The only method most companies have for "evaluating" a potential programmer is through interships. This works great for the college-age crowd; prove your worth and you get a full-time job, fail and, no hard feelings, you're back in school the next fall.
I agree that there needs to be a similar evaluation period for professionals who can't afford to take an internship to "try out" a job.
Maybe the solution is to make the first contract for a month. This would be great for the good programmers who work well with others and learn quickly. This might not be so good for the "buzzword compliant" cookbook programmers.
Of course this isn't going to work for all situations, but for many of us it would be a way to get around HR and prove our worth to those that matter: our peers and the project leaders.
Don't forget that 15 years ago Bill Gates told us that we'd only ever need 640k RAM. Fifty years ago, the CEO of IBM said there would only be a market for a half-dozen computers. A thousand years ago, the Pope said the world is flat.
Luckily science is based on accepting a "fact" forever and never going out to gather new information. If a scientist said something is true 35 years ago then, dammit, it is TRUTH and those damn liberals shouldn't be messing with it.
It's a non-issue anyway. Imagine a large school district -- Philadephia, New York, LA -- announced that, due to the cost of licenses of MS products, they were standardizing on Debian (or pick your favorite distribution) with StarOffice, Gimp, and Mozilla for the 15,000 computers in all of their schools and administrative offices. Approximatly, 16 hours later a fleet of helecopters from Redmond would swoop down and drop crates of MS products compliments of the Gates foundation. Microsoft may want everyone to pay for their software, but the one thing they can't risk is an entire city of children and educators who realize that there are options other than MS for your software.
All the more reason why every school district in the country shouldn't be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Microsoft for their soon-to-be-annualized software subscriptions! That money could be used to - gasp - pay good teachers what they're worth.
Exactly! The article made me want to fucking scream. Phili paid nearly five-million dollars in fines, anti-piracy employees, buying compliant software. If I was a Philadephia taxpayer I'd be pissed.
I'm willing to be that for $5 million, RedHat would be willing to put together a standardized installation CD set that had linux plus KDE (or GNOME), an email program, a browser, StarOffice, the GNU compilers, GIMP, etc. etc. etc.) that would be intuitive to install and would run on a Pentium 133, 32 mb, 20 gb hd. The school district would never have to pay licensing fees again!
Instead some moronic, non-technical, middle-management administrators lack the foresight to escape their current cycle of doom. My sypathy is definitly not with the administration of that school distict (though I do feel sorry for the students and the teachers).
Re:What, and Python doesn't?
on
Why not Ruby?
·
· Score: 2
Anyway, by your definition, ANSI C supports operator overloading since you could write a couple of "int MultiplyInt(int, int);" etc. etc. functions.
Generally, "operator overloading" means overloading the specific character(s) that make up the operator. By my (and I think the general) definition, C++ allows operator overloading, C (any, by your description, Python) doesn't.
Anyway, I like Ruby even though I'm just learning it now. I think the reason I like it better than any other language I've dealt with recently is that, since it's new, many people are learning it together. The people I've asked for help are friendly and helpful.
Try going to comp.c.plus.plus.moderated and enter a snippet of code that starts "void main(void) {". Half the people there will act like you pissed on their mom no matter what your question is... It doesn't affect me -- I'm past that level of C++ coding -- but it bothers me that so much mental bandwidth is wasted.
Interesting point: that OEM copy of MS Office that came with one office computer (and has been copied to the 9 other computers in the office) has kept the purchasing department from looking for cheaper alternatives.
Sure, if you're paying full price, the MS Office "office" is pretty expensive (e.g. 10 x $500 = $5000) but if one copy is hidden in the cost of a computer and the other 9 copies are pirated then as far as the purchaser is concerned that only cost $0 dollars.
That makes it pretty hard for WordPerfect or WordPro to compete even if their Office Suites are half the price of Microsoft Office.
Make people pay full price for their software, then maybe they won't necessarily follow the herd but attempt to limit the amount of money they need to spend.
Great... nice quote we'll see pasted into the next snide, non-technical, anti-open source article. I can see the article now in the Wall Street Journal: Communist, Anti-Capitolist Assassins Lurk on Underground Hacker Web Site.
We are talking about privacy. How do your think you are going to buy a car and get credit so you can pay $400 a month and not give away personal information. So you have three options:
pay cash to dealer (if more than $10k the dealer must report you...)
get loan (going to need to give personal financial information)
don't get loan but try to convince dealer that you actually have enough money to buy the car but you actually want to pay $400 in easy monthly installments because you don't want the dealer to report you to the government because of the $10k law. Oh, by the way, you want the dealer to accept your offer without giving him any personal information...
One final option. Buy a used car from a private individual (who probably wouldn't know about the $10k law or how to go about reporting it...) or buy a used car that cost's less than $10k.
"Idiots like" me don't have a frequent buyer's discount card to any grocery stores (I bet you do) so no one knows what I buy.
HINT: go buy something that has a "frequest buyer" discount about 5 pm on a friday afternoon. Wait until there are about seven people behind you in line. Ask to join. They'll want you to fill it out right there. Enter any kind of random crap in your worst possible handwriting (hell, I type everything anyway so my handwriting is normally bad). Pay cash for your stuff. The cashier isn't going to double check anything (even if they could read it...). If they cancel your discount card, do it again next week. I have a tendancy to lose mine about once a month anyway. I must have 10 discount accounts under "Orson Wells" of "1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington D.C.".
BTW, harsh comments, dada21, but fairly on the mark. Anyway, I try not to take it so seriously. Its a game with you against the marketroids. Give false infomation if I can get away with it; incomplete information if you can get away with it; bad handwriting is always an excuse; etc. etc.. I think I got my philosphy of privacy from The Stainless Steel Rat's philosophy on money which was (something like) "if you can pay nothing, pay nothing, if you can pay too little, pay to little, if you have to pay, pay too much, at least they'll have to spend 0.35 USD to mail you your refund."
My next desk is gonna have a kind of mini-cupboard, into which I put the tower. open to the back for ventilation, and with an isolated door in the front so to dam the noise.
Someday I'm going to be a good enough woodworker (or rich enough to hire a good woodworker) to make a desk like that. Don't forget the second cupboard to hold the laser printer...
You make good points about the technical difficluties of some sort of post-earthbound existance (note, I'm not limiting the discussion to sattelites, lunar, or martian settlements). However there is a chicken and egg problem that you are ignoring. No one is going to completely design, build and test to fine-nines perfection the chicken until their is a reason. That reason is the pioneers that will need that those technologies. Get a couple of people on the Moon with a weekly show ("Survivor IXX: Moon Base Alpha") and if something goes wrong us earth-bound people are going to come up with a solution.
I'm sure there are people reading that can pick apart the technical difficulties of some sort of settlement option, but my point is more heroic. Imagine the following historical drama:
Queen Isabelle: Chris, my sweetie, you can't go the New World, there's no lighthouses on the shores to guide your ship through potential reefs!!!
Christopher Columbus: Babe, I'm willing to risk it. I want to be remembered forever as the discoverer of the New World. I'm, of course, not denigrating the accomplishments of Vikings and, possibly, Irish monks. Oh, and don't forget those wacky "indians", boy did they have a walk, whew...
Queen Isabelle: No, my lust monkey, I forbid it. I will not allow my husband to fund your dangerous mission. For god's sake, your ships are not even fully sea monster proof.
Christopher Columbus: Oh my gilded buttercup, they are sea monster proofed as much as current technology will allow. Besides, the only thing I need to scare off those monsters is my trusty muskett and a lock of your hair that I may hold in a locket close to my heart!
Queen Isabelle: Oh take me NOW!!!
King Ferdinand: Jesus H. Christ would you two shut up, I'm trying to watch the game. Chris here's a check, now get the fuck out!!
How many readers of/. would be willing to risk a 10% yearly mortality rate to be the first pioneers on a lunar settlement. If nothing else, think of the babes!!!
for his bravery. He's badly outnumbered, but he's still gladly participating. I know many people would think Craig is *cough* retarded, but he's surely brave.
Andover.net executive: Dammit, CT, the comment counts on slashdot are way down. Advertising revenue is your primary action item. Think outside the box and reprioritize your status objectives and get us some comments!!!
CmdrTaco: I know, I'll intentially misspell words which will easily double our comment count as all the bored people berate me for my spelling and grammer!
Just playing devil's advocate, but I recently read a report by some economist who's thesis was that the U.S. shouldn't even be in the farming business anymore.
He was under the impression that since so much of farming is mind-numbing, dangerous, and labour-intensive work, in a perfect (capitolist;) society farming would naturally move to 3rd World countries if there weren't tariffs, subsidies, and other assistance (daming rivers for irrigation etc..) that made it possible to continue farming here. In other words, the average American is too well-educated (okay, don't laugh too hard...), too "fragile" (e.g. worth too much in a lawsuit if he loses an arm in a bailer or something), and too expensive (dollars per hour) to be a farmer. In addition, U.S. land is too valuable in it's alternative uses (roads, parking lots, strip malls, McMansions, etc..) to be tied up in farming.
In the report's anlysis, the future of farming in the U.S. is limited to a few huge corps who can automate much of the grunt work, a few niche, specialty, and seasonal crops (where time to market is the determining factor), and hobbiests (like me... I can't wait for my home-grown tomatoes!).
It's a harsh stream of ideas. I personally prefer to live near a 100 acres of corn than 75 acres of developments and 25 acres of Walmarts.
I would prefer him [Gates] to be more precise. Maybe we should try to 'open' discussion between MS and OSS techs and discover which problems Microsoft encountered when they started using open source.
1. He's not being precise because "U" -- as in "Uncertainty" -- is an important aspect of "FUD". Blur the lines, tar everything with the same brush, try to get the people that don't read/. to associate Open Source, Free Software, and the GPL with anti-american, anti-competition, potentially dangerous...
2. Microsoft has "encountered" no problems with open source. At least in the development of software. Where they may have encountered problem is in the purchase of companies that have made use of GPL. Here, during the crash of the Nasdaq, MS is the perfect position to purchase all the techological advances it wants at fire sale prices. Anyone remember the term "poison pill"? It may be that the GPL is the "poison pill" that is preventing these companies from being consumed.
3. I have come up with a decryption protocol for Microsoft speeches.
a. Save the speech as a text file.
b. Globally search and replace all existing sentences with this string: "We need to build marketshare and mindshare for.NET".
b. Read the text file.
A non-slashdot person actually sent this to me today...
Quote of the Decade*:
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if
Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running
around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and
listening to repetitive electronic music."
Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989
Or, if your speed decreases from, say 50 mph, to 0 mph within 1 second, (and perhaps the same happened to another car very close to you) perhaps they can automatically dispatch an ambulance or something.
Better idea that doesn't invade privacy... Put a GPS on every telephone pole. Send an ambulance if the telephone pole accelerates from 0 mph to 50 mph within a second.
Perhaps you are right. Maybe unions should be something you join based on your hometown or your gender or alma mater or something. That way you'd be associated with a union before you enter into a contract with a business. All slashdotters in Seattle could be part of Slashdotters Local 102 and refuse to work for Microsoft unless Microsoft agrees to a minimum contract and promises to port Age of Empires to Linux.
Also, there is no doubt that the government can f-up the free marketplace. For example, if a company is going to break strikes with axe handles, I don't like the fact that the union can't hire these guys to take out a couple of recacitrant management types. And, don't even start on the second ammendment issues... if the supply wasn't kept artificially low due to those anti-2nd amendment laws, then maybe unions could afford to buy a few Stingers to make the CEO's LearJet a less attractive option for commuting to his new 3rd world sweatshop.;)
On the other hand, perhaps a better solution is to have an independent entity to establish some ground rules that benefit both the union and the company. If you think that independent entity unfairly favors business then vote Democrat, if you think that independent entity unfairly favors unions then vote Republican, if you want to retreat from the real world vote Libertarian.
Having said all this, I don't necessarily support unions and, in particular, I have real trouble seeing the need for a union in a real high-tech shop. In other words, I'd happily argue the opposite of the argument I'm trying to make here. However, one point stands, capitalism only works when there is a rough equality among the parties engaging in the market (9/10ths of the reason the SEC exists to to insure all investors have an equal access to the information that affects the stock market {essay question: good for capitalism or bad. discuss. 20pts.}) and I happen to believe that the government can, occasionally, help maintain this equality.
It seems to me that you accept your working conditions when you accept the job, pay, benefits, etc.. You shouldn't be complaining about them after you are hired.
Wow! That takes care of the OSHA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and all sexual harassment laws. What the fuck, you probably could get rid of murder and rape laws if an asshole lawyer could convince a jury that these crimes were part of the "working conditions" of the job.
Don't get me wrong, I don't entirely trust unions any more than I entire trust the upper management of the company I work for. But any good capitalist has to believe in competition and that's all that unions are... competition with management.
As a non-Python using non-lawyer, I assume it is perfectly legal to write a commercial app in Python, sell it, and NOT release the Python source code of your application.
But, if you use the Python libraries I assume you have to package the source code of those libraries along with your app.
The GPL simply covers the code that makes the interpreter right plus the Python code in any standard libraries?
Sorry for my ignorance, just trying to get a handle on what the fuss is about...
Okay, I'm generally pretty cynical, but there was a UK request for comments six or so months ago. I spent a few minutes filling out thier questionaire and, eventually, their patent office issued their official recomendation and my name was on the list of contributers. Pretty cool.
Of course, there are differences.
That was on the question of software business patents as a whole not just comments on the database for searching those patents.
The UK version actually had a web form where you entered you opinions and received a confirmation. (Obviously, it could have been bogus, but at least you didin't get the impression that some clerk tossed it in file 13 because you didn't write your comments on a lobbiest's letterhead.)
I guess if I get around to commenting on this I'd push for a database that allowed the very least amound of flexibility in how a business method patent could be interpreted. In other words, don't let companies fish for related applications for thier (IMHO) bogus business applications.
Second, make sure that the database links to whatever databases already exist in the patent office so that any application that comes through that is basically a copy of some "real world" patent but has the words "computer, internet, wireless, or web" attached to it is immediatly tossed out the window.
As we run low on fish, fishing becomes a less-viable source of life. Old fishermen find something else to do, or go on welfare, or are supported by their families. Their kids don't become fishermen to begin with. Within 50 years, fishing as a way of life dies out. Eventually, a few large boats keep fish stocks at a constant level, and provides the population with fish.
Obviously this didn't work with the Dodo (too convientent a food source for sailing crews) or the Passenger Pigeon. I was trying to keep this fairly simple so the original poster wouldn't get lost. What you say is true, but its also a lot more complicated than you indicate here.
One thing that's missing is the idea of genetic diversity. Some scientists say the Siberian tiger is already extinct (despite a few still walking around zoos and in the wild) because there is too little genetic diversity. Potentially, they are doomed to extinction via the tiger equivalent of hemophila, mental retardation, or other diseases of inbreeding. The Cheeta (sp?) also falls into this catagory. By the time our children are adults, both species will probably only be in zoos. By the time thier children are adults, both cats may exist only as DNA samples in government laboratories.
Sure, many species may reach a stable, free-market equilibrium with human harvesting of those species. If that equilibrium maintains a large enough pool of creatures that they can survive disease, non-human hunting (sea lions eating salmon, for example), and other pressures not associated with the act of harvesting these creatures (climate change, pollution, habitat loss) then we have reached the best solution. We get to enjoy the "harvest" like retirees living off the interest of their investment. I whole-heartedly support this kind of environmentalism. It's not the "animals good/humans bad" environmentalism that you seem to be complaining about, but the same kind of common sense that your accountant tries to get us to use when planning for our individual retirement.
However, there are other motivations. I personally can't go through life making every decision like life is a entry in an accounting ledger. If I have kids, I don't want to explain why tigers only exist in old picture books, I want to be able to take my kids out for an authentic maryland crabcake, and I want to be able show them western red ceders and redwoods that are hundreds of years old (it will be difficult to explain to a four-year-old how the indians used to carve canoes out of a tree if the only tree she has ever seen is a 6" diameter douglas fir on a tree farm). These are purely selfish reasons but they are definitely a motivation and I, personally, am willing to pay a bit more for my crab cakes, lumber, and salmon in the hopes that those things will still be around a century from now.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I'll bite. What makes something a "rock" instead of a mineral so I don't piss off any geologists when posting to slashdot?
The only method most companies have for "evaluating" a potential programmer is through interships. This works great for the college-age crowd; prove your worth and you get a full-time job, fail and, no hard feelings, you're back in school the next fall.
I agree that there needs to be a similar evaluation period for professionals who can't afford to take an internship to "try out" a job. Maybe the solution is to make the first contract for a month. This would be great for the good programmers who work well with others and learn quickly. This might not be so good for the "buzzword compliant" cookbook programmers.
Of course this isn't going to work for all situations, but for many of us it would be a way to get around HR and prove our worth to those that matter: our peers and the project leaders.
Don't forget that 15 years ago Bill Gates told us that we'd only ever need 640k RAM. Fifty years ago, the CEO of IBM said there would only be a market for a half-dozen computers. A thousand years ago, the Pope said the world is flat.
Luckily science is based on accepting a "fact" forever and never going out to gather new information. If a scientist said something is true 35 years ago then, dammit, it is TRUTH and those damn liberals shouldn't be messing with it.
It's a non-issue anyway. Imagine a large school district -- Philadephia, New York, LA -- announced that, due to the cost of licenses of MS products, they were standardizing on Debian (or pick your favorite distribution) with StarOffice, Gimp, and Mozilla for the 15,000 computers in all of their schools and administrative offices. Approximatly, 16 hours later a fleet of helecopters from Redmond would swoop down and drop crates of MS products compliments of the Gates foundation. Microsoft may want everyone to pay for their software, but the one thing they can't risk is an entire city of children and educators who realize that there are options other than MS for your software.
All the more reason why every school district in the country shouldn't be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Microsoft for their soon-to-be-annualized software subscriptions! That money could be used to - gasp - pay good teachers what they're worth.
Exactly! The article made me want to fucking scream. Phili paid nearly five-million dollars in fines, anti-piracy employees, buying compliant software. If I was a Philadephia taxpayer I'd be pissed.
I'm willing to be that for $5 million, RedHat would be willing to put together a standardized installation CD set that had linux plus KDE (or GNOME), an email program, a browser, StarOffice, the GNU compilers, GIMP, etc. etc. etc.) that would be intuitive to install and would run on a Pentium 133, 32 mb, 20 gb hd. The school district would never have to pay licensing fees again!
Instead some moronic, non-technical, middle-management administrators lack the foresight to escape their current cycle of doom. My sypathy is definitly not with the administration of that school distict (though I do feel sorry for the students and the teachers).
Anyway, by your definition, ANSI C supports operator overloading since you could write a couple of "int MultiplyInt(int, int);" etc. etc. functions.
Generally, "operator overloading" means overloading the specific character(s) that make up the operator. By my (and I think the general) definition, C++ allows operator overloading, C (any, by your description, Python) doesn't.
Anyway, I like Ruby even though I'm just learning it now. I think the reason I like it better than any other language I've dealt with recently is that, since it's new, many people are learning it together. The people I've asked for help are friendly and helpful.
Try going to comp.c.plus.plus.moderated and enter a snippet of code that starts "void main(void) {". Half the people there will act like you pissed on their mom no matter what your question is... It doesn't affect me -- I'm past that level of C++ coding -- but it bothers me that so much mental bandwidth is wasted.
Interesting point: that OEM copy of MS Office that came with one office computer (and has been copied to the 9 other computers in the office) has kept the purchasing department from looking for cheaper alternatives.
Sure, if you're paying full price, the MS Office "office" is pretty expensive (e.g. 10 x $500 = $5000) but if one copy is hidden in the cost of a computer and the other 9 copies are pirated then as far as the purchaser is concerned that only cost $0 dollars.
That makes it pretty hard for WordPerfect or WordPro to compete even if their Office Suites are half the price of Microsoft Office.
Make people pay full price for their software, then maybe they won't necessarily follow the herd but attempt to limit the amount of money they need to spend.
Great... nice quote we'll see pasted into the next snide, non-technical, anti-open source article. I can see the article now in the Wall Street Journal: Communist, Anti-Capitolist Assassins Lurk on Underground Hacker Web Site.
Think before you post next time....
We are talking about privacy. How do your think you are going to buy a car and get credit so you can pay $400 a month and not give away personal information. So you have three options:
One final option. Buy a used car from a private individual (who probably wouldn't know about the $10k law or how to go about reporting it...) or buy a used car that cost's less than $10k.
Summing up... YOU think before you post.
"Idiots like" me don't have a frequent buyer's discount card to any grocery stores (I bet you do) so no one knows what I buy.
HINT: go buy something that has a "frequest buyer" discount about 5 pm on a friday afternoon. Wait until there are about seven people behind you in line. Ask to join. They'll want you to fill it out right there. Enter any kind of random crap in your worst possible handwriting (hell, I type everything anyway so my handwriting is normally bad). Pay cash for your stuff. The cashier isn't going to double check anything (even if they could read it...). If they cancel your discount card, do it again next week. I have a tendancy to lose mine about once a month anyway. I must have 10 discount accounts under "Orson Wells" of "1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington D.C.".
BTW, harsh comments, dada21, but fairly on the mark. Anyway, I try not to take it so seriously. Its a game with you against the marketroids. Give false infomation if I can get away with it; incomplete information if you can get away with it; bad handwriting is always an excuse; etc. etc.. I think I got my philosphy of privacy from The Stainless Steel Rat's philosophy on money which was (something like) "if you can pay nothing, pay nothing, if you can pay too little, pay to little, if you have to pay, pay too much, at least they'll have to spend 0.35 USD to mail you your refund."
My next desk is gonna have a kind of mini-cupboard, into which I put the tower. open to the back for ventilation, and with an isolated door in the front so to dam the noise.
Someday I'm going to be a good enough woodworker (or rich enough to hire a good woodworker) to make a desk like that. Don't forget the second cupboard to hold the laser printer...
It's also the original virus checker... "That's funny, my hard drive hasn't stopped spinning for the last twenty minutes."
At an old job, we caught one of the few Macintosh viruses. The only thing it seemed to do was click the Hard Drive on and off every 10 seconds or so.
You make good points about the technical difficluties of some sort of post-earthbound existance (note, I'm not limiting the discussion to sattelites, lunar, or martian settlements). However there is a chicken and egg problem that you are ignoring. No one is going to completely design, build and test to fine-nines perfection the chicken until their is a reason. That reason is the pioneers that will need that those technologies. Get a couple of people on the Moon with a weekly show ("Survivor IXX: Moon Base Alpha") and if something goes wrong us earth-bound people are going to come up with a solution.
I'm sure there are people reading that can pick apart the technical difficulties of some sort of settlement option, but my point is more heroic. Imagine the following historical drama:
Queen Isabelle: Chris, my sweetie, you can't go the New World, there's no lighthouses on the shores to guide your ship through potential reefs!!!
Christopher Columbus: Babe, I'm willing to risk it. I want to be remembered forever as the discoverer of the New World. I'm, of course, not denigrating the accomplishments of Vikings and, possibly, Irish monks. Oh, and don't forget those wacky "indians", boy did they have a walk, whew...
Queen Isabelle: No, my lust monkey, I forbid it. I will not allow my husband to fund your dangerous mission. For god's sake, your ships are not even fully sea monster proof.
Christopher Columbus: Oh my gilded buttercup, they are sea monster proofed as much as current technology will allow. Besides, the only thing I need to scare off those monsters is my trusty muskett and a lock of your hair that I may hold in a locket close to my heart!
Queen Isabelle: Oh take me NOW!!!
King Ferdinand: Jesus H. Christ would you two shut up, I'm trying to watch the game. Chris here's a check, now get the fuck out!!
How many readers of /. would be willing to risk a 10% yearly mortality rate to be the first pioneers on a lunar settlement. If nothing else, think of the babes!!!
Don't forget. He got First Post.
Andover.net executive: Dammit, CT, the comment counts on slashdot are way down. Advertising revenue is your primary action item. Think outside the box and reprioritize your status objectives and get us some comments!!!
CmdrTaco: I know, I'll intentially misspell words which will easily double our comment count as all the bored people berate me for my spelling and grammer!
Just playing devil's advocate, but I recently read a report by some economist who's thesis was that the U.S. shouldn't even be in the farming business anymore.
He was under the impression that since so much of farming is mind-numbing, dangerous, and labour-intensive work, in a perfect (capitolist ;) society farming would naturally move to 3rd World countries if there weren't tariffs, subsidies, and other assistance (daming rivers for irrigation etc..) that made it possible to continue farming here. In other words, the average American is too well-educated (okay, don't laugh too hard...), too "fragile" (e.g. worth too much in a lawsuit if he loses an arm in a bailer or something), and too expensive (dollars per hour) to be a farmer. In addition, U.S. land is too valuable in it's alternative uses (roads, parking lots, strip malls, McMansions, etc..) to be tied up in farming.
In the report's anlysis, the future of farming in the U.S. is limited to a few huge corps who can automate much of the grunt work, a few niche, specialty, and seasonal crops (where time to market is the determining factor), and hobbiests (like me... I can't wait for my home-grown tomatoes!).
It's a harsh stream of ideas. I personally prefer to live near a 100 acres of corn than 75 acres of developments and 25 acres of Walmarts.
1. He's not being precise because "U" -- as in "Uncertainty" -- is an important aspect of "FUD". Blur the lines, tar everything with the same brush, try to get the people that don't read /. to associate Open Source, Free Software, and the GPL with anti-american, anti-competition, potentially dangerous...
2. Microsoft has "encountered" no problems with open source. At least in the development of software. Where they may have encountered problem is in the purchase of companies that have made use of GPL. Here, during the crash of the Nasdaq, MS is the perfect position to purchase all the techological advances it wants at fire sale prices. Anyone remember the term "poison pill"? It may be that the GPL is the "poison pill" that is preventing these companies from being consumed.
3. I have come up with a decryption protocol for Microsoft speeches. .NET".
a. Save the speech as a text file.
b. Globally search and replace all existing sentences with this string: "We need to build marketshare and mindshare for
b. Read the text file.
The speech has been decrypted...
A non-slashdot person actually sent this to me today...
Quote of the Decade*:
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if
Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running
around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and
listening to repetitive electronic music."
Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989
* I have no idea if this is a real quote...
Better idea that doesn't invade privacy... Put a GPS on every telephone pole. Send an ambulance if the telephone pole accelerates from 0 mph to 50 mph within a second.
No, not another law... ;)
Anyway, stupid behavior on motorcycles is a self-limiting phenomenon. Not that I'd know anything about it...
Perhaps you are right. Maybe unions should be something you join based on your hometown or your gender or alma mater or something. That way you'd be associated with a union before you enter into a contract with a business. All slashdotters in Seattle could be part of Slashdotters Local 102 and refuse to work for Microsoft unless Microsoft agrees to a minimum contract and promises to port Age of Empires to Linux.
Also, there is no doubt that the government can f-up the free marketplace. For example, if a company is going to break strikes with axe handles, I don't like the fact that the union can't hire these guys to take out a couple of recacitrant management types. And, don't even start on the second ammendment issues... if the supply wasn't kept artificially low due to those anti-2nd amendment laws, then maybe unions could afford to buy a few Stingers to make the CEO's LearJet a less attractive option for commuting to his new 3rd world sweatshop. ;)
On the other hand, perhaps a better solution is to have an independent entity to establish some ground rules that benefit both the union and the company. If you think that independent entity unfairly favors business then vote Democrat, if you think that independent entity unfairly favors unions then vote Republican, if you want to retreat from the real world vote Libertarian.
Having said all this, I don't necessarily support unions and, in particular, I have real trouble seeing the need for a union in a real high-tech shop. In other words, I'd happily argue the opposite of the argument I'm trying to make here. However, one point stands, capitalism only works when there is a rough equality among the parties engaging in the market (9/10ths of the reason the SEC exists to to insure all investors have an equal access to the information that affects the stock market {essay question: good for capitalism or bad. discuss. 20pts.}) and I happen to believe that the government can, occasionally, help maintain this equality.
Wow! That takes care of the OSHA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and all sexual harassment laws. What the fuck, you probably could get rid of murder and rape laws if an asshole lawyer could convince a jury that these crimes were part of the "working conditions" of the job.
Don't get me wrong, I don't entirely trust unions any more than I entire trust the upper management of the company I work for. But any good capitalist has to believe in competition and that's all that unions are... competition with management.
As a non-Python using non-lawyer, I assume it is perfectly legal to write a commercial app in Python, sell it, and NOT release the Python source code of your application.
But, if you use the Python libraries I assume you have to package the source code of those libraries along with your app.
The GPL simply covers the code that makes the interpreter right plus the Python code in any standard libraries?
Sorry for my ignorance, just trying to get a handle on what the fuss is about...
Okay, I'm generally pretty cynical, but there was a UK request for comments six or so months ago. I spent a few minutes filling out thier questionaire and, eventually, their patent office issued their official recomendation and my name was on the list of contributers. Pretty cool.
Of course, there are differences.
I guess if I get around to commenting on this I'd push for a database that allowed the very least amound of flexibility in how a business method patent could be interpreted. In other words, don't let companies fish for related applications for thier (IMHO) bogus business applications.
Second, make sure that the database links to whatever databases already exist in the patent office so that any application that comes through that is basically a copy of some "real world" patent but has the words "computer, internet, wireless, or web" attached to it is immediatly tossed out the window.
As we run low on fish, fishing becomes a less-viable source of life. Old fishermen find something else to do, or go on welfare, or are supported by their families. Their kids don't become fishermen to begin with. Within 50 years, fishing as a way of life dies out. Eventually, a few large boats keep fish stocks at a constant level, and provides the population with fish.
Obviously this didn't work with the Dodo (too convientent a food source for sailing crews) or the Passenger Pigeon. I was trying to keep this fairly simple so the original poster wouldn't get lost. What you say is true, but its also a lot more complicated than you indicate here.
One thing that's missing is the idea of genetic diversity. Some scientists say the Siberian tiger is already extinct (despite a few still walking around zoos and in the wild) because there is too little genetic diversity. Potentially, they are doomed to extinction via the tiger equivalent of hemophila, mental retardation, or other diseases of inbreeding. The Cheeta (sp?) also falls into this catagory. By the time our children are adults, both species will probably only be in zoos. By the time thier children are adults, both cats may exist only as DNA samples in government laboratories.
Sure, many species may reach a stable, free-market equilibrium with human harvesting of those species. If that equilibrium maintains a large enough pool of creatures that they can survive disease, non-human hunting (sea lions eating salmon, for example), and other pressures not associated with the act of harvesting these creatures (climate change, pollution, habitat loss) then we have reached the best solution. We get to enjoy the "harvest" like retirees living off the interest of their investment. I whole-heartedly support this kind of environmentalism. It's not the "animals good/humans bad" environmentalism that you seem to be complaining about, but the same kind of common sense that your accountant tries to get us to use when planning for our individual retirement.
However, there are other motivations. I personally can't go through life making every decision like life is a entry in an accounting ledger. If I have kids, I don't want to explain why tigers only exist in old picture books, I want to be able to take my kids out for an authentic maryland crabcake, and I want to be able show them western red ceders and redwoods that are hundreds of years old (it will be difficult to explain to a four-year-old how the indians used to carve canoes out of a tree if the only tree she has ever seen is a 6" diameter douglas fir on a tree farm). These are purely selfish reasons but they are definitely a motivation and I, personally, am willing to pay a bit more for my crab cakes, lumber, and salmon in the hopes that those things will still be around a century from now.