Interesting analogy...but I don't buy it. I am on the fence on this issue and have been for some time. I have a cousin who works in the strategy department of a very large utility. Given how much the energy business sucks right now the last nine months or so they have been looking for options to lower costs.
The idea of outsourcing call center and development jobs to India and China has come up numerous times and rejected every time. Why you ask? Why doesn't the company look for the cheapest labor...? Because the company is deathly afraid of a competitor touting the fact that their putting people in the US out of work. That's right good old-fashioned fear of retribution by competitors and consumers.
Do you know why none of these companies in India will advertise their client list to you? Because the dirty little secret of every US company is that if they get caught they will get plowed under if they are in the consumer space. Like it or not, outside of a few mega-international corporations nearly all companies derive 50% or more of their profits from U.S. consumers becase the U.S. is by FAR THE LARGEST MARKET FOR GOODS!
So I don't think your analogy is a good one. I would say the relationship between US companies and US consumers has been a symbiotic one for sometime. However, one side of this equation is turning parasitic and it won't be long before the other side ends the relationship. One final thought, one of my marketing professors used to say you can cut costs to the bone, but if their is no top line grow there is nothing to float to the bottom. Show me a company that takes a 10% hit in revenue for a quarter because of a disgusted consumer reaction and I will show you some serious back peddaling. Look no further then Intuit and TurboTax for your example. The day when companies start naming names of competitors is coming and its coming soon.
to provide a wonderful and immensely valuable tool when it "MIGHT" with a "HIGH DEGREE" of time, effort, and money be undermined. Lord knows someone couldn't go to a "UNIVERSITY LIBRARY" and do the same thing.
So all things being equal would you like to invest in a company that always strives to be number one or a company that is willing to be third, fourth, or seven-best in the sectors which they compete. Hint: Long term capital appreciation doesn't happen when you are someone who will never be the best. GE has the same philosophy 1 or 2 in the industry or get out. This is not limited to Microsoft nor should it be.
Forget about the Free Software angle for the moment, how is this any different then we as a country (the United States) saying we will only use American-based software. The answer is, it isn't. I am more concerned for the ability of American companies to develop software and export it to China then I am about Free Software. While this may see like a wonderful thing for Linux and the much larger software suites and it maybe great, its a real crap storm for small companies that provide niche-based software.
Look at all the software packages that might be used in the Chinese government created by companies all over the world. Now these companies are being told "Nope, you can't sell here anymore." That's a great deal of the world's producers being effectively shut out based on nationality. This is not a win for Free Software, this is a win for protectionism disguised (apparently very well) as advocacy for Free Software. This is no different then farm subsidies in Europe, and U.S. protection of the steel industry. (I have problems with both by the way).
One final thought, the last country in the world I would expose my source to is the Chinese government. The Chinese have not been known to be respecters of intellectual property. How fast do you think it would take for source of your application you developed to be handed over to a competing Chinese company. A month tops I believe.
As for you apologist who believe it necessary to protect new industries in developing countries, I have a rebuttal when it comes to software. The reason to protect industries like this would be because they have high barriers-to-entry and large capital costs. For instance, the building of farm equipment is one I would support because it is both resource intensive and long lead times to development and production. Software on the other hand is just the opposite. I can seat down someone in Russia, India, China, Egypt, Costa Rica, or the US give them a text editor and a compiler and they can become a software company. The resources and talent to build software can be found anywhere in the world as long as you got a computer and an internet connection to download the software. Therefore protecting local software companies, especially as an inflow of jobs comes from other parts of the world at the same time, is protectionism at its worst.
I own some IP inside the Linux Kernel, but won't disclose what it is either. I am lot more generous then SCO though and will only charge you $500 for a enterprise wide license for Linux. See that wasn't so hard now was it. Please forward your payments to Hangtime.
Actually Charlie its changed here in the last few months, you can now get a FastPass every hour. Alot of folks would get a FastPass and if it was mid-morning or your favorite ride Tower of Terror comes to mind was booked out 3 hours or so you were out of luck. Now, you can with your ticket get a FastPass every hour. What I think is pretty interesting is if you try and go for another FastPass before your time, the system will penalize you 5 or 15 minutes cannot remember so it keeps everyone in line (sorry for the pun).:)
AAAAAAmen Reverened. Preach on! Does anyone get the feeling this is a technology in search of a solution instead of vice versa. Now I am sure there were a lot of smart people who came together to do this but guess what, it will not be used. We need to be spending more time on content instead of trying to disaggregate content from presentation. There are now several different ways you can do this as shown in this thread and one more additional one way doesn't help. Go back and think of some interesting stuff instead of the rehashing the same thing 30 different ways.
My senators and rep Kay Bailey Hutchinson, John Cornyn, and Tom Delay will all be getting faxes today from me. Again, I will stress the angle that the US should not be in the business of keeping businesses with outdated business plans propped up. In addition, a mandatory five year sentence to federal pound-me-in-the-*** prison, when we got killers, drug kingpins, and celeberties get off with easier sentences. Oh I am peeved at the moment. Hey Michigan and California wake up and don't elect this jokers again.
Love him or hate him, you have to admire Ellison and what this has done to the entire ERP landscape at the moment by basically putting everyone outside of Oracle and SAP in-play. One of the frequent mistakes of corporate strategy is the internalization of decisions. Long before Peoplesoft and J.D. Edwards began talks, Oracle executives including Ellison got together and diagrammed a number of different scenarios occurring in the ERP sector and scripted the responses Oracle would take in the event of their occurrence. One of those events was Peoplesoft merging with J.D. Edwards thus why it was such a short time between the announcement by Peoplesoft and JD Edwards and Oracle's response. The entire situation was scripted!
The real loser right now is not Peoplesoft, Peoplesoft is fighting for its life. The real loser and I believe the intended target of this attack all along has been JD Edwards. While Peoplesoft is a much more powerful competitor to Oracle, the overlap between the two in terms of customer bases is much smaller then between JD Edwards and Oracle. JD Edwards and Oracle go after almost the same manufacturing customers. Right now, JD Edwards, its customers, and future customers are withering on the vine due to this play. While I may still go ahead with a Peoplesoft purchase given the guarantee Peoplesoft began writing in its contracts (an incredibly smart move by PSFT), I don't get that kind of assuarance with JD Edwards and therefore more likely to go elsewhere.
When the merger of Peoplesoft and JD Edwards was announced both companies were myopic of the environment and only thinking of what would occur together. Neither company had enough forsight to understand what their competitors might do or how the environment would shift around them. I have to hand it to Ellison and the Oracle execs (personally I'm not a fan of the culture or Ellison's bravado) but I do give them credit for thinking ahead and making a brilliant tactical move weakening two competitors at once. That said, everyone else will be on the lookout after such a bold attack by Oracle now that I would be very surprised if Oracle didn't go back to the drawing board and retool their scripts for the next time around.
Everyone has a voter registration card, why not use ID tokens instead. At my place of business we use the RSA ID tokens for authentication when accessing our network. When applying to vote, you get a token and setup your username and password at the office. The token generates a new key every 60 seconds so its extremely difficult to actually hack the key itself. Instead of setting up a user name, you could assign a random code with a password as well. In this case keeping anonimity becomes more of an issue, which I'm sure many individuals who are smarter then I am could figure out.
These people have forgotten that all user interfaces used to be "richer environments," which the users abandoned by the millions, in favor of the browser, the moment they got a chance. I said millions and I meant millions: tens of millions, hundreds of millions of browser downloads from the Netscape that was, and the software vendors fighting the rearguard actions to defend their "richer," "more responsive," "higher-performance" client software; and losing, losing.
Hey, I cashed in on it. Open Text got to be a successful vendor of content management software largely because we were the first to do it all through the browser, with no client software. Our stuff didn't do all that much more, but given a choice between client and browser, the people wanted the browser.
People want the browser not for the fact it makes for a simpler application in a GUI sense but for the fact you do not have to install and run it from a desktop. We do nothing but web apps in my company now and the reason is we have 18 different branches and no one wants to push an application out to that many individuals each time there is a fix. A thriving industry has been created by the need to install applications locally on desktops and insure the correct licensing of that software. As a consumer of software, I don't want to pay for those things. In addition, users don't want to have install an application on their desktop when they can go to a website and do the same thing.
The reason this trade-off between functionality and universal access has occurred is that people find more value in server-centric management and universal access today for those simple applications where I am entering some information or retrieving it. I think we will see the rise of "richer" web applications over the next few years because there is a need for better controls if for no other reason then productivity and efficiency gains. Working with large blocks of information on a web page can be very cumbersome to the user. Client-Server computing (VB, Delphi, insert your favorite GUI-centric language here), GUIs became much more functional in what they could do over time, the browser-based application will follow the same path, but now with the added convenience of server-based management and fixes, and universal access for all users. The user, the administrator, and the developer all get what they want. Of course as the author has pointed out we may start seeing web-based GUIs become more unusuable, but that is a design flaw of the developer and can occur on any platform.
NT on a workstation is fine...NT on a laptop just take the gun, put it to your temple, and pull the trigger. Man I can only imagine just knowing some of the things I had to do to get it working on some of the laptops I rolled out in college. That's actually the first thing I told folks was when W2K came out move your laptops first...mmmmm power savings.
If you want to run the software that's fine man, but you can't expect a company to support a software version indefinitely. Considering the software has been out there now for seven years. Who on Slashdot today is running a kernel from seven years ago...any takers. I'm betting there is at least three or four oddballs but the vast majority probably do not.
Also, these roadmaps have been set for a very long time and actually EXTENDED because some customers just did not want to move. Its not like people haven't known this was coming. Unfortunately, many companies like mine will have to hurry to get it installed before the end of the year (were a financial services organization). Our little branch of the company has been moving progressively moving towards W2K so our job will not be that big, but the rest of company will be.
Microsoft has bent over backwards with NT to keep it supported for this long. Sidenote: would you as a software producer keep up support for your DOS-based application you wrote seven years ago when you have web-based services running on your platform of choice...unless your as big as MS or IBM maybe you wouldn't. The end-of-life for this software should have caught exactly zero people off-guard and if you haven't made plans to transition off NT then you have defintitely fallen down on your job as a sysadmin.
Good idea but not real reliable as others in this thread have shown. What you MUST do is slap an injunction on any movement of their offsite backup tapes. I GUARANTEE you that those trees were being backed up and sent off site every month. What you must do is insure that no one from SCO can change those tapes because that is the only way to establishing dates of both sets of code.
One thing I hear in here this morning is that its unencumbered and lossless compression format. Yes the format will stick around just because somebody will use it for something. However, I don't need a lossless format that often (if ever) on the web. People aren't downloading your image and sending it to others and your probably not going any further then two-three generations when your working on your website. Finally, size matters ladies! I am not going to clutter up a webpage with a 45K file when JPG and GIF can do it 15K or BETTER! I know because its lossless, however, as I have demonstrated I don't need a lossless format to keep a website maintained because I probably have the original artwork in Adobe Photoshop or TIF format and just save it down to JPEG when I am ready to update the website.
So in conclusion, are we ever going to see PNG as a widespread use format...no. The only problem it solved was one of not using GIF and come 11 days from now, its primary reason for existence will be gone.
No matter what's being said today about Miss Johnson, I can guarantee one thing. We are rapidly approaching the worst day in her life. NYTimes, Fark, and now Slashdot have picked this stuff up. Google has the story cached and its probably getting more hits now then it ever got before this lawsuit.
I originally read the story on Fark and quite frankly I happen to believe it. While I don't believe in the judge and she trying to deny 1st amendment rights (BAD MONKEY! NNNOOO!), I can't help but show a little emphathy (not symphathy) to the situation. Given that background she probably doesn't have a great deal of self confidence or high self-esteem.
That said, we all have a relationship or two we wish we could cram back in the closet but hey that's what growing up is. Part of maturity is beginning to recognize bad relationships and deal with them accordingly. I know a lot of 23 year olds that are just as immature as she is portrayed in the article (part of the reason I tend to believe it). I know I wouldn't want my sexual exploits published on the web, but you know part of growing up and maturity is not picking those individuals who would publish this stuff on the web in the first place.
All said, I am glad I am not dating anymore and am committed to a wonderful woman who will be my bride soon. Hopefully this episode in her life will teach Miss Johnson a valuable but very costly lesson about the kind of individuals she should be looking to date and have an intimate relationship. In addition, part of maturity and growing up is dealing with the consequences of past relationships. Finally, any woman who would let a man smack her on the butt and say get along were about to have ManTalk and not turn around and turn his balls into puree needs to take a long hard look at the reflection in the mirror.
You can't negotiate with criminals because if you do, what will stop the next company from doing the same thing that SCO's doing today. You have to just put the foot down and beat them here or you'll have every small company that is desperately seeking a buyer do the same thing and this will become an ongoing IP problem. I you have five companies each year claim some sort of IP infringement even its TOTALLY baseless, if their is a remote chance they might win they will take that chance. At that point, IT managers won't want to here about Linux and all its wonderful value because all they see is a risk of being sued.
Take my advice for all it's worth and make SCO an example to the rest of the world. Kick the ever-living crap out of SCO so hard and so bad now so nobody tries this ever again.
I agree with the prevailing thought, it doesn't mean a damn thing until a judge sees it. If you happen to be coding and see this code under an NDA you could open yourself up for suit as well. Best to just leave it be and let the companies fight it out. Another thought is they haven't disclosed the terms of the NDA to anyone. They could read something like "If you view this code, all articles written about the comparison to Linux must be positive to SCO's claims." Or "You may make no comment in regards to the code you have seen." In both of these cases it doesn't make a lot of sense from a reporters view and from a coder's view they could always come back on you...so don't even bother. Their is no constituency that it actually makes sense to look at this code, even if in the most improbably, screwed-up dimensional state where SCO has a remote chance of actually winning this case...they will just be bought out to shut them up.
So I'm up right now and just read through this and blew through my mind a little too far.
The article ends on the following In sum, if your descendants might make simulations of lives like yours, then you might be living in a simulation. And while you probably cannot learn much detail about the specific reasons for and nature of the simulation you live in, you can draw general conclusions by making analogies to the types and reasons of simulations today. If you might be living in a simulation then all else equal it seems that you should care less about others, live more for today, make your world look likely to become eventually rich, expect to and try to participate in pivotal events, be entertaining and praiseworthy, and keep the famous people around you happy and interested in you.
In other words, the article is says if you believe your in a simulation live for the now. The unfortunate this is without outside evidence of living in a simulation i.e. the light falling to "earth" in the Truman Show, you have no real way of knowing. If the simulations themselves were detailed enough, all the individuals could be programmed with memories, meaning if I am indeed a simulant then all my memories up to this point could have just been given to me including writing this reply....spooky. Reminds me a lot of Jeremy Bentham and Hedonistic Calculas for those who took Philosophy in college. In the end the way you live your life is soley dependent upon your time frame and values. How I would live my life if I were to die in a month from now is much different then if I believe I am going to live to 150. Its not wise to plan for one and not the other, i.e. spending all your money today and nothing for tomorrow, but also not taking advantage of saying I Love you to everyone of your Loved ones every chance you get. Your internal compass must guide you.
Before I turn in for the evening I did get a kick out of this passage.
Also, in general the behavior of many people far from the simulated people of interest might be randomly generated based on statistics from previous simulations, or come from "cached" records of previous simulated people. Some "people" in a crowd simulation might even be run by very simple programs that have them wiggle and mumble "peas and carrots" like extras supposedly did once in movie crowd scenes.
Large companies end up paying tons in license fees for a plethora of different software products that fit individual needs. They could instead find a few open source products and pay the salaries of a few programmers to customize them to their needs, or outright integrate them. Lotus Notes for mail, Novell for meta, People Soft for CRM, Windows clients, etc. Instead, you could take one strong open source CRM, expand upon it, integrate web based mail (or even make a quick client), and integrate their features to work flawlessly, all running in an open source browser that is running on Linux terminals (which removes the need for de-centralized administration) - instead of forcing the admins to find ways around making all of these closed products work together in hack jobs, with expensive tools like Zen Works deployed just to install and configure software on expensive Windows workstations - or worse. Oh well - I'm being a square headed open source zealot again. I'll go lay down.
Your kidding right...go find a couple of open source packages and pay some developers to integrate them together. I'll take this one at a time.
1. Besides packages like MySQL and Open Office that are dual-use meaning can be used in the home, name me five "business" open source packages out there? Better yet name me this elusive "strong open source CRM." Please tell me that product that bests Peoplesoft or Seibel, or duplicates 60% of the functionality, where can I find this elusive piece of software. It doesn't exist. I can't name you five Linux/Open Source packages that function as business applications but I can name you five off the top of my head in my niche of Builder's Mortgage Banking.
2. Hire a bunch of Developers to Integrate It All: Problem, I'm not in the business of building applications, I am in the business of making loans to home builders. We only build things if its not already done. I looked 12 months for one software package even though we had developers in the bullpen waiting for a project because I have to then maintain that software! Chances are if your not in the mainframe world or you don't run a company like Disney or GE where turnover is minimal; your going to have turnover. That means maintenance, new releases, new features for a product that's already built and maintained by someone else! A complete waste! Its called a real option. If I build one piece of software I sacrifice building another. I would rather build software keeping us on the cutting edge of business then duplicating the functionality of another package.
3. That hodgepodge of programs you referred to is Best-of-Breed buying its their to ensure that I get the most bang for my license buck. Yes integrationn is tough but if you go into the purchase with integration as a checklist item in criteria your less likely to be burned.
4. Large companies end up paying tons in license fees...over a time span. All software can be depreciated over three years and based upon your tax strategy and the purchase maybe even longer. Its just like buying furniture and computers, yes its an immediate cash outlay but its affect on income can be spread over multiple years.
When the PDA really took fire three years ago, we all began to speculate that everyone would have a handheld and would go everywhere with it. My how times have changed and not necessarily for the worse. I have a Palm IIIxe and find myself not taking it to all the places I used too. It got to the point that is was very bulky and I found I didn't take it out as much so I left it at home. However, when I was in school I used all the time. Hooked up with one of the Palm keyboards I could take all my notes in class and not have to worry about lugging a laptop.
The simple fact of the matter is, handhelds are starting to go back into their niche and take the place of paper where it makes sense. Currently, we have an internally produced application that interfaces with our system of record to update inspections for home sites. It makes a lot of sense because the inspector no longer has to use a pen and pad and we can process draws for borrowers at any point in the week instead of waiting for the inspectors to come back in on Thursday.
I predict you will see more and more of this as time progresses. The time for everyone having a PDA with 20 applications has passed. Its now Blackberrys (wireless email, calendar, contact info) and/or hardened PDAs for every day, one to two applications use.
I agree that in the end that trading illegally is wrong, but what the High Court might do is take a look at the Amendment 4 and have a thought otherwise when it comes to the DMCA. What the DMCA is allowing is an unreasonable search and seizure. Here's where it gets tricky. Since the DMCA carries with it criminal charges it should therefore be subject to the highest of standards when it comes to a criminal investigation. If they had come with a warrant to look at logs I am sure Verizon would have complied, but they came when an act that circumvents the 4th Amendment. Indeed this portion of the DMCA should be ruled unconstitutional, it gives police powers to any copyright holder with no check on the authority. What if in the course of an investigation of one of these file traders they were found to be kiddie-pornographers? Could the evidence gathered by the request be used against them in a court of law? Would the entire case be thrown out? Very interesting questions indeed.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Don't be too sure. id knows how powerful its games are in the computer world. When a new game is released Doom, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, a mini-worldwide upgrade in hardware generally comes as well. I got to talk with Todd Hollenshead one time and he seems like a pretty shrewd dude in terms of business. They will weigh the pros and cons of only releasing to one console platform and it come out a little something like this.
((Total Projected Sales of units between each of the other consoles) * 25%??? exclusivitiy bonus for the XBox) - (Development Costs to Port to other systems)
If MS is offering more then that then they probably do it. id is powerful enough to demand that sort of deal and MSFT is rich and desperate enough to make that kind of deal. Guarantee you they hit a number like that, they would make it an X-Box exclusive.
This is my own view of the Mozilla project, and lord help my karma. I feel the Mozilla has been a complete failure. Lets go back six years ago. The year was 1997 and I was interning in a Marketing department (hahhaha) and updating the company website. The only thing we used was Netscape. Netscape had 80% of the market. Six years latter Netscape/Mozilla is pushing what 10% to 15%? Netscape when it open sourced Mozilla gave the Linux community and finally yielded a very nice browser, however, at best Linux users (not servers) make up 5% 15%, you can't argue with that. If better how about 70% ---> 25% still awful. Happy Birthday Mozilla, sorry nobody but a few showed up this year maybe you will make some new friends next year huh? Maybe AOL will finally incorporate you huh? Oh, no, you don't think so...well your still pretty special. Oh, you render pages just the same as IE, but more "standards-based." Oh that's great, that's what makes you different. Oh, people don't care for different? Well, sorry, look at the time, gotta go, Happy Birthday.
Legitmacy is not something you gain by going with the crowd.
Report on the 28 year old plumber who drowned after being ordered to cross a canal in full battle dress. Or the 20 year old lifeguard who drowned trying to save him.
Report on the seven year old girl lying in a pool of her own blood, her intestines laying beside her.
Report on the man who kissed the Americans and asked them why they didn't come sooner. His son had made disparging remarks about Saddam so he was taken beaten, tortured, and finally executed because he was doing something your doing right now, attempting to resist the government.
Since I see the Europe.com Tres, I will assume you are somewhere in Europe for the moment. You and I are very unique is this world. There is probably in the neighborhood of 20% - 30% of us that occupy the world. We are the only individuals in this world who don't have to fear government reprisal for our views. If we want to go march, we can march. If want to burn our countries flags in protest, we can do that and not fear having our tongues cut out.
WSJ yesterday talked about Marine patrols that found a supposed sheepherder carrying $30,000 in US Cash, hundreds of thousands in Dinar?sp (Iraqi currency, a GPS locater, a book on US troop movement, and list of sympathizers within the Iraqi ranks. When you fear for your own families safety that if you don't fight your family will die...you fight.
CNN maybe pro-American, but don't think Al-Jazeera is an independent news source. Personally, I believe the truth is somewhere in between. Each side has its own point of view and they should both be respected and questioned because the same Iraqi monitors that follow the US people camera crews are the same who follow Al-Jazeera.
You say its an unjust war and that is your opinion. Personally, I don't carry about the weapons of mass destruction. I carry about the fact that based upon where your born in this world equates to how many freedoms and rights you are granted. If you are lucky and born in Miami or Paris, you are granted the right to free speech, the right to assemble, the right to defy what your government says and not feel the least bit worried about it. If you are born in the Mideast outside of two or three pockets or just to the south of Miami in Cuba, you have no rights. You have no rights, if the government feels you are getting to strong politically they execute you. If the government feels one of your family members is a sympathizer you can be held hostage. If the government feels you are a threat to them, they can beat, torture, mame, ostrasize, rape, execute you and the list goes on. Three quarters of the World including Iraqis wake up to that reality every day!
A question for you, where do you stand on Chinese human rights abuses. Do you believe the Chinese should be held accountable for them. Do you believe the individuals who took part in the Tinamennen Square massacre should be brought to justice? I do as I do in Iraq. They both parallel. These regimes are bent on keeping itself in power and not worrying about little things such as human life, pride, God, dignity, legitmacy which you say you uphold.
So in conclusion, I applaud you. You are making the most of democracy and what the original framers of the US consitution were envisioning (if you are a US citizen), but most importantly the ideological thinkers in Western Europe were thinking 200+ years ago when they came up with this silly idea called democracy. I want to give Iraqis those same rights. I want to give Iraqis the right to protest the US all they want, to walk down the main throughfares of Baghdad and chant anti-American slogans, burn American flags and feel no fear of being executed, tortured, or their families killed by the state. However, I also want to give Iraqis the right to protest for the US all they want, to walk down the main throughfares of Baghdad and chant anti-Saddam slogans, and stand face to face with the anti-Americans and argu
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting analogy...but I don't buy it. I am on the fence on this issue and have been for some time. I have a cousin who works in the strategy department of a very large utility. Given how much the energy business sucks right now the last nine months or so they have been looking for options to lower costs.
The idea of outsourcing call center and development jobs to India and China has come up numerous times and rejected every time. Why you ask? Why doesn't the company look for the cheapest labor...? Because the company is deathly afraid of a competitor touting the fact that their putting people in the US out of work. That's right good old-fashioned fear of retribution by competitors and consumers.
Do you know why none of these companies in India will advertise their client list to you? Because the dirty little secret of every US company is that if they get caught they will get plowed under if they are in the consumer space. Like it or not, outside of a few mega-international corporations nearly all companies derive 50% or more of their profits from U.S. consumers becase the U.S. is by FAR THE LARGEST MARKET FOR GOODS!
So I don't think your analogy is a good one. I would say the relationship between US companies and US consumers has been a symbiotic one for sometime. However, one side of this equation is turning parasitic and it won't be long before the other side ends the relationship. One final thought, one of my marketing professors used to say you can cut costs to the bone, but if their is no top line grow there is nothing to float to the bottom. Show me a company that takes a 10% hit in revenue for a quarter because of a disgusted consumer reaction and I will show you some serious back peddaling. Look no further then Intuit and TurboTax for your example. The day when companies start naming names of competitors is coming and its coming soon.
to provide a wonderful and immensely valuable tool when it "MIGHT" with a "HIGH DEGREE" of time, effort, and money be undermined. Lord knows someone couldn't go to a "UNIVERSITY LIBRARY" and do the same thing.
=P
So all things being equal would you like to invest in a company that always strives to be number one or a company that is willing to be third, fourth, or seven-best in the sectors which they compete. Hint: Long term capital appreciation doesn't happen when you are someone who will never be the best. GE has the same philosophy 1 or 2 in the industry or get out. This is not limited to Microsoft nor should it be.
Forget about the Free Software angle for the moment, how is this any different then we as a country (the United States) saying we will only use American-based software. The answer is, it isn't. I am more concerned for the ability of American companies to develop software and export it to China then I am about Free Software. While this may see like a wonderful thing for Linux and the much larger software suites and it maybe great, its a real crap storm for small companies that provide niche-based software.
Look at all the software packages that might be used in the Chinese government created by companies all over the world. Now these companies are being told "Nope, you can't sell here anymore." That's a great deal of the world's producers being effectively shut out based on nationality. This is not a win for Free Software, this is a win for protectionism disguised (apparently very well) as advocacy for Free Software. This is no different then farm subsidies in Europe, and U.S. protection of the steel industry. (I have problems with both by the way).
One final thought, the last country in the world I would expose my source to is the Chinese government. The Chinese have not been known to be respecters of intellectual property. How fast do you think it would take for source of your application you developed to be handed over to a competing Chinese company. A month tops I believe.
As for you apologist who believe it necessary to protect new industries in developing countries, I have a rebuttal when it comes to software. The reason to protect industries like this would be because they have high barriers-to-entry and large capital costs. For instance, the building of farm equipment is one I would support because it is both resource intensive and long lead times to development and production. Software on the other hand is just the opposite. I can seat down someone in Russia, India, China, Egypt, Costa Rica, or the US give them a text editor and a compiler and they can become a software company. The resources and talent to build software can be found anywhere in the world as long as you got a computer and an internet connection to download the software. Therefore protecting local software companies, especially as an inflow of jobs comes from other parts of the world at the same time, is protectionism at its worst.
I own some IP inside the Linux Kernel, but won't disclose what it is either. I am lot more generous then SCO though and will only charge you $500 for a enterprise wide license for Linux. See that wasn't so hard now was it. Please forward your payments to Hangtime.
/me puts on my former Cast Member badge:
:)
Actually Charlie its changed here in the last few months, you can now get a FastPass every hour. Alot of folks would get a FastPass and if it was mid-morning or your favorite ride Tower of Terror comes to mind was booked out 3 hours or so you were out of luck. Now, you can with your ticket get a FastPass every hour. What I think is pretty interesting is if you try and go for another FastPass before your time, the system will penalize you 5 or 15 minutes cannot remember so it keeps everyone in line (sorry for the pun).
AAAAAAmen Reverened. Preach on! Does anyone get the feeling this is a technology in search of a solution instead of vice versa. Now I am sure there were a lot of smart people who came together to do this but guess what, it will not be used. We need to be spending more time on content instead of trying to disaggregate content from presentation. There are now several different ways you can do this as shown in this thread and one more additional one way doesn't help. Go back and think of some interesting stuff instead of the rehashing the same thing 30 different ways.
My senators and rep Kay Bailey Hutchinson, John Cornyn, and Tom Delay will all be getting faxes today from me. Again, I will stress the angle that the US should not be in the business of keeping businesses with outdated business plans propped up. In addition, a mandatory five year sentence to federal pound-me-in-the-*** prison, when we got killers, drug kingpins, and celeberties get off with easier sentences. Oh I am peeved at the moment. Hey Michigan and California wake up and don't elect this jokers again.
Love him or hate him, you have to admire Ellison and what this has done to the entire ERP landscape at the moment by basically putting everyone outside of Oracle and SAP in-play. One of the frequent mistakes of corporate strategy is the internalization of decisions. Long before Peoplesoft and J.D. Edwards began talks, Oracle executives including Ellison got together and diagrammed a number of different scenarios occurring in the ERP sector and scripted the responses Oracle would take in the event of their occurrence. One of those events was Peoplesoft merging with J.D. Edwards thus why it was such a short time between the announcement by Peoplesoft and JD Edwards and Oracle's response. The entire situation was scripted!
The real loser right now is not Peoplesoft, Peoplesoft is fighting for its life. The real loser and I believe the intended target of this attack all along has been JD Edwards. While Peoplesoft is a much more powerful competitor to Oracle, the overlap between the two in terms of customer bases is much smaller then between JD Edwards and Oracle. JD Edwards and Oracle go after almost the same manufacturing customers. Right now, JD Edwards, its customers, and future customers are withering on the vine due to this play. While I may still go ahead with a Peoplesoft purchase given the guarantee Peoplesoft began writing in its contracts (an incredibly smart move by PSFT), I don't get that kind of assuarance with JD Edwards and therefore more likely to go elsewhere.
When the merger of Peoplesoft and JD Edwards was announced both companies were myopic of the environment and only thinking of what would occur together. Neither company had enough forsight to understand what their competitors might do or how the environment would shift around them. I have to hand it to Ellison and the Oracle execs (personally I'm not a fan of the culture or Ellison's bravado) but I do give them credit for thinking ahead and making a brilliant tactical move weakening two competitors at once. That said, everyone else will be on the lookout after such a bold attack by Oracle now that I would be very surprised if Oracle didn't go back to the drawing board and retool their scripts for the next time around.
Everyone has a voter registration card, why not use ID tokens instead. At my place of business we use the RSA ID tokens for authentication when accessing our network. When applying to vote, you get a token and setup your username and password at the office. The token generates a new key every 60 seconds so its extremely difficult to actually hack the key itself. Instead of setting up a user name, you could assign a random code with a password as well. In this case keeping anonimity becomes more of an issue, which I'm sure many individuals who are smarter then I am could figure out.
Hey, I cashed in on it. Open Text got to be a successful vendor of content management software largely because we were the first to do it all through the browser, with no client software. Our stuff didn't do all that much more, but given a choice between client and browser, the people wanted the browser.
People want the browser not for the fact it makes for a simpler application in a GUI sense but for the fact you do not have to install and run it from a desktop. We do nothing but web apps in my company now and the reason is we have 18 different branches and no one wants to push an application out to that many individuals each time there is a fix. A thriving industry has been created by the need to install applications locally on desktops and insure the correct licensing of that software. As a consumer of software, I don't want to pay for those things. In addition, users don't want to have install an application on their desktop when they can go to a website and do the same thing.
The reason this trade-off between functionality and universal access has occurred is that people find more value in server-centric management and universal access today for those simple applications where I am entering some information or retrieving it. I think we will see the rise of "richer" web applications over the next few years because there is a need for better controls if for no other reason then productivity and efficiency gains. Working with large blocks of information on a web page can be very cumbersome to the user. Client-Server computing (VB, Delphi, insert your favorite GUI-centric language here), GUIs became much more functional in what they could do over time, the browser-based application will follow the same path, but now with the added convenience of server-based management and fixes, and universal access for all users. The user, the administrator, and the developer all get what they want. Of course as the author has pointed out we may start seeing web-based GUIs become more unusuable, but that is a design flaw of the developer and can occur on any platform.
NT on a workstation is fine...NT on a laptop just take the gun, put it to your temple, and pull the trigger. Man I can only imagine just knowing some of the things I had to do to get it working on some of the laptops I rolled out in college. That's actually the first thing I told folks was when W2K came out move your laptops first...mmmmm power savings.
If you want to run the software that's fine man, but you can't expect a company to support a software version indefinitely. Considering the software has been out there now for seven years. Who on Slashdot today is running a kernel from seven years ago...any takers. I'm betting there is at least three or four oddballs but the vast majority probably do not.
Also, these roadmaps have been set for a very long time and actually EXTENDED because some customers just did not want to move. Its not like people haven't known this was coming. Unfortunately, many companies like mine will have to hurry to get it installed before the end of the year (were a financial services organization). Our little branch of the company has been moving progressively moving towards W2K so our job will not be that big, but the rest of company will be.
Microsoft has bent over backwards with NT to keep it supported for this long. Sidenote: would you as a software producer keep up support for your DOS-based application you wrote seven years ago when you have web-based services running on your platform of choice...unless your as big as MS or IBM maybe you wouldn't. The end-of-life for this software should have caught exactly zero people off-guard and if you haven't made plans to transition off NT then you have defintitely fallen down on your job as a sysadmin.
Good idea but not real reliable as others in this thread have shown. What you MUST do is slap an injunction on any movement of their offsite backup tapes. I GUARANTEE you that those trees were being backed up and sent off site every month. What you must do is insure that no one from SCO can change those tapes because that is the only way to establishing dates of both sets of code.
It's dead meat.
One thing I hear in here this morning is that its unencumbered and lossless compression format. Yes the format will stick around just because somebody will use it for something. However, I don't need a lossless format that often (if ever) on the web. People aren't downloading your image and sending it to others and your probably not going any further then two-three generations when your working on your website. Finally, size matters ladies! I am not going to clutter up a webpage with a 45K file when JPG and GIF can do it 15K or BETTER! I know because its lossless, however, as I have demonstrated I don't need a lossless format to keep a website maintained because I probably have the original artwork in Adobe Photoshop or TIF format and just save it down to JPEG when I am ready to update the website.
So in conclusion, are we ever going to see PNG as a widespread use format...no. The only problem it solved was one of not using GIF and come 11 days from now, its primary reason for existence will be gone.
No matter what's being said today about Miss Johnson, I can guarantee one thing. We are rapidly approaching the worst day in her life. NYTimes, Fark, and now Slashdot have picked this stuff up. Google has the story cached and its probably getting more hits now then it ever got before this lawsuit.
I originally read the story on Fark and quite frankly I happen to believe it. While I don't believe in the judge and she trying to deny 1st amendment rights (BAD MONKEY! NNNOOO!), I can't help but show a little emphathy (not symphathy) to the situation. Given that background she probably doesn't have a great deal of self confidence or high self-esteem.
That said, we all have a relationship or two we wish we could cram back in the closet but hey that's what growing up is. Part of maturity is beginning to recognize bad relationships and deal with them accordingly. I know a lot of 23 year olds that are just as immature as she is portrayed in the article (part of the reason I tend to believe it). I know I wouldn't want my sexual exploits published on the web, but you know part of growing up and maturity is not picking those individuals who would publish this stuff on the web in the first place.
All said, I am glad I am not dating anymore and am committed to a wonderful woman who will be my bride soon. Hopefully this episode in her life will teach Miss Johnson a valuable but very costly lesson about the kind of individuals she should be looking to date and have an intimate relationship. In addition, part of maturity and growing up is dealing with the consequences of past relationships. Finally, any woman who would let a man smack her on the butt and say get along were about to have ManTalk and not turn around and turn his balls into puree needs to take a long hard look at the reflection in the mirror.
You can't negotiate with criminals because if you do, what will stop the next company from doing the same thing that SCO's doing today. You have to just put the foot down and beat them here or you'll have every small company that is desperately seeking a buyer do the same thing and this will become an ongoing IP problem. I you have five companies each year claim some sort of IP infringement even its TOTALLY baseless, if their is a remote chance they might win they will take that chance. At that point, IT managers won't want to here about Linux and all its wonderful value because all they see is a risk of being sued.
Take my advice for all it's worth and make SCO an example to the rest of the world. Kick the ever-living crap out of SCO so hard and so bad now so nobody tries this ever again.
I agree with the prevailing thought, it doesn't mean a damn thing until a judge sees it. If you happen to be coding and see this code under an NDA you could open yourself up for suit as well. Best to just leave it be and let the companies fight it out. Another thought is they haven't disclosed the terms of the NDA to anyone. They could read something like "If you view this code, all articles written about the comparison to Linux must be positive to SCO's claims." Or "You may make no comment in regards to the code you have seen." In both of these cases it doesn't make a lot of sense from a reporters view and from a coder's view they could always come back on you...so don't even bother. Their is no constituency that it actually makes sense to look at this code, even if in the most improbably, screwed-up dimensional state where SCO has a remote chance of actually winning this case...they will just be bought out to shut them up.
Such is this most dangerous game being played.
So I'm up right now and just read through this and blew through my mind a little too far.
The article ends on the following
In sum, if your descendants might make simulations of lives like yours, then you might be living in a simulation. And while you probably cannot learn much detail about the specific reasons for and nature of the simulation you live in, you can draw general conclusions by making analogies to the types and reasons of simulations today. If you might be living in a simulation then all else equal it seems that you should care less about others, live more for today, make your world look likely to become eventually rich, expect to and try to participate in pivotal events, be entertaining and praiseworthy, and keep the famous people around you happy and interested in you.
In other words, the article is says if you believe your in a simulation live for the now. The unfortunate this is without outside evidence of living in a simulation i.e. the light falling to "earth" in the Truman Show, you have no real way of knowing. If the simulations themselves were detailed enough, all the individuals could be programmed with memories, meaning if I am indeed a simulant then all my memories up to this point could have just been given to me including writing this reply....spooky. Reminds me a lot of Jeremy Bentham and Hedonistic Calculas for those who took Philosophy in college. In the end the way you live your life is soley dependent upon your time frame and values. How I would live my life if I were to die in a month from now is much different then if I believe I am going to live to 150. Its not wise to plan for one and not the other, i.e. spending all your money today and nothing for tomorrow, but also not taking advantage of saying I Love you to everyone of your Loved ones every chance you get. Your internal compass must guide you.
Before I turn in for the evening I did get a kick out of this passage.
Also, in general the behavior of many people far from the simulated people of interest might be randomly generated based on statistics from previous simulations, or come from "cached" records of previous simulated people. Some "people" in a crowd simulation might even be run by very simple programs that have them wiggle and mumble "peas and carrots" like extras supposedly did once in movie crowd scenes.
Now who hasn't run in to these people!
Large companies end up paying tons in license fees for a plethora of different software products that fit individual needs. They could instead find a few open source products and pay the salaries of a few programmers to customize them to their needs, or outright integrate them. Lotus Notes for mail, Novell for meta, People Soft for CRM, Windows clients, etc. Instead, you could take one strong open source CRM, expand upon it, integrate web based mail (or even make a quick client), and integrate their features to work flawlessly, all running in an open source browser that is running on Linux terminals (which removes the need for de-centralized administration) - instead of forcing the admins to find ways around making all of these closed products work together in hack jobs, with expensive tools like Zen Works deployed just to install and configure software on expensive Windows workstations - or worse. Oh well - I'm being a square headed open source zealot again. I'll go lay down.
Your kidding right...go find a couple of open source packages and pay some developers to integrate them together. I'll take this one at a time.
1. Besides packages like MySQL and Open Office that are dual-use meaning can be used in the home, name me five "business" open source packages out there? Better yet name me this elusive "strong open source CRM." Please tell me that product that bests Peoplesoft or Seibel, or duplicates 60% of the functionality, where can I find this elusive piece of software. It doesn't exist. I can't name you five Linux/Open Source packages that function as business applications but I can name you five off the top of my head in my niche of Builder's Mortgage Banking.
2. Hire a bunch of Developers to Integrate It All: Problem, I'm not in the business of building applications, I am in the business of making loans to home builders. We only build things if its not already done. I looked 12 months for one software package even though we had developers in the bullpen waiting for a project because I have to then maintain that software! Chances are if your not in the mainframe world or you don't run a company like Disney or GE where turnover is minimal; your going to have turnover. That means maintenance, new releases, new features for a product that's already built and maintained by someone else! A complete waste! Its called a real option. If I build one piece of software I sacrifice building another. I would rather build software keeping us on the cutting edge of business then duplicating the functionality of another package.
3. That hodgepodge of programs you referred to is Best-of-Breed buying its their to ensure that I get the most bang for my license buck. Yes integrationn is tough but if you go into the purchase with integration as a checklist item in criteria your less likely to be burned.
4. Large companies end up paying tons in license fees...over a time span. All software can be depreciated over three years and based upon your tax strategy and the purchase maybe even longer. Its just like buying furniture and computers, yes its an immediate cash outlay but its affect on income can be spread over multiple years.
When the PDA really took fire three years ago, we all began to speculate that everyone would have a handheld and would go everywhere with it. My how times have changed and not necessarily for the worse. I have a Palm IIIxe and find myself not taking it to all the places I used too. It got to the point that is was very bulky and I found I didn't take it out as much so I left it at home. However, when I was in school I used all the time. Hooked up with one of the Palm keyboards I could take all my notes in class and not have to worry about lugging a laptop.
The simple fact of the matter is, handhelds are starting to go back into their niche and take the place of paper where it makes sense. Currently, we have an internally produced application that interfaces with our system of record to update inspections for home sites. It makes a lot of sense because the inspector no longer has to use a pen and pad and we can process draws for borrowers at any point in the week instead of waiting for the inspectors to come back in on Thursday.
I predict you will see more and more of this as time progresses. The time for everyone having a PDA with 20 applications has passed. Its now Blackberrys (wireless email, calendar, contact info) and/or hardened PDAs for every day, one to two applications use.
I agree that in the end that trading illegally is wrong, but what the High Court might do is take a look at the Amendment 4 and have a thought otherwise when it comes to the DMCA. What the DMCA is allowing is an unreasonable search and seizure. Here's where it gets tricky. Since the DMCA carries with it criminal charges it should therefore be subject to the highest of standards when it comes to a criminal investigation. If they had come with a warrant to look at logs I am sure Verizon would have complied, but they came when an act that circumvents the 4th Amendment. Indeed this portion of the DMCA should be ruled unconstitutional, it gives police powers to any copyright holder with no check on the authority. What if in the course of an investigation of one of these file traders they were found to be kiddie-pornographers? Could the evidence gathered by the request be used against them in a court of law? Would the entire case be thrown out? Very interesting questions indeed.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Don't be too sure. id knows how powerful its games are in the computer world. When a new game is released Doom, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, a mini-worldwide upgrade in hardware generally comes as well. I got to talk with Todd Hollenshead one time and he seems like a pretty shrewd dude in terms of business. They will weigh the pros and cons of only releasing to one console platform and it come out a little something like this.
((Total Projected Sales of units between each of the other consoles) * 25%??? exclusivitiy bonus for the XBox) - (Development Costs to Port to other systems)
If MS is offering more then that then they probably do it. id is powerful enough to demand that sort of deal and MSFT is rich and desperate enough to make that kind of deal. Guarantee you they hit a number like that, they would make it an X-Box exclusive.
This is my own view of the Mozilla project, and lord help my karma. I feel the Mozilla has been a complete failure. Lets go back six years ago. The year was 1997 and I was interning in a Marketing department (hahhaha) and updating the company website. The only thing we used was Netscape. Netscape had 80% of the market. Six years latter Netscape/Mozilla is pushing what 10% to 15%? Netscape when it open sourced Mozilla gave the Linux community and finally yielded a very nice browser, however, at best Linux users (not servers) make up 5% 15%, you can't argue with that. If better how about 70% ---> 25% still awful. Happy Birthday Mozilla, sorry nobody but a few showed up this year maybe you will make some new friends next year huh? Maybe AOL will finally incorporate you huh? Oh, no, you don't think so...well your still pretty special. Oh, you render pages just the same as IE, but more "standards-based." Oh that's great, that's what makes you different. Oh, people don't care for different? Well, sorry, look at the time, gotta go, Happy Birthday.
Legitmacy is not something you gain by going with the crowd.
Report on the 28 year old plumber who drowned after being ordered to cross a canal in full battle dress. Or the 20 year old lifeguard who drowned trying to save him.
Report on the seven year old girl lying in a pool of her own blood, her intestines laying beside her.
Report on the man who kissed the Americans and asked them why they didn't come sooner. His son had made disparging remarks about Saddam so he was taken beaten, tortured, and finally executed because he was doing something your doing right now, attempting to resist the government.
Since I see the Europe.com Tres, I will assume you are somewhere in Europe for the moment. You and I are very unique is this world. There is probably in the neighborhood of 20% - 30% of us that occupy the world. We are the only individuals in this world who don't have to fear government reprisal for our views. If we want to go march, we can march. If want to burn our countries flags in protest, we can do that and not fear having our tongues cut out.
WSJ yesterday talked about Marine patrols that found a supposed sheepherder carrying $30,000 in US Cash, hundreds of thousands in Dinar?sp (Iraqi currency, a GPS locater, a book on US troop movement, and list of sympathizers within the Iraqi ranks. When you fear for your own families safety that if you don't fight your family will die...you fight.
CNN maybe pro-American, but don't think Al-Jazeera is an independent news source. Personally, I believe the truth is somewhere in between. Each side has its own point of view and they should both be respected and questioned because the same Iraqi monitors that follow the US people camera crews are the same who follow Al-Jazeera.
You say its an unjust war and that is your opinion. Personally, I don't carry about the weapons of mass destruction. I carry about the fact that based upon where your born in this world equates to how many freedoms and rights you are granted. If you are lucky and born in Miami or Paris, you are granted the right to free speech, the right to assemble, the right to defy what your government says and not feel the least bit worried about it. If you are born in the Mideast outside of two or three pockets or just to the south of Miami in Cuba, you have no rights. You have no rights, if the government feels you are getting to strong politically they execute you. If the government feels one of your family members is a sympathizer you can be held hostage. If the government feels you are a threat to them, they can beat, torture, mame, ostrasize, rape, execute you and the list goes on. Three quarters of the World including Iraqis wake up to that reality every day!
A question for you, where do you stand on Chinese human rights abuses. Do you believe the Chinese should be held accountable for them. Do you believe the individuals who took part in the Tinamennen Square massacre should be brought to justice? I do as I do in Iraq. They both parallel. These regimes are bent on keeping itself in power and not worrying about little things such as human life, pride, God, dignity, legitmacy which you say you uphold.
So in conclusion, I applaud you. You are making the most of democracy and what the original framers of the US consitution were envisioning (if you are a US citizen), but most importantly the ideological thinkers in Western Europe were thinking 200+ years ago when they came up with this silly idea called democracy. I want to give Iraqis those same rights. I want to give Iraqis the right to protest the US all they want, to walk down the main throughfares of Baghdad and chant anti-American slogans, burn American flags and feel no fear of being executed, tortured, or their families killed by the state. However, I also want to give Iraqis the right to protest for the US all they want, to walk down the main throughfares of Baghdad and chant anti-Saddam slogans, and stand face to face with the anti-Americans and argu