Sort of the, "if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail argument":). I've personally come to love Java after having been a Perl programmer initially. Why? Because I found that most of what I wanted to do, Java did, rather easily. I'll admit though that occasionally I do something silly like do parsing of something in Java because I've almost completely forgotten how to do perl from disuse.
Java isn't a fad, it's incredibly well suited to certain tasks, just like perl is. I'm not going to write device drivers in perl or java, and I'm not going to write a distributed application in perl or C. So as long as Java does what I need, I'll use it. Then when it doesn't I'll go learn the next thing, as long as it runs on something other than windows:)
Would I pay $290 for XP? No, not unless I absolutely had to. Would I pay $129 for OS X? Damn straight I would. Hell, I'd probably pay $200 for it even. I've been longing to play with OS X but I'm not willing to invest the money in a PPC based system.
I'd rather I could download it for free, but I'd be okay with paying real money for it:)
I don't recall a certification test that challeneged me to make time estimates for development. I don't recall a certification test that required me to use an intelligent design.
Most of what causes needs to re-write down the road are due to poor planning which may or may not be the developer's fault. When you've got 1 week to write 2 weeks worth of code because a salesman didn't bother to consult technicians, bad things get written.
"Self Taught" earns your bid a short trip to my circular file.
Eliminating the "self taught" out of hand seems like a bit of throwing the baby out with the bath water. I've seen many a person who had a number of certifications and couldn't program their way out of a paper bag. Certificiations, depending on the type, can be almost completely meaningless.
Personally the only certificiation I have is as a Java programmer and I will tell you right now that all this means is I read the book. If you want a good measure of skill, get a sample of some of the developers and what their real-world experience is. Most of the good developers I know have few if any certifications.
From the newsforge commentary: Microsoft tried, and was forced to become criminal in its activities to do so. Who would willingly do that again? What true long term gain is there in feeding your own girth without advancing your product line or its merits? What fruit is there in eating at your own customers? Um, let's try huge piles of cash. You can criticize the morality and legality of what they've done but it's hard to argue the fact that nobody's going to jail and all the big players have made immense fortunes. And do they have trouble sleeping at night? No, I guarantee you that they all feel that having a unifying unquestioned platform for all people to run on their computers is a wonderful service for humanity (and that point does have merit).
The future is going to have aspects of both strategies. The problem that AOL is going to face is that being a provider of broadband content isn't going to be that valuable. On the otherhand, being an distributor and moderator (for lack of a better word) of broadband content is the place to be.
Think about it, already we see on television that there is no shortage of crap to watch. The problem is figuring out what crap is worth watching, and when it is on. The solution, of course, is Tivo and ReplayTV. This solution has the side effect of choking off money (through ad revenue) to the providers of content. This does, however, illustrate the struggle that content providing services are already getting burned by.
Basically if you want to be a content provider, plan to provide a service that people will be willing to pay for. Be like HBO or any number of pr0n sites. Otherwise you will get drowned in the sea of noise that is thousands of small-time producers who are willing to do their work for free because they enjoy it or to gain noteriety enough to go work for HBO or any number of pr0n sites.
Smart money is on the people who can filter through the noise and consolidate the content in a useful way for various audiences.
Is it true that AT&T, etc, didn't block access to the site, yes. That's really not in question. The only thing that is in question is whether that somehow constitutes violation of some law.
The logic you're using, that you should go start your own business because you don't have the experience to get employed by somebody else seems faulty. Convincing an employer of your talents is infinitely simple than convincing a prospective client. The amount of risk to an employer is substantially lower if they make a bad hiring decision than for a company who chooses the wrong developer for their product.
Having said that, do either of you have sales experience? While you may both have ample development skills, without being able to land the business to work you'll be screwed. Where do you find that business? I'd suggest doing lots of networking. Getting business through friends of friends is your best bet. If that's not going to work for you, try to find small projects for smaller businesses. You'll likely have to take a lot of the risk of project failure on yourself (why should they trust you). So prepare to have little to no income for a while because until you can proove you can deliver, people aren't likely to cut checks.
Other things to consider. Find a good lawyer to help you in drafting contracts, etc. Find a good accountant to deal with the financial details of all of it. Do you have consulting experience or was your job more of a strict product development role? Consulting is a lot more demanding in the way of documentation, tracking of requirements, etc.
Good luck to you, but I'd recommend going back into the job market and trying to build your exeperience. Work on that PHD:). Or actually more usefully, work on your MBA. PHD's are nice, but only if you are doing really out there reasearch. Most businesses would rather deal with somebody who has an appreciation of their business needs rather than some egghead theorist:).
The thing is that the DMCA provides safe harbor provisions for an ISP if they remove an offending website. The offender can then get the content returned if they affirm that they are not violating copyright.
Of course the safe harbor provisions were intended for the ISP at the end of the line. So I'm not sure what legal precedent would be in play here. Given that these carriers are common carriers, with no control over the content they carry, I should think the RIAA would lose the case. If they didn't, then it would become the responsibility of carriers to monitor traffic on their networks for illegal activity, etc. It would be akin to holding AT&T responsible for embezzling because two mafiosos talked to eachother over a long distance phone call.
What I'm talking about is using the legal defintion of monopoly. That is to say, a company is a monpoly if a judge has declared it to be so. In most cases where a monopoly exists by that definition, there are still alternatives but they have an extrodinarily difficult competing in the marketplace because of the imabalance created by the monpoly.
I agree with your logic if we were going to take the literal definition of a monpoly.
I should clarify. When I say Monopoly, I'm referring to any company that has been rules to be such in a court of law. Which is basically just Microsoft.
Let's just make this simple. Make it a rule that the government cannot do business with anybody that is a monopoly. That kills off the big shark in the pond, and opens up the game for competitors of all colors to compete. If open source is truly the best, then it will win in the market place. Doesn't need a law to protect it.
The notion of requiring all software used by the government to be open source seems to be going a little too far. The problem as I see it is that some software is simply not available as open source and is needed to get their work done. On occasion the government does get stuff done and nobody benefits from making it harder for that to happen. Having said that, I think that requiring the government to make use of open source make sense if handle more reasonably.
Any software custom written for government use must be open source. Companies unwilling to open up their source code will likely find many new competitors perfectly happy to take those big government checks.
Any software that is a boxed purchased product from a retail store or what have you is fair game either way with one caveat. All documents created by this software that are for public consumption must use open formats. So the government can use Office if it's the best tool for the job, but they should be saving in plain text, RTF, etc.
My thinking is that the ongoing cuts into government budgets will encourage use of open source without need of government mandate. The only exception being in the realm of custom written software which I think should be open source because it opens up future enhancement of the software to competitive bids. There should also be some mandates about the clarity of the code, etc (an open source mandate means jack all if somebody can just crank their code through an obfuscator).
I agree with you that legal actions on such issues have become a game that has little to do with the legal standing of them, this is a bit different in the long run. While they can sue this guy and he'll likely cave, they aren't going to get a similar response from the Mozilla folks. Why? Because they have the backing of one of the largest media empires on the planet (AOL Time Warner), and because there's value in the Mozilla trademark.
My best is that if they go after Mozilla, they'll end up in court and they will lose.
Here's the thing. Trademark requires that the holder of the trademark actively defend their mark. If they do not do so and it falls into common usage, it's too bad so sad for the trademark holder. So, even if you successfully argue that Mozilla infringed on Godzilla (are these really confusingly similar?), the judge will ask why they have let it exist for the past 10 years without questioning it.
1) Code 2) Start your own company 3) Sell out most of your principles 4) Get rich 5) Buy your own congressman to protect your money from the tax man and pass laws mandating your company should never go out of business
It might make sense to make Linux a premiere platform except for a couple things:
1) more than 90% of the market runs windows 2) of those who run linux most of them (though I have no idea what percentage), run Windows as well
Generally speaking gamers know most games are released for Windows primarily or exclusively. Therefore gamers all own Windows machines for this purpose. Frankly it's one of the only reasons I still run windows.
The fact of the matter is that most people who install Windows will have an experience similar to what was just described. When you buy a computer pre-installed with Windows now you get these recovery CD's and all of them work very similarly to what was just described here. It is accurate to compare what most people will have to deal with in both cases.
What straw man do you suggest I'm shooting down? All I'm saying is that the slowdown right now is mostly out of overreaction to the 90's overhyping. That there will in fact be a return to IT spending though it will never be like the 90's and that's a good thing.
Of course IT needs to be rationalized like any other factor of production. That's the problem that happend in the 90's. Many people were convinced that the rules of the games thanks to the wonders of IT. Anytime any business bases decisions on the sorts of irrational assumptions that were abundant in the 90's can expect to pay the price. IT spending will return to a rational level where getting a PC that does the job isn't that hard (because they are pretty damned cheap), and the important technology projects that can bring a useful ROI will go forward.
The late 90's: All Tech Spending is Good The early 00's: All Tech Spending is Bad
It's oversimplistic reactions to the problems that came from tech spending in the 90's. Many people were creating products that were full of pizazz that didn't work for crap and people bought them because they thought technology was their salvation. Well guess what, technology isn't a magic pill, and anybody who claims ANYTHING is a magic pill should be taken out back and shot.
So now today, everybody is gun shy and overcautious. A company gets burned in the 90's converting their billing system to some flaky electronic system that has cost more money to keep together than your old system. Today they get the choice of buying yet another new system, taking the same risks again, or sticking with the known quantity. At this point, with money tight, few are willing to take that risk to get it right the second time because they can't afford to get burned this time.
Over the next few years as a recovery slowly works its way into the system, some people will feel that they can take some risks again. Those flaky systems will have long since been purged from the software gene pool and there will be good products that people will be able to trust. We'll actually begin to see those efficiency gains that were supposed to happen during the 90's hype and the world of IT will be back in business.
Until then, batton down the hatches and hang on tight:)
You've been running Solaris X86 on your systems since the early 90's and would have a training and support hassle if you tried to switch now.
Though I suspect, given sun's dabbling in the Linux realm, that they will be moving away from Solaris X86 in the long run. As long as money spent on keeping it up to date is less than they are bringing in from the sales and support contracts they'll keep at it, but Solaris X86 seems silly these days with so many unix variants on the market.
Slashdot Mirror
Sort of the, "if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail argument" :). I've personally come to love Java after having been a Perl programmer initially. Why? Because I found that most of what I wanted to do, Java did, rather easily. I'll admit though that occasionally I do something silly like do parsing of something in Java because I've almost completely forgotten how to do perl from disuse.
:)
Java isn't a fad, it's incredibly well suited to certain tasks, just like perl is. I'm not going to write device drivers in perl or java, and I'm not going to write a distributed application in perl or C. So as long as Java does what I need, I'll use it. Then when it doesn't I'll go learn the next thing, as long as it runs on something other than windows
The best way to remove the noise is to not ADD THE NOISE when you produce your hoax! :). Very clever but this is a big steaming pile of it!
Would I pay $290 for XP? No, not unless I absolutely had to. Would I pay $129 for OS X? Damn straight I would. Hell, I'd probably pay $200 for it even. I've been longing to play with OS X but I'm not willing to invest the money in a PPC based system.
:)
I'd rather I could download it for free, but I'd be okay with paying real money for it
I don't recall a certification test that challeneged me to make time estimates for development. I don't recall a certification test that required me to use an intelligent design.
Most of what causes needs to re-write down the road are due to poor planning which may or may not be the developer's fault. When you've got 1 week to write 2 weeks worth of code because a salesman didn't bother to consult technicians, bad things get written.
Eliminating the "self taught" out of hand seems like a bit of throwing the baby out with the bath water. I've seen many a person who had a number of certifications and couldn't program their way out of a paper bag. Certificiations, depending on the type, can be almost completely meaningless.
Personally the only certificiation I have is as a Java programmer and I will tell you right now that all this means is I read the book. If you want a good measure of skill, get a sample of some of the developers and what their real-world experience is. Most of the good developers I know have few if any certifications.
From the newsforge commentary:
Microsoft tried, and was forced to become criminal in its activities to do so. Who would willingly do that again? What true long term gain is there in feeding your own girth without advancing your product line or its merits? What fruit is there in eating at your own customers?
Um, let's try huge piles of cash. You can criticize the morality and legality of what they've done but it's hard to argue the fact that nobody's going to jail and all the big players have made immense fortunes. And do they have trouble sleeping at night? No, I guarantee you that they all feel that having a unifying unquestioned platform for all people to run on their computers is a wonderful service for humanity (and that point does have merit).
I don't know about you, but I find that a slow excruciating death makes me a tad more squeemish than a pig's organs :)
True, but try explaining why you need to carry around the giant spool of phone cable when you get on the bus for your morning commute.
The future is going to have aspects of both strategies. The problem that AOL is going to face is that being a provider of broadband content isn't going to be that valuable. On the otherhand, being an distributor and moderator (for lack of a better word) of broadband content is the place to be.
Think about it, already we see on television that there is no shortage of crap to watch. The problem is figuring out what crap is worth watching, and when it is on. The solution, of course, is Tivo and ReplayTV. This solution has the side effect of choking off money (through ad revenue) to the providers of content. This does, however, illustrate the struggle that content providing services are already getting burned by.
Basically if you want to be a content provider, plan to provide a service that people will be willing to pay for. Be like HBO or any number of pr0n sites. Otherwise you will get drowned in the sea of noise that is thousands of small-time producers who are willing to do their work for free because they enjoy it or to gain noteriety enough to go work for HBO or any number of pr0n sites.
Smart money is on the people who can filter through the noise and consolidate the content in a useful way for various audiences.
Is it true that AT&T, etc, didn't block access to the site, yes. That's really not in question. The only thing that is in question is whether that somehow constitutes violation of some law.
The logic you're using, that you should go start your own business because you don't have the experience to get employed by somebody else seems faulty. Convincing an employer of your talents is infinitely simple than convincing a prospective client. The amount of risk to an employer is substantially lower if they make a bad hiring decision than for a company who chooses the wrong developer for their product.
:). Or actually more usefully, work on your MBA. PHD's are nice, but only if you are doing really out there reasearch. Most businesses would rather deal with somebody who has an appreciation of their business needs rather than some egghead theorist :).
Having said that, do either of you have sales experience? While you may both have ample development skills, without being able to land the business to work you'll be screwed. Where do you find that business? I'd suggest doing lots of networking. Getting business through friends of friends is your best bet. If that's not going to work for you, try to find small projects for smaller businesses. You'll likely have to take a lot of the risk of project failure on yourself (why should they trust you). So prepare to have little to no income for a while because until you can proove you can deliver, people aren't likely to cut checks.
Other things to consider. Find a good lawyer to help you in drafting contracts, etc. Find a good accountant to deal with the financial details of all of it. Do you have consulting experience or was your job more of a strict product development role? Consulting is a lot more demanding in the way of documentation, tracking of requirements, etc.
Good luck to you, but I'd recommend going back into the job market and trying to build your exeperience. Work on that PHD
The thing is that the DMCA provides safe harbor provisions for an ISP if they remove an offending website. The offender can then get the content returned if they affirm that they are not violating copyright.
Of course the safe harbor provisions were intended for the ISP at the end of the line. So I'm not sure what legal precedent would be in play here. Given that these carriers are common carriers, with no control over the content they carry, I should think the RIAA would lose the case. If they didn't, then it would become the responsibility of carriers to monitor traffic on their networks for illegal activity, etc. It would be akin to holding AT&T responsible for embezzling because two mafiosos talked to eachother over a long distance phone call.
What I'm talking about is using the legal defintion of monopoly. That is to say, a company is a monpoly if a judge has declared it to be so. In most cases where a monopoly exists by that definition, there are still alternatives but they have an extrodinarily difficult competing in the marketplace because of the imabalance created by the monpoly.
I agree with your logic if we were going to take the literal definition of a monpoly.
I should clarify. When I say Monopoly, I'm referring to any company that has been rules to be such in a court of law. Which is basically just Microsoft.
Let's just make this simple. Make it a rule that the government cannot do business with anybody that is a monopoly. That kills off the big shark in the pond, and opens up the game for competitors of all colors to compete. If open source is truly the best, then it will win in the market place. Doesn't need a law to protect it.
The notion of requiring all software used by the government to be open source seems to be going a little too far. The problem as I see it is that some software is simply not available as open source and is needed to get their work done. On occasion the government does get stuff done and nobody benefits from making it harder for that to happen. Having said that, I think that requiring the government to make use of open source make sense if handle more reasonably.
Any software custom written for government use must be open source. Companies unwilling to open up their source code will likely find many new competitors perfectly happy to take those big government checks.
Any software that is a boxed purchased product from a retail store or what have you is fair game either way with one caveat. All documents created by this software that are for public consumption must use open formats. So the government can use Office if it's the best tool for the job, but they should be saving in plain text, RTF, etc.
My thinking is that the ongoing cuts into government budgets will encourage use of open source without need of government mandate. The only exception being in the realm of custom written software which I think should be open source because it opens up future enhancement of the software to competitive bids. There should also be some mandates about the clarity of the code, etc (an open source mandate means jack all if somebody can just crank their code through an obfuscator).
There are no ethics when there are no consquences.
I agree with you that legal actions on such issues have become a game that has little to do with the legal standing of them, this is a bit different in the long run. While they can sue this guy and he'll likely cave, they aren't going to get a similar response from the Mozilla folks. Why? Because they have the backing of one of the largest media empires on the planet (AOL Time Warner), and because there's value in the Mozilla trademark.
My best is that if they go after Mozilla, they'll end up in court and they will lose.
Here's the thing. Trademark requires that the holder of the trademark actively defend their mark. If they do not do so and it falls into common usage, it's too bad so sad for the trademark holder. So, even if you successfully argue that Mozilla infringed on Godzilla (are these really confusingly similar?), the judge will ask why they have let it exist for the past 10 years without questioning it.
1) Code
2) Start your own company
3) Sell out most of your principles
4) Get rich
5) Buy your own congressman to protect your money from the tax man and pass laws mandating your company should never go out of business
Cynical? Me? Noooooo...
It might make sense to make Linux a premiere platform except for a couple things:
1) more than 90% of the market runs windows
2) of those who run linux most of them (though I have no idea what percentage), run Windows as well
Generally speaking gamers know most games are released for Windows primarily or exclusively. Therefore gamers all own Windows machines for this purpose. Frankly it's one of the only reasons I still run windows.
The fact of the matter is that most people who install Windows will have an experience similar to what was just described. When you buy a computer pre-installed with Windows now you get these recovery CD's and all of them work very similarly to what was just described here. It is accurate to compare what most people will have to deal with in both cases.
What straw man do you suggest I'm shooting down? All I'm saying is that the slowdown right now is mostly out of overreaction to the 90's overhyping. That there will in fact be a return to IT spending though it will never be like the 90's and that's a good thing.
Of course IT needs to be rationalized like any other factor of production. That's the problem that happend in the 90's. Many people were convinced that the rules of the games thanks to the wonders of IT. Anytime any business bases decisions on the sorts of irrational assumptions that were abundant in the 90's can expect to pay the price. IT spending will return to a rational level where getting a PC that does the job isn't that hard (because they are pretty damned cheap), and the important technology projects that can bring a useful ROI will go forward.
The late 90's: All Tech Spending is Good
:)
The early 00's: All Tech Spending is Bad
It's oversimplistic reactions to the problems that came from tech spending in the 90's. Many people were creating products that were full of pizazz that didn't work for crap and people bought them because they thought technology was their salvation. Well guess what, technology isn't a magic pill, and anybody who claims ANYTHING is a magic pill should be taken out back and shot.
So now today, everybody is gun shy and overcautious. A company gets burned in the 90's converting their billing system to some flaky electronic system that has cost more money to keep together than your old system. Today they get the choice of buying yet another new system, taking the same risks again, or sticking with the known quantity. At this point, with money tight, few are willing to take that risk to get it right the second time because they can't afford to get burned this time.
Over the next few years as a recovery slowly works its way into the system, some people will feel that they can take some risks again. Those flaky systems will have long since been purged from the software gene pool and there will be good products that people will be able to trust. We'll actually begin to see those efficiency gains that were supposed to happen during the 90's hype and the world of IT will be back in business.
Until then, batton down the hatches and hang on tight
You've been running Solaris X86 on your systems since the early 90's and would have a training and support hassle if you tried to switch now.
Though I suspect, given sun's dabbling in the Linux realm, that they will be moving away from Solaris X86 in the long run. As long as money spent on keeping it up to date is less than they are bringing in from the sales and support contracts they'll keep at it, but Solaris X86 seems silly these days with so many unix variants on the market.