But its this power to move... that gives you the power to make demands.
Besides the objection in the other reply here, this assumes that the employer believes you're willing to make good on that threat. They may well know that you are, for reasons of family or otherwise, tied to a place with few available options. They may call your bluff. Then what?
My other point was, who wants to move, even to the company next door, just to gain a few simple demands. Starting anew at a company is a pain. You don't know the people or the place or the culture. If you care about your own work, you don't want to take that kind of hit to your productivity and effectiveness.
One thing I'm hearing way too much here is 'if you don't like your job, then move'. Whether you're talking about a city or a company, that's just lame. People have other priorities in their lives. You can't just move a family or friends or other commitments every time your employer won't do what you want. Sometimes you have to hold your ground and force your employer to make concessions.
When you're young and in a booming sector of the economy, it's easier to just pack up for better prospects, true. But neither will always be. A lot of software jobs will relocate to the third world in the next decade. If you're not a star programmer yourself, will you just relocate too?
(Related: you might enjoy a new book "Corrosion of Character" by Richard Sennett about the effects on people's personal lives of 'non-committal' work environments. How does one practice trust/committment with friends and family, while doing the opposite with work?...)
I'm not saying unions are the only answer to this -- just that I think the 'simply move' argument is chickenshit crap.
If they were truly sincere about bettering wages and working conditions, you'd see a massive attempt to unionize fast-food workers and 7-11 cashiers. No, there isn't much money to be skimmed there so they ignore those folks.
Actually, the organizing effort around high-tech is fairly tiny compared to organizing going on around janitors, home health care workers, and other 15k/yr jobs. (Fast-food is an interesting one. Some workers at a McDonalds in Canada fought for union representation for a year or so recently. When they finally won, McDonalds responded by closing that 'shop'.) Tech labor just makes for better copy in the NYT.
Not that unions can ignore well paid fields, either. One of the more interesting growth areas for unions now is with disgruntled medical professionals. Didn't the AMA or something recently endorse unions in concept?
I wish articles like this focused less on "oh, what will these hapless unions do in the Brand New Economy?", and reported more on what is or isn't working for tech workers. Like the hiring hall idea -- really interesting. Is it working? Why? Why not? Oh well, I can dream, can't I?
What's interesting is how this puts our images of the world into still fewer hands. At least Cindy Crawford and Leonardo DiCaprio control a degree of self-expression -- they can select what they do, more or less, and can be held responsible for those choices, more or less. Not Lara. More cutting out of unknown variables, I guess.
Interesting too what it means when different people create different 'identities' for virtual people. I forget, is Lara generous and easygoing or withdrawn and sarcastic?
Quick note on standards of female/male beauty: in our (still patriarchal) society, men can be sexy/desireable without being attractive. Not women. That's the difference.
But seriously, the rights of corporations are not new rights, and they do not literally lie with the corporation, since the corporation is not a physical entity. The rights of a corporation are only an extension of the rights of its members. Nothing more, nothing less.
What do you mean by 'only an extension'? People do not forfeit their individual rights as members of a corporation. (Well, in the negative sense, as employees, but that's another thread.) They may manage a corporation which is bound by additional laws, but that's not really the same as saying that they are bound by those as individuals. Different laws apply to group action than to individual action, nothing radical about that.
Does this mean that a marriage is a "ficticious entity" that cannot own property or have free speech rights?
Yes. Marriages don't have free speech rights, people do. You could make the case that a 'marriage' does not have the full rights of an individual, while the individuals within it do. Of course, in practice the difference is so slight as to be unneccessary. Two people in mariage can have joint ownership of property, meanwhile, but there is no limited liability to give significance to the fictitious entity.
The same arguments can be made about churches, schools, governments, social clubs, universities, unions, etc.
Yes again. These entities are subject to laws which do not apply to individuals.
You've said that you don't agree with anti-trust laws, but it bears repeating that the US courts have affirmed them time and time again. And the foundation of those laws is that a company which holds a monopoly is a special case, subject to different rules. The same rights do not apply. That is the foundation of anti-trust, otherwise anti-trust just means 'follow the law like everyone else'.
(On the subject of corporations having rights or not: Ever seen a corporation literally imprisoned? Ever meet someone 140 years old who existed on 5 continents simultaneously? My point is that corporations and people are not the same. A five year old knows this. There may be rights appropropriate to corporations, just as there may be rights appropriate to sheep. But there is no reasonable basis for granting the legal status of a person to a fictitious entity ipso facto.)
Interesting discussion. In spite of a clear majority favoring the 'if they don't like it they should quit' line, I think there's a recognition here that this 'investigation' highlights some interesting ambiguities about the intersection of 'online community' (including open-source) and commerce. I don't know what the answer is -- I think we're in new territory.
Both in terms of community and open source, people have a strong motivation to participate in things that they care about. But in some cases, companies are able to exploit that to build proprietary content, network effects, etc. Compare to IRC or newsgroups, for example. What if those _didn't_ exist as non-proprietary alternatives? What if you felt that the AOL community was the one that really mattered?
There's a grey area here, I think. If we could just ignore AOL and other for-profit communities, that would be one thing. But I don't think that's realistic. Their quality is often better than free alternatives for the precise reason that they can afford to pay *some* of their workers, but still reap the volunteerism of others. What are the obligations of these companies toward the people who's labor (and not just casual participation) fills out the product?
No answers here, though I'd love to see more responses.
Actually, I agree completely on the need and nearly complete absence of 'free' handhelds. Part of the problem comes from the fact that handhelds are more thoughly integrated hardware/software wise. Most handheld OS's are in ROM.
Still, the need is there, and deserves more attention.
(FWIW, I was also a Newton user. Best handheld interface yet. Sad to see it thrown away. I'm using a Psion Siena now. Limited functionality, but small, light, inexpensive, and with a first rate calendar application.)
>The key requirement would be that the cost to the user would be in proportion to the benefit derived.
This is effectively a disincentive to benefit from the use of software, no? Or perhaps, to only get as much benefit out as one's budget will allow? Surely not an equasion for rising social wealth and productivity...
Interestingly, COSS betrays a particular concern: how to maximize payment for software in a open source environment. Now in a sense, that seems reasonable. People should get paid for their work. But I can't help but see it as an attempt to impose capitalist values in a place where, if we're honest about it, they are few people's first concern.
Why do people feel so uncomfortable with the way free software has developed up to this point? Has it been such a failure?
Perhaps Mr. Johnson should consider another aspect of evolutionary biology and psychology, mutual aid. Namely, evolution also favors the trait of cooperation. This can be read in terms of individual benefit, though I think that is a misreading. Selective pressures favor indivduals who look out for the health of the group -- not because they are 'rewarded' with reproduction precisely, but because their group survives better, and thus their progeny.
Capitalism tends to punish this survival trait -- as a system, its laws favor privatization, competition, and the rights of property over the rights of people. (If that sounds inflamatory, take a pill.) But nonetheless this trait is with us: we enjoy working with other people on common projects for its own sake. Why did this become a force (and a threat?) in software? I suspect it's because of low barriers to entry in programming, especially thanks to the internet. Compare the costs of developing and distributing a breakfast cereal, say, versus a piece of software. Orders of magnitude, really.
COSS strikes me most as the well intentioned work of a missionary out to save the decent but provincial natives. The relation between OSS, Free, and Commercial software is complicated and still in need of theorizing -- but a plan to commodify respect and community is not the answer. Who'd have thought that a bunch of hackers working on software together would have tweeked so many?
What you're saying then, is 'if you get bombed, do as you're told.' That's rational, I presume -- though I'm less sure if that if the US was getting bombed by someone with the declared intention of protecting a minority within our borders, we would respond as 'rational actors'. Just a thought. (Apologies for the we=USA language)
If technology is used to obfuscate the reality of war, is writing about technology in war used for the same reason? Put another way, if you duck talking about the rights or wrongs of the mission, or the interests/purposes it serves, is the rest of this piece a red herring?
As far as technical info on WinCE, I can't speak to that too well. Like I said, I'm not a programmer. From what I understand, MS has tried to mimic Windows95 APIs in CE to simplify things for programmers. That makes some sense. Technical unknowns aside, the interface for CE is one of the reasons the machines haven't been selling very well (despite some wonderful engineering on the hardware side). It is still far too complicated and inconsistent for a palmtop, or even a sub notebook.
On a palmtop, you want to do things with one tap or gesture whenever possible. That's not something a 'start' bar does very well (start--> address book--> name field--> (letter/s)--> find--> done, or more...). You get the idea. Now, there are reports that MS is still working on major revisions of CE, so things should improve there.
'WinCE sucks' was probably a bit dramatic. I'd say more that it's mediocre, like most MS software. Still, it may be the best choice out there in some respects. Your other choices are presumably palm or epoc (psion), later on maybe Apeiron (Sony). Finally, the best hope is probably for the porting of some scripting languages (perl, python, tcl/tk) to different handheld OSes.
You might also browse around http://www.pdadash.com/news/ , a pda news site I like.
Yes and no. There's value in running Linux on a handheld because it simplifies interaction with Linux desktops -- document sharing being the most common example probably. It also moves development into a common space.
I disagree also about handhelds being just for information access. Handhelds are great for filling out forms, and will do in a pinch for writing email or a letter. Good for games too. The 'Jupiter' WinCE devices would be outstanding for most peoples computing needs -- truly portable, long battery life, instant on (!), more rugged (no HD), etc. -- if only the OS didn't suck. The Sharp TelMail would be a slick little email machine with a few improvements and a non-proprietary way of dialing-up...
Basicly, I think most people's work could be done easier with specialized devices than with desktop machines. There's value in having a common low-level OS underneath them, and a GNU/GPL one best of all. What's needed is for porting work to continue alongside the development of a handheld-appropriate desktop/window manager. And then some distros. (At this point I'm talking somewhat out my butt, 'cause I don't program.)
Somewhere I read Linus saying something to this effect -- that handheld space is the next important arena. Anyone remenber where?
Well, I read "the job" requirements as described by ESR, and... hey, what a coincidence! They describe ESR's resume to a tee!* In fact, I can't imagine "the job" being done by anyone with any different background whatsoever! Wow. Self-serving is as self-serving does, I suppose. But rather than just sling easy mud, perhaps we should look in earnest at what "the job" does require, now that someone says they're vacating the position. Most of what ESR laid out is still useful, though he might just as well have added: open to criticism, charismatic, and experienced with grassroots organizing/politics. But then... Anyway, I nominate Miguel de Icaza. It doesn't take CNNfn to acheive world domination, when MTV will do just as well. Here's to version 2. * Actually, I never bought that "anthropology/sociology/psychology" line. "Cathedral" wouldn't last two minutes in front of soc sci peer review.
A lot of comments here have said 'well, he's right, but that's defeatist'. Maybe. I think it's good to see a public figure come out and say what so many people already know: real privacy is over.
What I haven't seen discussed here is the 'third way': reciprocal transparency. Possibly something McNealy had in mind. One defining feature of the privacy we have now is that there's lots of privacy for corporations, police, spys, etc. But we can design our laws and technology so that there is balance. Here in NYC, there are videocameras dotted throughout town, some police owned, some corporate. If that's fair, then surely there should be cameras for the public observing police precints, and wherever video feeds are being monitored. Same principle applies to data. It's gonna flow, but it shouldn't all flow in one direction.
(For a full discussion, see "The Transparent Society" by David Brin.)
Slashdot Mirror
Besides the objection in the other reply here, this assumes that the employer believes you're willing to make good on that threat. They may well know that you are, for reasons of family or otherwise, tied to a place with few available options. They may call your bluff. Then what?
My other point was, who wants to move, even to the company next door, just to gain a few simple demands. Starting anew at a company is a pain. You don't know the people or the place or the culture. If you care about your own work, you don't want to take that kind of hit to your productivity and effectiveness.
When you're young and in a booming sector of the economy, it's easier to just pack up for better prospects, true. But neither will always be. A lot of software jobs will relocate to the third world in the next decade. If you're not a star programmer yourself, will you just relocate too?
(Related: you might enjoy a new book "Corrosion of Character" by Richard Sennett about the effects on people's personal lives of 'non-committal' work environments. How does one practice trust/committment with friends and family, while doing the opposite with work?...)
I'm not saying unions are the only answer to this -- just that I think the 'simply move' argument is chickenshit crap.
If they were truly sincere about bettering wages and working conditions, you'd see a massive attempt to unionize fast-food workers and 7-11 cashiers. No, there isn't much money to be skimmed there so they ignore those folks.
Actually, the organizing effort around high-tech is fairly tiny compared to organizing going on around janitors, home health care workers, and other 15k/yr jobs. (Fast-food is an interesting one. Some workers at a McDonalds in Canada fought for union representation for a year or so recently. When they finally won, McDonalds responded by closing that 'shop'.) Tech labor just makes for better copy in the NYT.
Not that unions can ignore well paid fields, either. One of the more interesting growth areas for unions now is with disgruntled medical professionals. Didn't the AMA or something recently endorse unions in concept?
I wish articles like this focused less on "oh, what will these hapless unions do in the Brand New Economy?", and reported more on what is or isn't working for tech workers. Like the hiring hall idea -- really interesting. Is it working? Why? Why not? Oh well, I can dream, can't I?
Oh, come on. That's just one way. Go see a local band. Lots of broke, ugly guys, getting the ladies' attention. Funny, but true.
What's interesting is how this puts our images of the world into still fewer hands. At least Cindy Crawford and Leonardo DiCaprio control a degree of self-expression -- they can select what they do, more or less, and can be held responsible for those choices, more or less. Not Lara. More cutting out of unknown variables, I guess.
Interesting too what it means when different people create different 'identities' for virtual people. I forget, is Lara generous and easygoing or withdrawn and sarcastic?
Quick note on standards of female/male beauty: in our (still patriarchal) society, men can be sexy/desireable without being attractive. Not women. That's the difference.
What do you mean by 'only an extension'? People do not forfeit their individual rights as members of a corporation. (Well, in the negative sense, as employees, but that's another thread.) They may manage a corporation which is bound by additional laws, but that's not really the same as saying that they are bound by those as individuals. Different laws apply to group action than to individual action, nothing radical about that.
Does this mean that a marriage is a "ficticious entity" that cannot own property or have free speech rights?
Yes. Marriages don't have free speech rights, people do. You could make the case that a 'marriage' does not have the full rights of an individual, while the individuals within it do. Of course, in practice the difference is so slight as to be unneccessary. Two people in mariage can have joint ownership of property, meanwhile, but there is no limited liability to give significance to the fictitious entity.
The same arguments can be made about churches, schools, governments, social clubs, universities, unions, etc.
Yes again. These entities are subject to laws which do not apply to individuals.
Not complicated.
(On the subject of corporations having rights or not: Ever seen a corporation literally imprisoned? Ever meet someone 140 years old who existed on 5 continents simultaneously? My point is that corporations and people are not the same. A five year old knows this. There may be rights appropropriate to corporations, just as there may be rights appropriate to sheep. But there is no reasonable basis for granting the legal status of a person to a fictitious entity ipso facto.)
Interesting discussion. In spite of a clear majority favoring the 'if they don't like it they should quit' line, I think there's a recognition here that this 'investigation' highlights some interesting ambiguities about the intersection of 'online community' (including open-source) and commerce. I don't know what the answer is -- I think we're in new territory.
Both in terms of community and open source, people have a strong motivation to participate in things that they care about. But in some cases, companies are able to exploit that to build proprietary content, network effects, etc. Compare to IRC or newsgroups, for example. What if those _didn't_ exist as non-proprietary alternatives? What if you felt that the AOL community was the one that really mattered?
There's a grey area here, I think. If we could just ignore AOL and other for-profit communities, that would be one thing. But I don't think that's realistic. Their quality is often better than free alternatives for the precise reason that they can afford to pay *some* of their workers, but still reap the volunteerism of others. What are the obligations of these companies toward the people who's labor (and not just casual participation) fills out the product?
No answers here, though I'd love to see more responses.
do geeks need high school?
Actually, I agree completely on the need and nearly complete absence of 'free' handhelds. Part of the problem comes from the fact that handhelds are more thoughly integrated hardware/software wise. Most handheld OS's are in ROM.
Still, the need is there, and deserves more attention.
(FWIW, I was also a Newton user. Best handheld interface yet. Sad to see it thrown away. I'm using a Psion Siena now. Limited functionality, but small, light, inexpensive, and with a first rate calendar application.)
This is effectively a disincentive to benefit from the use of software, no? Or perhaps, to only get as much benefit out as one's budget will allow? Surely not an equasion for rising social wealth and productivity...
Interestingly, COSS betrays a particular concern: how to maximize payment for software in a open source environment. Now in a sense, that seems reasonable. People should get paid for their work. But I can't help but see it as an attempt to impose capitalist values in a place where, if we're honest about it, they are few people's first concern.
Why do people feel so uncomfortable with the way free software has developed up to this point? Has it been such a failure?
Perhaps Mr. Johnson should consider another aspect of evolutionary biology and psychology, mutual aid. Namely, evolution also favors the trait of cooperation. This can be read in terms of individual benefit, though I think that is a misreading. Selective pressures favor indivduals who look out for the health of the group -- not because they are 'rewarded' with reproduction precisely, but because their group survives better, and thus their progeny.
Capitalism tends to punish this survival trait -- as a system, its laws favor privatization, competition, and the rights of property over the rights of people. (If that sounds inflamatory, take a pill.) But nonetheless this trait is with us: we enjoy working with other people on common projects for its own sake. Why did this become a force (and a threat?) in software? I suspect it's because of low barriers to entry in programming, especially thanks to the internet. Compare the costs of developing and distributing a breakfast cereal, say, versus a piece of software. Orders of magnitude, really.
COSS strikes me most as the well intentioned work of a missionary out to save the decent but provincial natives. The relation between OSS, Free, and Commercial software is complicated and still in need of theorizing -- but a plan to commodify respect and community is not the answer. Who'd have thought that a bunch of hackers working on software together would have tweeked so many?
What you're saying then, is 'if you get bombed, do as you're told.' That's rational, I presume -- though I'm less sure if that if the US was getting bombed by someone with the declared intention of protecting a minority within our borders, we would respond as 'rational actors'. Just a thought. (Apologies for the we=USA language)
If technology is used to obfuscate the reality of war, is writing about technology in war used for the same reason? Put another way, if you duck talking about the rights or wrongs of the mission, or the interests/purposes it serves, is the rest of this piece a red herring?
As far as technical info on WinCE, I can't speak to that too well. Like I said, I'm not a programmer. From what I understand, MS has tried to mimic Windows95 APIs in CE to simplify things for programmers. That makes some sense. Technical unknowns aside, the interface for CE is one of the reasons the machines haven't been selling very well (despite some wonderful engineering on the hardware side). It is still far too complicated and inconsistent for a palmtop, or even a sub notebook.
On a palmtop, you want to do things with one tap or gesture whenever possible. That's not something a 'start' bar does very well (start--> address book--> name field--> (letter/s)--> find--> done, or more...). You get the idea. Now, there are reports that MS is still working on major revisions of CE, so things should improve there.
'WinCE sucks' was probably a bit dramatic. I'd say more that it's mediocre, like most MS software. Still, it may be the best choice out there in some respects. Your other choices are presumably palm or epoc (psion), later on maybe Apeiron (Sony). Finally, the best hope is probably for the porting of some scripting languages (perl, python, tcl/tk) to different handheld OSes.
You might also browse around http://www.pdadash.com/news/ , a pda news site I like.
Yes and no. There's value in running Linux on a handheld because it simplifies interaction with Linux desktops -- document sharing being the most common example probably. It also moves development into a common space.
I disagree also about handhelds being just for information access. Handhelds are great for filling out forms, and will do in a pinch for writing email or a letter. Good for games too. The 'Jupiter' WinCE devices would be outstanding for most peoples computing needs -- truly portable, long battery life, instant on (!), more rugged (no HD), etc. -- if only the OS didn't suck. The Sharp TelMail would be a slick little email machine with a few improvements and a non-proprietary way of dialing-up...
Basicly, I think most people's work could be done easier with specialized devices than with desktop machines. There's value in having a common low-level OS underneath them, and a GNU/GPL one best of all. What's needed is for porting work to continue alongside the development of a handheld-appropriate desktop/window manager. And then some distros. (At this point I'm talking somewhat out my butt, 'cause I don't program.)
Somewhere I read Linus saying something to this effect -- that handheld space is the next important arena. Anyone remenber where?
Well, I read "the job" requirements as described by ESR, and... hey, what a coincidence! They describe ESR's resume to a tee!* In fact, I can't imagine "the job" being done by anyone with any different background whatsoever! Wow. Self-serving is as self-serving does, I suppose. But rather than just sling easy mud, perhaps we should look in earnest at what "the job" does require, now that someone says they're vacating the position. Most of what ESR laid out is still useful, though he might just as well have added: open to criticism, charismatic, and experienced with grassroots organizing/politics. But then... Anyway, I nominate Miguel de Icaza. It doesn't take CNNfn to acheive world domination, when MTV will do just as well. Here's to version 2. * Actually, I never bought that "anthropology/sociology/psychology" line. "Cathedral" wouldn't last two minutes in front of soc sci peer review.
A lot of comments here have said 'well, he's right, but that's defeatist'. Maybe. I think it's good to see a public figure come out and say what so many people already know: real privacy is over.
What I haven't seen discussed here is the 'third way': reciprocal transparency. Possibly something McNealy had in mind. One defining feature of the privacy we have now is that there's lots of privacy for corporations, police, spys, etc. But we can design our laws and technology so that there is balance. Here in NYC, there are videocameras dotted throughout town, some police owned, some corporate. If that's fair, then surely there should be cameras for the public observing police precints, and wherever video feeds are being monitored. Same principle applies to data. It's gonna flow, but it shouldn't all flow in one direction.
(For a full discussion, see "The Transparent Society" by David Brin.)