I absolutely agree with you. I was just saying that this sort of thing is likely to be happening all over the commercial world just as much as government. The difference is that for some reason, people expect that government entities should be more accountable with information about them than anyone else. I don't really think it's fair to start bagging the government though, without acknowledging that it's something that happens everywhere.
It sounds as if there were actually rules in this case, which is more than what often happens. They just weren't followed whether it was due to incompetence of the people involved, bad management (eg. making it difficult for people to follow the rules), or some other kind of systematic error.
You'd hope that a decent investigation will now take place to find the actual cause of the problem (rather than just blaming a couple of people), the system will be fixed if it needs to be, people will be re-trained as necessary, and anyone who was particularly negligent will be appropriately dealt with. I don't have much experience with the UK Government so I couldn't say how likely it is that this will happen. Ironically this is far more than anything that would happen in the private sector, which would just do whatever it took to cover the whole thing up, and then try to defend its stupid mistakes in the courts if it turned out to be necessary.
Thanks for pointing this out, which I entirely agree with. I also agree with the first response to your post, which is that it's like this all through the private sector, too. The difference is that government organisations actually have to be directly accountable to people sooner or later, and in that sense they have a much harder time. It's not really a surprise that a lot of people don't want to work for them.
Lately I've been doing IT work for a government department (in New Zealand in my case) which is actually run well. The entire government sector here was overhauled in the early 1980s with the Official Information Act, which has had at least one really good review from over the Tasman. The law says that anyone can request any information from any department at any time, and the department has to provide it within a specific timeframe (about twenty-something working days), or it'll get into a lot of trouble. The only exceptions are if the request is unreasonably complex, or if there's a good reason to withhold it (such as privacy, etc), in which case the department has to explain why it's withholding the info, and often convince an external auditor that it's justifiable to do so.
After 25 years of working with it, the whole government sector has adapted. We have a full time team of people which is specifically dedicated to receiving official information requests from the public and journalists, delegating them to appropriate managers or other staff, and then making sure the queries actually get answered appropriately.
Everyone knows they could be accountable at any time, any they take it seriously, and contrary to what it sounds like your experiences have been, the management actually supports the whole thing, which as an employee is very encouraging. It's not perfect and people do make mistakes, but the whole system does seem to be a lot more accountable than what I've heard of something like the US Federal Government, for instance.
The fact that 25million records were being sent via. post burnt on DVDs should give some idea of the level of technical competency in the public sector.
Actually I'd say it's representative of the competency of large organisations in general. Just think about how easily your email address gets around once you've given it to a few companies who say they'll never disclose it. The fact that government entities tend to deal more with information about people whom the government governs, that they're not supposed to rip people off, and that it's generally harder for them to hide mistakes (as it should be for everyone), just rubs it in.
Perhaps hope they learn something from this. A lot of organisations would just cover it up and not tell you about it.
Ignorance should not be a defence in crimminal procedings. Especially when related to the prosecution of goverment pesonell.
Why exactly should government personnel be any more subject to prosecution of losing your personal information than corporate personnel or other organisations or people who should be expected to be careful?
If you meant to say that government personnel should not be any less subject than anyone else, I fully agree with you.
They are not a private company with private money, its tax payer's money. If you had a box that said "NASA 4-star hotel celebration party" box on your tax form, how much would you put in? What if it was a "United States Postal Service celebration party"?
And this is one of several reasons that many government departments frequently find it difficult to attract quality employees. It's impossible to spend the money to keep good people without being heavily scrutinised by those who think money not directly being attributed to visible immediate results that directly affect those people would be better spent on a couple of extra heart operations, a few more teachers, or whatever else.
I don't know whether the money NASA's spending is justified or not, and it's not even my direct concern since I'm not a US citizen and it's not my money that NASA's spending. It might be that money's being spent stupidly because the people who would spend it well left NASA a long time ago for exactly the reasons I just mentioned. But people won't get quality government workers until they start respecting that departments need to compete with the private sector to keep quality workers.
I definitely think there should be scrutiny about how money is spent, but it needs to be done realistically, and in a way that's sheltered from media sensationalism that's more interested in producing something that will sell commercials than in conveying accurate and contextually correct information.
The government of Nigeria has shown itself to be easily corrupted at the expense of the people. See wikipedia and read the part about the government. It's not hard to imagine something crooked going on with this.
Thanks for pointing this out. This is Nigeria, which rates 2.2/10 in Transparency International's corruption perception's index. This places it in 144th place out of 179 listed countries.
Anything that happens in Nigeria involving a sizeable amount of money will involve corruption and bribery somehow, because in a place like that it's necessary just to make the world go around. That's how the country works, and it's an ingrained into generations of the culture that people in power are expected to abuse their positions. Even before Microsoft was involved, corruption and bribery would have been part of the process just to get the country to accept, allow or purchase PCs for educational purposes at all.
Relatively transparent governments are a luxury that's mostly restricted to the western world, but it's a foreign concept in a place like Nigeria. It's bad for Mandriva, it's even worse for the people who actually live there, and doing business in the country will continue to be unfair until something changes to address the culture of bribery and corruption.
I wonder a bit if this is only getting noticed because the tech industry is so new to dealing with corrupt countries. As you pointed out, the oil industry's been doing it for years. People in western countries don't actually care about it as long as they're kept isolated from the details.
You know, it's great that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is donating all that money to research and aide but if word gets out that they're using that to influence who those countries do business with, I don't think anyone's going to be impressed anymore.
It sounds like quite a complicated issue to me.
I think most people responding to this story are focusing a bit too much on the their own expectations, from the perspective of relatively transparent societies, and are ignoring that this is Nigeria. Nigeria is placed at 147th equal (of 179) in the Transparency International Corruption Perception's Index with an impressive score of 2.2/10, give or take 0.2 either way. Libya, for that matter, rates at 131st equal with a score of 2.5/10.
These are countries where bribery of corrupt officials is necessary simply to make the world go around and to get anything done at all. It's expected, and it's a perk of getting a position with power, for which the salary is probably low due to the expectation that bribes will be a major part of a person's income. People in power get ahead by being corrupt, it's treated as normal because it's widespread that it's difficult to get rid of, and the concept of corruption being bad really is a foreign concept to anyone in power.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if Microsoft bribed Nigerian and Libyan officials, either directly or indirectly. I also don't think it's too much to suggest that bribery was likely to have been part of the process of getting anything there in the first place, open source or not.
This isn't specifically an issue of Microsoft being corrupt to get their product in the door. It's an issue of Microsoft playing by the rules put forward by the government that it's dealing with. Those rules basically say that whoever has the most money and can get it to the right people wins. Which contract is better for the people who actually live in Nigeria and Libya is irrelevant. It's completely unfair, but it's also the only realistic way to get a lot of things to happen at all, until the corruption issue is sorted out.
Relatively transparent governments are a luxury that we're too used to, but it doesn't really work that way in a place like Nigeria. It's bad for Mandriva, it's even worse for the people who actually live there, but this will keep happening until the corruption is actually sorted out, if ever.
Other industries (Oil definitely springs to mind) have a lot of experience in dealing with corrupt regimes, since they've been doing it for decades and people in western societies don't really care as it doesn't affect them. Perhaps this is getting noticed so much because the tech industry is relatively new to dealing with corrupt countries.
Do you know of a more accurate source of the quote? The linked article definitely doesn't have an ellipsis. Copied and pasted from paragraph 9, the text is:
"I told Microsoft that it should give legal security to programmers who help to develop open source software and confine its patent disputes to commercial software distributors and end users. Microsoft will now pledge to do so."
These were also my first thoughts in reading the summary. From the article, the European Commissioner for Competition Policy says (emphasis is mine):
"I told Microsoft that it should give legal security to programmers who help to develop open source software and confine its patent disputes to commercial software distributors and end users. Microsoft will now pledge to do so."
Presumably all this means is that Microsoft won't be going after developers, but it may still be going after anyone who makes use of those developers' efforts. It's some good news for developers, but it's not exactly a let off the hook if you can't tell your users with any confidence that they won't be sued by Microsoft for obscure patents that wouldn't hold up in the face of anyone who could afford to defend themselves. If anything, this might give Microsoft more power to spread FUD about OSS. They're just narrowing the target, basically saying that it's okay to develop OSS, but they might not let people use it without paying up.
Hopefully the linked article isn't representative of what the actual arrangement is. For the thing to be of any use, Microsoft really needs to be pledging that they won't enforce whatever patents they claim to have at all.
But please, keep pretending your countries politics actually matter.
Well obviously my country's politics don't matter to you. Unless my country is more powerful and influential than the USA, I don't see how they should or why I should care. The point I was making was that it's not politics in general that the problem, it's your own specific country's implementation of politics.
To make things clear for starters, I'm a New Zealander. It's a country about three hours' flight south-east of Australia made of two main islands and lots of smaller islands. It's only been settled by humans in recent history (meaning the native population only turned up ~1000 years ago), it became a British colony in 1840 after a rushed and badly translated draft of a treaty was shuttled around the local chiefs to sign (so the French couldn't get in first). The country now has a variety of internal race-relations issues that stem from illegal land confiscations that happened through the British government in the 19th century. The country has roughly 4 million people, with many people immigrating from asian countries and many native-born New Zealanders emigrating to Europe, which is resulting in some quite large culture differences. Geographically it has a scattering of native forestry and lots of unique birds, many of which live on the ground and which began to get wiped out after the introduction 100 years ago of rabbits and possums (for sport) and then stoats (to kill the rabbits), none of which had their on natural predators to keep their numbers down. Right now, there's a biological scare called Didymo, which is basically a kind of rock snot that's slowly creeping its way up the rivers from the southern end of the country. It's thought to have been brought in by an American fisherman who hadn't cleaned his boots properly before entering the country.
I don't expect any of this to be of any relevance to you, and I really don't expect you to care in the slightest. I also don't expect it of your government. These are all specific New Zealand issues that people here vote on, and they're issues that they get represented on.
Do I care about US politics? Sure, of course I do. I specifically care because I know from living outside the US that the US has a massive influence on the world. I even find it frustrating at times that I don't have a say in your government when it affects me in such annoying ways. (Such as when the US federal government decides to force its corporate-lobbied views on everyone else.) But just because I could be wiped out by a hydrogen bomb tomorrow because someone over there has an itchy finger doesn't mean I don't take my own country's issues seriously.
I don't expect New Zealanders to have a significant say in many things in front of the rest of the world, but I do expect New Zealanders to have a significant say in what happens in New Zealand. Personally I'm a lot happier with the kind of representation that we get through our political system here than what I feel I would be if I was living in the USA. I appreciate that you're disillusioned by your country's brand of politics, but please remember that it's your country that has the problem, and that just because you're in the middle of it doesn't mean that it's everywhere. It's only a shame that that flawed system has enough influence to flail around annoying everyone else. For as much as I realise I don't have a say, I wish people over there would just fix the system rather than repeatedly choosing between two identical manifestos and then constantly complaining about it.
But I eventually got smart and figured out it's all BS and it really doesn't matter how you vote. Politics are more or less an illusion created to distract us while we are more or less put into servitude by the elite. You're in essence given two polarizing choices and you pick a side. Suddenly the world is black and white. Right and wrong and nothing in between.
I don't think it's politics that's the problem -- I think you just happen to live in a place with a really crappy voting system that doesn't do much to ensure fair representation.
Then explain the surprising amount of laws that corporations, and only corporations, benefit of, while Average Joe Voter gets the shaft.
Personally I think that's at least as much a problem with the system as with any people involved in it. If there's a decent system, it will do more to keep out corrupt politicians who don't represent the voters. For the record, I personally think the US federal system encourages slick bastards, although I'm not from the US so I might be misinformed. The system seems ridiculously bipartisan and actively prevents third parties from getting a foot in the door. The bipartisan nature means people tend to vote along party lines rather than for individuals, and if you live in place that's safe for one particular side, your vote is usually pointless except to express token support. There's little incentive for parties to do much to differentiate except on very specific issues of the day in specific locations. People get elected at least as much by aligning themselves as attempting to represent anyone, and the system makes corporate lobbying and manipulation easy.
Personally I don't live in the US and I'm relatively happy with the representation that I get. In New Zealand (albeit much smaller) we're using a Mixed Member Proportional system which admittedly still encourages people to vote along party lines, but there are a lot more parties that represent smaller interest groups, and they have to work together and make concessions to each other to actually form a government. This makes it much easier to actually get a say in the government when it comes to voting time, because it's easier for smaller parties to get involved in the process. Obviously this doesn't mean I always agree with what happens, but I'm confident the politicians here do what they do because they're representing people.
They're part of Vista. They're not part of XP unless you either have Office 2007 or the 2007 compatibility pack installed. Let's say 5% of all internet browsing computers are Vista and 75% are XP. How many of those 75% have Office 2007 or the compatibility pack (which isn't automatically downloaded via windows update, requiring the user go and download it).
I'm not an expert on such things, but I would have thought it would shoot up to 90% just as soon as Microsoft decides to push it out as an automatic Windows update. The conspiracy nuts might even claim that web developers would be encouraged not to bother about the remaining 10% of other platforms as soon as this happens, although I personally think there's more awareness of non-Windows platforms these days.
What I don't understand though, is why any pointy haired boss would buy from a company whose medium-term goal is to be bought and shut down by Microsoft.
Yes, a representative democracy has its advantages. If, and only if, the person who is supposed to represent you does actually represent you. If he's just a slick bastard who gets the lowbrows to vote for him because he promises easy solutions to problems that have none, he's worse than any direct democracy could be.
Every elected politician I know of represents lots of people, and lots of people rarely agree on anything. It's not to say that some (maybe even many) politicians aren't slick bastards, but just because they back something you disagree with doesn't mean that they are.
The entire problem with corruption stems from the average Nigerian government worker making the equivalent of maybe 50 USD per month. Because of this, bribery runs rampant, as they have a lot of trouble surviving on such a low salary with such supplementary income.
Although the cost of living is (presumably) much lower there, and you can bet that a typical government worker in any position that deals with foreigners will probably be on a salary that's a lot better than average. I do agree with you, though.
I can't speak for Nigeria, but when I was on the tourist trail through Peru and Bolivia, I had the impression that the more corrupt people were comparatively rolling in money compared with those who were just trying to live their day-to-day lives. The best jobs were the ones where people would be exposed to tips from tourists, because the western tour companies always told western tourists to tip so hugely.
My specific impression was that bribes and corruption-related payments were making a small minority of people very rich, but the wealth wasn't getting distributed at all. In fact, most of it was probably going straight back out of the country by purchasing of imported goods. (TVs, MP3 players, etc.) They might have been getting paid a crappy wage, but millions of other people were getting paid an order of magnitude worse, and on top of that they were not in an advantaged position to rip even more money off the foreigners.
To be fair to Peru and Bolivia, both of them seem to be reforming a bit (although we were still being protected from seeing some places). The problems, though, are that there are cultures of corruption that go through the entire government at all levels, so that it's just seen to be okay. In a country where there's such a huge amount of poverty, the only way to really get ahead is by getting into a position that can be abused, and this becomes the norm.
I honestly can't believe how people blur the edges of reality and sci-fi series. So now people deserve special honour because they played in Star Trek? I mean, the guy was probably a great actor, but what the heck.
Unless it's changed recently, names for asteroids are decided by the person (or programme) who discovers it, and I don't think it's fair to hold those people responsible for the names they choose. The IAU merely rubber stamps the name and makes sure nobody chooses anything potentially embarrassing.
It was a great system a couple of decades ago when it was an unusual achievement to have discovered an asteroid, but I personally think it's a bit dated now that technology has improved so much, and particularly with several large telescope programmes whose purpose has been to scan the sky for uncharted rocks. There are tens of thousands of asteroids that are attributed to only a small group of people, and those people would have started to grasp at straws a long time ago trying to think of names for them all. Actually the fact that so many remain un-named suggests that those people have probably decided they have better things to do with their time for the most part.
One of my good friends has an asteroid named after him. He's a mathematical modeler buried in a research institute who also does a lot of orbital modeling as a hobby. Not many people would have heard of him. He's very good at what he does, and personally I think he deserves to have something like this named after him at least as much as anyone else. His work helps, but the primary reason he has an asteroid named after him is because a couple of his good friends are career professional astronomers. It was their decision to propose that his name be attached to one of their discoveries. They still have quite a lot of others which they could name if they wanted to, simply because of the amount of undiscovered rocks they pick up in images they've taken for other reasons.
Apparently someone decided they wanted to name an asteroid after George Takei. Good for him -- I guess he's well known. But it doesn't really mean much, nor does it diminish the achievements of other people.
It will be competition because Microsoft will direct its existing customers to the online service using its already established dominant Microsoft Office product. Only working in MSIE is irrelevant because everyone who uses Office has MSIE installed.
Well, there is the same point that has convinced me to use Google Docs for a few minor things, which is the convenience of being able to edit within a web browser and use a central storage location that's available ubiquitously.
I probably wouldn't store important and/or personal documents that I care about with Google or Microsoft, but I have used Google docs for jotting things down between work and home. I've also made use of the features for letting a couple of other people collaborate on the documents. (Realistically Google Docs is like a structured Wiki in many ways, but it's one that's already set up and ready to go.) For basic stuff, something like Google Docs is a lot more convenient at times when mounting a remote file system isn't an option.
I imagine that Microsoft plans to integrate this into its desktop MS Office, allowing people to store their documents online rather than their PCs, and then access them from anywhere. Microsoft has a history of leveraging their existing successful products to force their way into new markets, and using MS Office to "encourage" people to use "MS Office Online" doesn't seem too unlikely.
Better yet let's be a little more specific. Let's ask victims of lock-picking burglars who were caught (the burglars) if that burglar should be offered a job making sure that other, uncaught, burglars can't pick the locks of that company any more?
Perhaps I'm different from you, but I'd feel much better knowing that a convicted lock-picking burglar had nothing to do with the design or manufacturing process of a lock that was on my house.
Once they burgle someone, they demonstrate beyond any doubt that their ethics can be compromised, and I don't want someone like that involved in the design process.
I'm just confused as to the point of the article. This article seems as relevant as saying air in the Earth's atmosphere contains 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 0.9 percent argon, 0.03 percent carbon dioxide, with trace gasses and this is impossible to avoid.
To me it seems that Gartner published it for similar reasons that television news media has sports news. 90%+ of sports news isn't actually news, is irrelevant the day after it was broadcast, and a lot of it is just filler before it even airs. For example, getting sound-bytes from prominent players and coaches to create a lead-up to a weekend game, ignoring that the sound-bytes are nothing more than clichés that are suspiciously similar to what interviewees said the previous week.
That said, people expect television news media to provide sports news and they like to watch it -- so much so that it'll fill up to half of a typical news bulletin. When there's nothing to say, Gartner makes it up with clichés and pointless re-stating of things that are obvious. If the sports bulletin wasn't full of something to do with sports that people are interested in, people wouldn't watch it, and eventually they might even move away from the channel. It gives people something to watch in their spare time, it stretches out the entertainment value of a game by giving them more time when they can think about it, and it helps them feel like they're up-to-date with something that's important to them... even if they really haven't been given any meaningful information.
Gartner is expected to provide commentary on things like Windows and Linux; when there's nothing to say, they make it up with clichés and pointless re-stating of things that are obvious. If Gartner's publications aren't full of something to do with topics that people are interested in, people wouldn't read them, and eventually they might even move away from Gartner. It gives managers something to read in their spare time, it stretches out the time they can say they've been considering a particular decision, and it helps them feel like they're up-to-date with parts of their job on which they have a major influence... even if they really haven't been given any meaningful information.
And not one is going to promise not to enforce the DMCA, put people on the bench to rule against it, or back congressional candidates that will have it removed from law.
I agree that the DMCA is silly, but campaigning to not enforce something is very flaky, because it amounts to arbitrary standards. If it's okay to not enforce the DMCA, why not any other random law that the current administration doesn't like. Besides, deciding what to enforce is really infringing on the rights of the police and the courts to do their respective jobs independently, without political interference. It'd make much more sense to simply work to clean up the political mes by having the DMCA removed from law before it does too much more damage.
As for the second point, people should surely be chosen based on their merit and qualifications rather than because they're expected to rule against a specific piece of legislation. Choosing people based on their alignment with certain political ideas is just emulating exactly the same actions that the current federal administration has been seriously criticised for.
I'd be willing to pay double the Windows version for a native version of SimCity 4 (or even SimCity3 or SimCity2k). No, Wine emulation doesn't count.
I'd also consider something like that once I was confident that the vendor's packaging of the game would work nicely on my system. eg. If it was hard-coded to look for certain libraries in a place that didn't match my distribution, it could cause a lot of problems.
I think this is part of the difficulty for any vendor who doesn't want to open source their code and leave things up to the distro vendors to package. Even with things like the Linux Standard Base, there are so many different configurations out there and ways that things could go wrong, and which could be a nightmare to support. Some kind of free trial to guarantee that a full version would work would be useful.
These are common GUI things from the mid 80s, but as a rank ordering from best to worst, you have OS X, Windows, and others. Windows is not that great either. The look and feel has become about as segmented as *NIX. And OS X is not perfect, but it seems clear that they have spent more time and effort with attention to these design features than anybody else.
I take your points, and to me it just seems as if nobody knows how to make a great GUI, or at least, nobody is making a great GUI. If there really was a great GUI out there, I might use it, but as far as I can tell there simply isn't.
I also think it's important to point out that it's completely possible to have a user friendly command line. I think command line interfaces get an unjustified reputation for new users. One of the most commonly used types of apps in the World -- the web search engine -- is based around command lines. Users type what they want, and the search engine tries to give it to them... often quite accurately. The Google command line is a great example of this. It's straightforward for new users to use quite effectively, and advanced users can customise their searches in lots of ways. It's not the type of precisely specified command line that would be associated with something like a bash session, but it's a well designed system appropriate for the task, intended to be quick to learn and easier to use.
Getting back to your comments about GUIs, I have to admit that one of the main reasons I prefer Linux as a desktop OS (and I fully agree this isn't for anyone) is that in a world where no GUI is that great, it provides an excellent command line. I primarily use the GUI these days to do regular things like open a web browser or edit a spreadsheet. But when I get sick of trying to interact with the GUI for a slightly complex operation such as moving files around in a certain way, I can switch to a command line and do things very easily.
Windows has a horrible command line as far as I've experienced. There are few consistent standards for how Windows command line tools should work together, and many Windows tools I've tried to use through a command line have been a secondary effort to an equivalent GUI tool. Often it's impossible to do simple things without invoking the GUI. The Windows Powershell stuff is quite nice for scipting functionality, but Windows still presents it through an awful interface for typing in.
I really don't see any point in implementing a new C compiler under the BSD lisence. There's no reason to duplicate effort: it's not like the compiled binaries would be under the GPL.
Perhaps it's for the same reason that some people prefer to use the BSD license for things other than C compilers. ie. Maybe they just want to write some code that other people can use in their own compilers, without imposing the GPL's distribution restrictions.
If you assume that there are going to be closed source commercial compilers out there, the software world might be a better place if they're able to make use of at least some openly vetted code.
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I absolutely agree with you. I was just saying that this sort of thing is likely to be happening all over the commercial world just as much as government. The difference is that for some reason, people expect that government entities should be more accountable with information about them than anyone else. I don't really think it's fair to start bagging the government though, without acknowledging that it's something that happens everywhere.
It sounds as if there were actually rules in this case, which is more than what often happens. They just weren't followed whether it was due to incompetence of the people involved, bad management (eg. making it difficult for people to follow the rules), or some other kind of systematic error.
You'd hope that a decent investigation will now take place to find the actual cause of the problem (rather than just blaming a couple of people), the system will be fixed if it needs to be, people will be re-trained as necessary, and anyone who was particularly negligent will be appropriately dealt with. I don't have much experience with the UK Government so I couldn't say how likely it is that this will happen. Ironically this is far more than anything that would happen in the private sector, which would just do whatever it took to cover the whole thing up, and then try to defend its stupid mistakes in the courts if it turned out to be necessary.
Thanks for pointing this out, which I entirely agree with. I also agree with the first response to your post, which is that it's like this all through the private sector, too. The difference is that government organisations actually have to be directly accountable to people sooner or later, and in that sense they have a much harder time. It's not really a surprise that a lot of people don't want to work for them.
Lately I've been doing IT work for a government department (in New Zealand in my case) which is actually run well. The entire government sector here was overhauled in the early 1980s with the Official Information Act, which has had at least one really good review from over the Tasman. The law says that anyone can request any information from any department at any time, and the department has to provide it within a specific timeframe (about twenty-something working days), or it'll get into a lot of trouble. The only exceptions are if the request is unreasonably complex, or if there's a good reason to withhold it (such as privacy, etc), in which case the department has to explain why it's withholding the info, and often convince an external auditor that it's justifiable to do so.
After 25 years of working with it, the whole government sector has adapted. We have a full time team of people which is specifically dedicated to receiving official information requests from the public and journalists, delegating them to appropriate managers or other staff, and then making sure the queries actually get answered appropriately.
Everyone knows they could be accountable at any time, any they take it seriously, and contrary to what it sounds like your experiences have been, the management actually supports the whole thing, which as an employee is very encouraging. It's not perfect and people do make mistakes, but the whole system does seem to be a lot more accountable than what I've heard of something like the US Federal Government, for instance.
Actually I'd say it's representative of the competency of large organisations in general. Just think about how easily your email address gets around once you've given it to a few companies who say they'll never disclose it. The fact that government entities tend to deal more with information about people whom the government governs, that they're not supposed to rip people off, and that it's generally harder for them to hide mistakes (as it should be for everyone), just rubs it in.
Perhaps hope they learn something from this. A lot of organisations would just cover it up and not tell you about it.
Why exactly should government personnel be any more subject to prosecution of losing your personal information than corporate personnel or other organisations or people who should be expected to be careful?
If you meant to say that government personnel should not be any less subject than anyone else, I fully agree with you.
And this is one of several reasons that many government departments frequently find it difficult to attract quality employees. It's impossible to spend the money to keep good people without being heavily scrutinised by those who think money not directly being attributed to visible immediate results that directly affect those people would be better spent on a couple of extra heart operations, a few more teachers, or whatever else.
I don't know whether the money NASA's spending is justified or not, and it's not even my direct concern since I'm not a US citizen and it's not my money that NASA's spending. It might be that money's being spent stupidly because the people who would spend it well left NASA a long time ago for exactly the reasons I just mentioned. But people won't get quality government workers until they start respecting that departments need to compete with the private sector to keep quality workers.
I definitely think there should be scrutiny about how money is spent, but it needs to be done realistically, and in a way that's sheltered from media sensationalism that's more interested in producing something that will sell commercials than in conveying accurate and contextually correct information.
Thanks for pointing this out. This is Nigeria, which rates 2.2/10 in Transparency International's corruption perception's index. This places it in 144th place out of 179 listed countries.
Anything that happens in Nigeria involving a sizeable amount of money will involve corruption and bribery somehow, because in a place like that it's necessary just to make the world go around. That's how the country works, and it's an ingrained into generations of the culture that people in power are expected to abuse their positions. Even before Microsoft was involved, corruption and bribery would have been part of the process just to get the country to accept, allow or purchase PCs for educational purposes at all.
Relatively transparent governments are a luxury that's mostly restricted to the western world, but it's a foreign concept in a place like Nigeria. It's bad for Mandriva, it's even worse for the people who actually live there, and doing business in the country will continue to be unfair until something changes to address the culture of bribery and corruption.
I wonder a bit if this is only getting noticed because the tech industry is so new to dealing with corrupt countries. As you pointed out, the oil industry's been doing it for years. People in western countries don't actually care about it as long as they're kept isolated from the details.
It sounds like quite a complicated issue to me.
I think most people responding to this story are focusing a bit too much on the their own expectations, from the perspective of relatively transparent societies, and are ignoring that this is Nigeria. Nigeria is placed at 147th equal (of 179) in the Transparency International Corruption Perception's Index with an impressive score of 2.2/10, give or take 0.2 either way. Libya, for that matter, rates at 131st equal with a score of 2.5/10.
These are countries where bribery of corrupt officials is necessary simply to make the world go around and to get anything done at all. It's expected, and it's a perk of getting a position with power, for which the salary is probably low due to the expectation that bribes will be a major part of a person's income. People in power get ahead by being corrupt, it's treated as normal because it's widespread that it's difficult to get rid of, and the concept of corruption being bad really is a foreign concept to anyone in power.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if Microsoft bribed Nigerian and Libyan officials, either directly or indirectly. I also don't think it's too much to suggest that bribery was likely to have been part of the process of getting anything there in the first place, open source or not.
This isn't specifically an issue of Microsoft being corrupt to get their product in the door. It's an issue of Microsoft playing by the rules put forward by the government that it's dealing with. Those rules basically say that whoever has the most money and can get it to the right people wins. Which contract is better for the people who actually live in Nigeria and Libya is irrelevant. It's completely unfair, but it's also the only realistic way to get a lot of things to happen at all, until the corruption issue is sorted out.
Relatively transparent governments are a luxury that we're too used to, but it doesn't really work that way in a place like Nigeria. It's bad for Mandriva, it's even worse for the people who actually live there, but this will keep happening until the corruption is actually sorted out, if ever.
Other industries (Oil definitely springs to mind) have a lot of experience in dealing with corrupt regimes, since they've been doing it for decades and people in western societies don't really care as it doesn't affect them. Perhaps this is getting noticed so much because the tech industry is relatively new to dealing with corrupt countries.
Do you know of a more accurate source of the quote? The linked article definitely doesn't have an ellipsis. Copied and pasted from paragraph 9, the text is:
These were also my first thoughts in reading the summary. From the article, the European Commissioner for Competition Policy says (emphasis is mine):
Presumably all this means is that Microsoft won't be going after developers, but it may still be going after anyone who makes use of those developers' efforts. It's some good news for developers, but it's not exactly a let off the hook if you can't tell your users with any confidence that they won't be sued by Microsoft for obscure patents that wouldn't hold up in the face of anyone who could afford to defend themselves. If anything, this might give Microsoft more power to spread FUD about OSS. They're just narrowing the target, basically saying that it's okay to develop OSS, but they might not let people use it without paying up.
Hopefully the linked article isn't representative of what the actual arrangement is. For the thing to be of any use, Microsoft really needs to be pledging that they won't enforce whatever patents they claim to have at all.
Well obviously my country's politics don't matter to you. Unless my country is more powerful and influential than the USA, I don't see how they should or why I should care. The point I was making was that it's not politics in general that the problem, it's your own specific country's implementation of politics.
To make things clear for starters, I'm a New Zealander. It's a country about three hours' flight south-east of Australia made of two main islands and lots of smaller islands. It's only been settled by humans in recent history (meaning the native population only turned up ~1000 years ago), it became a British colony in 1840 after a rushed and badly translated draft of a treaty was shuttled around the local chiefs to sign (so the French couldn't get in first). The country now has a variety of internal race-relations issues that stem from illegal land confiscations that happened through the British government in the 19th century. The country has roughly 4 million people, with many people immigrating from asian countries and many native-born New Zealanders emigrating to Europe, which is resulting in some quite large culture differences. Geographically it has a scattering of native forestry and lots of unique birds, many of which live on the ground and which began to get wiped out after the introduction 100 years ago of rabbits and possums (for sport) and then stoats (to kill the rabbits), none of which had their on natural predators to keep their numbers down. Right now, there's a biological scare called Didymo, which is basically a kind of rock snot that's slowly creeping its way up the rivers from the southern end of the country. It's thought to have been brought in by an American fisherman who hadn't cleaned his boots properly before entering the country.
I don't expect any of this to be of any relevance to you, and I really don't expect you to care in the slightest. I also don't expect it of your government. These are all specific New Zealand issues that people here vote on, and they're issues that they get represented on.
Do I care about US politics? Sure, of course I do. I specifically care because I know from living outside the US that the US has a massive influence on the world. I even find it frustrating at times that I don't have a say in your government when it affects me in such annoying ways. (Such as when the US federal government decides to force its corporate-lobbied views on everyone else.) But just because I could be wiped out by a hydrogen bomb tomorrow because someone over there has an itchy finger doesn't mean I don't take my own country's issues seriously.
I don't expect New Zealanders to have a significant say in many things in front of the rest of the world, but I do expect New Zealanders to have a significant say in what happens in New Zealand. Personally I'm a lot happier with the kind of representation that we get through our political system here than what I feel I would be if I was living in the USA. I appreciate that you're disillusioned by your country's brand of politics, but please remember that it's your country that has the problem, and that just because you're in the middle of it doesn't mean that it's everywhere. It's only a shame that that flawed system has enough influence to flail around annoying everyone else. For as much as I realise I don't have a say, I wish people over there would just fix the system rather than repeatedly choosing between two identical manifestos and then constantly complaining about it.
I don't think it's politics that's the problem -- I think you just happen to live in a place with a really crappy voting system that doesn't do much to ensure fair representation.
Personally I think that's at least as much a problem with the system as with any people involved in it. If there's a decent system, it will do more to keep out corrupt politicians who don't represent the voters. For the record, I personally think the US federal system encourages slick bastards, although I'm not from the US so I might be misinformed. The system seems ridiculously bipartisan and actively prevents third parties from getting a foot in the door. The bipartisan nature means people tend to vote along party lines rather than for individuals, and if you live in place that's safe for one particular side, your vote is usually pointless except to express token support. There's little incentive for parties to do much to differentiate except on very specific issues of the day in specific locations. People get elected at least as much by aligning themselves as attempting to represent anyone, and the system makes corporate lobbying and manipulation easy.
Personally I don't live in the US and I'm relatively happy with the representation that I get. In New Zealand (albeit much smaller) we're using a Mixed Member Proportional system which admittedly still encourages people to vote along party lines, but there are a lot more parties that represent smaller interest groups, and they have to work together and make concessions to each other to actually form a government. This makes it much easier to actually get a say in the government when it comes to voting time, because it's easier for smaller parties to get involved in the process. Obviously this doesn't mean I always agree with what happens, but I'm confident the politicians here do what they do because they're representing people.
I'm not an expert on such things, but I would have thought it would shoot up to 90% just as soon as Microsoft decides to push it out as an automatic Windows update. The conspiracy nuts might even claim that web developers would be encouraged not to bother about the remaining 10% of other platforms as soon as this happens, although I personally think there's more awareness of non-Windows platforms these days.
What I don't understand though, is why any pointy haired boss would buy from a company whose medium-term goal is to be bought and shut down by Microsoft.
Every elected politician I know of represents lots of people, and lots of people rarely agree on anything. It's not to say that some (maybe even many) politicians aren't slick bastards, but just because they back something you disagree with doesn't mean that they are.
Although the cost of living is (presumably) much lower there, and you can bet that a typical government worker in any position that deals with foreigners will probably be on a salary that's a lot better than average. I do agree with you, though.
I can't speak for Nigeria, but when I was on the tourist trail through Peru and Bolivia, I had the impression that the more corrupt people were comparatively rolling in money compared with those who were just trying to live their day-to-day lives. The best jobs were the ones where people would be exposed to tips from tourists, because the western tour companies always told western tourists to tip so hugely.
My specific impression was that bribes and corruption-related payments were making a small minority of people very rich, but the wealth wasn't getting distributed at all. In fact, most of it was probably going straight back out of the country by purchasing of imported goods. (TVs, MP3 players, etc.) They might have been getting paid a crappy wage, but millions of other people were getting paid an order of magnitude worse, and on top of that they were not in an advantaged position to rip even more money off the foreigners.
To be fair to Peru and Bolivia, both of them seem to be reforming a bit (although we were still being protected from seeing some places). The problems, though, are that there are cultures of corruption that go through the entire government at all levels, so that it's just seen to be okay. In a country where there's such a huge amount of poverty, the only way to really get ahead is by getting into a position that can be abused, and this becomes the norm.
Unless it's changed recently, names for asteroids are decided by the person (or programme) who discovers it, and I don't think it's fair to hold those people responsible for the names they choose. The IAU merely rubber stamps the name and makes sure nobody chooses anything potentially embarrassing.
It was a great system a couple of decades ago when it was an unusual achievement to have discovered an asteroid, but I personally think it's a bit dated now that technology has improved so much, and particularly with several large telescope programmes whose purpose has been to scan the sky for uncharted rocks. There are tens of thousands of asteroids that are attributed to only a small group of people, and those people would have started to grasp at straws a long time ago trying to think of names for them all. Actually the fact that so many remain un-named suggests that those people have probably decided they have better things to do with their time for the most part.
One of my good friends has an asteroid named after him. He's a mathematical modeler buried in a research institute who also does a lot of orbital modeling as a hobby. Not many people would have heard of him. He's very good at what he does, and personally I think he deserves to have something like this named after him at least as much as anyone else. His work helps, but the primary reason he has an asteroid named after him is because a couple of his good friends are career professional astronomers. It was their decision to propose that his name be attached to one of their discoveries. They still have quite a lot of others which they could name if they wanted to, simply because of the amount of undiscovered rocks they pick up in images they've taken for other reasons.
Apparently someone decided they wanted to name an asteroid after George Takei. Good for him -- I guess he's well known. But it doesn't really mean much, nor does it diminish the achievements of other people.
It will be competition because Microsoft will direct its existing customers to the online service using its already established dominant Microsoft Office product. Only working in MSIE is irrelevant because everyone who uses Office has MSIE installed.
Well, there is the same point that has convinced me to use Google Docs for a few minor things, which is the convenience of being able to edit within a web browser and use a central storage location that's available ubiquitously.
I probably wouldn't store important and/or personal documents that I care about with Google or Microsoft, but I have used Google docs for jotting things down between work and home. I've also made use of the features for letting a couple of other people collaborate on the documents. (Realistically Google Docs is like a structured Wiki in many ways, but it's one that's already set up and ready to go.) For basic stuff, something like Google Docs is a lot more convenient at times when mounting a remote file system isn't an option.
I imagine that Microsoft plans to integrate this into its desktop MS Office, allowing people to store their documents online rather than their PCs, and then access them from anywhere. Microsoft has a history of leveraging their existing successful products to force their way into new markets, and using MS Office to "encourage" people to use "MS Office Online" doesn't seem too unlikely.
Perhaps I'm different from you, but I'd feel much better knowing that a convicted lock-picking burglar had nothing to do with the design or manufacturing process of a lock that was on my house.
Once they burgle someone, they demonstrate beyond any doubt that their ethics can be compromised, and I don't want someone like that involved in the design process.
To me it seems that Gartner published it for similar reasons that television news media has sports news. 90%+ of sports news isn't actually news, is irrelevant the day after it was broadcast, and a lot of it is just filler before it even airs. For example, getting sound-bytes from prominent players and coaches to create a lead-up to a weekend game, ignoring that the sound-bytes are nothing more than clichés that are suspiciously similar to what interviewees said the previous week.
That said, people expect television news media to provide sports news and they like to watch it -- so much so that it'll fill up to half of a typical news bulletin. When there's nothing to say, Gartner makes it up with clichés and pointless re-stating of things that are obvious. If the sports bulletin wasn't full of something to do with sports that people are interested in, people wouldn't watch it, and eventually they might even move away from the channel. It gives people something to watch in their spare time, it stretches out the entertainment value of a game by giving them more time when they can think about it, and it helps them feel like they're up-to-date with something that's important to them... even if they really haven't been given any meaningful information.
Gartner is expected to provide commentary on things like Windows and Linux; when there's nothing to say, they make it up with clichés and pointless re-stating of things that are obvious. If Gartner's publications aren't full of something to do with topics that people are interested in, people wouldn't read them, and eventually they might even move away from Gartner. It gives managers something to read in their spare time, it stretches out the time they can say they've been considering a particular decision, and it helps them feel like they're up-to-date with parts of their job on which they have a major influence... even if they really haven't been given any meaningful information.
I agree that the DMCA is silly, but campaigning to not enforce something is very flaky, because it amounts to arbitrary standards. If it's okay to not enforce the DMCA, why not any other random law that the current administration doesn't like. Besides, deciding what to enforce is really infringing on the rights of the police and the courts to do their respective jobs independently, without political interference. It'd make much more sense to simply work to clean up the political mes by having the DMCA removed from law before it does too much more damage.
As for the second point, people should surely be chosen based on their merit and qualifications rather than because they're expected to rule against a specific piece of legislation. Choosing people based on their alignment with certain political ideas is just emulating exactly the same actions that the current federal administration has been seriously criticised for.
I'd also consider something like that once I was confident that the vendor's packaging of the game would work nicely on my system. eg. If it was hard-coded to look for certain libraries in a place that didn't match my distribution, it could cause a lot of problems.
I think this is part of the difficulty for any vendor who doesn't want to open source their code and leave things up to the distro vendors to package. Even with things like the Linux Standard Base, there are so many different configurations out there and ways that things could go wrong, and which could be a nightmare to support. Some kind of free trial to guarantee that a full version would work would be useful.
I take your points, and to me it just seems as if nobody knows how to make a great GUI, or at least, nobody is making a great GUI. If there really was a great GUI out there, I might use it, but as far as I can tell there simply isn't.
I also think it's important to point out that it's completely possible to have a user friendly command line. I think command line interfaces get an unjustified reputation for new users. One of the most commonly used types of apps in the World -- the web search engine -- is based around command lines. Users type what they want, and the search engine tries to give it to them... often quite accurately. The Google command line is a great example of this. It's straightforward for new users to use quite effectively, and advanced users can customise their searches in lots of ways. It's not the type of precisely specified command line that would be associated with something like a bash session, but it's a well designed system appropriate for the task, intended to be quick to learn and easier to use.
Getting back to your comments about GUIs, I have to admit that one of the main reasons I prefer Linux as a desktop OS (and I fully agree this isn't for anyone) is that in a world where no GUI is that great, it provides an excellent command line. I primarily use the GUI these days to do regular things like open a web browser or edit a spreadsheet. But when I get sick of trying to interact with the GUI for a slightly complex operation such as moving files around in a certain way, I can switch to a command line and do things very easily.
Windows has a horrible command line as far as I've experienced. There are few consistent standards for how Windows command line tools should work together, and many Windows tools I've tried to use through a command line have been a secondary effort to an equivalent GUI tool. Often it's impossible to do simple things without invoking the GUI. The Windows Powershell stuff is quite nice for scipting functionality, but Windows still presents it through an awful interface for typing in.
Just my thoughts, anyway.
Perhaps it's for the same reason that some people prefer to use the BSD license for things other than C compilers. ie. Maybe they just want to write some code that other people can use in their own compilers, without imposing the GPL's distribution restrictions.
If you assume that there are going to be closed source commercial compilers out there, the software world might be a better place if they're able to make use of at least some openly vetted code.