There's a good response to this a few replies up. And a few more before that.
Basically, you're correct in theory. The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference.
The patent office, in the USA, at least, is notoriously bad at noticing prior art that hasn't been patented. Therefore, refusing to patent your invention, for whatever reason, means there's a chance someone else WILL patent it, and you'll have to fight them in court or give up. Sure, you'll win, but can you really afford the fight?
So... most of those were, at one point, under patent. Once the patent protection ends, other drug companies can come in and duplicate the formula. That's the way the patent system is SUPPOSED to work. The fact is, it does work right sometimes. But the fact that it sometimes works right doesn't mean it always will. And the companies that are manufacturing the generics aren't the ones who developed them, which pretty much means your example has nothing to do with the matter at hand.
She could still be... it's hard to do good when you're legally enjoined from distribuing the product you made. Or when you can't make enough on sales to rich people to sell to the poor at a massive discount.
There's nothing that says making a profit and helping people are mutually exclusive. For instance: if she starts selling them at a hefty markup (but still cheaper than her competition) in the US and Europe, she can give them away in poorer countries and call it a charitable donation. At least in the US, she'd get a big tax write-off, the rich would get relatively low cost solar panels, and people who can't afford to spend anything on them still get them. Everyone benefits. The urge to make money has caused a lot of trouble, but it's also done a lot of good. She's not going to be able to give many of these away if she's paying for manufacturing by flipping burgers at a fast food joint.
Knowing his general attitude, he probably WAS taking shots down that chick's rack, because, you know, "it's his right to".
That was my favorite part of the article... he decided to prove the manager was wrong, not by stating that he hadn't even been looking, but by offering to display photos showing that she wasn't wearing a low-cut top! The guy's an idiot, and we're all (including me) giving him exactly what he wants... attention.
As thePig said, patents are a good way to prevent a large company from putting your small company out of business. Most people interested in doing good for their community (or the world) can't make enough money from their product to out-produce a massive corporation; if they want to keep making money, they have to have a tool to prevent big businesses from immediately competing.
Sure... if you release it for free they can't patent it, but they can sure offer your widget at a lower price... right up until you've gone under, at which point they can -- and will -- raise the price again. Show me some proof that things can't work as I say, and I'll accept your argument. Until then, just keep telling me it's bullshit, and I'll keep thinking you're wrong.
Using it to set up a monopolistic business and pricing the device higher than Cost+ReasonableProfit. Selling it to an existing business so they can do so. Patent trolling, supporting a leisurely lifestyle by placing a perpetual tax on those who would like to bring these devices to the citizenry of the world without continuing to productively participate in society.
Four: Keeping a big, greedy, monopolistic company (or patent troll) from patenting the design first, thus forcing everyone to pay.
Not every patent-holder is evil, and not every company that sells something is trying to rob you. Only most of them.
So, first of all, Thomas Hawk is clearly an idiot. He spends a lot of time bragging (on-line) about breaking the law. Why has he not been arrested -- or at least fined -- yet? I mean, yes, fine, break what laws you find necessary. But honestly... bragging about it on the internet?
Ok, enough of that. The point here is that Mr. Hawk appears to be making a career out of being an obnoxious, loudmouthed nuisance who refuses to follow lawful directions on private property. Once he's pissed people off enough that they throw him out, he makes himself look good by posting the story online, where crowds of idiots show up to agree with him that he's super-cool for standing up to the man. Ego gratification at its finest.
I bet that, in the case of the museum, if he had responded calmly and quietly, and agreed not to take pictures in that location, they would have let him stay, and take all the other pictures he had wanted. Of course, in some of the other cases he was completely within his rights, but from the sounds of it he didn't handle those any better. Probably because if he did, he wouldn't get to puff himself up online, where his crowds of adoring fans could tell him what a stud he is.
Carry a copy of the "Photographer's Rights" pamphlet, speak quietly and politely to security guards, and don't waste your time arguing with people who don't have the authority to let you do what you want. It wastes your time, and annoys the guards.
I called the support lines for governmental agencies (I work for a state university) and Universities -- in the past, they've been quite knowledgeable. Or, at least, not this uninformed.
...according to the tech support "engineers" at Apple. I spent about two hours on the phone with them Friday, trying to find out when or IF there would be a patch.
No one I talked to had ever heard of the problem.
Two people told me it was a Windows-only issue, and I shouldn't worry about it.
Neither of the two more helpful people I talked to had ever heard of bind.
One person put me on hold for just under five minutes, then told me he had made an "extensive search through Google" and wasn't able to find any information about a DNS vulnerability in Apple, so I must be mistaken.
One person had heard of bind, and told me that if there was a security problem, it would be fixed in the next security update. I asked when that would be released, and he told me "No one below Steve Jobs can tell you that -- it's proprietary information, and we don't release that sort of information."
So you can all relax -- it's not a problem that affects macs, and if it is, someone will fix it. Eventually. Maybe. But if we told you when it will be fixed, we'd have to sue you.
I'm going to respond to this the way I always have.
Let's hire people (or admit them to college) based on their ability, not some arbitrary definition. If women want to apply for the engineering program, great. Most of the male engineering students I've known would have loved to have more women in their classes. "But the problem is that women are being discouraged from these majors," I hear you cry. Tough. That's a societal problem, not a legal one. As more strong-minded women decide to defy convention, it will become acceptable. "But the application office! They reject people based on sex/color/prejudice-of-the-year!" Ok, I actually have a solution to that one.
Let's make college admissions truly blind, in the scientific sense. As each application comes in, an intern tapes a numbered piece of paper over the name section, then scans it and sends it electronically to the admission board. Because we're doing blind admissions, we can leave out the piece on race/gender/religion/geographic location: all that matters are the SAT/test-of-the-month results and any essays the applicant may have included. Proof that the intern has been sending information that shouldn't be included (race, sex, etc) is grounds for immediate firing of everyone in the admissions office.
Hurrah. Now the admission office can't discriminate based on sex, color, religion, or any of these other things we keep complaining about. Can we go on to a new problem, now?
Arguably Sci-Fi: The "Lillith's Brood" trilogy by Octavia Butler. ("Dawn", "Adulthood Rites", and "Imago") I wouldn't recommend Parable of the Sower to a pre-teen, but they might like it anyway.
The Callahan books by Spider Robinson. Although that may teach your child that punning is appropriate behavior, which may not be a great thing. (The first three, at least... the second trilogy isn't as good, in my opinion.)
The Lucky Starr stories by Asimov, writing as Paul French (You can still find them used, though I'm pretty sure they're not available at all new).
The "Norby" books by Asimov. Asimov robots, with books targeting young adults.
The first Robot City series (created by Isaac Asimov, written by a bunch of other people). The second series may also be good -- I haven't read it.
I agree with "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" and "Podkayne of Mars" (or however that's spelled), recommended by other people.
Not really Sci-Fi:
The Odessy. Get the Fitzgerald translation -- it's one of the best (and my personal favorite, but that of course has nothing to do with my recommending it).
Anne McCaffery. The "Planet Pirate" books, the brainship series, and "Coelura" and "Nimisha's Ship" are arguably Sci-Fi. The Pern books aren't really, no matter how much the author may claim they are. (Still reasonable reads, though.)
John Bellairs; he wrote some of the creepiest mystery novels I ever saw published as "Young Adult" novels.
Tamora Pierce -- Any of the Tortall books are probably reasonable.
Robin McKinley. Pretty much anything.
Patricia McKillip. The "Riddle-Master" trilogy is brilliant. "Forgotten Beasts of Eld" is darker, but a good read.
Most importantly, don't try to limit their reading. If there are sex scenes or violence in the book, so what? They'll mostly skip over them anyway. And if they don't, well, they'll see worse if they turn on the TV or the computer. Encourage them to read EVERYTHING: biographies, mystery novels (I'm partial to Agatha Christie, myself), histories, poetry, books of mythology (actually, Greek Mythology is well worth some time... a lot of modern fiction has its roots there), whatever. I went through most of Shakespeare's plays in 6th grade or so, and loved it.
Don't try to push them to read things they don't like; just let them enjoy reading.
Probably. But people are weird -- if you tell them the truth, rather than what they want to hear, they tend to get mad at you.
Better that they hear it from a law enforcement professional then a friend. That also makes it more likely that the hypthetical uncle will go to jail, since there can't be any claims that a friend of the family altered the evidence, whatever it was.
It's worse than requiring a CD. I can easily carry a CD with me. I can't easily carry my network connection with me. And since I had been thinking about getting rid of my home network connection, it may mean I won't buy the game, or can only play it at work. What's the point in that?
Yet another brain-dead attempt to prevent piracy...
Seriously. Speak to a lawyer, and then recommend a professional data recovery company to the family. You do not want to get involved with this. Best case, it turns out there's proof it was accidental. I'm not sure how that could be proved, but let's assume it was.
Worst case, you find evidence of... something. Drug use, criminal activity, involvement with a cult, something like that. Whatever it was, it drove him to suicide. Now you're in the position of telling the family that their son/brother was doing something they wouldn't have approved of. Yes, they may be glad to know what really happened, but you'd better believe that things are going to be awkward with the family from now on.
Or, possibly even worse than that... what if it turns out it was something the family did? Even if it wasn't anything illegal or even dishonest... do you want to be in the position of telling the parents that something they did caused their son to kill himself? I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to do that to my worst enemy, let alone people I liked.
Speak to a lawyer to find out the legal issues and what is needed to get information from various hosting services, then suggest that the family contact a good data recovery firm. Have them hire a lawyer to get the data from the hosting services. No matter how much you want to help, restrict it to helping them find professionals to get the data, don't try to do it yourself.
This is a great point, though I prefer to divide by "what do you insist on having" vs. "what can you be happy without" -- the lists generally end up much the same, but at least they're titled more honestly.
What do we actually need to survive? Sufficient food to not starve, sufficient warmth to not freeze, and sufficient water to not die of dehydration. Rework that as "what do you need to survive in comfort" or "what do you insist on having", and the list gets a lot longer. But... most of us don't need that big gas-guzzler, or the TV, or even a computer (though the computer is getting to be more and more important if you want to hold down a job).
The list gets longer if you have kids, though, no matter how strict you're being on "need" vs. "want."
Certainly this is sometimes true. My father, for instance, spent three or four years complaining that Win98 didn't work before I finally convinced him to upgrade to XP.
On the other hand, a lot of people really don't have a need to upgrade. "But the new version of [whatever software] has so many more features!" I hear you cry. (Well, someone's yelling it, anyway.) But they don't need the new features. And in order to run the new version, they'd need a new computer, a new operating system, and time to learn to use both. I know a few people who are still running Photoshop 5. Why? Well, because it suits their needs, and they already know how to use it. Why spend time and money on a new product when the old one does what they want? Sure, the new one has some neat new gadgets, and some things might get easier, but for them, the time spent learning it is more valuable than those new features.
Change for the sake of change isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's also not necessarily a good thing. And not seeing a need to upgrade doesn't always mean they're simply being stubborn; sometimes it just means that they're happy with what they have.
OK, so this isn't intended as a troll, though no doubt everyone will look at it as such. Oh well.
The common perception is that linux users refuse to pay for anything. And it's not that far off.
How many of you played games released by Loki? Now, how many of you personally paid for that game, and installed it only on your own computer or computers? Maybe I got a bad sample, but I've asked that question in three different linux mailing lists at about the time Loki went under.
In all three, the response to question one was overwhelming -- nearly everyone had played one game or another from Loki, and had it installed. Question two? Well, generally ten or fifteen people would get together to buy the game, then make copies of the CD for anyone who wanted it. There were a few people who bought their own copies, but not enough. Say 20-25% of the total users.
So why don't we have commercial games for linux? Because that perception is a lot closer to true than it ought to be.
Now I'm going to go hide behind that wall over there, and hope I'm safe from the flames this draws...
On the other hand, if I wore a suit all the time, I'd get a lot of weird looks. I try to aim for about a step and a half up from what other people in my job wear.
Oh... and I work for a state university -- there are no hot marketing reps here. (Pity, really... )
The problem is only partly other management. Upper management wants lower management to be presentable to customers (in most fields); customers notice. They won't do business with a company they think is sloppy, and in a first meeting, appearance makes a HUGE impression.
Actually, most people notice clothing a lot more than they realize. In most business situations, someone wearing a shirt, tie, and slacks will get a lot more respect than someone wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
I work in a job where I could get away with wearing jeans and a t-shirt. A lot of my time is spent crawling around under people's desks or in the ceilings, trying to get broken network connections working (I'm glad to say I had nothing to do with the wiring in this building, so I can blame someone else. Instead, I wear nice (non-stained, non-faded, non-ripped) jeans and a button down shirt. I get a lot more respect from management than some of my co-workers do.
Now, "mismatched shoes and belt" is a little overboard, and no-one around here would notice, but overall appearance makes a big difference.
Certainly there is no excuse for a lack of good mass transit in urban and most suburban settings. Buses or light rail are excellent solutions, can theoretically be self-supporting financially (though I'm not sure I've ever run across one that actually WAS), and can easily be arranged so that no one will ever have to walk more than a couple blocks to get to a stop.
However... a lot of my family lives out in the country. My uncle lives in an area where the nearest grocery store is about 20 minutes away by car, and the nearest house is about a mile away. It's simply not economically feasible to have mass transit out there -- there aren't enough residents to make any number of runs per day pay for themselves. For that matter, my immediate family owns a vacation house out there... our nearest full time neighbor is two or three miles away.
I think there will be a need for individual cars for quite a long time to come, but the need can be drastically reduced; certainly no one in a city environment should need to drive even once a week on average.
"The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens."
Hmm. If someone could explain to me how that isn't a factually correct statement, I'm all ears.
It's entirely factually correct! Every time I look at an American news site, I'm exposed to "broad and constant streams" of propaganda about terrorism. Of course, it's not quite the type the folks who wrote the bill were thinking about, given that it mostly consists of stories about contries invading, or threatening to invade, other contries without cause, but...
Slashdot Mirror
There's a good response to this a few replies up. And a few more before that.
Basically, you're correct in theory. The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference.
The patent office, in the USA, at least, is notoriously bad at noticing prior art that hasn't been patented. Therefore, refusing to patent your invention, for whatever reason, means there's a chance someone else WILL patent it, and you'll have to fight them in court or give up. Sure, you'll win, but can you really afford the fight?
Well said.
So... most of those were, at one point, under patent. Once the patent protection ends, other drug companies can come in and duplicate the formula. That's the way the patent system is SUPPOSED to work. The fact is, it does work right sometimes. But the fact that it sometimes works right doesn't mean it always will. And the companies that are manufacturing the generics aren't the ones who developed them, which pretty much means your example has nothing to do with the matter at hand.
She could still be... it's hard to do good when you're legally enjoined from distribuing the product you made. Or when you can't make enough on sales to rich people to sell to the poor at a massive discount.
There's nothing that says making a profit and helping people are mutually exclusive. For instance: if she starts selling them at a hefty markup (but still cheaper than her competition) in the US and Europe, she can give them away in poorer countries and call it a charitable donation. At least in the US, she'd get a big tax write-off, the rich would get relatively low cost solar panels, and people who can't afford to spend anything on them still get them. Everyone benefits. The urge to make money has caused a lot of trouble, but it's also done a lot of good. She's not going to be able to give many of these away if she's paying for manufacturing by flipping burgers at a fast food joint.
Knowing his general attitude, he probably WAS taking shots down that chick's rack, because, you know, "it's his right to".
That was my favorite part of the article... he decided to prove the manager was wrong, not by stating that he hadn't even been looking, but by offering to display photos showing that she wasn't wearing a low-cut top! The guy's an idiot, and we're all (including me) giving him exactly what he wants... attention.
As thePig said, patents are a good way to prevent a large company from putting your small company out of business. Most people interested in doing good for their community (or the world) can't make enough money from their product to out-produce a massive corporation; if they want to keep making money, they have to have a tool to prevent big businesses from immediately competing.
Sure... if you release it for free they can't patent it, but they can sure offer your widget at a lower price... right up until you've gone under, at which point they can -- and will -- raise the price again. Show me some proof that things can't work as I say, and I'll accept your argument. Until then, just keep telling me it's bullshit, and I'll keep thinking you're wrong.
There are three utilities for a patent.
Using it to set up a monopolistic business and pricing the device higher than Cost+ReasonableProfit.
Selling it to an existing business so they can do so.
Patent trolling, supporting a leisurely lifestyle by placing a perpetual tax on those who would like to bring these devices to the citizenry of the world without continuing to productively participate in society.
Four: Keeping a big, greedy, monopolistic company (or patent troll) from patenting the design first, thus forcing everyone to pay.
Not every patent-holder is evil, and not every company that sells something is trying to rob you. Only most of them.
So, first of all, Thomas Hawk is clearly an idiot. He spends a lot of time bragging (on-line) about breaking the law. Why has he not been arrested -- or at least fined -- yet? I mean, yes, fine, break what laws you find necessary. But honestly... bragging about it on the internet?
Ok, enough of that. The point here is that Mr. Hawk appears to be making a career out of being an obnoxious, loudmouthed nuisance who refuses to follow lawful directions on private property. Once he's pissed people off enough that they throw him out, he makes himself look good by posting the story online, where crowds of idiots show up to agree with him that he's super-cool for standing up to the man. Ego gratification at its finest.
I bet that, in the case of the museum, if he had responded calmly and quietly, and agreed not to take pictures in that location, they would have let him stay, and take all the other pictures he had wanted. Of course, in some of the other cases he was completely within his rights, but from the sounds of it he didn't handle those any better. Probably because if he did, he wouldn't get to puff himself up online, where his crowds of adoring fans could tell him what a stud he is.
Carry a copy of the "Photographer's Rights" pamphlet, speak quietly and politely to security guards, and don't waste your time arguing with people who don't have the authority to let you do what you want. It wastes your time, and annoys the guards.
I called the support lines for governmental agencies (I work for a state university) and Universities -- in the past, they've been quite knowledgeable. Or, at least, not this uninformed.
...according to the tech support "engineers" at Apple. I spent about two hours on the phone with them Friday, trying to find out when or IF there would be a patch.
No one I talked to had ever heard of the problem.
Two people told me it was a Windows-only issue, and I shouldn't worry about it.
Neither of the two more helpful people I talked to had ever heard of bind.
One person put me on hold for just under five minutes, then told me he had made an "extensive search through Google" and wasn't able to find any information about a DNS vulnerability in Apple, so I must be mistaken.
One person had heard of bind, and told me that if there was a security problem, it would be fixed in the next security update. I asked when that would be released, and he told me "No one below Steve Jobs can tell you that -- it's proprietary information, and we don't release that sort of information."
So you can all relax -- it's not a problem that affects macs, and if it is, someone will fix it. Eventually. Maybe. But if we told you when it will be fixed, we'd have to sue you.
Well, we've got one. Of course, it'll be down to zero at the end of the week, given the lack of a patch.
I'm going to respond to this the way I always have.
Let's hire people (or admit them to college) based on their ability, not some arbitrary definition. If women want to apply for the engineering program, great. Most of the male engineering students I've known would have loved to have more women in their classes. "But the problem is that women are being discouraged from these majors," I hear you cry. Tough. That's a societal problem, not a legal one. As more strong-minded women decide to defy convention, it will become acceptable. "But the application office! They reject people based on sex/color/prejudice-of-the-year!" Ok, I actually have a solution to that one.
Let's make college admissions truly blind, in the scientific sense. As each application comes in, an intern tapes a numbered piece of paper over the name section, then scans it and sends it electronically to the admission board. Because we're doing blind admissions, we can leave out the piece on race/gender/religion/geographic location: all that matters are the SAT/test-of-the-month results and any essays the applicant may have included. Proof that the intern has been sending information that shouldn't be included (race, sex, etc) is grounds for immediate firing of everyone in the admissions office.
Hurrah. Now the admission office can't discriminate based on sex, color, religion, or any of these other things we keep complaining about. Can we go on to a new problem, now?
Arguably Sci-Fi:
The "Lillith's Brood" trilogy by Octavia Butler. ("Dawn", "Adulthood Rites", and "Imago") I wouldn't recommend Parable of the Sower to a pre-teen, but they might like it anyway.
The Callahan books by Spider Robinson. Although that may teach your child that punning is appropriate behavior, which may not be a great thing. (The first three, at least... the second trilogy isn't as good, in my opinion.)
The Lucky Starr stories by Asimov, writing as Paul French (You can still find them used, though I'm pretty sure they're not available at all new).
The "Norby" books by Asimov. Asimov robots, with books targeting young adults.
The first Robot City series (created by Isaac Asimov, written by a bunch of other people). The second series may also be good -- I haven't read it.
I agree with "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" and "Podkayne of Mars" (or however that's spelled), recommended by other people.
Not really Sci-Fi:
The Odessy. Get the Fitzgerald translation -- it's one of the best (and my personal favorite, but that of course has nothing to do with my recommending it).
Anne McCaffery. The "Planet Pirate" books, the brainship series, and "Coelura" and "Nimisha's Ship" are arguably Sci-Fi. The Pern books aren't really, no matter how much the author may claim they are. (Still reasonable reads, though.)
John Bellairs; he wrote some of the creepiest mystery novels I ever saw published as "Young Adult" novels.
Tamora Pierce -- Any of the Tortall books are probably reasonable.
Robin McKinley. Pretty much anything.
Patricia McKillip. The "Riddle-Master" trilogy is brilliant. "Forgotten Beasts of Eld" is darker, but a good read.
Most importantly, don't try to limit their reading. If there are sex scenes or violence in the book, so what? They'll mostly skip over them anyway. And if they don't, well, they'll see worse if they turn on the TV or the computer. Encourage them to read EVERYTHING: biographies, mystery novels (I'm partial to Agatha Christie, myself), histories, poetry, books of mythology (actually, Greek Mythology is well worth some time... a lot of modern fiction has its roots there), whatever. I went through most of Shakespeare's plays in 6th grade or so, and loved it.
Don't try to push them to read things they don't like; just let them enjoy reading.
Probably. But people are weird -- if you tell them the truth, rather than what they want to hear, they tend to get mad at you.
Better that they hear it from a law enforcement professional then a friend. That also makes it more likely that the hypthetical uncle will go to jail, since there can't be any claims that a friend of the family altered the evidence, whatever it was.
It's worse than requiring a CD. I can easily carry a CD with me. I can't easily carry my network connection with me. And since I had been thinking about getting rid of my home network connection, it may mean I won't buy the game, or can only play it at work. What's the point in that?
Yet another brain-dead attempt to prevent piracy...
Seriously. Speak to a lawyer, and then recommend a professional data recovery company to the family. You do not want to get involved with this. Best case, it turns out there's proof it was accidental. I'm not sure how that could be proved, but let's assume it was.
Worst case, you find evidence of... something. Drug use, criminal activity, involvement with a cult, something like that. Whatever it was, it drove him to suicide. Now you're in the position of telling the family that their son/brother was doing something they wouldn't have approved of. Yes, they may be glad to know what really happened, but you'd better believe that things are going to be awkward with the family from now on.
Or, possibly even worse than that... what if it turns out it was something the family did? Even if it wasn't anything illegal or even dishonest... do you want to be in the position of telling the parents that something they did caused their son to kill himself? I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to do that to my worst enemy, let alone people I liked.
Speak to a lawyer to find out the legal issues and what is needed to get information from various hosting services, then suggest that the family contact a good data recovery firm. Have them hire a lawyer to get the data from the hosting services. No matter how much you want to help, restrict it to helping them find professionals to get the data, don't try to do it yourself.
This is a great point, though I prefer to divide by "what do you insist on having" vs. "what can you be happy without" -- the lists generally end up much the same, but at least they're titled more honestly.
What do we actually need to survive? Sufficient food to not starve, sufficient warmth to not freeze, and sufficient water to not die of dehydration. Rework that as "what do you need to survive in comfort" or "what do you insist on having", and the list gets a lot longer. But... most of us don't need that big gas-guzzler, or the TV, or even a computer (though the computer is getting to be more and more important if you want to hold down a job).
The list gets longer if you have kids, though, no matter how strict you're being on "need" vs. "want."
Certainly this is sometimes true. My father, for instance, spent three or four years complaining that Win98 didn't work before I finally convinced him to upgrade to XP.
On the other hand, a lot of people really don't have a need to upgrade. "But the new version of [whatever software] has so many more features!" I hear you cry. (Well, someone's yelling it, anyway.) But they don't need the new features. And in order to run the new version, they'd need a new computer, a new operating system, and time to learn to use both. I know a few people who are still running Photoshop 5. Why? Well, because it suits their needs, and they already know how to use it. Why spend time and money on a new product when the old one does what they want? Sure, the new one has some neat new gadgets, and some things might get easier, but for them, the time spent learning it is more valuable than those new features.
Change for the sake of change isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's also not necessarily a good thing. And not seeing a need to upgrade doesn't always mean they're simply being stubborn; sometimes it just means that they're happy with what they have.
OK, so this isn't intended as a troll, though no doubt everyone will look at it as such. Oh well.
The common perception is that linux users refuse to pay for anything. And it's not that far off.
How many of you played games released by Loki? Now, how many of you personally paid for that game, and installed it only on your own computer or computers? Maybe I got a bad sample, but I've asked that question in three different linux mailing lists at about the time Loki went under.
In all three, the response to question one was overwhelming -- nearly everyone had played one game or another from Loki, and had it installed. Question two? Well, generally ten or fifteen people would get together to buy the game, then make copies of the CD for anyone who wanted it. There were a few people who bought their own copies, but not enough. Say 20-25% of the total users.
So why don't we have commercial games for linux? Because that perception is a lot closer to true than it ought to be.
Now I'm going to go hide behind that wall over there, and hope I'm safe from the flames this draws...
You know, I was waiting for someone to mention that...
On the other hand, if I wore a suit all the time, I'd get a lot of weird looks. I try to aim for about a step and a half up from what other people in my job wear.
Oh... and I work for a state university -- there are no hot marketing reps here. (Pity, really... )
Ack. I have no idea how I managed to miss ending that first parenthetical note.
Oh well... that's what I get for not proofreading well enough.
The problem is only partly other management. Upper management wants lower management to be presentable to customers (in most fields); customers notice. They won't do business with a company they think is sloppy, and in a first meeting, appearance makes a HUGE impression.
Actually, most people notice clothing a lot more than they realize. In most business situations, someone wearing a shirt, tie, and slacks will get a lot more respect than someone wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
I work in a job where I could get away with wearing jeans and a t-shirt. A lot of my time is spent crawling around under people's desks or in the ceilings, trying to get broken network connections working (I'm glad to say I had nothing to do with the wiring in this building, so I can blame someone else. Instead, I wear nice (non-stained, non-faded, non-ripped) jeans and a button down shirt. I get a lot more respect from management than some of my co-workers do.
Now, "mismatched shoes and belt" is a little overboard, and no-one around here would notice, but overall appearance makes a big difference.
Certainly there is no excuse for a lack of good mass transit in urban and most suburban settings. Buses or light rail are excellent solutions, can theoretically be self-supporting financially (though I'm not sure I've ever run across one that actually WAS), and can easily be arranged so that no one will ever have to walk more than a couple blocks to get to a stop.
However... a lot of my family lives out in the country. My uncle lives in an area where the nearest grocery store is about 20 minutes away by car, and the nearest house is about a mile away. It's simply not economically feasible to have mass transit out there -- there aren't enough residents to make any number of runs per day pay for themselves. For that matter, my immediate family owns a vacation house out there... our nearest full time neighbor is two or three miles away.
I think there will be a need for individual cars for quite a long time to come, but the need can be drastically reduced; certainly no one in a city environment should need to drive even once a week on average.
"The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens."
Hmm. If someone could explain to me how that isn't a factually correct statement, I'm all ears.
It's entirely factually correct! Every time I look at an American news site, I'm exposed to "broad and constant streams" of propaganda about terrorism. Of course, it's not quite the type the folks who wrote the bill were thinking about, given that it mostly consists of stories about contries invading, or threatening to invade, other contries without cause, but...