Once again, if you own your own business, of course you are going to pay the business portion of the tax and the employee portion of the tax.
If you consider that a disincentive, then you should not be self employed. It's the cost of being in business for yourself. It would be unfair to everybody else if a self employed person got the full benefits of social security but only half as much money were put into the program for him.
The self-employed are the ones who get truly screwed by our tax system--they pay both the employer and employee halves of all payroll related taxes, and as a result are taxed double.
The self-employed are both employers and employees. Of course they pay both halves. The self employed can still file for unemployment, disability and social security benefits because those taxes have been paid in full.
What do you think the average company would do if self-employed people didn't have to pay both halves? That's right... all their employees would suddenly become self-employed because it would cost less... and then the unemployment, disability and social security coffers would be underfunded.
Do a little economics here! The self employed are not getting truly screwed. The self employed generally charge slightly more to an employer to offset the fact that they must pay both employer and employee portions of taxes.
Before WinAmp and iTunes and some other predecessors, to my knowledge the MP3 Jukebox software as we know it did not really exist.
Yes, before winamp and itunes and some others, the mp3 jukebox didn't exist. In fact the mp3 jukebox wasn't even these guys idea. But more to the point - prior to the first instance of something, there was no instance of that something. In mathematics we call that the well ordering principle. That doesn't imply that the time hadn't come at which point that thing became an obvious need.
At some point computers will have reliable language recognition. At which point everything currently done on a computer will obviously now need to be done through language processing. So if I patent "Method of having a system perform a musical piece using spoken request for said performance" at that time, are you going to argue that since it hadn't been done before, it wasn't obvious?
What's more winamp doesn't fall under the purview of this patent because the computer, not a remote device, plays the music.
It's pretty obvious that these guys thought up the idea of having a MIDI jukebox, then someone else got a hold of it and broadened it to be any streaming data. And some point someone tacked on rather haphazardly the inclusion of video (see claim #14).
Both of the interfaces look to me to be reminiscent of 20 year old smalltalk interfaces. The whole parallel columns of increasingly specific properties as we move from left to right, with the contents of the rightmost item in an area below and spanning the columns is a classic old interface.
It looks to me like they both copied Xerox... that seems strangely familiar...
While a settlement may be in the future, this should not be a solid case. The patent is blindingly obvious. Come on, they patented any database access program for a music collection that can then cause a player device to play it.
If you have a 100 disc CD changer and write a computer program to allow you to choose and begin playing selections from that changer, you violate this patent.
Here's the first claim from the patent:
1. A computer user interface menu selection process for allowing the user to select music to be played on a music device controlled by a computer, comprising the steps of:
a) simultaneously displaying on a display device, at least two individual data fields selected from music categories, composers, artists, and songs;
b) selecting at least one item from at least one of the data fields;
c) in response to step b), redisplaying all data fields not having an item selected therefrom with data related only to the at least one item selected in step b), and simultaneously maintaining all items originally displayed in the data fields with at lest one item selected therefrom;
d) selecting an item in the songs data field in response to step c), and
e) playing the selected song item from step d) on the computer responsive music device.
Now come on. If you are going to use a computer for connecting to a music device, how obvious is a user interface that categorizes the data? 90% of what a computer does when it isn't playing games is categorizing data!
Back when I had lots of geeky friends in college who liked to find new games to play but lacked the financial resources to actually buy any of them, my friends and I discovered Cheap Ass Games. Though only a few of their games have real staying power, they were all very cheap, easy to learn and at least some fun.
I understand their game "Kill Dr. Lucky" is now played in tournaments.
Re: quads = text.split('.')
on
Data Crunching
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· Score: 1
Ummm... is receiving a number less than 0 or greater than 255 an exception?
In this case, it probably is.
No, it's abnormal input sure,
abnormal input is an exceptional condition by definition. Normal input is expected.
but that is a nasty and poor use of exceptions.
No it isn't.
You get an F on programming style
Your teaching credential needs revoking. As anybody worth their salt as a programmer would know that whether or not to handle something as an exception depends on the severity of the problem, the frequency of the problem, and the time critical nature of the code in question. Validating an IP address is something usually done infrequently, often in response to a user action, so any performance hit from exception handling is insignificant compared to the additional processing that will occur popping up some sort of dialog to let the user know something is wrong.
On the other hand, I can pay $9.50 (it's actually a little cheaper where I live) and see a movie in a theater. More like $5 for a matinee.
But maybe you mentioned the money just out of "principle." You don't have to lower yourself to pay to watch commercials.
"lower" himself? You completely dodged the fact that with a home entertainment system his significant other and his friends can come over to enjoy one anothers company without having to shell out $9.50 each.
Maybe you avoided those out of principle. You don't need to "raise" yourself to having a significant other or friends.
Why is everyone so quick to pit this as an OS battle?
Because OS X could offer us x86 Linux types something that is not currently offered: an OS with a well integrated GUI. I don't think people truly appreciate what the cost of a lack of a single standard, or a hardware abstraction layer, has been.
Healthy black newborns are easily adopted. It's people who try out raising kids, find they are too selfish to be a parent, screw the kid up, then have it taken away and put into the foster care system that are the ones you are referring to.
Healthy newborns are easily adoptable. Quit trying to toss out a red herring.
How many HIV positive children have you adopted? I rest my case.
There is no such thing as an "unborn child". It's not a child until after it's born. The word you want is "fetus".
Oh get over yourself. "Fetus" is a scientific term that refers to specific stage of development of a vertebrate animal. A human does not have to be born to be considered a child.
Both carrying a pregnancy and aborting a pregnancy pose a risk to the mother. However abortion has a 100% fatality rate among unborn humans.
Those that want to postpone may be postponing because they aren't old enough to care for the child properly.
Then put the baby up for adoption. There are literally thousands of couples in the US who are either unable or unwilling to go through a pregnancy and would very much like to adopt a healthy newborn. I just don't see wanting to 'postpone' as being anything other than for convenience.
Not being able to afford the child is definatly a good reason.
Putting the baby up for adoption is very economical.
You really think we need more kids growing up in ghettos?
Wow. Now we should use abortion to solve problems of poverty? Aren't we bigger than that?
A child really should have a mother and father, or are you saying that being without one has no effect on the child at all?
I haven't done a scientific study or anything, but I haven't met a single person raised by a single parent who truly wished they had never been born.
Being too young is perfectly good as well; if you can't take care of yourself, how can you possible take care of a child?
Put the baby up for adoption.
Disrupting education or career; again.. you'd rather an uneducated mother attempting to raise a child, at times when even a college degree doesn't garentee decent earnings?
Put the baby up for adoption.
Those sound like more then simple convience issues to me... but you'll never admit otherwise, you'll just say 'suck it up.'
If the reason the pregnancy is being terminated is so that you may improve your quality of life, it's convenience. Hundreds of thousands of courageous women have shown it is possible to be a single mother working your way through college. I go to school with several of them.
Wow. You do realize you've listed a whole bunch of rights you do not have, right?
You do not have the right to travel anywhere except on private property you own by car. To travel anywhere else requires somebody's permission. You want to drive on the freeway? You need a license. Driving on public roads is a privelege, not a right.
Want to fly an airplane? Same deal. The FAA sets the standard for pilot's licenses and commercial air passengers.
If the police have a search warrant that includes the contents of those encrypted files you would have to turn over the key the same way you would have to turn over the key to your safe if they have a warrant.
Can you provide any case law to support this? It is my understanding that, under the 5th ammendment, the court can only compel you to do so if you are given blanket immunity for any crime that might be uncovered by what is discovered in either the files or the safe or you voluntarily give them the key. No warrant or other court order can ever force you to incriminate yourself.
This case would be more analogous with the following added and modified components:
FBI: You Tried to launder money to the Soviets, didn't you?
Person: No. I didn't.
FBI: We caught you exchanging money with operatives in soviet russia.
Person: I didn't know that was wrong.
FBI: We found encryption software and encrypted files on your computer from the same time we caught you exchanging money with the soviets. You knew it was wrong.
I also believe that O'Gara was merely being controversial.
Characterizing PJ as a harridan, publishing anything that could be construed as negative about her as heard from 3rd parties, posting pictures of residences of family members is certainly controversial.
O'Gara was attacked because what she did was flat wrong. She did not set out to discover who PJ was, she set out to do a character assassination. There was no balance in her reporting, no reporting of anyone who had anything positive to say... And most importantly nothing in the article was germaine to the pro-SCO stance of O'Gara or the pro-IBM stance of PJ. It was a vicious mean-spirited attack.
Some publications, such as the National Enquirer, are renowned for this sort of reporting. Sys-con is not. And when sys-con condoned that sort of reporting... well, people who do not want to be associated with such vicious hack journalism leave.
Incidentally I believe we are still waiting the unsealing of the proceedings of one of the hearings in the SCO v. IBM case because O'Gara's "eye witness" report of what happened at the hearing was not in agreement with several independent reports by people who claim to also be eye witnesses but whose stories generally agree with one another.
I mean really, how do you run a blog/news site and not expect people out there to fact check your ass when you start taking sides?
The nice thing about Groklaw... the facts are usually right there on the site for you to check. Every released court document in the case is right there, available. People actually volunteer their time to transcribe the documents from paper to digital form.
PJ's only bona fide is that she was a paralegal.
Groklaw is a site with coverage of court cases affecting Linux. It is only a "legal site" in that it covers legal proceedings. PJ is not a lawyer, that is stated up front.
That the reason little johnny is a dunce, is because of... outsourcing?
No. Johnny isn't a dunce. That's the point.
Remove the artificial barrier to removing incompetent teachers (the all-powerful teacher's unions), and you would improve education.
If you read "The Peter Principle" you'll realize that you'll also remove super-competent teachers as well. I agree with your sentiment - I survived the super-incompetent Los Angeles Unified School District - but the problem is much more complicated than that. I do think that starting a competitive K12 program would be a major step in the right direction though. Every argument I've heard against vouchers is total crap: "You don't need vouchers, you just need to fix the existing system." (do the people spewing that argument really believe it?)
If you don't want to apply fanatical dedication, and you think "protecting" those who don't from competition (such as outsourcing) will fix the problem, well... I just don't know what to say to you...
Consider where the 'competition' is living. Is there an area of the united states where I could move and compete with their cost of living? If competition is your argument, then you are saying that US cities should contain the same amount of pollution, squalor and lack of services as their indian counterparts.
Re:A blinkered view from the ivory tower of UC Dav
on
Johnny Can So Program
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
OMG, it's not fair, they trained harder! Well hello! Is it cheating to produce programmers who can actually solve problems and write code?
He doesn't say it isn't fair. He says it is not fair to take the results of the contest and extend them to "American CS students can't compete." Have you really done these programming contests? Are you seriously implying that dynamic programming with memoization is something you are even remotely likely to need in the average IT software project? Bipartite matching? Prime factorization?
He's pointing out that some schools spend incredible amounts of time training for the contest... not training to be better programmers, but training to be better in programming contests, which is a very different thing.
I was a H1-B worker - I made great rates (thanks very much) and so did all the other H1-B's I know. It's convenient for Norm's flawed argument to repeat this myth, propagated by programmers who think they should have had my job because it was their birthright, not because they could have done it better.
Um, excuse me but we are citizens of this country and you are not. You would not even get to come here and work if it were not for a flawed relationship between labor and politics. Is it your birthright to go to any country you wish and work, or is it a courtesy extended by the government of that country?
When Chinese (or Indian, or anyone else) programmers turn out to cost less AND be better programmers we'll be able to thank guys like Norm, who wanted to deny there was ever a problem.
The opinions I'm hearing from various places doing outsourcing is that the programmers are not better, but they are a lot cheaper. I've yet to read anything credible suggesting outsourced work was both cheaper and better.
Giving software away for free makes Dr. Evil angry. And when Dr. Evil gets angry, Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset. And when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset people are SUED.
The USA can suck my balls if they want us to adopt the DMCA.
So I take it you reject the U.S. rejection of the Canadian rejection of the DMCA?
You do realize that U.S. IP holders would reject your rejection of the U.S. rejection of the Canadian rejection of the DMCA??
Re:PC-based DVRs have massive drawbacks...
on
Build Your Own DVR
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· Score: 1
Out of curiousity... Which commercial DVR are you using as your comparison? I've had a DirecTV with Tivo unit for 3 1/2 years that is free from those problems (except DVD playback).
The correlary is: "The problem with quick and dirty is that dirty remains long after quick is forgotten."
I've often wondered how this relates to prototypes that are generally by their nature quick and dirty, but frequently necessary. Unless you are some uber-coder who can write quick and clean.
At a place I used to work, one of the hats I wore was part time sales engineer. In between getting real work done I'd have an event happen something like this on a friday night:
Boss: Hey, we have a potential customer half way around the country who would like to use our software, but only if it supports CORBA.
Me: But we don't support CORBA
Boss: Yeah, we need you to prototype a CORBA container to fit with the rest of our product and fly out there Tuesday with the sales team and show them.
Me: But I don't know CORBA.
Boss: Well, Bob over there knows some, just ask him if you have any questions.
Me: Ummm, okay I'll see what I can do. ...3 days later...
Me: Okay, I've managed to develop a prototype CORBA service for the product. It's in an unusual spot and will not scale well in production, but it's the best that could be done in 3 days. It works for small numbers of clients.
Boss: Perfect! ...3 months later...
Boss: The guys in services are having problems getting the CORBA service you wrote to handle even moderate loads. What is happening?
Me: I told you it was a quick prototype - a proof of concept. Of course it doesn't scale. Part of the service contract was supposed to be money to pay someone to properly add in CORBA!!
Boss: Why didn't you mention this when you reviewed the requirements document?
Me: I did not get the requirements document! Nobody outside of services did!
Slashdot Mirror
By the way, check the 1992 revolution in LA that was turned down quite brutally, where's their right to revolution?
Brutally? Huh? What are you talking about? Right to revolution? Were they revolting? Is that a right? Do you even know what you're talking about?
P.S. Yes I was there at the time, don't try and play the biased media card.
Once again, if you own your own business, of course you are going to pay the business portion of the tax and the employee portion of the tax.
If you consider that a disincentive, then you should not be self employed. It's the cost of being in business for yourself. It would be unfair to everybody else if a self employed person got the full benefits of social security but only half as much money were put into the program for him.
The self-employed are the ones who get truly screwed by our tax system--they pay both the employer and employee halves of all payroll related taxes, and as a result are taxed double.
The self-employed are both employers and employees. Of course they pay both halves. The self employed can still file for unemployment, disability and social security benefits because those taxes have been paid in full.
What do you think the average company would do if self-employed people didn't have to pay both halves? That's right... all their employees would suddenly become self-employed because it would cost less... and then the unemployment, disability and social security coffers would be underfunded.
Do a little economics here! The self employed are not getting truly screwed. The self employed generally charge slightly more to an employer to offset the fact that they must pay both employer and employee portions of taxes.
Before WinAmp and iTunes and some other predecessors, to my knowledge the MP3 Jukebox software as we know it did not really exist.
Yes, before winamp and itunes and some others, the mp3 jukebox didn't exist. In fact the mp3 jukebox wasn't even these guys idea. But more to the point - prior to the first instance of something, there was no instance of that something. In mathematics we call that the well ordering principle. That doesn't imply that the time hadn't come at which point that thing became an obvious need.
At some point computers will have reliable language recognition. At which point everything currently done on a computer will obviously now need to be done through language processing. So if I patent "Method of having a system perform a musical piece using spoken request for said performance" at that time, are you going to argue that since it hadn't been done before, it wasn't obvious?
What's more winamp doesn't fall under the purview of this patent because the computer, not a remote device, plays the music.
It's pretty obvious that these guys thought up the idea of having a MIDI jukebox, then someone else got a hold of it and broadened it to be any streaming data. And some point someone tacked on rather haphazardly the inclusion of video (see claim #14).
Both of the interfaces look to me to be reminiscent of 20 year old smalltalk interfaces. The whole parallel columns of increasingly specific properties as we move from left to right, with the contents of the rightmost item in an area below and spanning the columns is a classic old interface.
It looks to me like they both copied Xerox... that seems strangely familiar...
While a settlement may be in the future, this should not be a solid case. The patent is blindingly obvious. Come on, they patented any database access program for a music collection that can then cause a player device to play it.
If you have a 100 disc CD changer and write a computer program to allow you to choose and begin playing selections from that changer, you violate this patent.
Here's the first claim from the patent:
1. A computer user interface menu selection process for allowing the user to select music to be played on a music device controlled by a computer, comprising the steps of:
a) simultaneously displaying on a display device, at least two individual data fields selected from music categories, composers, artists, and songs;
b) selecting at least one item from at least one of the data fields;
c) in response to step b), redisplaying all data fields not having an item selected therefrom with data related only to the at least one item selected in step b), and simultaneously maintaining all items originally displayed in the data fields with at lest one item selected therefrom;
d) selecting an item in the songs data field in response to step c), and
e) playing the selected song item from step d) on the computer responsive music device.
Now come on. If you are going to use a computer for connecting to a music device, how obvious is a user interface that categorizes the data? 90% of what a computer does when it isn't playing games is categorizing data!
Back when I had lots of geeky friends in college who liked to find new games to play but lacked the financial resources to actually buy any of them, my friends and I discovered Cheap Ass Games. Though only a few of their games have real staying power, they were all very cheap, easy to learn and at least some fun.
I understand their game "Kill Dr. Lucky" is now played in tournaments.
Ummm... is receiving a number less than 0 or greater than 255 an exception?
In this case, it probably is.
No, it's abnormal input sure,
abnormal input is an exceptional condition by definition. Normal input is expected.
but that is a nasty and poor use of exceptions.
No it isn't.
You get an F on programming style
Your teaching credential needs revoking. As anybody worth their salt as a programmer would know that whether or not to handle something as an exception depends on the severity of the problem, the frequency of the problem, and the time critical nature of the code in question. Validating an IP address is something usually done infrequently, often in response to a user action, so any performance hit from exception handling is insignificant compared to the additional processing that will occur popping up some sort of dialog to let the user know something is wrong.
On the other hand, I can pay $9.50 (it's actually a little cheaper where I live) and see a movie in a theater. More like $5 for a matinee.
But maybe you mentioned the money just out of "principle." You don't have to lower yourself to pay to watch commercials.
"lower" himself? You completely dodged the fact that with a home entertainment system his significant other and his friends can come over to enjoy one anothers company without having to shell out $9.50 each.
Maybe you avoided those out of principle. You don't need to "raise" yourself to having a significant other or friends.
Why is everyone so quick to pit this as an OS battle?
Because OS X could offer us x86 Linux types something that is not currently offered: an OS with a well integrated GUI. I don't think people truly appreciate what the cost of a lack of a single standard, or a hardware abstraction layer, has been.
1) they are too old
Not newborn.
2) they have too many "problems"
Not healthy.
3) they are black.
Healthy black newborns are easily adopted. It's people who try out raising kids, find they are too selfish to be a parent, screw the kid up, then have it taken away and put into the foster care system that are the ones you are referring to.
Healthy newborns are easily adoptable. Quit trying to toss out a red herring.
How many HIV positive children have you adopted? I rest my case.
No really, quit trying to toss out a red herring.
There is no such thing as an "unborn child". It's not a child until after it's born. The word you want is "fetus".
Oh get over yourself. "Fetus" is a scientific term that refers to specific stage of development of a vertebrate animal. A human does not have to be born to be considered a child.
Both carrying a pregnancy and aborting a pregnancy pose a risk to the mother. However abortion has a 100% fatality rate among unborn humans.
Those that want to postpone may be postponing because they aren't old enough to care for the child properly.
Then put the baby up for adoption. There are literally thousands of couples in the US who are either unable or unwilling to go through a pregnancy and would very much like to adopt a healthy newborn. I just don't see wanting to 'postpone' as being anything other than for convenience.
Not being able to afford the child is definatly a good reason.
Putting the baby up for adoption is very economical.
You really think we need more kids growing up in ghettos?
Wow. Now we should use abortion to solve problems of poverty? Aren't we bigger than that?
A child really should have a mother and father, or are you saying that being without one has no effect on the child at all?
I haven't done a scientific study or anything, but I haven't met a single person raised by a single parent who truly wished they had never been born.
Being too young is perfectly good as well; if you can't take care of yourself, how can you possible take care of a child?
Put the baby up for adoption.
Disrupting education or career; again.. you'd rather an uneducated mother attempting to raise a child, at times when even a college degree doesn't garentee decent earnings?
Put the baby up for adoption.
Those sound like more then simple convience issues to me... but you'll never admit otherwise, you'll just say 'suck it up.'
If the reason the pregnancy is being terminated is so that you may improve your quality of life, it's convenience. Hundreds of thousands of courageous women have shown it is possible to be a single mother working your way through college. I go to school with several of them.
Wow. You do realize you've listed a whole bunch of rights you do not have, right?
You do not have the right to travel anywhere except on private property you own by car. To travel anywhere else requires somebody's permission. You want to drive on the freeway? You need a license. Driving on public roads is a privelege, not a right.
Want to fly an airplane? Same deal. The FAA sets the standard for pilot's licenses and commercial air passengers.
There was no obstruction of justice charge that we know of.
There was also no indication that anybody had committed the crime of obstructing justice. What are you saying?
If the police have a search warrant that includes the contents of those encrypted files you would have to turn over the key the same way you would have to turn over the key to your safe if they have a warrant.
Can you provide any case law to support this? It is my understanding that, under the 5th ammendment, the court can only compel you to do so if you are given blanket immunity for any crime that might be uncovered by what is discovered in either the files or the safe or you voluntarily give them the key. No warrant or other court order can ever force you to incriminate yourself.
This case would be more analogous with the following added and modified components:
FBI: You Tried to launder money to the Soviets, didn't you?
Person: No. I didn't.
FBI: We caught you exchanging money with operatives in soviet russia.
Person: I didn't know that was wrong.
FBI: We found encryption software and encrypted files on your computer from the same time we caught you exchanging money with the soviets. You knew it was wrong.
Person: Encryption is irrelevant to this case!
I also believe that O'Gara was merely being controversial.
Characterizing PJ as a harridan, publishing anything that could be construed as negative about her as heard from 3rd parties, posting pictures of residences of family members is certainly controversial.
O'Gara was attacked because what she did was flat wrong. She did not set out to discover who PJ was, she set out to do a character assassination. There was no balance in her reporting, no reporting of anyone who had anything positive to say... And most importantly nothing in the article was germaine to the pro-SCO stance of O'Gara or the pro-IBM stance of PJ. It was a vicious mean-spirited attack.
Some publications, such as the National Enquirer, are renowned for this sort of reporting. Sys-con is not. And when sys-con condoned that sort of reporting... well, people who do not want to be associated with such vicious hack journalism leave.
Incidentally I believe we are still waiting the unsealing of the proceedings of one of the hearings in the SCO v. IBM case because O'Gara's "eye witness" report of what happened at the hearing was not in agreement with several independent reports by people who claim to also be eye witnesses but whose stories generally agree with one another.
I mean really, how do you run a blog/news site and not expect people out there to fact check your ass when you start taking sides?
The nice thing about Groklaw... the facts are usually right there on the site for you to check. Every released court document in the case is right there, available. People actually volunteer their time to transcribe the documents from paper to digital form.
PJ's only bona fide is that she was a paralegal.
Groklaw is a site with coverage of court cases affecting Linux. It is only a "legal site" in that it covers legal proceedings. PJ is not a lawyer, that is stated up front.
That the reason little johnny is a dunce, is because of... outsourcing?
No. Johnny isn't a dunce. That's the point.
Remove the artificial barrier to removing incompetent teachers (the all-powerful teacher's unions), and you would improve education.
If you read "The Peter Principle" you'll realize that you'll also remove super-competent teachers as well. I agree with your sentiment - I survived the super-incompetent Los Angeles Unified School District - but the problem is much more complicated than that. I do think that starting a competitive K12 program would be a major step in the right direction though. Every argument I've heard against vouchers is total crap: "You don't need vouchers, you just need to fix the existing system." (do the people spewing that argument really believe it?)
If you don't want to apply fanatical dedication, and you think "protecting" those who don't from competition (such as outsourcing) will fix the problem, well... I just don't know what to say to you...
Consider where the 'competition' is living. Is there an area of the united states where I could move and compete with their cost of living? If competition is your argument, then you are saying that US cities should contain the same amount of pollution, squalor and lack of services as their indian counterparts.
OMG, it's not fair, they trained harder! Well hello! Is it cheating to produce programmers who can actually solve problems and write code?
He doesn't say it isn't fair. He says it is not fair to take the results of the contest and extend them to "American CS students can't compete." Have you really done these programming contests? Are you seriously implying that dynamic programming with memoization is something you are even remotely likely to need in the average IT software project? Bipartite matching? Prime factorization?
He's pointing out that some schools spend incredible amounts of time training for the contest... not training to be better programmers, but training to be better in programming contests, which is a very different thing.
I was a H1-B worker - I made great rates (thanks very much) and so did all the other H1-B's I know. It's convenient for Norm's flawed argument to repeat this myth, propagated by programmers who think they should have had my job because it was their birthright, not because they could have done it better.
Um, excuse me but we are citizens of this country and you are not. You would not even get to come here and work if it were not for a flawed relationship between labor and politics. Is it your birthright to go to any country you wish and work, or is it a courtesy extended by the government of that country?
When Chinese (or Indian, or anyone else) programmers turn out to cost less AND be better programmers we'll be able to thank guys like Norm, who wanted to deny there was ever a problem.
The opinions I'm hearing from various places doing outsourcing is that the programmers are not better, but they are a lot cheaper. I've yet to read anything credible suggesting outsourced work was both cheaper and better.
Giving software away for free makes Dr. Evil angry. And when Dr. Evil gets angry, Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset. And when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset people are SUED.
The USA can suck my balls if they want us to adopt the DMCA.
So I take it you reject the U.S. rejection of the Canadian rejection of the DMCA?
You do realize that U.S. IP holders would reject your rejection of the U.S. rejection of the Canadian rejection of the DMCA??
Out of curiousity... Which commercial DVR are you using as your comparison? I've had a DirecTV with Tivo unit for 3 1/2 years that is free from those problems (except DVD playback).
The correlary is: "The problem with quick and dirty is that dirty remains long after quick is forgotten."
...3 days later...
...3 months later...
I've often wondered how this relates to prototypes that are generally by their nature quick and dirty, but frequently necessary. Unless you are some uber-coder who can write quick and clean.
At a place I used to work, one of the hats I wore was part time sales engineer. In between getting real work done I'd have an event happen something like this on a friday night:
Boss: Hey, we have a potential customer half way around the country who would like to use our software, but only if it supports CORBA.
Me: But we don't support CORBA
Boss: Yeah, we need you to prototype a CORBA container to fit with the rest of our product and fly out there Tuesday with the sales team and show them.
Me: But I don't know CORBA.
Boss: Well, Bob over there knows some, just ask him if you have any questions.
Me: Ummm, okay I'll see what I can do.
Me: Okay, I've managed to develop a prototype CORBA service for the product. It's in an unusual spot and will not scale well in production, but it's the best that could be done in 3 days. It works for small numbers of clients.
Boss: Perfect!
Boss: The guys in services are having problems getting the CORBA service you wrote to handle even moderate loads. What is happening?
Me: I told you it was a quick prototype - a proof of concept. Of course it doesn't scale. Part of the service contract was supposed to be money to pay someone to properly add in CORBA!!
Boss: Why didn't you mention this when you reviewed the requirements document?
Me: I did not get the requirements document! Nobody outside of services did!
Boss: You need to fix this.
Me: Grrrrrr....