If the corporation is truly that important, that it cannot be allowed to fail for whatever reason, you've sort of gone past traditional capitalism and into this strange la-la land that hard-core capitalists still deny exists.
IMHO, you might as well just nationalize the beast and get it over with.
"...why not just assume people want to keep their information private?"
Because that doesn't make money. Exploiting and making public any personal information people offer is how they make money. It's the only way they can make money. They have a fiduciary duty to their stakeholders to do so. Telling them not to do so is like telling water not to be wet.
If you are thinking about China, good luck with that. I'll bet three-quarters of the stuff you own was made there. Pretty well every part of the computer anyone is reading this on was made there. The clock radio that wakes you up in the morning, the iron that gets the wrinkles out of your clothes.... your toaster, kettle, cellphone, TV, iPod, the fork you eat your food with, the clothes on your back... Until something changes, we have no choice but to play ball. In fact, if you pick up a ball you find out and around your house, I'll bet it was made in China.
But what's the point of having 1Gb/s to the home right now? You want to watch 30 YouTube videos at the same time? Uh-huh. You're still going to have to pull most of your torrent data from our wimpy Intertubes here in North America.
That and the Swedish government caved and shut down Pirate Bay. That was so uncool.
But there is also still a good chance the 'founding principle' is wrong. This happens to real doctors all the time. It's only the quacks who refuse to admit they are wrong.
Why is it that you aren't President? Because that was a hell of a lot more insightful than anything pretty well any President since like Jefferson has ever said.
Great movie, Cube. I can't think of any faults with it, honestly. It's like Twelve Angry Men, only with death traps.
I've always thought that Chronicles of Riddick was underrated. Sure it wasn't up to the benchmark set by Pitch Black, but I found the Director's Cut to be quite enjoyable. Weird, but enjoyable.
/. really needs to grow a sense of humour. This is a joke comment. It should be scored "5, Funny". Even if it was serious, it should still be scored "5, Funny".
They put up with it because for most people it is the least bad of the options. The problem is that Linux still isn't there for a lot of regular joe users. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some kind of MS-fanboi, I run various flavours of Linux on most of my machines, but for a many regular users running an actual desktop of it is too unfamiliar.
It's not just an issue of training, either. You can deny this all you like, but there must be some reason why Microsoft controls most of the marketplace and it can't only be because Microsoft is this predatory evil monopolist. Here are some that come to mind:
1. Windows mostly meets most people's needs and does so in a familiar way. Even Microsoft has run into this problem trying to get people off of XP. Those needs are to run simple things like IM Clients, photo editing programs, Facebook, web mail, word processor, that sort of thing. Linux can do those things too, but it is different, and people fear change.
2. Windows stuff works out of the box. And by box I mean, the box the adaptor card or gadget comes in has a driver disc in it for Windows and maybe Mac. No Linux drivers. Now you might be able to download the drivers and use the package manager to install them... at that point you just lost half your market. Or perhaps put them in as a kernel module. Now you are up to 90% running away.
3. Some critical software is still not available. Keep in mind that only recently did CD burning software on Linux actually catch up to offerings which have been available for a decade on Windows. Quickbooks or Simply Accounting, not a chance. Convert the users to OOCalc? Not going to happen and if you have to ask why, you don't know bookkeepers. Run VMWare? Kind of defeats the purpose, now doesn't it? Plus the customer is going to wonder why he isn't just running Windows in the first place (point #1).
4. Linux Software has odd names. "Windows Live Messenger" not only trades on the "Windows" brand name, but even describes what the product does. So does "Internet Explorer". "Pidgin", while a clever title, does not. "Aero Glass" has sort of a sexy sound to it. "Gnome", to most folks, brings up visions of imaginary midgets in the bushes, not a state of the art desktop environment.
5. Linux types have always tried to sell it on the idea of security and stability. People rank that below points 1,2,3 and 4 and the Linux community still hasn't figured that out. That doesn't mean that Linux guys are wrong, just that the marketing isn't there.
6. Linux has evangelism. Worse than even than Mac users. I have tried to explain thousands of times how open source software works and people just don't get it. Conversations take on a surreal element like, "So the Mozilla Foundation is a charity? And they aren't in it for money? How do they live?" You might as well be handing out Watchtower pamphlets.
Yes. Excellent. The country with a government-enforced duopoly over internet/telecommunications.
How is that worse than a market-enforced Verizon monopoly?
Besides, there is plus side to it. Bell, the incumbent telco, is forced to rent it's infrastructure to local ISPs and CLECs. Bell copper goes to my house, but I don't pay them for anything. My money goes to a little co-op telco. $59 month for telephone and unlimited Internet (6Mb/s). And by unlimited I mean no caps, no throttling, no censoring.
A relation of mine works on a team that writes new financial apps in COBOL. Some big financial institution managing millions of pensions. One of their biggest problems: the team is getting old and finding new COBOL programmers isn’t as easy as you would think.
Anyway, the young university grads at the firm think COBOL is old geezer work. They would scurry around a few floors down, writing front end stuff in Java and Visual Studio. Always agitated, always in a hurry, always behind yet they worked 70 hour weeks. The COBOL team managed to convince one of them to come work in their department. After six months, you would barely recognize the kid: he got a haircut, the bags under his eyes were gone, he had returned to a healthy weight, met a girl, purchased a respectable condo. Why? He now has the time to do it. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, three weeks of vacation every year. These 'old geezer' programmers would pull this off by very carefully planing out what they were expected to do, not over-commit, submitting the plan to management and then getting it done. Since COBOL programmers tend to work at a fairly predictable rate, it was easy for them to always be on time.
I've only programmed for financial companies but IMHO I think these young game hackers are getting caught up in the whole "OMFG I pulled off this monster hack and it only took 20 hours and six cans of Red Bull!" I've done that too -- back in college. But if you start thinking like that professionally and promise as much to your boss, he's just going to ask for it all the time until you are all used up.
Seriously, I'm on it. Or rather, someone who has the exact same name as me is on it. I got held up for a bit at Pearson flying to Vegas because of it. But then again, I'm from Canada, and we all know what a terrorist hotbed this place is.
Could be like a rum-runner during the prohibition. Sneaking contraband sugar into sweeteasys in the US. I've been looking for a career change anyway, sign me up!
None of the parties involved in this debacle had a choice, in my opinion. I wrote this to help me get my own head straight on the matter, if anyone cares:
The WHO raised fears of this great pandemic because it's their job to. The media ran with the story because it is their job to. The public became afraid so the politicians moved in to quell their fears because that's their job. The drug companies made stupid piles of unneeded drugs because the politicians asked them to. In short, there is no conspiracy, everyone behaved the way they did because is was their job to, and they don't want to lose their jobs.
I also have wondered what the point of texting is. It doesn't seem an efficient a way to communicate any reasonable amount of data. You can speak like ten times faster than you can type on a proper keyboard and I'm going to go out on a limb here and reckon that a regular keyboard is around 10 times faster than a cellphone keypad.. There is only so fast you can move your thumbs. Since you are holding a mobile communication device anyway, why not just call them and speak?
Another one I don't get, perhaps because I'm only of the 'Net Generation', is Twitter. Email I get, blogs I get, forums and lists I get, even Blackberries make some sense to me. But Twitter makes zero sense to me. The very nature of micro-blogging seems to guarantee the tiny posts will always be insufficient in content or trivial in nature. So what is the point?
Slashdot Mirror
That's the real question, isn't it?
If the corporation is truly that important, that it cannot be allowed to fail for whatever reason, you've sort of gone past traditional capitalism and into this strange la-la land that hard-core capitalists still deny exists.
IMHO, you might as well just nationalize the beast and get it over with.
Awesome nerdiness. PgUp and PgDn work too. Now all it needs is a searching function:
grep Megan xkcd | more
Because we all know how much of a babe she is, even if she could stand to gain a few pounds.
"...why not just assume people want to keep their information private?"
Because that doesn't make money. Exploiting and making public any personal information people offer is how they make money. It's the only way they can make money. They have a fiduciary duty to their stakeholders to do so. Telling them not to do so is like telling water not to be wet.
If you are thinking about China, good luck with that. I'll bet three-quarters of the stuff you own was made there. Pretty well every part of the computer anyone is reading this on was made there. The clock radio that wakes you up in the morning, the iron that gets the wrinkles out of your clothes.... your toaster, kettle, cellphone, TV, iPod, the fork you eat your food with, the clothes on your back... Until something changes, we have no choice but to play ball. In fact, if you pick up a ball you find out and around your house, I'll bet it was made in China.
But what's the point of having 1Gb/s to the home right now? You want to watch 30 YouTube videos at the same time? Uh-huh. You're still going to have to pull most of your torrent data from our wimpy Intertubes here in North America.
That and the Swedish government caved and shut down Pirate Bay. That was so uncool.
Hell of a thing to ask, socialize the stupidity of a private company and of its legions of careless customers. How do I get in on a deal like that?
But there is also still a good chance the 'founding principle' is wrong. This happens to real doctors all the time. It's only the quacks who refuse to admit they are wrong.
Debauchery makes the world go 'round. Who knew?
Why is it that you aren't President? Because that was a hell of a lot more insightful than anything pretty well any President since like Jefferson has ever said.
Great movie, Cube. I can't think of any faults with it, honestly. It's like Twelve Angry Men, only with death traps.
I've always thought that Chronicles of Riddick was underrated. Sure it wasn't up to the benchmark set by Pitch Black, but I found the Director's Cut to be quite enjoyable. Weird, but enjoyable.
/. really needs to grow a sense of humour. This is a joke comment. It should be scored "5, Funny". Even if it was serious, it should still be scored "5, Funny".
They put up with it because for most people it is the least bad of the options. The problem is that Linux still isn't there for a lot of regular joe users. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some kind of MS-fanboi, I run various flavours of Linux on most of my machines, but for a many regular users running an actual desktop of it is too unfamiliar.
It's not just an issue of training, either. You can deny this all you like, but there must be some reason why Microsoft controls most of the marketplace and it can't only be because Microsoft is this predatory evil monopolist. Here are some that come to mind:
1. Windows mostly meets most people's needs and does so in a familiar way. Even Microsoft has run into this problem trying to get people off of XP. Those needs are to run simple things like IM Clients, photo editing programs, Facebook, web mail, word processor, that sort of thing. Linux can do those things too, but it is different, and people fear change.
2. Windows stuff works out of the box. And by box I mean, the box the adaptor card or gadget comes in has a driver disc in it for Windows and maybe Mac. No Linux drivers. Now you might be able to download the drivers and use the package manager to install them... at that point you just lost half your market. Or perhaps put them in as a kernel module. Now you are up to 90% running away.
3. Some critical software is still not available. Keep in mind that only recently did CD burning software on Linux actually catch up to offerings which have been available for a decade on Windows. Quickbooks or Simply Accounting, not a chance. Convert the users to OOCalc? Not going to happen and if you have to ask why, you don't know bookkeepers. Run VMWare? Kind of defeats the purpose, now doesn't it? Plus the customer is going to wonder why he isn't just running Windows in the first place (point #1).
4. Linux Software has odd names. "Windows Live Messenger" not only trades on the "Windows" brand name, but even describes what the product does. So does "Internet Explorer". "Pidgin", while a clever title, does not. "Aero Glass" has sort of a sexy sound to it. "Gnome", to most folks, brings up visions of imaginary midgets in the bushes, not a state of the art desktop environment.
5. Linux types have always tried to sell it on the idea of security and stability. People rank that below points 1,2,3 and 4 and the Linux community still hasn't figured that out. That doesn't mean that Linux guys are wrong, just that the marketing isn't there.
6. Linux has evangelism. Worse than even than Mac users. I have tried to explain thousands of times how open source software works and people just don't get it. Conversations take on a surreal element like, "So the Mozilla Foundation is a charity? And they aren't in it for money? How do they live?" You might as well be handing out Watchtower pamphlets.
Those are just off the top of my head.
Yes. Excellent. The country with a government-enforced duopoly over internet/telecommunications.
How is that worse than a market-enforced Verizon monopoly?
Besides, there is plus side to it. Bell, the incumbent telco, is forced to rent it's infrastructure to local ISPs and CLECs. Bell copper goes to my house, but I don't pay them for anything. My money goes to a little co-op telco. $59 month for telephone and unlimited Internet (6Mb/s). And by unlimited I mean no caps, no throttling, no censoring.
I'd love to be a contractor on that, tho. Keeping that finicky thing running could be a job for life.
Ahh... Doorstop Earth. I ain't getting those hours back. I hear the movie sucked too.
I'm starting to think that George Orwell wasn't that far off the mark.
This sort of relates.
A relation of mine works on a team that writes new financial apps in COBOL. Some big financial institution managing millions of pensions. One of their biggest problems: the team is getting old and finding new COBOL programmers isn’t as easy as you would think.
Anyway, the young university grads at the firm think COBOL is old geezer work. They would scurry around a few floors down, writing front end stuff in Java and Visual Studio. Always agitated, always in a hurry, always behind yet they worked 70 hour weeks. The COBOL team managed to convince one of them to come work in their department. After six months, you would barely recognize the kid: he got a haircut, the bags under his eyes were gone, he had returned to a healthy weight, met a girl, purchased a respectable condo. Why? He now has the time to do it. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, three weeks of vacation every year. These 'old geezer' programmers would pull this off by very carefully planing out what they were expected to do, not over-commit, submitting the plan to management and then getting it done. Since COBOL programmers tend to work at a fairly predictable rate, it was easy for them to always be on time.
I've only programmed for financial companies but IMHO I think these young game hackers are getting caught up in the whole "OMFG I pulled off this monster hack and it only took 20 hours and six cans of Red Bull!" I've done that too -- back in college. But if you start thinking like that professionally and promise as much to your boss, he's just going to ask for it all the time until you are all used up.
I'm on the No Fly List you insensitive clod :)
Seriously, I'm on it. Or rather, someone who has the exact same name as me is on it. I got held up for a bit at Pearson flying to Vegas because of it. But then again, I'm from Canada, and we all know what a terrorist hotbed this place is.
Could be like a rum-runner during the prohibition. Sneaking contraband sugar into sweeteasys in the US. I've been looking for a career change anyway, sign me up!
Meh. You're probably right.
But it's all happened before and it will all happen again.
None of the parties involved in this debacle had a choice, in my opinion. I wrote this to help me get my own head straight on the matter, if anyone cares:
http://www.cobolhacker.com/?p=912
The WHO raised fears of this great pandemic because it's their job to. The media ran with the story because it is their job to. The public became afraid so the politicians moved in to quell their fears because that's their job. The drug companies made stupid piles of unneeded drugs because the politicians asked them to. In short, there is no conspiracy, everyone behaved the way they did because is was their job to, and they don't want to lose their jobs.
Just saying.
Same.
I also have wondered what the point of texting is. It doesn't seem an efficient a way to communicate any reasonable amount of data. You can speak like ten times faster than you can type on a proper keyboard and I'm going to go out on a limb here and reckon that a regular keyboard is around 10 times faster than a cellphone keypad.. There is only so fast you can move your thumbs. Since you are holding a mobile communication device anyway, why not just call them and speak?
Another one I don't get, perhaps because I'm only of the 'Net Generation', is Twitter. Email I get, blogs I get, forums and lists I get, even Blackberries make some sense to me. But Twitter makes zero sense to me. The very nature of micro-blogging seems to guarantee the tiny posts will always be insufficient in content or trivial in nature. So what is the point?
So why have they not invaded my country yet? Stupid piles of oil here in Canada. In fact, Canada produces more oil per year than Iraq ever has.