(Not to dispute your sharp analysis, I totally agree)
By the same logic:
Since I oppose the death penalty and it's a safe bet that psycho-rapist-mass murderers also oppose the death penalty this makes me a psycho-rapist-mass murderer?
The sad thing is that some "analysts" seem to either believe this pile of shit or (even more sinister) must have an agenda of their own in this whole mess.
Interesting read, but that of course could never happen.
For starters there's the constitution and business and government would never act so wicked. In addition we are talking about cultural products, which are very different from Pepsi Cola or Gilette Razorblades and... er! well, never mind.
Of the friendly folks at Unisys (GIF) or the Fraunhofer Institut (MP3)?
The point why I think such a scheme is totally fucked and dishonest is not the fact that such patents exist, but because of the following business model:
1. Create valuable idea
2. Wait until it's a defacto standard
3. PROFIT !!! (no ??? required)
It looks more and more like RMS is a true visionary.
It gives me a leverage in dealing with my phone provider.
Real life example:
They phone spammed me (picked up by my sweetie, which annoys me to no end) trying to sell their incredible landline services at incredible prices, this despite the fact that all my numbers are marked as don't spam me. It's not a "do not call list" in the strict sense, but the directoriy entries are marked as don't call this number if you intend to sell shit. This is usually repected.
I called to complain and of course the call center drone is not authorized to connect me with the marketing department, but promises a return call. Needless to say that this never materialized.
Deary me, fire up Mozilla, find the vice prez for marketing and communications and send her personally a letter hinting that they'll lose one of their first customers if they don't stop that shit pronto.
Before portability: "Hoho! yeah, fuck you too sir and good luck distributing your new number" (this is assumed, but you know the spiel)
After portability: "Well, we're dreadfully sorry Sir. Your privacy is our paramount concern and here are two vouchers for movie tickets for any theatre in the country for the best category..."
The same is true of support - while you may get faster or better support
through this group than you get with commercial software, there's no
guarantee that you'll get any support at all - and most organizations will
find that hard to live with.
This is very true, of course. But has the guy considerered that this is 1:1 the case with commercial software too?
Even support providers for enterprise level software (i.e database vendors, which may charge hundreds of thousands of $, depending on the installation and support level) will never guarantee that they provide you with a solution.
Of course their sales reps have the flashier presentations though, which is a part of what you pay for.
Actually I heard about the restaurant trick with the exactly opposite approach:
You sell food like mad and (being a nice honest citizen) pay your taxes on your proceeds. This strategy can miserably backfire though. Here's a real world story, which I got from a court clerk who actually was involved in it:
There was this Kebab vendor, who sold Kebabs like crazy. What he didn't consider was that his phone was tapped and the following - paraphrased - conversation was taped:
"Wow man, what a fucking boring day. I prepared three Kebabs and one I even eaten myself..."
Needless to say that this didn't quite jibe with the turnover on the books.
Another common mistake is the supply side. It's somewhat hard to grasp selling 25000 Kebabs a month, when you order supplies for 219.47$
1) We don't want to have to pay someone to tally all the votes. If its not computerized, someone has to count them all up. When there's around 100 million votes for president, that's a lot of minimum wage hours right there!
So you rather pay voting machine companies some 5'000$ per unit for a glorified Windows CE computer with an Access database that can be hacked by any pimply faced teenager with 100$ worth of computer equipment?
The penalty however, may matter, as if some of these firms were just stupid, they may stay in business with just a big, but non-lethal hit to their reputation and bottom line. If they are shown to be that crooked, they won't, as their investors will sue on top of IBMs actions and the court's.
If I'd be the CEO of the Yankee Group I'd definitely shiver in my boots:
In the first case (stupidity) they'll be the laughing stock of the industry for years to come. They might or might not survive it. I mean who wants to commission (or pay for) analysis from a firm which fell for such an obvious scam.
In the second case (crooked) they are deader then a dead duck in the water.
With bulk E-mail you get responses back in 1 to 4 days instead of waiting weeks or months!
Including whacked out teeth, a cutoff penis, a shot knee (or two) and if you're really, really lucky you get a permanent, private and guaranteed spam free space 6 feet under ground
I want people to be able to call me without them stopping to think whether the call is going to cost them a fortune or not. If it's a choice, that's fine, but in Europe (AFAIK) there is not even a choice for receiver-pays.
Sigh, I more and more get the impression that you're either a troll or some sort of a free market fanatic of the take no prisoner sort.
Anyway, here's the plan to follow if you want to pay for incoming phone calls in Europe, doesn't matter if from a cell phone or a land line (with the exception of international roaming of course):
Call your friendly Telco and no! you don't have to beg an evil state controlled monopoly for such services
Ask that they install an 1-800 number (0-800 in some countries and 00-800 if you want to make it available toll free to the rest of the world)
This last one IMO outweighs all other considerations in this particular case: e.g., I simply do not think it is right for the government to say, "Thou shalt use GSM!" to the exclusion of all other technologies. Protecting the rights of individuals to choose the technology that suits them best instead of commanding one from above is morally superior, whether it leads to fragmentation or not.
Well, even though CDMA is apparently so much better (I hear this line a lot, but frankly I care about usability and not about technical merits as a user) I think it's extremely smart to have decided on (or if you prefer to have dictated) a standard, which has been taken up by roughly a billion people worldwide (except huge parts of the US and South Korea I think) in contrast to the joke they call "wireless services", which I had the misfortune to experience on various visits to the US.
In addition (and if I'm a slimy, evil commie so be it, alas you guys seem to have a strange definition for communism/socialism) I think it's extremely desireable not to have such vital technologies hijacked by an ip company, but that such technology is being owned by a consortium with a formal Antitrust Policy and thus by the public at large.
I really hope E-voting becomes a trustworthy standard. With the right people, this could become a reality. It would enable us to move democracy into a new era, where the public could vote on each policy.
Actually we are doing that right today. We is the citizenship of Switzerland.
To put it into perspective: That doesn't apply to "each policy" and the legislative process is quite comparable with the one in the US. (Actually the US constitution served as the template for the two house system we also use).
But if you, Average Q Citizen has qualms about a new law you have an instrument: Collect a minimum of 50000 signatures from eligible citizens and start a referendum. (It's less on cantonal/state level and even lesser on communal level of course). The law then goes to be voted on and chances are good that the law will be overturned by the good burgers of the country.
The other instrument is called an "initiative". In essence you need 100000 signatures to enforce a vote on an ammendment of the constitution.
But guess what: We do it all on paper and the results are in the next morning (at the very latest and for an inherintly complicated election of the members of parlament). In other cases the results are in with 8:00pm news (the voting locations close at noon, but most people vote by mail anyway).
Now, you may argue that Switzerland has 5M elligable voters while the US has 200+M. But that's just a matter of scale and organization and could be set up virtually everywhere.
What is my point? Well, a direct democratic approach as we have it here is most certainly not bound to any electronic gizmos, not at all sir.
Yeah, I give the US credit and respect as soon they sign the treaty on land mines
Those are about the most evil, wicked and for civilians devastating weapons in use today (even decades after they where planted) and just about every civilized country shuns them.
Sorry bub, but as long the US doesn't sign this treaty there's neither respect nor credit for such a sinister programs.
After reading all those (rightfully) outraged comments I can't avoid a thought.
Usually, when the fairly stiff EU privacy protection laws come up there's a lot of "haha's", "this is bad for business" and "that's what you get for socialist governments" comments.
This example shows very drastically why we got those laws in place (which among other things generally prohibit data export to countries which don't have adequate privacy protection laws) and why they are generally a good thing.
This is not to say that this could never happen, but the responsible folks (the hospital in this case) would most certainly not get off with a slap on their wrists, which will probably be the final outcome here.
I always heartily suggest they consider keeping the Access front end, if they must, for the forms and reports and so forth, but link the tables to a real database engine. You know, one which has transaction logging and can run DBCC, for example.
Bad idea!
Despite absolute horrid SQL generated by Access as a front end I've seen nasty effects on industry strength databases. For example ghost locks on pages, which would only go away upon a server reboot.
Generally speaking I think that all "4GL" front ends are bad news in terms of performance, but what I've seen under Access is a desaster.
If you are running a database or doing video editing then reading large files is exactly what you do want.
Why would that be. And isn't that very dependant on the spcific database and it's storage architecture? (Not all databases use OS files)
My take is that the ability to read large files is not necessarily beneficial for a heavy duty oltp system, where you have a lot of tiny transactions.
Being fast on large files might be beneficial for table scans on huge tables (again, depending on the allocation concepts), but then again I would want to avoid that like the plague in the first place.
And no, basic calendar and todo list are NOT enough for people in the real world who make money with their time (sales, office execs, etc, especially sales and self employed people).
Since I am self employed I probably qualify to craft a reply here.
Even though I don't generally disagree with your notion on "all-in-ONE" the basic calendar in newer Nokias is an absolute killer feature and life saver.
Why? I should urgently call Joe Dork tomorrow at precisely 10:29. Sure, I can add it to the callendar (with 5 minute precision) of my Palm and set an alarm. Or I can enter it into my 6510 (I think) automatically integrating the number from the address book.
Guess what; tomorrow at 10:29 my trusty phone will emmit an annoying beep and (keyboard locked or not) just punch the green key and voila: I'm connected to Joe Dork (if not his voice mail, some dreadful Muzak, or a friendly voice that suggests to dial 1).
Add that to the very accurate clock and the alarm clock from hell (which even works when the phone's off and I prefer that in the bedroom) and you have a killer device for old-fart busy executives, like me.
I don't dispute though that you still need an additional pda (or paper agenda, but they're just too clunky to be effective).
Slashdot Mirror
But it's always nice to picture Steve "Fester" Balmer after such news rushes in.
Yeah, well: Absolutely! This is what I do now and steadfastily intend to do in the future.
Looking at the crap flooding the floor shelves why should I ever need to buy a new, crippled non-cd?
By the same logic:
Since I oppose the death penalty and it's a safe bet that psycho-rapist-mass murderers also oppose the death penalty this makes me a psycho-rapist-mass murderer?
The sad thing is that some "analysts" seem to either believe this pile of shit or (even more sinister) must have an agenda of their own in this whole mess.
For starters there's the constitution and business and government would never act so wicked. In addition we are talking about cultural products, which are very different from Pepsi Cola or Gilette Razorblades and... er! well, never mind.
The point why I think such a scheme is totally fucked and dishonest is not the fact that such patents exist, but because of the following business model:
1. Create valuable idea
2. Wait until it's a defacto standard 3. PROFIT !!! (no ??? required)It looks more and more like RMS is a true visionary.
Real life example:
They phone spammed me (picked up by my sweetie, which annoys me to no end) trying to sell their incredible landline services at incredible prices, this despite the fact that all my numbers are marked as don't spam me. It's not a "do not call list" in the strict sense, but the directoriy entries are marked as don't call this number if you intend to sell shit. This is usually repected.
I called to complain and of course the call center drone is not authorized to connect me with the marketing department, but promises a return call. Needless to say that this never materialized.
Deary me, fire up Mozilla, find the vice prez for marketing and communications and send her personally a letter hinting that they'll lose one of their first customers if they don't stop that shit pronto.
Before portability: "Hoho! yeah, fuck you too sir and good luck distributing your new number" (this is assumed, but you know the spiel)
After portability: "Well, we're dreadfully sorry Sir. Your privacy is our paramount concern and here are two vouchers for movie tickets for any theatre in the country for the best category..."
Number portability? Works for me.
This is very true, of course. But has the guy considerered that this is 1:1 the case with commercial software too?
Even support providers for enterprise level software (i.e database vendors, which may charge hundreds of thousands of $, depending on the installation and support level) will never guarantee that they provide you with a solution.
Of course their sales reps have the flashier presentations though, which is a part of what you pay for.
You sell food like mad and (being a nice honest citizen) pay your taxes on your proceeds. This strategy can miserably backfire though. Here's a real world story, which I got from a court clerk who actually was involved in it:
There was this Kebab vendor, who sold Kebabs like crazy. What he didn't consider was that his phone was tapped and the following - paraphrased - conversation was taped:
"Wow man, what a fucking boring day. I prepared three Kebabs and one I even eaten myself..."
Needless to say that this didn't quite jibe with the turnover on the books.
Another common mistake is the supply side. It's somewhat hard to grasp selling 25000 Kebabs a month, when you order supplies for 219.47$
It's somewhat hard to understand without a lyrics sheet.
(Actually the credit should go to Rockers Hifi in the first place, but the K&D version is just so fucking awesome)
So you rather pay voting machine companies some 5'000$ per unit for a glorified Windows CE computer with an Access database that can be hacked by any pimply faced teenager with 100$ worth of computer equipment?
What a bargain
If I'd be the CEO of the Yankee Group I'd definitely shiver in my boots:
In the first case (stupidity) they'll be the laughing stock of the industry for years to come. They might or might not survive it. I mean who wants to commission (or pay for) analysis from a firm which fell for such an obvious scam.
In the second case (crooked) they are deader then a dead duck in the water.
Of course this is all purely speculative.
Samsung was always grazing at both sides of the fense. I don't think they are about to dump Symbian.
Motorolla otoh never really warmed up to Symbian though.
Including whacked out teeth, a cutoff penis, a shot knee (or two) and if you're really, really lucky you get a permanent, private and guaranteed spam free space 6 feet under ground
Sigh, I more and more get the impression that you're either a troll or some sort of a free market fanatic of the take no prisoner sort.
Anyway, here's the plan to follow if you want to pay for incoming phone calls in Europe, doesn't matter if from a cell phone or a land line (with the exception of international roaming of course):
There is no need to thank me.
Well, even though CDMA is apparently so much better (I hear this line a lot, but frankly I care about usability and not about technical merits as a user) I think it's extremely smart to have decided on (or if you prefer to have dictated) a standard, which has been taken up by roughly a billion people worldwide (except huge parts of the US and South Korea I think) in contrast to the joke they call "wireless services", which I had the misfortune to experience on various visits to the US.
In addition (and if I'm a slimy, evil commie so be it, alas you guys seem to have a strange definition for communism/socialism) I think it's extremely desireable not to have such vital technologies hijacked by an ip company, but that such technology is being owned by a consortium with a formal Antitrust Policy and thus by the public at large.
Actually we are doing that right today. We is the citizenship of Switzerland.
To put it into perspective: That doesn't apply to "each policy" and the legislative process is quite comparable with the one in the US. (Actually the US constitution served as the template for the two house system we also use).
But if you, Average Q Citizen has qualms about a new law you have an instrument: Collect a minimum of 50000 signatures from eligible citizens and start a referendum. (It's less on cantonal/state level and even lesser on communal level of course). The law then goes to be voted on and chances are good that the law will be overturned by the good burgers of the country.
The other instrument is called an "initiative". In essence you need 100000 signatures to enforce a vote on an ammendment of the constitution.
But guess what: We do it all on paper and the results are in the next morning (at the very latest and for an inherintly complicated election of the members of parlament). In other cases the results are in with 8:00pm news (the voting locations close at noon, but most people vote by mail anyway).
Now, you may argue that Switzerland has 5M elligable voters while the US has 200+M. But that's just a matter of scale and organization and could be set up virtually everywhere.
What is my point? Well, a direct democratic approach as we have it here is most certainly not bound to any electronic gizmos, not at all sir.
Maybe that Pres. Dubia and his cronies can't provide their political friends and constributors with a really, really sweet deal?
Those are about the most evil, wicked and for civilians devastating weapons in use today (even decades after they where planted) and just about every civilized country shuns them.
Sorry bub, but as long the US doesn't sign this treaty there's neither respect nor credit for such a sinister programs.
Usually, when the fairly stiff EU privacy protection laws come up there's a lot of "haha's", "this is bad for business" and "that's what you get for socialist governments" comments.
This example shows very drastically why we got those laws in place (which among other things generally prohibit data export to countries which don't have adequate privacy protection laws) and why they are generally a good thing.
This is not to say that this could never happen, but the responsible folks (the hospital in this case) would most certainly not get off with a slap on their wrists, which will probably be the final outcome here.
Bad idea!
Despite absolute horrid SQL generated by Access as a front end I've seen nasty effects on industry strength databases. For example ghost locks on pages, which would only go away upon a server reboot.
Generally speaking I think that all "4GL" front ends are bad news in terms of performance, but what I've seen under Access is a desaster.
You should stop watching Fox News, bub! It's not good for your brain cells.
Why would that be. And isn't that very dependant on the spcific database and it's storage architecture? (Not all databases use OS files)
My take is that the ability to read large files is not necessarily beneficial for a heavy duty oltp system, where you have a lot of tiny transactions.
Being fast on large files might be beneficial for table scans on huge tables (again, depending on the allocation concepts), but then again I would want to avoid that like the plague in the first place.
Since I am self employed I probably qualify to craft a reply here.
Even though I don't generally disagree with your notion on "all-in-ONE" the basic calendar in newer Nokias is an absolute killer feature and life saver.
Why? I should urgently call Joe Dork tomorrow at precisely 10:29. Sure, I can add it to the callendar (with 5 minute precision) of my Palm and set an alarm. Or I can enter it into my 6510 (I think) automatically integrating the number from the address book.
Guess what; tomorrow at 10:29 my trusty phone will emmit an annoying beep and (keyboard locked or not) just punch the green key and voila: I'm connected to Joe Dork (if not his voice mail, some dreadful Muzak, or a friendly voice that suggests to dial 1).
Add that to the very accurate clock and the alarm clock from hell (which even works when the phone's off and I prefer that in the bedroom) and you have a killer device for old-fart busy executives, like me.
I don't dispute though that you still need an additional pda (or paper agenda, but they're just too clunky to be effective).
Because you don't have a choice ?
Every damn hospital I've ever set foot in outright forbids the use of cell phones on hospital premises. (Use as defined in having it switched on)
Apparently they can lead to nasty interactions with some of the delicate electronics they have running in hospitals and kill patients in the process.