Hey, the system wakes up and takes notice, finally. I'd say that about fifty percent of the time I think that the cases that the ACLU files are a valueless waste of time and paper. The other fifty percent (like this one), are why I haven't utterly given up hope in the lawyer dominated system.
So reverse engineering the proprietary information inside censorware, filing blanket sub-poenas, legal threatening, etc. are what it takes to get the ACLU involved?
Fine, then why haven't they caught a clue and started a brush fire against UCITA and the DCMA? Maybe we at/. can find a way to smack the ACLU upside the head with a giant cluestick so that they will get involved -- so that we in the so-called "geek" community have a legal voice besides the EFF that can make the judges and legislators notice that we are trying to defend some of our basic rights (as expressed on the web) here.
Nah, compared to a missle target they are sitting ducks.
But ya'know, I'd pay to see the movie if the Navy or somebody could hit em' with a missile and catch it in on film in all the IMAX technicolor glory they could come up with.
Now there's an OS Project I'd join -- instead of "Save Iridium" "Roast Iridium -- the OS IMAX adventure... Yeah, that's it -- 66 worldwide teams competing for the best shoot down show.
Couldn't they retrofit the satellites... If they were in a higher orbit perhaps. But technically not worth while -- for the cost of the the retrofits, a state of the art network could be put in place (in the right orbital pattern as well) that would use the frequency much more efficiently.
...and use them as a big SETI array or something? I thought about that too -- I mean, suppose these things could potentially be a globe size radio telescope. But (if I understand the math correctly), the satellites are essentially tone deaf except in their specified frequency rangem, and even if it were a useful frequency for radio telescops, I don't know if there is any way that they could be turned and selectively focused outward. Or that the signal bleed from planet earth wouldn't render them inaccurate anyway.
So really, though it seems like a huge waste, it's time for them to be brought down safely.
Very good points. As I was reading I also came to the conclusion that the DCMA was specifically designed to overturn the 1984 court case. What I'm not sure of is whether the court(s) will allow it to succeed or not -- and we all know that the issue really comes down to money vs. constitutional rights on this one.
"Regarding economic value as a touchstone,..." I'm not sure if the idea of advancement OR economics is more important either.
The more important argument seems to have been that the copyright holders could not prove that a VTR (Video Tape Recorder) would cause substantial financial damage in the form of copyright infringement before the courts should get involved. They couldn't, and so Sony won.
By my (non-lawyer, by the way) reading is that DeCSS doesn't create or prevent piracy, it actually expands the market just like the Betamax and VHS VTR's did. So by this test, the deCSS code should be legal, and if a court case rules that it is, the DCMA is DEAD. [We all agree -- pirated copies of DVDs, CD-ROMS, etc are not acceptable or legal, right?]
Okay, now for a one or two minor disputations with your points: "Congress not only can do things in its listed powers, it can do anything that is reasonably connected to advancing those exercises of power."Not quite. My reading is that the Founding Fathers recognized that the legislatures in many European countries were quite corrupt, and made a strong judiciary a foundation of our governmental system as a counterbalance to it, with the goal of protecting fairness in the rule of law. So Congress cannot advance it's powers in an unlimited matter unless the Supreme Court sits on its hands.
"Hence, the DCMA. (Whose likely valid constitutional basis is the Commerce Clause.)"Not a disputation of your point, but so far the court cases have been trade secret and/or copyright clause related. I'm curious as to this interpretation of the DCMA's constitutional foundation.
"They could avoid the constitutional issue (free speech vs. copyright) by using the "fair use" part of the statute. That day may well be gone.
Absolutely brilliant point, the expression of which has been like an itch in the back of my mind which I couldn't quite scratch.
"The good news is that this is a pretty first-amendment-friendly Supreme Court." Yeah, but slow to act (designed that way), too. "See the statute isn't fair. It isn't SUPPOSED to be fair. And it isn't clear that the Constitution requires it to be. Agreed, but the Bill of Rights is designed to promote justice and liberty for all of us -- not just the megacorps.
Ever wonder why the DCMA really got passed? And whether the Supreme Court will ultimately find it to be constitutional? While researching I found this [and I am not the only one, the Harv ard Law website also has the case online], (Bolding of certain areas of text, known as emphasis, is mine)
An explanation of our rejection of respondents'
unprecedented attempt to impose copyright liability upon the distributors of copying equipment requires a quite detailed recitation of the findings of the District Court. (skipping some VCR/TV specific content, resuming where the reason for rejection is given) even the two respondents in this case, who do assert objections to time-shifting in this litigation, were unable to prove that the practice has impaired the commercial value of their copyrights or has created any likelihood of future harm. Given these findings, there is no basis in the Copyright Act upon which respondents can hold petitioners liable for distributing VTR's to the general public. The Court of Appeals' holding that respondents are entitled to enjoin the distribution of VTR's, to collect royalties on the sale of such equipment, or to obtain other relief, if affirmed, would enlarge the scope of respondents' statutory monopolies to encompass control over an article of commerce that is not the subject of copyright protection.
Hmmm...It seems that according to the Supreme Court, I can watch copyrighted content which I have copied for my own use with a technological device, doesn't it? How about this one:
...the noncommercial character of the use, and the private character of the activity conducted entirely within the home. (Slight skip of TV only related content) "Even when an entire copyrighted work was recorded, the District Court regarded the copying as fair use
"because there is no accompanying reduction in the market for 'plaintiff's original work.'"
The first section referred to receiving "free" signals, but once I have paid for a license to view a DVD in the privacy of my home, I have the right to do so for free...unless it's on a machine not pre-approved for the purpose, apparently. (No DVD decoders have been licensed for Linux that I know of) The second part says that if I am not reducing the commercial value of the copyright owners (AKA piracy), copying an entire work is fair use.
One more, the most important of all:
Article I, Sec. 8 of the Constitution provides that: "The Congress shall have Power... to Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The monopoly privileges that Congress may authorize are neither unlimited nor primarily designed to provide a special private benefit. Rather, the limited grant is a means by which an important public purpose may be achieved. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors by the provision of a special reward, and to allow the public access to the products of their genius after the limited period of exclusive control has expired. "The copyright law, like the patent statute, makes reward to the owner a secondary consideration.
So if you haven't yet decided whether the DCMA is worth fighting against, consider these arguments. Join the fight to make sure that the entire DCMA is thrown out as an unconstitutional infringement of our rights. [4 good ways (?), contacting your congressional representatives, media exposure where available, boycotting the studios, and by financially supporting the EFF.]
I am currently in the process of creating what I hope to be a successful portal site using PHP, and one of the areas is intended to be a distribution point for on-line music, for musical artists whose work I think deserves a chance to be heard.
I also need to have a source of revenue to pay for the bandwidth, etc. required to provide the songs, and so I have thought about this long and hard. To date the best solution I have come up with is just what Tim Lord suggested, that is, I will make the same song available in the same place on the web page, but the encoding rate will be based on whether or not the person is a "site subscriber". Granted, subscribers can re-post the higher quality MP3 back to the web and essentially screw the artist (I'm out of the loop because I'm not paying for the bandwidth for the downloads of the reposted copy), but if I'm providing good music at a good cost, why would they bother?
By the way, the big difference between this model and MP3.com is essentially the difference between an indie label and the big boys. I become an "indie producer", and the web becomes my marketing tool. So if I have the integrity to limit myself to musicians, etc. I want to push, I can make a decent amount of money, and most importantly -- push the majority of the financial benefit to the artists.
That's where a wide skill set comes in handy. I've consulted for about five years since last being a corporate drone, and learned enough different tools (SQL, XML, Java, etc.) to move back into corporate IT with enough skills that I don't get pegged to one project, and therefore get bored.
Instead, I'm sort of loaned to a project long enough to make sure that it is designed well, a stable core code base established, and testing standards in place. Then all I have to do is approve the work, and all the folks on the projects gain experience as well.
Not only is their product not available where I want it (Linux/Mozilla), I saw this on their FAQ page:
"IDcide's
patent-pending technology automatically distinguishes between persistent cookies sent to the site you are visiting and persistent cookies that are sent to external sites. "
Hmmm. Seems to me if the code I am presently working on (which allows the user to set a preference on my site as to whether or not they wish to receive third party ads/cookies/etc., participate in demographic surveys, etc.), then I might be in violation of a patent. Or if I take the same logic and create a plug in for Mozilla, I'm in violation of patent law. [If I were to reverse engineer the technique (which I don't need to), who knows how many laws I'll be in violation of by the time this type of crap is over...]
So IDCide? No, I decided already -- skip it, and find some prior art to defeat their patent as well.
Here in the Kansas City, MO area, a person can usually find advertisements for what looks like 400-500 positions on any given weekend. Trouble is, alot of those are consulting companies competing to put the same butt in a chair.
Secondarily, software engineering is unique in that it can be applied to so many different areas, where an chemical engineer, for example, will never work as a mechanical engineer, and even more -- a chemical engineer specializing in petrochemical refinement will probably never work in pharmaceuticals. But as an IT engineer, I might work with one or all of these other engineers in the course of my career, and gain enough experience to be useful to all of them.
So the competition isn't for bodies, it's for bodies with a wide enough range of skills to be applied to numerous projects.
Finally, The real difficulty is that with {programmer burnout, poor management, and the project completions} etc., the required skill sets change drastically over what might be a person's whole IT career. This makes it difficult hard for companies to retain people with a wide enough skill set to be useful on multiple projects, because once those skills are developed, the person is usually worth alot more than they are being paid in their present position.
All of which says to me, there's no shortage in the labor pool -- there's a shortage in the "stable expert" labor pool.
Absolutely great article, and I'm glad that/. highlighted it as I did not see it in a previous poster's reference.
Interestingly enough, without even commenting on the DCMA vs. DeCSS litigations, Jesse makes it clear that the mega-corps in the entertainment industry have absolutely no morals when it comes to extracting every last dime from their song libraries, film vaults, etc. and controlling not only the profitable distribution of materials, but what is distributable at all.
Coupled with all of the recent attacks on the Internet as a communications medium by the RIAA, MPAA, etc., and you realize we really are in a war with the corporations to retain our civil rights regarding freedom of expression. The problem is, the companies are also in a justifiable and intense war with rip-off artists. Too bad that little things like rights and justice are getting trampled in the middle, and the government being bought by special interest monies to insure that big corporate rights win out.
Well, I'll stop complaining and do something about it. I'm emailing a copy of this article to every state and federal legislator, judge, and executive branch member that I can think of. Anyone else care to join me in this crusade?
Thought I'd chime in here, not so much as a programmer or manager, but as someone who sits in the middle chair and does about 50% of each (project management and coding):
What I would say is that full time telecommuting is the best way to do things -- when it works, which in my experience, is only about 10% of the time. That said, here's my personal top ten list for when it will probably work well:
10. The commute is 45 minutes or longer each way.
9. The project(s) you are on have clearly defined goals. 8. The company has a well thought out telecommunication policy. 7. A 56K or faster connection to the IntraNet 6. Adequate problem solving resources at the home office. 5. A tight communications loop with your boss. 4. Frequent reporting of progress and problems. 3. A non-distracting home work environment. 2. A focused, effective work methodology (how to get the tough work done...) 1. A personal integrity based work ethic.
See why only 10%? Remove any of the above, and it becomes progressively more difficult to get the job done.
Well, to be accurate, it was registered by someone who is now living in the US, and the "The domain has not really been registered that long either" comment isn't necessarily true either.
The date listed is the "date of last registration", which means that the domain name owner was last registed on July 5, 1999 -- which could have been a renewal. (Not sure, my own domains aren't up for renewal yet.)
Two thoughts, the more important one will come second.
First, and assuming that the domain owner's statement about their desired use for the domain is legit -- the word coke is used in even more ways -- coke is also used in the coal industry. I wonder if Coca Cola would be doing this if the site was active as a part of a large Swiss coal mining company [BTW, I admit up front to not knowing if there are even any coal mines in Switzerland:)]
Second thought: with the site not being in present day use, maybe there is a win-win for everybody ['xcept maybe the lawyers??;-)]. So that Coke wins, the domain owner wins, cocaine addicts win, etc. My suggestion would be to create a proposal where the domain owner would agree to give up the coke.ch domain and Coca Cola would in turn offer and come through with high-quality sponsorship of an alternatively named domain with information on cocaine addiction, etc. A nice letter to the appropriate folks at Coca Cola, presenting an opportunity for the Big Company to be on the side of the little guy, Coke agrees, the Lawyers go on to other things, [and we don't have to boycott Coke...;-)], what could be better?
Even more significant, you might be doing operations outside of the database (writing a file, sending an email) that if it fails, you need to roll back your DB transaction.
I'm not absolutely disagreeing with you but I'd bet that even in your example, I could design a process flow that would do the same thing in MySQL for when it was needed, and retain the speed advantage of MySQL the rest of the time. [Caveat: I'm limiting the above comment to RDBMS's running on single processor machines, because that's all I have used MySQL on so far.]
Anyone who thinks otherwise has never built a robust, scaleable system.
Oh Really??? What about those of us who were building systems that had to be robust and scalable before Oracle, et. al. had transactions? We did it with middle-ware or right in the application program code. Which is what you have to do with MySQL.
But wouldn't you know it, even though I've become a PDG Oracle SQL coder(pretty damn good [5 yrs experience], some of my non-Oracle applications (mostly based on Netware/B-Trieve) still blow the doors off of any SQL based system I've written since.
Transactions + SQL are not required for robustness and scalability. Transactional logic -- at whatever layer -- RDBMS, Middleware, or Application -- is, and no-one is disputing that.
BTW, the SQL advantage isn't necessarily performance anyway. It is and always has been that I can get at my data more ways with SQL without having to hand code my request for data in new ways into an application.
Agreed. Which is why I pointed out that maybe MySQL is the "best SQL server" for people with more sense than money.
Best example I have -- I am currently coding an information web site for a small non-profit. 98% of the site is dynamically created (a la Slashdot), and the remaining 2% will require some heavy code in PHP to create the transaction type logic I've described elsewhere in this thread.
Now then, this info site might remain an unknown spot on the web, or it could suddenly get very very active like/. did about 18 months ago. Where suddenly I need all the speed I can get out of the database.
Now then, since I don't know how heavy the load will be ahead of time: do I ask the non-profit to pay the heavy, heavy license cost and support fees for Oracle, SQL Server, DB-2, or Informix to get the transactions for 2% of the site? or do I use PHP/MySQL, have them pay the optional $200 registration fee to take care of the more heavily used 98% part of the site, and then write the code for the remaining 2% myself?
I think you basically just agreed with me. (See my post to the comment which followed yours) about what transactions are and why they are needed. But yes, with good planning I can write my middle layer of code so that it uses atomic operations with pass fails at each step, so that I don't need "expensive" SQL deletes, etc., I need "cheap" ones.
I'm not saying that transactions aren't important, or that a person should always go with MySQL -- I'm just saying that with good design, I can use the speed advantage of MySQL most of the time, and then only incur the "transaction with data atoms done in the middleware"-speed penalty only when it is absolutely needed.
Like you lucidly demonstrated in your three table example above.
Have no clue, do I? Wrong. If you're going to shoot, at least be prepared to back it up, like I'm going to do with my post right now. Not to toot my horn, but to defend my point - been there done that, I was writing systems 10 years ago that were not even SQL compliant, had no inherent transaction logic, but that did have the ability to do commits and roll backs.
And how you may ask -- oh illustrious poster -- do you suppose it was done?
I (the programmer) created a middle layer of code that forced each part of what we would all call an SQL "transaction" into atomic data units, with pass/fails on each step. Alot of extra code yes. A pain to code, yes. But the bottom line is that the code which didn't require this level of commit/rollback ability also didn't have the speed penalty associated with the extra code.
We all agree that if I want transactions, I will have to pay the speed penalty somewhere, either on the database, or in the middleware, and that it is going to be more efficient (when needed) if it's just in the database. However, if I don't need it, then what? By way of example, I wouldn't expect a web site based on PHP/MySQL and transaction logic to be any faster than a PHP/SQL Server web site where the transaction logic is in the database, in fact I would expect it to be slower. But for every non-transactional SQL operation, I would expect PHP/MySQL to have a benchmarkable and reproducable speed advantage, and according to other RDBMS reviewers (one link here), this in fact has proved to be true, against even Oracle on the same machine.
In my view, the deCSS and DCMA battles are more like the civil rights battles of the late '50s and the '60s than we might realize. Here's my comparison:
Slavery was outlawed and supposedly equal rights based on race were guaranteed by constitutional amendments during and shortly after the Civil War. However, for the next 100 years, the local, state, and federal governments and courts allowed the so-called "Jim Crow" laws to deny legal equality.
The movie and recording industry via the DCMA )and the software companies via the UCITA) are seeking to create and enforce rights that are ultimately anti-consumer, telling me what I may view/listen to / analyze/reproduce data and how I may view / listen / analyze / reproduce data -- not based on technological patent, but on copyright.
This is a fundamental change, because if I buy a book which is copyrighted, I am free to read it whenever, however, and for whatever purpose I can think of. Within "fair use" limits I can quote from it, skip pages, cross out sections, etc.
But if that wasn't bad enough, the industries are attacking the Net citizenry as if we are citizens with lesser rights -- by the broad based attacks on the freedom to disseminate information via the web.
But if the critical mass of people do not move the political forces to protect our rights, we may spend the next 100 years fighting for personal vs. corporate rights.
This is definitely a case of RTF-Website, which very clearly identifies the state of their technology, and why they have not chosen to implement certain features such as transactions, stored procedures, and triggers, and the top three reasons for not including them are performance, performance, and performance. MySQL on even a 486/133 with moderate amounts of memory can be set up to be fairly speedy -- I wouldn't try any of the other SQL databases with anything less than a K6/266 and a ton of memory.
The fact is, for many IT operations these more advanced features are not absolutely necessary, and when they are, it is easy enough to choose other RDBMS platforms, with their associated higher costs. As far as transactions specifically go, MySQL does support atomic operations which can be made to do essentially the same thing.
The one thing I do not know about MySQL is how well it would support multiple processors. The thread model looks good, but I've never had a system that with high enough requirements to put MySQL on the rack and thrash test it either.
Maybe Widenius and Co. should refer to their product as "the best SQL solution for people with more sense than money".
I was in contact with the author of the deCSS contest as nothing seemed to be happening on the web site. He indicated that
the contest will still take place,
it was back-burnered because of a death in the family at the end of February, and
that he has not had time to update the web pages since then.
I have asked him to post some information here on Slashdot as soon as possible. He agreed and will probably post later on in this thread or by submitting an article.
Other notes:
Judges are needed,
He'd like to offer other prizes such as t-shirts, etc. to good entries, if others can help defray costs or are willing to donate other prizes to the contest.
This contest is not so much about code as it is about methodology, however workable code will probably have an advantage when entries are judged.
A$$wipe? stick it where the sun doesn't shine, AC. Whether or not I've invented anything has nothing to do with my critique of your post.
Metcalfe: I'll leave it to other/. posters to correct me if I am wrong, I doubt we're even talking about the same guy. The Metcalfe I'm referring to writes articles for Sm@rt Reseller, and his articles are often rebutted by other writers for the same magazine. He blasts Linux but never seems to get the details right.
Open Source debugging doesn't work because Linux still has bugs? You're nuts. All major code bases have bugs, for example look at Win2K -- the so called gold version was announced with 65,000 bugs (28,000 major according to Microsoft), but we'll never know what they are. At least with Open Source, the bugs are known and any number of people can work on eliminating them.
Finally, you didn't even get the quote right -- Jobs said "Unix", not Linux. And as to who cares what Steve Jobs says? Well, a whole lot of people with better vocabularies and less biases than you, apparently.
Slashdot Mirror
But if they really want to sell into an untapped market, how about having Loki port Tomb Raider to Linux?
So reverse engineering the proprietary information inside censorware, filing blanket sub-poenas, legal threatening, etc. are what it takes to get the ACLU involved?
Fine, then why haven't they caught a clue and started a brush fire against UCITA and the DCMA? Maybe we at /. can find a way to smack the ACLU upside the head with a giant cluestick so that they will get involved -- so that we in the so-called "geek" community have a legal voice besides the EFF that can make the judges and legislators notice that we are trying to defend some of our basic rights (as expressed on the web) here.
But ya'know, I'd pay to see the movie if the Navy or somebody could hit em' with a missile and catch it in on film in all the IMAX technicolor glory they could come up with.
Now there's an OS Project I'd join -- instead of "Save Iridium" "Roast Iridium -- the OS IMAX adventure... Yeah, that's it -- 66 worldwide teams competing for the best shoot down show.
Anybody game? ;-)
- It may not be technically possible... It's Not.
- Couldn't they retrofit the satellites... If they were in a higher orbit perhaps. But technically not worth while -- for the cost of the the retrofits, a state of the art network could be put in place (in the right orbital pattern as well) that would use the frequency much more efficiently.
...and use them as a big SETI array or something? I thought about that too -- I mean, suppose these things could potentially be a globe size radio telescope. But (if I understand the math correctly), the satellites are essentially tone deaf except in their specified frequency rangem, and even if it were a useful frequency for radio telescops, I don't know if there is any way that they could be turned and selectively focused outward. Or that the signal bleed from planet earth wouldn't render them inaccurate anyway.
So really, though it seems like a huge waste, it's time for them to be brought down safely."Regarding economic value as a touchstone, ..." I'm not sure if the idea of advancement OR economics is more important either.
The more important argument seems to have been that the copyright holders could not prove that a VTR (Video Tape Recorder) would cause substantial financial damage in the form of copyright infringement before the courts should get involved. They couldn't, and so Sony won.
By my (non-lawyer, by the way) reading is that DeCSS doesn't create or prevent piracy, it actually expands the market just like the Betamax and VHS VTR's did. So by this test, the deCSS code should be legal, and if a court case rules that it is, the DCMA is DEAD. [We all agree -- pirated copies of DVDs, CD-ROMS, etc are not acceptable or legal, right?]
Okay, now for a one or two minor disputations with your points: "Congress not only can do things in its listed powers, it can do anything that is reasonably connected to advancing those exercises of power."Not quite. My reading is that the Founding Fathers recognized that the legislatures in many European countries were quite corrupt, and made a strong judiciary a foundation of our governmental system as a counterbalance to it, with the goal of protecting fairness in the rule of law. So Congress cannot advance it's powers in an unlimited matter unless the Supreme Court sits on its hands.
"Hence, the DCMA. (Whose likely valid constitutional basis is the Commerce Clause.)"Not a disputation of your point, but so far the court cases have been trade secret and/or copyright clause related. I'm curious as to this interpretation of the DCMA's constitutional foundation.
"They could avoid the constitutional issue (free speech vs. copyright) by using the "fair use" part of the statute. That day may well be gone.
Absolutely brilliant point, the expression of which has been like an itch in the back of my mind which I couldn't quite scratch.
"The good news is that this is a pretty first-amendment-friendly Supreme Court." Yeah, but slow to act (designed that way), too. "See the statute isn't fair. It isn't SUPPOSED to be fair. And it isn't clear that the Constitution requires it to be. Agreed, but the Bill of Rights is designed to promote justice and liberty for all of us -- not just the megacorps.
One more, the most important of all:
So if you haven't yet decided whether the DCMA is worth fighting against, consider these arguments. Join the fight to make sure that the entire DCMA is thrown out as an unconstitutional infringement of our rights. [4 good ways (?), contacting your congressional representatives, media exposure where available, boycotting the studios, and by financially supporting the EFF.]I also need to have a source of revenue to pay for the bandwidth, etc. required to provide the songs, and so I have thought about this long and hard. To date the best solution I have come up with is just what Tim Lord suggested, that is, I will make the same song available in the same place on the web page, but the encoding rate will be based on whether or not the person is a "site subscriber". Granted, subscribers can re-post the higher quality MP3 back to the web and essentially screw the artist (I'm out of the loop because I'm not paying for the bandwidth for the downloads of the reposted copy), but if I'm providing good music at a good cost, why would they bother?
By the way, the big difference between this model and MP3.com is essentially the difference between an indie label and the big boys. I become an "indie producer", and the web becomes my marketing tool. So if I have the integrity to limit myself to musicians, etc. I want to push, I can make a decent amount of money, and most importantly -- push the majority of the financial benefit to the artists.
Instead, I'm sort of loaned to a project long enough to make sure that it is designed well, a stable core code base established, and testing standards in place. Then all I have to do is approve the work, and all the folks on the projects gain experience as well.
So IDCide? No, I decided already -- skip it, and find some prior art to defeat their patent as well.
Secondarily, software engineering is unique in that it can be applied to so many different areas, where an chemical engineer, for example, will never work as a mechanical engineer, and even more -- a chemical engineer specializing in petrochemical refinement will probably never work in pharmaceuticals. But as an IT engineer, I might work with one or all of these other engineers in the course of my career, and gain enough experience to be useful to all of them.
So the competition isn't for bodies, it's for bodies with a wide enough range of skills to be applied to numerous projects.
Finally, The real difficulty is that with {programmer burnout, poor management, and the project completions} etc., the required skill sets change drastically over what might be a person's whole IT career. This makes it difficult hard for companies to retain people with a wide enough skill set to be useful on multiple projects, because once those skills are developed, the person is usually worth alot more than they are being paid in their present position.
All of which says to me, there's no shortage in the labor pool -- there's a shortage in the "stable expert" labor pool.
Interestingly enough, without even commenting on the DCMA vs. DeCSS litigations, Jesse makes it clear that the mega-corps in the entertainment industry have absolutely no morals when it comes to extracting every last dime from their song libraries, film vaults, etc. and controlling not only the profitable distribution of materials, but what is distributable at all.
Coupled with all of the recent attacks on the Internet as a communications medium by the RIAA, MPAA, etc., and you realize we really are in a war with the corporations to retain our civil rights regarding freedom of expression. The problem is, the companies are also in a justifiable and intense war with rip-off artists. Too bad that little things like rights and justice are getting trampled in the middle, and the government being bought by special interest monies to insure that big corporate rights win out.
Well, I'll stop complaining and do something about it. I'm emailing a copy of this article to every state and federal legislator, judge, and executive branch member that I can think of. Anyone else care to join me in this crusade?
What I would say is that full time telecommuting is the best way to do things -- when it works, which in my experience, is only about 10% of the time. That said, here's my personal top ten list for when it will probably work well:
- 10. The commute is 45 minutes or longer each way.
See why only 10%? Remove any of the above, and it becomes progressively more difficult to get the job done.9. The project(s) you are on have clearly defined goals.
8. The company has a well thought out telecommunication policy.
7. A 56K or faster connection to the IntraNet
6. Adequate problem solving resources at the home office.
5. A tight communications loop with your boss.
4. Frequent reporting of progress and problems.
3. A non-distracting home work environment.
2. A focused, effective work methodology (how to get the tough work done...)
1. A personal integrity based work ethic.
Oops... I forgot that one. And to do it anonymously, coward that I ought-a-be. ;-)
The date listed is the "date of last registration", which means that the domain name owner was last registed on July 5, 1999 -- which could have been a renewal. (Not sure, my own domains aren't up for renewal yet.)
First, and assuming that the domain owner's statement about their desired use for the domain is legit -- the word coke is used in even more ways -- coke is also used in the coal industry. I wonder if Coca Cola would be doing this if the site was active as a part of a large Swiss coal mining company [BTW, I admit up front to not knowing if there are even any coal mines in Switzerland :)]
Second thought: with the site not being in present day use, maybe there is a win-win for everybody ['xcept maybe the lawyers?? ;-)]. So that Coke wins, the domain owner wins, cocaine addicts win, etc. My suggestion would be to create a proposal where the domain owner would agree to give up the coke.ch domain and Coca Cola would in turn offer and come through with high-quality sponsorship of an alternatively named domain with information on cocaine addiction, etc. A nice letter to the appropriate folks at Coca Cola, presenting an opportunity for the Big Company to be on the side of the little guy, Coke agrees, the Lawyers go on to other things, [and we don't have to boycott Coke... ;-)], what could be better?
I'm not absolutely disagreeing with you but I'd bet that even in your example, I could design a process flow that would do the same thing in MySQL for when it was needed, and retain the speed advantage of MySQL the rest of the time. [Caveat: I'm limiting the above comment to RDBMS's running on single processor machines, because that's all I have used MySQL on so far.]
Anyone who thinks otherwise has never built a robust, scaleable system.
Oh Really??? What about those of us who were building systems that had to be robust and scalable before Oracle, et. al. had transactions? We did it with middle-ware or right in the application program code. Which is what you have to do with MySQL.
But wouldn't you know it, even though I've become a PDG Oracle SQL coder(pretty damn good [5 yrs experience], some of my non-Oracle applications (mostly based on Netware/B-Trieve) still blow the doors off of any SQL based system I've written since.
Transactions + SQL are not required for robustness and scalability. Transactional logic -- at whatever layer -- RDBMS, Middleware, or Application -- is, and no-one is disputing that.
BTW, the SQL advantage isn't necessarily performance anyway. It is and always has been that I can get at my data more ways with SQL without having to hand code my request for data in new ways into an application.
Best example I have -- I am currently coding an information web site for a small non-profit. 98% of the site is dynamically created (a la Slashdot), and the remaining 2% will require some heavy code in PHP to create the transaction type logic I've described elsewhere in this thread.
Now then, this info site might remain an unknown spot on the web, or it could suddenly get very very active like /. did about 18 months ago. Where suddenly I need all the speed I can get out of the database.
Now then, since I don't know how heavy the load will be ahead of time: do I ask the non-profit to pay the heavy, heavy license cost and support fees for Oracle, SQL Server, DB-2, or Informix to get the transactions for 2% of the site? or do I use PHP/MySQL, have them pay the optional $200 registration fee to take care of the more heavily used 98% part of the site, and then write the code for the remaining 2% myself?
Which makes sense for the money?
I'm not saying that transactions aren't important, or that a person should always go with MySQL -- I'm just saying that with good design, I can use the speed advantage of MySQL most of the time, and then only incur the "transaction with data atoms done in the middleware"-speed penalty only when it is absolutely needed.
Like you lucidly demonstrated in your three table example above.
And how you may ask -- oh illustrious poster -- do you suppose it was done?
I (the programmer) created a middle layer of code that forced each part of what we would all call an SQL "transaction" into atomic data units, with pass/fails on each step. Alot of extra code yes. A pain to code, yes. But the bottom line is that the code which didn't require this level of commit/rollback ability also didn't have the speed penalty associated with the extra code.
We all agree that if I want transactions, I will have to pay the speed penalty somewhere, either on the database, or in the middleware, and that it is going to be more efficient (when needed) if it's just in the database. However, if I don't need it, then what? By way of example, I wouldn't expect a web site based on PHP/MySQL and transaction logic to be any faster than a PHP/SQL Server web site where the transaction logic is in the database, in fact I would expect it to be slower. But for every non-transactional SQL operation, I would expect PHP/MySQL to have a benchmarkable and reproducable speed advantage, and according to other RDBMS reviewers (one link here), this in fact has proved to be true, against even Oracle on the same machine.
- Slavery was outlawed and supposedly equal rights based on race were guaranteed by constitutional amendments during and shortly after the Civil War. However, for the next 100 years, the local, state, and federal governments and courts allowed the so-called "Jim Crow" laws to deny legal equality.
- The movie and recording industry via the DCMA )and the software companies via the UCITA) are seeking to create and enforce rights that are ultimately anti-consumer, telling me what I may view
/listen to / analyze /reproduce data and how I may view / listen / analyze / reproduce data -- not based on technological patent, but on copyright. - This is a fundamental change, because if I buy a book which is copyrighted, I am free to read it whenever, however, and for whatever purpose I can think of. Within "fair use" limits I can quote from it, skip pages, cross out sections, etc.
But if that wasn't bad enough, the industries are attacking the Net citizenry as if we are citizens with lesser rights -- by the broad based attacks on the freedom to disseminate information via the web.But if the critical mass of people do not move the political forces to protect our rights, we may spend the next 100 years fighting for personal vs. corporate rights.
The fact is, for many IT operations these more advanced features are not absolutely necessary, and when they are, it is easy enough to choose other RDBMS platforms, with their associated higher costs. As far as transactions specifically go, MySQL does support atomic operations which can be made to do essentially the same thing.
The one thing I do not know about MySQL is how well it would support multiple processors. The thread model looks good, but I've never had a system that with high enough requirements to put MySQL on the rack and thrash test it either.
Maybe Widenius and Co. should refer to their product as "the best SQL solution for people with more sense than money".
- the contest will still take place,
- it was back-burnered because of a death in the family at the end of February, and
- that he has not had time to update the web pages since then.
I have asked him to post some information here on Slashdot as soon as possible. He agreed and will probably post later on in this thread or by submitting an article.Other notes:
- Judges are needed,
- He'd like to offer other prizes such as t-shirts, etc. to good entries, if others can help defray costs or are willing to donate other prizes to the contest.
- This contest is not so much about code as it is about methodology, however workable code will probably have an advantage when entries are judged.
That's all I can think of for now.How does the potential use/misuse of these laws affect the future viability of the Samba project?
A$$wipe? stick it where the sun doesn't shine, AC. Whether or not I've invented anything has nothing to do with my critique of your post.
/. posters to correct me if I am wrong, I doubt we're even talking about the same guy. The Metcalfe I'm referring to writes articles for Sm@rt Reseller, and his articles are often rebutted by other writers for the same magazine. He blasts Linux but never seems to get the details right.
Metcalfe: I'll leave it to other
Open Source debugging doesn't work because Linux still has bugs? You're nuts. All major code bases have bugs, for example look at Win2K -- the so called gold version was announced with 65,000 bugs (28,000 major according to Microsoft), but we'll never know what they are. At least with Open Source, the bugs are known and any number of people can work on eliminating them.
Finally, you didn't even get the quote right -- Jobs said "Unix", not Linux. And as to who cares what Steve Jobs says? Well, a whole lot of people with better vocabularies and less biases than you, apparently.