and a more feature rich application to work through. Google docs is a killer app as a document repository, not a stand alone office suite. But they would need to bundle it with their google appliance so that documents never leave the company's network.
So what is it? Do you want free society, where safety is sometimes an issue, or do you want a police state, where you might possibly be safer, but have no rights? Because those are your choices. It is a false choice, I am sure my crime statistics would go down if I could shoot the statistician and get away with it... crime still happens in a police state, otherwise the police and politicians couldn't justify their holding onto power, but the perception of the level of crime is manipulated effectively or crimes are built into the law and perpetrated by the police themselves and those in power and thus covered up even more effectively. At some level of police control information is only released in order to serve the purposes of "the State" in controlling the population. The aim of a police state is usually to derive the greatest tax on a population and not for anything to do with security or well being of the people.
It isn't reasonable to expect that every user of a product should participate in the testing and development of that product. Products that are intended to be used by a broad user base should be stable products and should not require the end user to have to provide input for product development. Clicking "yes, submit error report" is one thing - having to go out of the way to file an error report is another. So long as the open source community continues to respond to complaints by saying, "You should file a bug report!" or "You should develop a patch!" - so long as this sort of thing takes place, Open Source products will lose. It's completely the wrong attitude for developers to have. This development model seems to work pretty well for Microsoft, except that with Microsoft you don't have any other option.
Seriously, bugs or more broadly speaking, flaws, are inherent in any complex human undertaking. The more complex the more likely for flaws. Commercial products have had innumerable bugs since the beginning of the personal computer and more often than not the customer has had to actually call the publisher to get bugs even on the schedule to be addressed in the next release. That's if the company was going to be around or still committed to that product to make a next release. Which is an issue for open source development as well, since projects are born and die everyday, just as they do in the proprietary software development.
I think it is funny that you make the argument about open source being the problem when evolution is being supported by a commercial software company, Novell. The Mozilla and Apache foundations do just fine with open source development and have a broad base who do not regularly contribute or report bugs, and they are putting out high quality, useful and innovative software.
Perhaps if Evolution went under the Mozilla umbrella instead of Novell, then they might have a bit more success.
I myself am no longer so certain that getting everyone to use Linux is what is best for Linux as a whole right now. My main reason for thinking this is seeing how little Ubuntu contributes to the rest of the "open-source community". Maybe I am wrong, in that case I would love to hear why. In the "open-source community", more free riders are a good thing.
Verizon has to prove its case again in court if it wants to go after other VOIP to PSTN providers. They probably use different technology so they would have to prove that it was also infringing. Really I think the case is absurd to begin with. That a computer can map from one directory to another using a common attribute and route information accordingly should be considered obvious, regardless of how big your revenue is. If the US is any less corrupt than Zimbabwe, then eventually this case should be overturned on appeal.
Sunrocket and Packet8 look like promising VOIP providers. I'll be switching to one of these shortly. I never liked the idea of Vonage being the 100 Lb gorilla anyway, they seemed to be a good example of the proverb about keeping 'all your eggs in one basket'. And as The big player in independent PSTN VOIP interoperability they also seemed taylor made for Verizon to come along and kill them off as an example to others, so they could keep their market position.
Also seems that if this Verizon patent is valid and actually being used by anyone who routes calls from IP to PSTN, then Verizon could possibly use this to kill off Comcast and RCN phone services depending on how they have architected their systems. Though they would presumably have some alternative to IP routing since they control their own wires.
All those things might be useful, but there should be a clearer abandonment clause to IP. If you aren't producing products and actually selling them, or using IP in your publications for say a period of 5 years, then you should lose the exclusive right... 'Use it or lose it' should be the law of the land. It actually used to be part of the law for copyright in the US, but it was stripped out in favor of less red tape. But I don't think there needs to be red tape, like there was with registration with Library of Congress, companies should simply keep and make records of their use of IP in their business so when challenged they have to provide records. Sure the law could be little more than a nuisance if it is not written properly, but it should make it clear that the products must be purchased by persons independent of the company or if the IP is in support of a product or service then it must be actively published and distributed (even if not sold) also to persons independent of the company.
Don't worry, they've planned for this. Air cowboys are ready to rassle up those wild airliners and keep them out of harm's way. air traffic controllers = air cowboys?
Since you went through the trouble anyway, could you list out the hardware with the component prices? Because just compared to Dell's Precision Workstation 690 with two quad core's and similar components it seems about the same price or maybe even a bit less. But Dell does offer more configuration options.
I think the "Apple brand premium" arguments are a bit out of date. Apple is much more competitive on price these days now that they are using the same hardware components that are available off the shelf.
...but they hardly own it. For one, they're still missing a killer 3D app. They have all the apps that Windows has, because... now Intel Mac Hardware can run MS Windows and thus MS Windows apps. And Macs can also run x86 Linux, so I am not sure why application availability under Mac OS would even be a question.
I don't know what their customer base looks like, but if they have the hardware that people want, then I don't think the default OS is going to keep people away.
OK.... so how big (in your opinion) does a company have to be before they should be forced to give away their research and Ip to competing companies? How about changing the law so that companies can't withhold technology from the market via a patent. Make them license it and if the company thinks teh licensing cost is too excessive then simply let courts determine if the patent license is excessive. The court in this case determined a 5% surcharge on the service vonage was charging was appropriate, a 5% surcharge is a competitive advantage to Verizon and gives them revenue, seems very appropriate.
Letting little Ma' Bell crush a competitor because they think it is their god given right to provide me with a phone and charge me excessively is just plain wrong.
I ain't going back to Verizon, even if I have to drop home phone service altogether.
Isn't Democracy wonderful? More like Bureaucracy which is to blame for allowing frivolous patents. And you get Bureaucracy regardless of how the government is formed.
They have made a half decent start, but I think what is lacking is a publicly visible way to see the bill and all the bill changes while the proposal is in committee and also a way to track who made what changes. Also I have noticed that thomas seems to cut off after a certain number of lines... not sure if they have fixed that yet.
If anyone is interested in donating their time to put together a system to do what this thread is proposing, free and open source, I've been giving this some thought. It wouldn't necessarily be just applicable to Congress, I think good software would be flexible enough to apply just as well to your local city council or your state legislature as it would be to congress.
I'd prefer to make it java based: struts 2, jpa, spring, hibernate Mysql/Oracle as that is what I have been working with most recently. But if you are a php, python or ruby on rails person, then maybe a few different versions might eventually be worth putting together to give people options.
So, far I would see the system as role based wiki like, with an option to simply upload a text file to overwrite the previous version, each version would have a threaded possibly moderated discussion associated with each change (unlike the current wikipedia free for all "discussion"), with possibly a way to have weighted voting for comments like slashdot and a way to have weighted voting for specific versions of the law. A system that could just as easily scale to be used by a congressional committee internally, or your local city council or opened to the public to solicit feedback.
email me at poreilly@openlaws.org if you are interested in doing a thankless job for no money. well, hopefully not thankless.
That is not to say we shouldn't do something about the dangers we CAN avoid, mitigate, or prepare for, like charcoal grilled food and sunspots. But let's not get too upset about the dangers we can't do anything about. I agree that pushing away a 500 mile across asteroid heading straight for us with just a few days notice isn't practical. But a 250 meter wide asteroid like apophis could certainly be dealt with with our current technology and probably with a price tag that makes it reasonable to have several back up plans. Given that an asteroid of this size would cause regional devastation and kill millions of people, it seems a worthwhile expenditure of money.
Actually, it's win-lose since it's the appearance of openness without actual openness, so MS Office devotes will be able to claim that no change in status quo is required (after all competition exists so there's no vendor lockin) but no-one will trust ODF translations into OOXML since they will look bad. Another side effect is that people will move away from DOC which has better support universally (through years of reverse engineering) in favour of OOXML (which has poorer universal support) since "XML is the future". Not good. Yes, this was my impression also. But since Microsoft is hell bent on pushing OOXML as the next format, then it was likely that OOXML will be a de facto standard for MS Word in about a year or two once a critical mass of Office 07 installations are in the market. Having some compatibility in Open Office for that format is desirable, but if it is a way way conversion then it could very well be a trap. Much better to have the ability to read and write ODF in Microsoft Office, so that people have the option to use ODF in Microsoft Office. To that end the ODF converter for Word attemps to do just that and has just made their initial release. So now you can write.odt files in Open Office or MS Office and people will be able to share them and there is no danger of proprietary lock-in. Hopefully the other file types will follow.
But people need to keep driving home the point that OOXML is not really an open standard. It is simply a open wrapper for proprietary formats.
Really? So often you can not have correct conversion of WMF to SVG. I don't know why but probably WMF (or EMF to be more precise) can do things that SVG cannot. Now, would you do it if you were Microsoft and did this move did broke lots of current documents of your customers because you couldn't keep the figures the same way they are? Would you as a customer buy Office 2007 if you knew that there is a 1% probability that some of your Office 2003 documents could not be read correctly? I think the original point was that OOXML is not an open standards based format. Maybe it makes sense in terms of backwards compatibility for Microsoft to keep it based on its proprietary formats, or maybe it is just laziness on their part, or maybe it is because they are still trying for vendor lock in. Who cares? It is still a proprietary format being sold as an open standard, which is misleading and harmful to new customers. Fine let MS maintain backwards compatibility and continue to use proprietary formats, but they should stop lying about it so that consumers and institutions know they are going to be stuck with Microsoft if they go down that path.
For some classes of products, such as sewers and drinkable water, it may make sense to put your local conniving pocket-lining councilman in charge. But I'm far from convinced that wifi falls under that category. I agree, they should not be in charge. But there is little chance of that. FCC has jurisdiction and they aren't going to let the localities regulate WiFi anytime soon. What local governments can do is to coordinate WiFi coverage and since they often control utility polls, then they are in the best position to place wifi hotspots in key location. As for privacy concerns, well the phone companies have shown that they are pretty willing to hand over all of our phone records to the government without any warrants, so that argument pretty much seems a wash.
You are a Windows user and are happy about it, I get that part. I am a Windows user and a Linux user and I think Linux is better. That is not what is frustrating about what you are saying.
I believe Linux is about as good as its going to get as far as the software goes and I believe is already superior to Microsoft Windows in just about every way. What you say about Linux developers should just copy Windows is already true and I have heard the opposite complaint that it is just a rip off of windows so that it doesn't differentiate itself enough... you can't win either way with that argument unless you want to talk specifics. I'll simply say it again. What Linux lacks it lacks because of lack of support by a major PC maker and because it is starting off with less market share so peripheral makers and software vendors don't always offer equivalent support for Linux. Despite your protests, there isn't much more to it than that.
What is frustrating to me is how you can bash Linux usability when you admittedly don't use it as a desktop OS. You say you have never seen a Linux install go as smoothly as a Windows install, but my experience is the opposite with Windows being the harder install. Seems you are bashing on reputation alone, which perhaps is a problem for Linux as well, but it doesn't help that fallacies are being perpetuated. And it doesn't help that 8 year old perceptions of Linux are unchanged in some people's minds.
If peripheral device support is the major drawback to Linux then how else do you expect it to be addressed except by greater PC manufacturer support? I don't blame the PC user for not getting the correct hardware to run under Linux, I have done that myself (I also used to do that when I had a Mac 10 years ago). But neither should you blame the Linux developers or current Linux users for their attitudes as being the cause of the lack of linux desktop success or barrier to greater Linux adoption. Don't you think we would like devices to just work plug and play like most do under Windows now. But if you expect Linux developers to be able to instantly develop free drivers for every proprietary device when a manufacturer decides to ignore Linux support, then I am suggesting you are putting the blame in the wrong place. Microsoft couldn't do it if they had to, but they don't need to. That's why it is good to be king.
Several small PC makers that have tried to compete by offering preinstalled Linux based PCs at low prices, but have simply not been able to garner enough volume to undercut Dell on price, even without Windows license costs. What i take from that is just that it is very hard to compete with Dell on the low priced end of the PC market. I like Linux better, but if it was a hundred dollar difference, with Linux being more expensive, for the same hardware specs then I would choose the one with Windows and i still have a choice later. Theoretically, eventually with enough volume then Linux should be cheaper than Windows by say $20 or $30. But with Dell selling at such high volume, that price difference wouldn't show up until they started selling millions of units, probably.
So, I go back to the point, Dell is the greatest barrier to greater growth in the Linux PC market and not flaws in the software or some perceived attitude by existing Linux users. HP, Gateway or others could also help Linux market growth, but Dell has control of the low end of the market which, I think with its plentiful quality free software available, Linux really needs to grow there first where it can make the greatest qualitative difference.
Well, you previously went a bit further with you rhetoric than that. But what you are suggesting is precisely what people have been doing all along. There are lots of drivers that have been written for Linux, the pump is already well primed. There are more drivers out there for Linux than there ever were for the MacOS, at least before its renaissance of the last few years.
Linux can do nothing more than it already has done. Sure developers can continue the fine work they have been doing device by device in order to get new hardware working. But it is up to the hardware manufacturers to go the last mile. Whether that be Dell or Gateway or whomever. You simply can't have a refined consumer product if you make the consumer put it together themselves, there is nothing a software developer can do about that.
As for whether a customer should know better... of course they should. Customers are asked to make informed technical decisions all the time... Standard or automatic, PS3 compatible or Xbox360, SD card or USB drive, Mac versus Windows, HDMI or Component video. Certification is certainly a problem for Linux. There is no generic certification trademark for Linux that I know of. Microsoft has done a good job with that, in that if it says Windows98 or Windows2000 compatible, then you have a reasonable expectation it will work on xp. Linux has its certifications, but they are distribution specific and aren't economical when done in such a tedious niche way.
But where I am objecting to your characterization is in that it is somehow a software problem with Linux, when really the software is at this point has better usability than Windows. The problem is simply that Linux lacks the market that Windows does and suffers for it. And unlike Apple which was big enough to carry the essential hardware needs of its users in times of sparse peripheral support, Linux has no equivalent hardware maker backing it in the PC market. Linux is coming to dominate the server market because it does not need as extensive peripheral support. But to gain PC market share, then it needs PC manufacturers to back it. Otherwise developers can continue to eek out small gains here and there, but will probably not make any significant inroads.
In this way Dell provides a stumbling block to Linux. If they truly supported it then it would take off, but that they don't but could choose to support it at any time undercuts the potential for an upstart from investing time and money into filling this growing niche market.
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In Massachusetts we have a system in place that provides better health care to the poor than anyone in the middle class could ever afford. It is called MassHealth.
But the safety net for the poor wasn't what original poster was complaining about. He was talking about how we are being reamed by a health insurance system that has inflated prices and reduced benefits over the last 30 years and how that system has been propped up and promoted by government regulations which were designed by the insurance companies in order to benefit insurance companies. Those regulations and tax incentives were put in place because of promises made to the public that insurance companies could better manage costs through collective bargaining with hospitals. It is an experiment in a form of collectivizing medicine that has clearly failed, and has clearly failed for reasons that are apparent and the poster rightly points them out. The idea of the insurance companies being able to drive down costs through negotiating "deals" for their customers has been proven false... Hospitals and Doctors simply inflated prices in response to these "negotiations" so they could then give "discounts" to the insurance companies. So hospitals and doctors are being contractually forced to screw over people that don't have good insurance or pay out of pocket, because they can't charge on a sliding scale anymore because it would risk their bread and butter insurance payments. It is a race to the bottom, with greed on the part of hospitals, clinics and doctors competing with the greed of insurance industry.
I am a libertarian and I think that government can play a role in providing a safety net for some basic level of health care. But what it shouldn't be doing, like it is doing in Massachusetts is driving up prices to support the bloated health insurance companies that take 1 out of every 3 health care dollars and put it in their own pockets.
I wouldn't think that to criticize the current "health care system" in the US and criticize the role the government has played in driving up health care prices artificially is to imply that we should have people dying on the streets. There are simply too many people on the take.
Many types of health care are by their nature charitable. Palliative care for instance, there is really no way the free market working purely on supply and demand can control costs when the person has the choice of dying in pain and indignity or giving you whatever you want to make it more bearable. The difference in these cases between thievery and the necessary expense for compassionate care should be something that is regulated by government. It is the definition of a free market that there needs to be a government authority to arbitrate what are fair agreements between people. If you are facing imminent pain or death, then that is the equivalent of having a gun to your head and nobody should be allowed to negotiate for their health care under those conditions. This is especially true under a system where the most effective pain medications are strictly controlled by the government, so that our government requires us to pay for a doctor to simply alleviate our pain with what would be otherwise naturally occurring and readily available substances.
So here is a simple solution: an additional 3% flat income tax for universal basic government managed health care, about the equivalent of what we pay for Medicare now. From this fund simply define a list of things that you can afford to pay for and set the price that hospitals and doctors can charge for those things. Don't use this health care tax to supplement any particular treatment, because this will simply drive up prices. Make it all or nothing. Pay for all the costs of a treatment or drug or not at all (with a small co-pay or rationing simply to prevent abuse). Focus on those things that are life threatening and more easily treatable and don't pay for those things that are life threatening, but too expensive. Yes, let people die when they have
In that way, I think Google docs should provide a better more natural way to keep a local working copy of documents which then syncs with the central service when you are done editing. Probably only possible with a client outside the web browser, perhaps a good open office or ms office plugin would do it.
That is how i work with my Concurrent Versions System (CVS) local working copy with central repository with version information.
So, basically the best rule of thumb of architecture for applications on the network is that it is good to have network accessible services for those requirements that are network dependent, but your applications should allow for the user to still be productive and "gracefully degrade" when the network or central servers go away for a little while.
Unfortunately, what is best for the user doesn't always coincide with what is best for the software provider, who will often want to increase user reliance on the central provider in order to exercise more market control rather than for technical reasons. But there is no way in hell that any business should relinquish in-house control of data that are key to its business. Sure you can primarily host that data elsewhere, but only as long as you can quickly physically recover that data and use it after a disaster. A disaster that could be a fire or a business or other contract failure at that provider.
I worked at a company that hastily grabbed its own hardware from the server collocation provider one weekend, because there was a great fear that the place was going to go bankrupt abruptly and just lock the doors and turn off the power. A serious concern when you have a million dollars worth of equipment and data critical to your business that could go dark during business hours while you have to go seek an emergency order to unlock the doors. Things happen, seemingly strong businesses and business relationships can go bad very quickly and you need to insulate your business from disruptions as much as practical.
It is a simple variation on an old lesson: don't put all your eggs in someone else's basket.
Another way that a critical web based application such as google docs could become enterprise ready, would be for google to distribute it like they do with their Google Search Server, that you can purchase for your enterprise. This, along with a client for syncing documents you need regularly to that repository, would make google docs a better document repository than Oracle's Stellent or other document and content management products, especially combined with their search technology. Combine that with a plugin for open office and ms office and you might have a killer and enterprise worthy app.
Why is it that techs cannot be trained on multiple OSes? They are trained on multiple software packages, so why wouldn't the OS just be treated as software, that is what it is after all. Companies seem to have no problem getting different models of PCs from a few different vendors... it makes sense to diversify your vendors to prevent vendor lockin and to get the best price, so why not do that at the OS level also? I know there is sometimes a short term savings standardizing on hardware and software, familiarity also creates its own type of comfort, but this usually comes at the expense of longer term growth and flexibility... companies can literally grind to a halt when they cut IT to the bone a couple years after a standardization push that was supposed to create bigger savings than it does.
I would think that liability, if any, would be with whomever is actually distributing the public domain software. Being that it is in the public domain, someone could take it and redistribute the software without the disclaimer. But the person distributing could simply have the receiver of the software agree to the disclaimer. I would be skeptical that a liability claim could be made successfully against the original writer of the software even if the person distributing the software failed to include the disclaimer. I think most courts would use the 'you get what you pay for' criteria for determining liability.
Seriously, bugs or more broadly speaking, flaws, are inherent in any complex human undertaking. The more complex the more likely for flaws. Commercial products have had innumerable bugs since the beginning of the personal computer and more often than not the customer has had to actually call the publisher to get bugs even on the schedule to be addressed in the next release. That's if the company was going to be around or still committed to that product to make a next release. Which is an issue for open source development as well, since projects are born and die everyday, just as they do in the proprietary software development.
I think it is funny that you make the argument about open source being the problem when evolution is being supported by a commercial software company, Novell. The Mozilla and Apache foundations do just fine with open source development and have a broad base who do not regularly contribute or report bugs, and they are putting out high quality, useful and innovative software.
Perhaps if Evolution went under the Mozilla umbrella instead of Novell, then they might have a bit more success.
Maybe I am wrong, in that case I would love to hear why. In the "open-source community", more free riders are a good thing.
Verizon has to prove its case again in court if it wants to go after other VOIP to PSTN providers. They probably use different technology so they would have to prove that it was also infringing. Really I think the case is absurd to begin with. That a computer can map from one directory to another using a common attribute and route information accordingly should be considered obvious, regardless of how big your revenue is. If the US is any less corrupt than Zimbabwe, then eventually this case should be overturned on appeal.
Sunrocket and Packet8 look like promising VOIP providers. I'll be switching to one of these shortly. I never liked the idea of Vonage being the 100 Lb gorilla anyway, they seemed to be a good example of the proverb about keeping 'all your eggs in one basket'. And as The big player in independent PSTN VOIP interoperability they also seemed taylor made for Verizon to come along and kill them off as an example to others, so they could keep their market position.
Also seems that if this Verizon patent is valid and actually being used by anyone who routes calls from IP to PSTN, then Verizon could possibly use this to kill off Comcast and RCN phone services depending on how they have architected their systems. Though they would presumably have some alternative to IP routing since they control their own wires.
All those things might be useful, but there should be a clearer abandonment clause to IP. If you aren't producing products and actually selling them, or using IP in your publications for say a period of 5 years, then you should lose the exclusive right... 'Use it or lose it' should be the law of the land. It actually used to be part of the law for copyright in the US, but it was stripped out in favor of less red tape. But I don't think there needs to be red tape, like there was with registration with Library of Congress, companies should simply keep and make records of their use of IP in their business so when challenged they have to provide records. Sure the law could be little more than a nuisance if it is not written properly, but it should make it clear that the products must be purchased by persons independent of the company or if the IP is in support of a product or service then it must be actively published and distributed (even if not sold) also to persons independent of the company.
Since you went through the trouble anyway, could you list out the hardware with the component prices? Because just compared to Dell's Precision Workstation 690 with two quad core's and similar components it seems about the same price or maybe even a bit less. But Dell does offer more configuration options.
I think the "Apple brand premium" arguments are a bit out of date. Apple is much more competitive on price these days now that they are using the same hardware components that are available off the shelf.
...but they hardly own it. For one, they're still missing a killer 3D app. They have all the apps that Windows has, because... now Intel Mac Hardware can run MS Windows and thus MS Windows apps. And Macs can also run x86 Linux, so I am not sure why application availability under Mac OS would even be a question.I don't know what their customer base looks like, but if they have the hardware that people want, then I don't think the default OS is going to keep people away.
Letting little Ma' Bell crush a competitor because they think it is their god given right to provide me with a phone and charge me excessively is just plain wrong.
I ain't going back to Verizon, even if I have to drop home phone service altogether.
Congress isn't quite as unsavvy as you might think, but there is significant room for improvement:
1 49:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.Res.
They have made a half decent start, but I think what is lacking is a publicly visible way to see the bill and all the bill changes while the proposal is in committee and also a way to track who made what changes. Also I have noticed that thomas seems to cut off after a certain number of lines... not sure if they have fixed that yet.
If anyone is interested in donating their time to put together a system to do what this thread is proposing, free and open source, I've been giving this some thought. It wouldn't necessarily be just applicable to Congress, I think good software would be flexible enough to apply just as well to your local city council or your state legislature as it would be to congress.
I'd prefer to make it java based: struts 2, jpa, spring, hibernate Mysql/Oracle as that is what I have been working with most recently. But if you are a php, python or ruby on rails person, then maybe a few different versions might eventually be worth putting together to give people options.
So, far I would see the system as role based wiki like, with an option to simply upload a text file to overwrite the previous version, each version would have a threaded possibly moderated discussion associated with each change (unlike the current wikipedia free for all "discussion"), with possibly a way to have weighted voting for comments like slashdot and a way to have weighted voting for specific versions of the law. A system that could just as easily scale to be used by a congressional committee internally, or your local city council or opened to the public to solicit feedback.
email me at poreilly@openlaws.org if you are interested in doing a thankless job for no money. well, hopefully not thankless.
But people need to keep driving home the point that OOXML is not really an open standard. It is simply a open wrapper for proprietary formats.
You are a Windows user and are happy about it, I get that part. I am a Windows user and a Linux user and I think Linux is better. That is not what is frustrating about what you are saying.
I believe Linux is about as good as its going to get as far as the software goes and I believe is already superior to Microsoft Windows in just about every way. What you say about Linux developers should just copy Windows is already true and I have heard the opposite complaint that it is just a rip off of windows so that it doesn't differentiate itself enough... you can't win either way with that argument unless you want to talk specifics. I'll simply say it again. What Linux lacks it lacks because of lack of support by a major PC maker and because it is starting off with less market share so peripheral makers and software vendors don't always offer equivalent support for Linux. Despite your protests, there isn't much more to it than that.
What is frustrating to me is how you can bash Linux usability when you admittedly don't use it as a desktop OS. You say you have never seen a Linux install go as smoothly as a Windows install, but my experience is the opposite with Windows being the harder install. Seems you are bashing on reputation alone, which perhaps is a problem for Linux as well, but it doesn't help that fallacies are being perpetuated. And it doesn't help that 8 year old perceptions of Linux are unchanged in some people's minds.
If peripheral device support is the major drawback to Linux then how else do you expect it to be addressed except by greater PC manufacturer support? I don't blame the PC user for not getting the correct hardware to run under Linux, I have done that myself (I also used to do that when I had a Mac 10 years ago). But neither should you blame the Linux developers or current Linux users for their attitudes as being the cause of the lack of linux desktop success or barrier to greater Linux adoption. Don't you think we would like devices to just work plug and play like most do under Windows now. But if you expect Linux developers to be able to instantly develop free drivers for every proprietary device when a manufacturer decides to ignore Linux support, then I am suggesting you are putting the blame in the wrong place. Microsoft couldn't do it if they had to, but they don't need to. That's why it is good to be king.
Several small PC makers that have tried to compete by offering preinstalled Linux based PCs at low prices, but have simply not been able to garner enough volume to undercut Dell on price, even without Windows license costs. What i take from that is just that it is very hard to compete with Dell on the low priced end of the PC market. I like Linux better, but if it was a hundred dollar difference, with Linux being more expensive, for the same hardware specs then I would choose the one with Windows and i still have a choice later. Theoretically, eventually with enough volume then Linux should be cheaper than Windows by say $20 or $30. But with Dell selling at such high volume, that price difference wouldn't show up until they started selling millions of units, probably.
So, I go back to the point, Dell is the greatest barrier to greater growth in the Linux PC market and not flaws in the software or some perceived attitude by existing Linux users. HP, Gateway or others could also help Linux market growth, but Dell has control of the low end of the market which, I think with its plentiful quality free software available, Linux really needs to grow there first where it can make the greatest qualitative difference.
Well, you previously went a bit further with you rhetoric than that. But what you are suggesting is precisely what people have been doing all along. There are lots of drivers that have been written for Linux, the pump is already well primed. There are more drivers out there for Linux than there ever were for the MacOS, at least before its renaissance of the last few years.
Linux can do nothing more than it already has done. Sure developers can continue the fine work they have been doing device by device in order to get new hardware working. But it is up to the hardware manufacturers to go the last mile. Whether that be Dell or Gateway or whomever. You simply can't have a refined consumer product if you make the consumer put it together themselves, there is nothing a software developer can do about that.
As for whether a customer should know better... of course they should. Customers are asked to make informed technical decisions all the time... Standard or automatic, PS3 compatible or Xbox360, SD card or USB drive, Mac versus Windows, HDMI or Component video. Certification is certainly a problem for Linux. There is no generic certification trademark for Linux that I know of. Microsoft has done a good job with that, in that if it says Windows98 or Windows2000 compatible, then you have a reasonable expectation it will work on xp. Linux has its certifications, but they are distribution specific and aren't economical when done in such a tedious niche way.
But where I am objecting to your characterization is in that it is somehow a software problem with Linux, when really the software is at this point has better usability than Windows. The problem is simply that Linux lacks the market that Windows does and suffers for it. And unlike Apple which was big enough to carry the essential hardware needs of its users in times of sparse peripheral support, Linux has no equivalent hardware maker backing it in the PC market. Linux is coming to dominate the server market because it does not need as extensive peripheral support. But to gain PC market share, then it needs PC manufacturers to back it. Otherwise developers can continue to eek out small gains here and there, but will probably not make any significant inroads.
In this way Dell provides a stumbling block to Linux. If they truly supported it then it would take off, but that they don't but could choose to support it at any time undercuts the potential for an upstart from investing time and money into filling this growing niche market.