End-user database/web-development is a dead end outside of CMSs for hobbyists.
For a long time there has been this persistent belief, reflected in language like COBOL, and in the 90s in 4GLs and tools like Access, that the business end-users who run their business would also develop the software their businesses run on.
It turns out first that you have to be a programmer to effectively use these tools, and it turns out that business end users are better off doing what they do best, running their companies, and hiring out back office software functions.
Quicken and Excel are more than enough to run any small business on.
When you outgrow those, you hire specialists to deploy and maintain something like Oracle E-Business Suite.
Microsoft is successful because they are delivering the business and home markets the products they want at the prices they're willing to pay.
Why would you break up Microsoft?
Consumers are free to move to Apple any time they want. I did years ago. It has nothing to do with Microsoft. I was worried when I brought home my first mac that Bill Gates would turn up at my door with hired goons and "buy me out", but much to my surprise, nothing happened.
The problem continues to be not Microsoft, but that Microsoft's competitors do not deliver the products most consumers want at the prices they're willing to pay.
Now, to preface this, if I had my choice I'd go back to composing my documents in latex, reading my email in mutt, and doing my number crunching against a real rdbms, but at work I don't have my choice, so I use Microsoft software.
In the world of business, the combination of Microsoft Office and Exchange is unparalleled. It's the de facto standard for productivity and collaboration in small, medium, and large business. It enjoys that position not just because it has momentum, but because it really is very good at what it does, which is providing powerful publishing, collaboration, and number crunching tools to people who don't know a lot about software but do know a lot about their business. There are successful small and medium businesses whose back offices are built on this suite.The problem with would-be competitors like KOffice, OpenOffice, Evolution, and now Google Docs isn't Microsoft's monopoly; it's that they plain just aren't anywhere near as good. Microsoft may not be the model of efficiency, but these would-be competitors continue to underestimate how many man hours it takes to build a fully-featured, competitive office suite.
And in the world of games, the Direct X platform is immensely powerful, popular, and drives development of cutting edge graphics and gaming hardware for the entire industry. Apple is years behind in this regard. If Apple took a majority of the OS market tomorrow, game development shops would be hurting.
MIcrosoft makes a lot of money because they spend a lot of money. People drastically underestimate how rich Microsoft offers are in business and gaming, and just how expensive it is to compete on that level.
As a hardware and OS platform the Droid is far more appealing than my current iPhone.
But from what I've seen of the user experience so far, it's a no go. I've been spoiled on OS X on the desktop for years, and now on my phone. As much as I want to like the Droid and wish my iPhone had a slideout keyboard, I'm sticking with Apple for the time being.
It's a testament to just how good Apple is at user interface design that Microsoft and Google with all their resources can't hold a candle to it.
Let's make it even simpler. Let's say the government caps science and technology degree enrollment as a result of this study. I think capping science and technology degree enrollment probably would result in marginally higher salaries for current graduates in these fields.
And this illustrates the broader reason why their recommendation is so wrong-headed.
The objective shouldn't be to sell our future down the river just to raise salaries in select vocations in the near term.
The objective should be to create a rising tide that lifts all boats in the long term. That rising tide is productivity, and it requires incentive, and a commitment to public education and research in the hard sciences.
I am am optimist. I believe society will be better in 100 years with 100 scientists and technologists trying and failing, than with 100 sociologists telling us we shouldn't try.
One of these brought us from an agricultural society of constant pain and sorrow, to a world of ease, full of wonders our ancestors couldn't have dreamt of. That's the train I want to be on. Here's a hint: it wasn't the sociologists.
Productivity is everything, or almost everything. Our standard of living is higher than that of our ancestors 100 years ago, primarily, not because of sociologists, not because of government, and not even because of civil liberties, but because of increases in productivity due to new developments in science and technology. The lack of growth in productivity accounts for our current stagnation.
But for my money I would still rather have ten new scientists or technologists trying and failing than another sociologist telling me that it isn't worth trying.
I would sell my right to vote if it could buy me the opportunity to be the lowliest peasant with a public education in a society 100 years more technologically advanced than our own, and I have good reason to believe I would be better off than I am today for it in every measurable way, owing to the rising tide of productivity lifting all boats.
But it isn't a foregone conclusion. It requires a commitment to public education, public university education and research in the hard sciences, and a government willing to throw off the chains of industry and innovation that stifle equality of opportunity in the name of equality of outcome.
That's one perspective. Another perspective is that the sentiment you've just expressed indicates just the opposite, no offense intended.
Blogs are usually secondary sources. Blogs aren't giving you a more accurate impression of what is actually going on in the real world. Blogs are giving you an accurate impression of what the participants in an echo-chamber unrepresentative of society at large believe is actually going on in the world.
They may be correct, but without their freeloading on primary sources, you couldn't know it. Without primary sources, blogs would have less value than a chain letter. Many don't already.
Advertisers could make the information the visitor wants available only through proprietary browser plugins that take control away from the browser of rendering both information and ad content.
In the future you might have to download the DoubleClick News Reader to read the Washington Post, with new content keys and signatures every day. Oh joy.
Newspapers provide a direct path for national and international news outlets to monetize information derived from real, on location, research and reporting around the world.
New media, and increasingly cable news, simply freeload off of information from other outlets and sources, and fill the rest of their time blocks and postings with uninformed opinion, speculation, and other filler.
This freeloading reduces the value of real information on the market because there are fewer and fewer entities willing to pay to receive the information from a primary a source, because they know that if they wait another 15 minutes they can get that information somewhere else for free, and for the same reason, even if they do pay for it, they have an increasingly difficult time profiting from it themselves.
I think in the future we will three a mix of outcomes: A) Government owned information. Governments always have a need for up-to-date, in depth information from around the world, and would be more than happy for their populaces to turn to them as a source of information, where it will be appropriately spun and filtered. B) Government backed information. Benevolent governments will provide the funding to support gathering and reporting of information that can not be effectively monetized. We will rely on the benevolence of publicly supported institutions to provide us accurate and timely information. C) Global citizen journalist network. We are seeing this increasingly where private citizens on the ground where news is happening relay that information around the world free of charge, calling it as they see it, without any pretense of objectivity.
I despise Microsoft software. It is the bane of my existence, but give me a break. I assure you, Microsoft-related court fees have next to no bearing on your economic situation.
Help me understand this: 1. Microsoft is the 3rd largest employer in your state 2. You are in a recession 3. You have a 9.3% unemployment rate
4. You want to raise taxes on business.
So that your government has more money to redistribute to people who are not working, who lost their jobs because companies like Microsoft couldn't afford to keep them on in the first place.
Let me propose an alternative.
Reduce your spending just like every other American, and reduce taxes on employers like Microsoft, so that they can afford rehire to your residents.
IANAL, but by the plain language of the statue, these individuals have infringed the author's copyright by making unauthorized copies of his software into their non-volatile iPhone memory. While the circumstances exclude criminal liability, civil liability for copyright infringement is limited only by logistics and the will of the author to pursue it.
He should go to court and subpoena the identities of these individuals, and ask for the statutory damages he is entitled to.
I strongly recommend the author consult a lawyer to explore his options here. It's possible an IP lawyer would be willing to take his case pro bono as a trial case.
Anyone who has sufficient disposable income to purchase and operate an iPhone or iPod Touch has no excuse not to legitimately purchase the $1-5 entertainment and novelty apps they use.
This is truly shameful.
Developers spend thousands of man hours creating these apps. There is no causal chain by which you could be owed access to these apps in violation of the legal rights of their lawful creators.
The range of power and freedom of its participants has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not a market is free.
I produce widgets. Through no compulsion I am the only widget producer in my region. I exchange widgets for capital at rates, in quantities, and at times to which both I and my customers agree, not always agreeably or beneficially, but in agreement. I charge more for my widgets than widget producers in other regions where at present they are more greatly concentrated. My customers agree to buy my widgets at higher costs through no compulsion of mine or any other, and the rate to which I agree to sell my widgets is subject to no compulsion.
I and my customers are participants in a widget market that has the quality or state of being free. This quality or state will persist so long my agreement to sell is at no compulsion but my own, and my customers' agreement to buy is at no compulsion but their own.
Save for interference by the state or by coercive force of either or any other external party, this quality or state will persist indefinitely.
A free market is nothing more than a market that has the quality or state of being free, of being unencumbered.
A market is unencumbered only when any buyers and any sellers are able to exchange goods and services each possesses at any rate, in any quantity, and at any time to which both parties agree.
Whether its participants are powerful or weak has no bearing on whether or not a market is free, so long as the powerful do not prevent the weak from exchanging goods and services the weak possess, whether agreeably to the weak or not, so long as in agreement.
Save for minimal but overriding government regulations on liability, the Free Software market is a market having the quality or state of being free.
You are correct that a market does not have objectives, but from there you go on to describe people and politics, not markets. A "free market" is simply a market that has the quality or state of being free.
"Free" here means nothing more than "unencumbered." A market that is unencumbered is simply a market in which any buyers and any sellers are able to exchange the goods and services each posses at any rate, in any quantity, and at any time to which both parties agree. Free is simple.
The market you describe is therefore not free. When only those participants, and only at those rates, in those quantities, and at those times which they have equal power, are possessed of suitable knowledge, and have goods and services of certain origins are permitted to exchange goods and services, such a market no longer has the quality or state of being free.
Whether its participants are mighty or weak, young or old, wise or foolish, knowledgeable or feeble minded, and even righteous or wicked, has no bearing on whether a market is free. These may be qualities of participants in a market, but they are not qualities of a market.
Try as you might, you'll never separate liberalism from racism.
Even if a liberal isn't personally a racist, they see things like the civil rights act and the fair housing act (and the associated enforcement costs) as the government treating people differently based solely on the color of their skin, so at the very least a liberal world view enables racism.
Markets don't have objectives; people have objectives. A "free market" is simply a market that has the quality or state of being free. How you got from here to there I can not fathom.
"Free" here means nothing more than "unencumbered." A market that is unencumbered is a market in which buyers and sellers are able to exchange the goods and services each posses at any rate, in any quantity, and at any time. Free is simple.
A market, free or not, has no objective. It is not rational. It cares not for maximization or minimization. It does not know of distribution of wealth. It is not right or wrong, and is no respecter of persons, even of their relative freedom or lack thereof. All these are irrelevant to whether or not a market is free.
Participants in a market may be moral or immoral, but a market is neither.
On the contrary, a popular song from the #1 selling album in the world, widely known and enjoyed in the target demographic, is very likely an excellent song to use to measure consumer audio compression and encoding preferences.
If the state of California believes they need to regulate negative externalities resulting from the operation of internal combustion engines, then they should tax the operation of internal combustion engines across the board.
Instead, we have an authoritarian government telling us what light bulbs we can screw in, what size of televisions we can own, and now the brand of auto glass we use.
What we have here is government singling out specific groups, behaviors, and industries with coercive power in a manner that is anathema to individual liberty.
Slashdot Mirror
End-user database/web-development is a dead end outside of CMSs for hobbyists.
For a long time there has been this persistent belief, reflected in language like COBOL, and in the 90s in 4GLs and tools like Access, that the business end-users who run their business would also develop the software their businesses run on.
It turns out first that you have to be a programmer to effectively use these tools, and it turns out that business end users are better off doing what they do best, running their companies, and hiring out back office software functions.
Quicken and Excel are more than enough to run any small business on.
When you outgrow those, you hire specialists to deploy and maintain something like Oracle E-Business Suite.
Microsoft is successful because they are delivering the business and home markets the products they want at the prices they're willing to pay.
Why would you break up Microsoft?
Consumers are free to move to Apple any time they want. I did years ago. It has nothing to do with Microsoft. I was worried when I brought home my first mac that Bill Gates would turn up at my door with hired goons and "buy me out", but much to my surprise, nothing happened.
The problem continues to be not Microsoft, but that Microsoft's competitors do not deliver the products most consumers want at the prices they're willing to pay.
The author has it all wrong.
Now, to preface this, if I had my choice I'd go back to composing my documents in latex, reading my email in mutt, and doing my number crunching against a real rdbms, but at work I don't have my choice, so I use Microsoft software.
In the world of business, the combination of Microsoft Office and Exchange is unparalleled. It's the de facto standard for productivity and collaboration in small, medium, and large business. It enjoys that position not just because it has momentum, but because it really is very good at what it does, which is providing powerful publishing, collaboration, and number crunching tools to people who don't know a lot about software but do know a lot about their business. There are successful small and medium businesses whose back offices are built on this suite.The problem with would-be competitors like KOffice, OpenOffice, Evolution, and now Google Docs isn't Microsoft's monopoly; it's that they plain just aren't anywhere near as good. Microsoft may not be the model of efficiency, but these would-be competitors continue to underestimate how many man hours it takes to build a fully-featured, competitive office suite.
And in the world of games, the Direct X platform is immensely powerful, popular, and drives development of cutting edge graphics and gaming hardware for the entire industry. Apple is years behind in this regard. If Apple took a majority of the OS market tomorrow, game development shops would be hurting.
MIcrosoft makes a lot of money because they spend a lot of money. People drastically underestimate how rich Microsoft offers are in business and gaming, and just how expensive it is to compete on that level.
As a hardware and OS platform the Droid is far more appealing than my current iPhone.
But from what I've seen of the user experience so far, it's a no go. I've been spoiled on OS X on the desktop for years, and now on my phone. As much as I want to like the Droid and wish my iPhone had a slideout keyboard, I'm sticking with Apple for the time being.
It's a testament to just how good Apple is at user interface design that Microsoft and Google with all their resources can't hold a candle to it.
Why don't DS and PSP publishers just partner with cell phone manufacturers to build mass market crossover devices with the same hardware specs?
An email box is like a safe deposit box.
I pay the bank for my safe deposit box to provide secure storage for, and access to, private documents and belongings.
I pay my email provider for my email box to provide secure storage for, and access to, private documents and belongings.
The government can no more righfully search and seize my email inbox without a warrant than it can my safe deposit box without a warrant.
The government can go fuck themselves.
Sociology in principle is a legitimate and beneficial science driven by empirical evidence and statistics.
The problem comes, as always, in the misapplication of statistics.
Let's make it even simpler. Let's say the government caps science and technology degree enrollment as a result of this study. I think capping science and technology degree enrollment probably would result in marginally higher salaries for current graduates in these fields.
And this illustrates the broader reason why their recommendation is so wrong-headed.
The objective shouldn't be to sell our future down the river just to raise salaries in select vocations in the near term.
The objective should be to create a rising tide that lifts all boats in the long term. That rising tide is productivity, and it requires incentive, and a commitment to public education and research in the hard sciences.
I am am optimist. I believe society will be better in 100 years with 100 scientists and technologists trying and failing, than with 100 sociologists telling us we shouldn't try.
One of these brought us from an agricultural society of constant pain and sorrow, to a world of ease, full of wonders our ancestors couldn't have dreamt of. That's the train I want to be on. Here's a hint: it wasn't the sociologists.
Productivity is everything, or almost everything. Our standard of living is higher than that of our ancestors 100 years ago, primarily, not because of sociologists, not because of government, and not even because of civil liberties, but because of increases in productivity due to new developments in science and technology. The lack of growth in productivity accounts for our current stagnation.
But for my money I would still rather have ten new scientists or technologists trying and failing than another sociologist telling me that it isn't worth trying.
I would sell my right to vote if it could buy me the opportunity to be the lowliest peasant with a public education in a society 100 years more technologically advanced than our own, and I have good reason to believe I would be better off than I am today for it in every measurable way, owing to the rising tide of productivity lifting all boats.
But it isn't a foregone conclusion. It requires a commitment to public education, public university education and research in the hard sciences, and a government willing to throw off the chains of industry and innovation that stifle equality of opportunity in the name of equality of outcome.
That's one perspective. Another perspective is that the sentiment you've just expressed indicates just the opposite, no offense intended.
Blogs are usually secondary sources. Blogs aren't giving you a more accurate impression of what is actually going on in the real world. Blogs are giving you an accurate impression of what the participants in an echo-chamber unrepresentative of society at large believe is actually going on in the world.
They may be correct, but without their freeloading on primary sources, you couldn't know it. Without primary sources, blogs would have less value than a chain letter. Many don't already.
Advertisers could make the information the visitor wants available only through proprietary browser plugins that take control away from the browser of rendering both information and ad content.
In the future you might have to download the DoubleClick News Reader to read the Washington Post, with new content keys and signatures every day. Oh joy.
Newspapers provide a direct path for national and international news outlets to monetize information derived from real, on location, research and reporting around the world.
New media, and increasingly cable news, simply freeload off of information from other outlets and sources, and fill the rest of their time blocks and postings with uninformed opinion, speculation, and other filler.
This freeloading reduces the value of real information on the market because there are fewer and fewer entities willing to pay to receive the information from a primary a source, because they know that if they wait another 15 minutes they can get that information somewhere else for free, and for the same reason, even if they do pay for it, they have an increasingly difficult time profiting from it themselves.
I think in the future we will three a mix of outcomes:
A) Government owned information. Governments always have a need for up-to-date, in depth information from around the world, and would be more than happy for their populaces to turn to them as a source of information, where it will be appropriately spun and filtered.
B) Government backed information. Benevolent governments will provide the funding to support gathering and reporting of information that can not be effectively monetized. We will rely on the benevolence of publicly supported institutions to provide us accurate and timely information.
C) Global citizen journalist network. We are seeing this increasingly where private citizens on the ground where news is happening relay that information around the world free of charge, calling it as they see it, without any pretense of objectivity.
Think again.
Boeing only just moved its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago in 2001.
Analysts are predicting that Boeing's production facilities could be gone from WA state entirely in another 10 years, taking 100,000 job with them.
If an airplane manufacturing company can up and leave, a software company sure as hell can up and leave.
I despise Microsoft software. It is the bane of my existence, but give me a break. I assure you, Microsoft-related court fees have next to no bearing on your economic situation.
Help me understand this:
1. Microsoft is the 3rd largest employer in your state
2. You are in a recession
3. You have a 9.3% unemployment rate
4. You want to raise taxes on business.
So that your government has more money to redistribute to people who are not working, who lost their jobs because companies like Microsoft couldn't afford to keep them on in the first place.
Let me propose an alternative.
Reduce your spending just like every other American, and reduce taxes on employers like Microsoft, so that they can afford rehire to your residents.
Brough
IANAL, but by the plain language of the statue, these individuals have infringed the author's copyright by making unauthorized copies of his software into their non-volatile iPhone memory. While the circumstances exclude criminal liability, civil liability for copyright infringement is limited only by logistics and the will of the author to pursue it.
He should go to court and subpoena the identities of these individuals, and ask for the statutory damages he is entitled to.
I strongly recommend the author consult a lawyer to explore his options here. It's possible an IP lawyer would be willing to take his case pro bono as a trial case.
Anyone who has sufficient disposable income to purchase and operate an iPhone or iPod Touch has no excuse not to legitimately purchase the $1-5 entertainment and novelty apps they use.
This is truly shameful.
Developers spend thousands of man hours creating these apps. There is no causal chain by which you could be owed access to these apps in violation of the legal rights of their lawful creators.
The range of power and freedom of its participants has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not a market is free.
I produce widgets. Through no compulsion I am the only widget producer in my region. I exchange widgets for capital at rates, in quantities, and at times to which both I and my customers agree, not always agreeably or beneficially, but in agreement. I charge more for my widgets than widget producers in other regions where at present they are more greatly concentrated. My customers agree to buy my widgets at higher costs through no compulsion of mine or any other, and the rate to which I agree to sell my widgets is subject to no compulsion.
I and my customers are participants in a widget market that has the quality or state of being free. This quality or state will persist so long my agreement to sell is at no compulsion but my own, and my customers' agreement to buy is at no compulsion but their own.
Save for interference by the state or by coercive force of either or any other external party, this quality or state will persist indefinitely.
Nonsense.
A free market is nothing more than a market that has the quality or state of being free, of being unencumbered.
A market is unencumbered only when any buyers and any sellers are able to exchange goods and services each possesses at any rate, in any quantity, and at any time to which both parties agree.
Whether its participants are powerful or weak has no bearing on whether or not a market is free, so long as the powerful do not prevent the weak from exchanging goods and services the weak possess, whether agreeably to the weak or not, so long as in agreement.
Save for minimal but overriding government regulations on liability, the Free Software market is a market having the quality or state of being free.
You are correct that a market does not have objectives, but from there you go on to describe people and politics, not markets. A "free market" is simply a market that has the quality or state of being free.
"Free" here means nothing more than "unencumbered." A market that is unencumbered is simply a market in which any buyers and any sellers are able to exchange the goods and services each posses at any rate, in any quantity, and at any time to which both parties agree. Free is simple.
The market you describe is therefore not free. When only those participants, and only at those rates, in those quantities, and at those times which they have equal power, are possessed of suitable knowledge, and have goods and services of certain origins are permitted to exchange goods and services, such a market no longer has the quality or state of being free.
Whether its participants are mighty or weak, young or old, wise or foolish, knowledgeable or feeble minded, and even righteous or wicked, has no bearing on whether a market is free. These may be qualities of participants in a market, but they are not qualities of a market.
Try as you might, you'll never separate liberalism from racism.
Even if a liberal isn't personally a racist, they see things like the civil rights act and the fair housing act (and the associated enforcement costs) as the government treating people differently based solely on the color of their skin, so at the very least a liberal world view enables racism.
Markets don't have objectives; people have objectives. A "free market" is simply a market that has the quality or state of being free. How you got from here to there I can not fathom.
"Free" here means nothing more than "unencumbered." A market that is unencumbered is a market in which buyers and sellers are able to exchange the goods and services each posses at any rate, in any quantity, and at any time. Free is simple.
A market, free or not, has no objective. It is not rational. It cares not for maximization or minimization. It does not know of distribution of wealth. It is not right or wrong, and is no respecter of persons, even of their relative freedom or lack thereof. All these are irrelevant to whether or not a market is free.
Participants in a market may be moral or immoral, but a market is neither.
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/spotlight-server.html
On the contrary, a popular song from the #1 selling album in the world, widely known and enjoyed in the target demographic, is very likely an excellent song to use to measure consumer audio compression and encoding preferences.
If the state of California believes they need to regulate negative externalities resulting from the operation of internal combustion engines, then they should tax the operation of internal combustion engines across the board.
Instead, we have an authoritarian government telling us what light bulbs we can screw in, what size of televisions we can own, and now the brand of auto glass we use.
What we have here is government singling out specific groups, behaviors, and industries with coercive power in a manner that is anathema to individual liberty.
Economic liberty is a civil liberty.