You can hire all the best developers in the world but without a good idea you won't make any money.
And you can have the best idea in the world, but without any money or resources (developers) to make it happen you won't make any money.
You need a good idea and resources. I think it's bogus to be able to protect just an idea. Now, if you have a process or procedure that allows you to achieve the idea, THAT's something. But the idea itself is just a thought.
I thought about Instant Messaging back in about 1993. I didn't do anything because I thought at the time that only "geeks" would open an IM app every time they logged on to Internet. Now, I don't kick myself for not patenting the idea... I kick myself for not having spent a few months developing it years before everyone else did.
I don't see where your message gets off with a 4-Insightful...
Microsoft would be equally hurt by any of the alternatives 2, 3, or 4. Why is 2 a crime, while 3 and 4 are not?
This is an interesting thought, and I would support a 4-Interesting.
While you could say they are equally hurt financially (true) for any of those alternatives, that does not justify your use of their product without paying.
If there is a rock concert by your favorite artist charging $100 per ticket you can't argue that you should be able to go to that concert for free just because some other musician is willing to sing for free. Your favorite artist isn't "losing" anything, either.
If you don't want to pay to hear your favorite artist, go to the local bar and listen to the musician sing for free. If you don't want to pay for Office, use StarOffice.
IP laws do not exist to benefit inventors or artists, they exist to generate an incentive for inventors and artists to create the things society wants or needs. In the USA, at least, the Constitution states very clearly that the reason for patents and copyrights is promote the development of new ideas, and is NOT, in any way, a right of their developers.
That's where you are wrong.
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Now, I agree that this is for the progress of science and useful art, but it says right there: "..Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Yes, the author (programmer) has not only a right, but an exclusive right to his work.
Society is served by the advancement of arts and science. The Founding Fathers recognized this, and also recognized that the only way most people and companies would endeavor to advance art or science is with this exclusive right to their work. Granted, for a limited time.
Society is improved as a whole by author's having a motivation to produce new works/software. Nine times out of ten, that motivation is money. And that money is obtained by excercising the author's exclusive rights to his work during the limited time period.
This exclusive right is what drives technological advancement--the expectation of return on investment. And it is a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
Out of curiosity, do you, sir, pirate software? How about MP3 files?
This question wasn't directed to me, but I'm going to answer because it's a logical question I've dealt with personally.
I am a shareware author and, yes, I do download MP3 files. How can I justify that?
The difference is that a musician works a few days or weeks to come up with a song. Then he records it and is supposed to become a millionaire and sit on his butt selling that song, not having to work? No--I honestly believe the music is (or should be) his advertisement and where he makes money is off his concert tours, merchandising, endorsements, etc. There is no logic in expecting to be able to record a CD and then retire without doing any more work. If you want to make money, work: go on tour!
Software, on the other hand, doesn't normally take days or a few weeks. It takes months--even years. And once complete it has a very short "shelf life" before it becomes obsolete--so the developer needs to keep investing time to improve the product or the revenue stops almost immediately. You can't make money off of support if you've done a good job making a decent user interface, and programmers don't go on tour and--as far as I know--don't get paid to endorse Pepsi. So paying for their "art" (the software product) is the only way a programmer makes money. And that money really only lasts as long as the programmer keeps working, improving his product.
That's my explanation (or justification) for downloading MP3 files for free and yet insisting that people buy my software if they want the full registered version. I'm not going to pay money so some musician can smoke drugs. When I pay for software, I know it's paying for the ongoing work of a software project.
That being said, I always pay for the shareware I actually use. Without exception.
I don't want time-limited registration or regular fees to use software. This is the path online registration is going towards. It's all about the benjamins, maintaining an ongoing revenue stream, ensuring that software is "legitimate" while inconveniencing people who aren't pirates.
Yes, it's all about benjamins. Is that not what your job is about?
This is only a minor inconvenience that legitimate users will understand. Why should others get for free what they have paid money for?
I am against forcing people to "subscribe" to software. You buy software, you are done paying for it unless you want a new version. I do think it is fair, however, that shareware authors have a reasonable assurance that people who are using their software in registered mode have actually paid for it.
You don't pay for shareware before you download it. No-one forces you to pay for it after you download it. That being the case, it is not unreasonable that--at the very least--the shareware author can be certain that those using the full version are only those that are entitled to. It's not like they're asking to charge your credit card again or installing spyware or installing pop-up banners. We just want to know we aren't being robbed.
Why don't you go to 7-11, ask for 95% of a donut and tell them you'll take it home, try it out, and pay for it if you like it... You won't even get through the door. With shareware, we give you 95% of the donut, no questions asked. All we want in return is confidence that those who are consuming 100% of the donut have paid for it.
- App development in VB, much easier to pick up than C++ for Palm. (You can do this with some 3rd party tools for Palm but of course MS give it away)
People developing apps for WinCE in VB and developing apps for Palm in C++ is, in good part, why apps for Palm run so much faster.
VB is the wrong development tool for a Palm app, even a WinCE app. I once accepted a contract to develop a WinCE VB app. Never again. I am now happily developing Palm apps in C, and will decline any contract that requires I develop for the WinCE. *Especially* in VB. It makes the programmer look bad because the customer wonders why the app is so slow.
Although at least people are used to hearing, "Oh, that's Microsoft's tools' fault" and it is generally accepted as a valid explanation of why an app is slow.:)
Too many people don't understand the fact that WinCE devices are *not* PDAs. They are small computers with battery life measured in hours (like a laptop), not days or weeks (like a PDA).
Instead of looking at WinCE as powerful PDAs, look at them as hard-to-use, awkward PCs. That puts them in a whole different light.
Palm hasn't done much hardware innovation lately, but they still have the best PDA *platform*. And market share backs that up, even with MS having sold WinCE for how many years now?
is Ebay profitable? Yes, they had a profit of $90.4 million [etrade.com] last year.
That said, it'd be sad if eBay had lost money. What possible expenses could they have? They're purely an electronic service. Bandwidth and servers, what else?
Actually, I just checked, and they apparently have 1,927 employees! That's amazing. I would think most of their service ought to be handled completely electronically. Now that it's working they ought to have 5 to 10 programmers/admins, a 2-person accounting department, and, say, 50 customer service reps.
Makes me wonder what the other 1865 people are doing in an organization that should almost run itself...
OK, I can appreciate the fact that Microsoft has engaged is some questionable business practices (although, it's arguable whether they're actually illegal or not).
No, it's not really arguable. It's been decided by the courts.
Whether you agree with the courts is arguable.
But the Netscape browser was bug-ridden piece of crap. That's why they died.
Netcape had and has bugs, yes. But no more than a typical Microsoft application.
Netscape browser died only because, as everyone knows, most of the Windows consumers are too lazy to download a browser. Especially when that used to be 15MB on a dial-up line.
Of course, it's always amusing watching free software advocates (who think software should be free/beer) whine about Microsoft giving away software for free.
I don't mind MS giving stuff away for free. Netscape was free too. It's not like they were undercutting Netscape's price. The problem is that MS leveraged their operating system monopoly to kill an oponent.
Microsoft needs to be split into a minimum of an OS company and an "everything else" company. Preferably even three or four companies. Anything less will result in continued abuse by Microsoft.
I hate lawsuits, generally, especially opportunists that want to make a quick buck. But in this case I'd like to see TW win just so someone, somehow makes it clear to MS that their practices aren't acceptable. The DOJ lawsuit hasn't done anything so far--perhaps treble damages to TW would wake MS up.
WinCE is a bloated, silly way of navigating a palmtop machine. In what way? Other than "Microsoft made it".
I don't know how MS does it, but they just always bloat things. This is a fact, not anti-MS rhetoric.
I've programmed for both WinCE and Palm. My WinCE app, when clicked on, took a detectable amount of time to open. When I click on my Palm app, it opens by the time I've raised my sylus.
Let's be honest. Microsoft, the king of bloat, is just doesn't have the mindset to be in the PDA market.
Again, I think WinCE machines should be compared to very lightweight, low-capabity laptops. They should not be considered PDAs. And both they're price and weight reflect that.
Sure, Palms are VERY cheap, but PDAs are mainly used by businesspeople who use them as both status symbols AND useful tools...
The people I know who have PDAs all have Palms. And they aren't businesspeople in the sense of being executives or anything. They work in banks, insurance companies, etc.
These are "common people," not tech people by any sense of the word. And they chose Palm because it's what everyone knows, what everyone can afford, and because it does everything they need.
But even then, Palm won't be a viable company for more than five years
I disagree. Palm does everything most people need in a PDA. It does color (if you want to spend your batteries on that), it does GPS (if you need to know where you are), it does barcode scanning (if you want to pay the bucks for a scanner), it is being implemented in cell phones. And there's so much free and shareware software available for it that does everything you can imagine.
WinCE is, exactly as Palm's man says in the Yahoo news article said, a very bloated carry-over from the PC. Windows is bloat for the PC, WindowsCE is bloat for a PDA.
I've developed applications both for WinCE and for Palm. Palm has a much more stable, easy-to-use OS. It's fast. It does everything you need and nothing you don't.
And until energy efficiency is improved, WinCE machines will continue to be battery-hungry mini-laptops while Palm will continue to service the PDA market.
Distribution of movies freely in digital form over the Internet will not kill the movie industry. There is and will always be a market for making movies to go see in the theater.
Going to the movies is an activity people enjoy. Millions of people go to see movies at $8/person when they know they can wait 6 months and the whole family can rent it for $3. But yet we go to the movies.
What will probably dry up in the end is the residual income that the MPAA is used to earning from rentals and PPV. I believe that form of income is as good as dead. Technology and laws will not stop that form of income from disappearing. But plenty of money was made from movies when the only income was made in the theaters, and that will continue to be the case.
The RIAA, however, will become extinct. They no longer serve a useful purpose.
I work in the financial services industry and it's not the 'dumb jobs' (i.e. manufacturing) jobs that go overseas. India has a billion people, many of whom speak English. Many call center jobs are going over there
Not to imply that everyone that works at call centers are dumb, but they're hardly high-tech.
These are not menial jobs. They are complex jobs that require good English and awareness of America's financial industry laws and practices.
Again, this is not to say that people that speak English and know about American financial industrial laws are stupid; I'm sure they are quite intelligent. But again, these are not high-tech jobs.
They will process scanned in account applications, take instructions from clients, and research archives that are based on scanned paperwork. The workers there are not robots
They are huamn beings, but the jobs you just described are definitely repetitive, low-thought tasks. Again, not high-tech.
they are intelligent human beings that are operating under wage circumstances that are so far below the United States/rest of Western World that a global economic reality regression to the mean will mean empowerment for those workers and a declining work climate for us.
You see things very differently than I do. I see these as low-paying jobs by nature, and are repetitive boring jobs that many Americans don't want. It's not just the low wages that attract companies to export these kinds of jobs; it's that it's hard to find Americans willing to do them and get paid what the job is worth (not much).
I stand to lose my job to these very talented people
The talented people answering the phone or looking up research in files? You lost your job to them?
Sorry, bud, it's ended now... the unemployment rate of programmers is higher than that of unskilled laborers.
Not surprising since we just went through the "dot.com crash." That will change.
The difference between an unemployed programmer and an unemployed unskilled laborer is that the unemployed programmer potentially can be a millionaire in a few months by thinking creatively and applying his skills.
Yes, the "dot.com crash" was rough. It was also inevitable. It was a craze and was not sustainable; I'm surprised so many people were surprised. If you're making $50,000 one year and $100,000 the next, you better not get used to it--in most cases it's unsustainable.
But the fact that we went through the dot.com crash doesn't mean that there's no money to be made in technology or software. There's plenty of money to be made in both; and programming is one of the coolest professions in that any programmer worth his weight in salt that has a good idea has a shot at making it big. We have the tools, we have the talnet (It's Miller Time)...
How many janitors that get layed off can really hope to use their skillset to make a make millions in the next year? I'm not saying that every programmer will achieve it, but any good programmer can.
I think the trends are already in place - programming is already moving overseas
I'm not convinced that's the case.
As someone else mentioned, the jobs that usually go to India involve migrating existing huge applications to a new platform or operating system. There is no innovation there, no real thought work. It's grunt work. That can sometimes be outsourced to the lowest bidder.
Having said that, I already know of several cases of companies that will never again outsource any project to India and other low-wage companies because they've been burned in the past. These companies have delt with constant delays caused by a lack of communication with the Indian company, absurdly optimistic milestone dates that are constantly missed (but not before having invested so much money that they no longer want to cancel the project), the time lost due to the fact that when we're coming to work they're going home, and when we're going home, they're getting ready to go to work.
I don't doubt there will be more technical work in developing countries. Entrepreneurs in these countries are in a position to make a lot of money, especially by local standards. But economics is not a zero-sum game; their gains are not my losses. In fact, their gains open up new markets for my products and services.
I welcome the new programmers that will be creating new technology in developing countries along with those of us who have been doing it for decades.
There's room for everybody. Don't worry, be happy.:)
I agree with what others have said. This isn't so much because of Google but because of the declining demand for domain names in post-com world.
What I do believe is that adding additional TLDs, for the most part, will not help free up names. Currently companies will typically purcase theircompany.com, theircompany.net, and some even go as far as getting theircompany.org. If you start adding additional TLDs all it means is that companies will start buying theircomany.TLD, where TLD is the new TLD that is available to them.
This won't increase available names... it'll increase revenues to registrars that end up selling the same domain name in more TLDs, costing companies and other domain name owners more money.
They'd love your account to get dinged every time you listen to a song on the radio, every time you watch a TV show, every time you read an article. That is exactly the world they're moving us toward.
That's the world they're trying to move us toward in desperation and greed.
1. They worry that their content is going to be distributed massively via the Internet. They're right. Their content will be distributed on a massive scale via the Internet. So they make efforts, legal and technical, to try to keep this form happening. Hence copy protection, DMCA, etc.
2. They worry that they won't be able to stop #1, even with technology and laws. They're right. They can't stop it. So they make efforts to try to charge on a per-use basis; micro-payments, whatever.
What none of the content producers seem to have realized is that their has been a paradigm shift. They won't suceed with #1 and won't suceed with #2.
Music is now free. Any attempts to charge, even micro-payments, will fail because music is now free. Music is now the advertisement to encourage the public to go see the artists concert. Artists will make money by going on tour and selling merchandise.
The movie has less to worry about. They can still make mega-bucks because people want to go to the movies to get out for awhile, buy the popcorn, etc. So they'll still make plenty of money there. However, they should expect to make much less in the video/DVD market beause, like music, that will be freely traded long after the movie has left the movie theaters.
The signal is being sent through MY (and your and everyone else's) property. It is as if Government, Inc. has legslated permission for couriers to walk through your house any time they want, and requires you to cover your eyes whenever they do so, lest you see things the courier is carrying...
Exactly.
For example, I can understand why DirectTV doesn't want people to decode their transmission without paying for it. I can see why they would make every effort to make doing so as expensive and inconvenient as possible. It's in their best interest.
However, when they decided to build a satellite-based delivery system they knew that their signal would be available to anyone who wanted to pick it up--even if they were not subscribers. As such, they knew there would be people that would receive and use the signal without paying for it.
If, knowing all that, they still decided to deploy a satellite system it is because they made the business decision that they'd still be able to make a profit. If they had considered non-subscriber use of their signal to be a show-stopper then they would have deployed a cable or fiber-optic system that is more difficult to intercept. But they opted for a satellite system because it was probably cheaper and, with it, the risks and costs of busines that go with it--which include use by non-subscribers.
It may be illegal to listen in on a cell phone call, but it shouldn't be. And anyone who says something on a cell phone expecting privacy or secrecy is an order of fries short of a happy meal...
Anyway, I believe that people and companies ought to only transmit that information they are comfortable having intercepted and used. If they are comfortable with their encryption, transmit away. If they aren't, don't.
Meanwhile, I'm going to use anything I find on my private property. Including RF signals.
If I read this correctly they now want to somehow implement copyright protection mesaures at the protocol level? So now not only will companies and courts have control over what I transmit, the protocol will decide whether or not I can transmit? A protocol that prevents use is a protocol that won't be used.
It also seems to be a contradiction. DirectTV can transmit from their satellite to almost every square foot of North America, but if someone grabs that signal on their private property and decodes it then the person who received it is legally responsible, not DirectTV. But here, for some reason, they believe it is necessary for the sender to have some kind of permission to transmit with a range of a few hundred feet?
Who even cares? I suspect DirectTV provides a lot more free content to pirates than neighbors transmitting via RF do or will.
Everyone thought that Internet was great, that the new economy was great, and that all this communication and information would enlighten and unite the world. That was until companies started realizing exactly what that meant...
Interesting...people from the United States get called American, whereas anybody else from any of the countries on either the North or South American continents get a label specific to their country.
This is off-topic, but I'll bite anyway.
What's the problem calling someone from the United States of America an American?
Often, people from Europe are called Europeans. People from Asia are called Asians. But there is no continent called "America." There is a North America and a South America. So Colombians can certainly call themselves South Americans if they want to, but calling themselves Americans is confusing since no such continent exists.
Better yet, did you know the official name of Mexico is "Estados Unidos Mexicanos", i.e., United States of Mexico. They are universally called Mexicans.
If citizens of the United States of Mexico are Mexicans, what do we call citizens of the United States of America? I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader.
I still use Win98SE. It doesn't usually crash, but I do usually reboot it every couple of days to make sure I clean any memory leaks. But other than that, it's pretty decent. I'll switch to Linux as soon as there is enough of a market to justify developing programs for it.
But XP? Never.
A friend of mine just bought a new laptop which, of course, came with XP installed. I had heard that XP was as much as 40% slower than 98 on the same hardware. I have a Pentium II-550 (bought it 1.5 years ago) and he has some new fangled 1.0GHz+ machine. The details are unimportant. The fact is, we did some speed tests and my machine ran several tests faster using the same software. And his hardware is at least twice as fast as mine!
Another friend of mine purchased a new desktop system, I believe it was HP. Came pre-installed with XP (his coice). The hardware came and we tried to get some of his favorite games working. They would not, or executed too slowly. He later tried to get the thing to dual boot between Win98SE and WinXP. He couldn't make it happen. A few days later he emailed me and told me he had returned the machine to HP and he would be receiving a "custom-built" system from HP... With Win2K, I believe.
There is nothing in WinXP that is worth your time and money. It is slower than previous versions of Windows. The look-and-feel has changed (again). It looks like a kiddie cartoon, not a serious OS. I don't believe it to be any more reliable than the uncounted times in the past that MS has said their new OS was "the most reliable yet." They've said that with every release of Windows since 3.1.
I'll be helping my laptop friend install either Win98SE or Win2K on his laptop sometime in the next week.
The only cool thing about WinXP is the Ray of Light music they play in the commercials. Unfortunately, they have ruined that song for me since I can't listen to the song without thinking of XP.
Didn't they assume that this act would anger lots of people?. This whole thing may have backfired on them, and be the beginning of their
demise.
I agree. I believe Bin Laden did it, and I think the Taliban either had direct knowledge or a basic idea of what he was doing.
And I think the Taliban, and maybe even Bin Laden, miscalculated how successful the attacks would be, how destructive they would be, and more than anything how united the entire world would be in its response.
The Taliban and Bin Laden are denying they did it because now they know how successful the attack was, they know the United States is hopping mad, they know even Muslim countries and two of their three allies are with the United States, and they know no country in the world is going to even try to stop the United States.
They're running to the hills, and for good reason.
The ants kept biting the lion until they finally stung the lion in the eye and it really hurt. The lion woke up, woke up everyone else in the area, and they are now going to pound the anthill into the ground. The ant bit one too many times, and bit in the wrong place.
Afghanistan has a history of successfully repelling foreign invaders...
Yes, and the United States has a history of successfully winning wars.
I've been researching the past invasions of Afghanistan that have failed and which are now being trumpeted as cowardly reasons to refrain from attacking. This is not the same situation, and Afghanistan's past performance is not representative of what they can hope for this time.
First, UK's invasions of Afghanistan cannot be used to guage what will happen this time. The UK attacked several times in the 1800's and were involved in a final conflict in Afghanistan after WWI. The UK was just starting to recover from the first World War and was tired and uninterested in an umimportant foreign battle far from home that posed no threat to the UK. Also, in those times, the differences between the occupying military and a bunch of people with guns was not so significant, except the occupying military was an easily identifiable target and the people with guns weren't. So the UK failure in Afghanistan is not a valid comparison. The situation is too different to make a useful comparison.
More recently, the Soviets failed in their Afghanistan invasion from 1979-1989. A great deal of this failure was due to a lack of resolve at the highest levels of Soviet government and a resulting lack of commitment to the cause. Additionally, they had a very real concern about alienating almost the entire world in a time where it was important to have as many, or more, friends than their cold-war enemy, the United States. They lost Afghanistan for the same reasons the U.S. lost Vietnam: The politicians back home didn't allow them to go in with everything they had to win.
Additionally, Afghanistan was receiving support from Iran, Pakistan and, yes, the United States' CIA.
Given the Soviet politicians' unwillingness to give the military the green light to win, and considering all the countries that were supporting the Afghan opposition, it is not surprising that that invasion failed.
The difference here is:
There is no lack of resolve on the part of U.S. politicians, nor the U.S. population, to let the military win.
No country in the world is willing or able to help Afghanistan. Perhaps Iraq would like to, but there is no way they can. Every other country is either neutral or aligning with the U.S. in supporting retaliatory, military strikes. But, unlike the Soviet invasion, there will be no-one to help them this time.
Afghanistan's few friends have, grudgingly or under pressure, sided with the United States. Afghanistan has no friends that will help them.
Every country on Afghanistan's border would like to see the Taliban go down, except maybe Pakistan.
Regardless of whether or not Pakistan really wants to see the Taliban go down, Pakistan has sealed Afghanistan's borders, turned off their oil supply, and will allow attacks to be made from their territory. Pakistan knows this is not the time to oppose the U.S., and they would rather have Afghanistan as an enemy than the U.S. right now. Good choice.
The Northern Aliance, the active opposition in Afghanistan, has been fighting the Taliban since it came to power. They are, themselves, Afghanis and have stated they would welcome an American attack against the Taliban. Not all of Afghanistan will be fighting us, just the Taliban.
If the Taliban military was so deadly, they would have long since exterminated the opposition. They haven't been able to do that--I don't think they are going to be able to do any better against the strongest military in the world.
I agree that Afghanistan is not the easiest target. They have no significant infrastructure to target.
But we can, and I suspect will, easily take Kabul, get the Taliban running into the hills where the opposition forces on the ground will be able to help take care of them, radio in their positions for air support, strifing runs, carpet boming. We have night-vision and infrared equipment that will make it harder for them to hide than normal.
And remember, I don't think we're looking at a long-term invasion. We're not looking to annex or particulary control Afghanistan, we're going to topple a terrorist government and probably give control to the opposition forces. Whether the opposition later starts killing themselves again and Afghanistan returns to civil war is not our problem here--as long as Afghanistan keeps the killing inside its borders.
So be skeptical of those that suggest that Afghanistan is somehow a force to be reckoned with; they just had favorable conditions in the past. This time everything is against them with the one and only exception being it could be a guerilla war.
Also, remember people were making similar warnings about Saddam's fearsome military. No need to remind anyone how fearsome that military really turned out to be.
Slashdot Mirror
And you can have the best idea in the world, but without any money or resources (developers) to make it happen you won't make any money.
You need a good idea and resources. I think it's bogus to be able to protect just an idea. Now, if you have a process or procedure that allows you to achieve the idea, THAT's something. But the idea itself is just a thought.
I thought about Instant Messaging back in about 1993. I didn't do anything because I thought at the time that only "geeks" would open an IM app every time they logged on to Internet. Now, I don't kick myself for not patenting the idea... I kick myself for not having spent a few months developing it years before everyone else did.
... that now Bill Gates doesn't have to spend a month on fixing their broken security? I'm sure he'll be thrilled that he can go back to bloat...
Microsoft would be equally hurt by any of the alternatives 2, 3, or 4. Why is 2 a crime, while 3 and 4 are not?
This is an interesting thought, and I would support a 4-Interesting.
While you could say they are equally hurt financially (true) for any of those alternatives, that does not justify your use of their product without paying.
If there is a rock concert by your favorite artist charging $100 per ticket you can't argue that you should be able to go to that concert for free just because some other musician is willing to sing for free. Your favorite artist isn't "losing" anything, either.
If you don't want to pay to hear your favorite artist, go to the local bar and listen to the musician sing for free. If you don't want to pay for Office, use StarOffice.
IP laws do not exist to benefit inventors or artists, they exist to generate an incentive for inventors and artists to create the things society wants or needs. In the USA, at least, the Constitution states very clearly that the reason for patents and copyrights is promote the development of new ideas, and is NOT, in any way, a right of their developers.
That's where you are wrong.
- "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Now, I agree that this is for the progress of science and useful art, but it says right there: "..Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Yes, the author (programmer) has not only a right, but an exclusive right to his work.Society is served by the advancement of arts and science. The Founding Fathers recognized this, and also recognized that the only way most people and companies would endeavor to advance art or science is with this exclusive right to their work. Granted, for a limited time.
Society is improved as a whole by author's having a motivation to produce new works/software. Nine times out of ten, that motivation is money. And that money is obtained by excercising the author's exclusive rights to his work during the limited time period.
This exclusive right is what drives technological advancement--the expectation of return on investment. And it is a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
This question wasn't directed to me, but I'm going to answer because it's a logical question I've dealt with personally.
I am a shareware author and, yes, I do download MP3 files. How can I justify that?
The difference is that a musician works a few days or weeks to come up with a song. Then he records it and is supposed to become a millionaire and sit on his butt selling that song, not having to work? No--I honestly believe the music is (or should be) his advertisement and where he makes money is off his concert tours, merchandising, endorsements, etc. There is no logic in expecting to be able to record a CD and then retire without doing any more work. If you want to make money, work: go on tour!
Software, on the other hand, doesn't normally take days or a few weeks. It takes months--even years. And once complete it has a very short "shelf life" before it becomes obsolete--so the developer needs to keep investing time to improve the product or the revenue stops almost immediately. You can't make money off of support if you've done a good job making a decent user interface, and programmers don't go on tour and--as far as I know--don't get paid to endorse Pepsi. So paying for their "art" (the software product) is the only way a programmer makes money. And that money really only lasts as long as the programmer keeps working, improving his product.
That's my explanation (or justification) for downloading MP3 files for free and yet insisting that people buy my software if they want the full registered version. I'm not going to pay money so some musician can smoke drugs. When I pay for software, I know it's paying for the ongoing work of a software project.
That being said, I always pay for the shareware I actually use. Without exception.
Yes, it's all about benjamins. Is that not what your job is about?
This is only a minor inconvenience that legitimate users will understand. Why should others get for free what they have paid money for?
I am against forcing people to "subscribe" to software. You buy software, you are done paying for it unless you want a new version. I do think it is fair, however, that shareware authors have a reasonable assurance that people who are using their software in registered mode have actually paid for it.
You don't pay for shareware before you download it. No-one forces you to pay for it after you download it. That being the case, it is not unreasonable that--at the very least--the shareware author can be certain that those using the full version are only those that are entitled to. It's not like they're asking to charge your credit card again or installing spyware or installing pop-up banners. We just want to know we aren't being robbed.
Why don't you go to 7-11, ask for 95% of a donut and tell them you'll take it home, try it out, and pay for it if you like it... You won't even get through the door. With shareware, we give you 95% of the donut, no questions asked. All we want in return is confidence that those who are consuming 100% of the donut have paid for it.
People developing apps for WinCE in VB and developing apps for Palm in C++ is, in good part, why apps for Palm run so much faster.
VB is the wrong development tool for a Palm app, even a WinCE app. I once accepted a contract to develop a WinCE VB app. Never again. I am now happily developing Palm apps in C, and will decline any contract that requires I develop for the WinCE. *Especially* in VB. It makes the programmer look bad because the customer wonders why the app is so slow.
Although at least people are used to hearing, "Oh, that's Microsoft's tools' fault" and it is generally accepted as a valid explanation of why an app is slow. :)
Too many people don't understand the fact that WinCE devices are *not* PDAs. They are small computers with battery life measured in hours (like a laptop), not days or weeks (like a PDA).
Instead of looking at WinCE as powerful PDAs, look at them as hard-to-use, awkward PCs. That puts them in a whole different light.
Palm hasn't done much hardware innovation lately, but they still have the best PDA *platform*. And market share backs that up, even with MS having sold WinCE for how many years now?
That said, it'd be sad if eBay had lost money. What possible expenses could they have? They're purely an electronic service. Bandwidth and servers, what else?
Actually, I just checked, and they apparently have 1,927 employees! That's amazing. I would think most of their service ought to be handled completely electronically. Now that it's working they ought to have 5 to 10 programmers/admins, a 2-person accounting department, and, say, 50 customer service reps.
Makes me wonder what the other 1865 people are doing in an organization that should almost run itself...
No, it's not really arguable. It's been decided by the courts.
Whether you agree with the courts is arguable.
But the Netscape browser was bug-ridden piece of crap. That's why they died.
Netcape had and has bugs, yes. But no more than a typical Microsoft application.
Netscape browser died only because, as everyone knows, most of the Windows consumers are too lazy to download a browser. Especially when that used to be 15MB on a dial-up line.
Of course, it's always amusing watching free software advocates (who think software should be free/beer) whine about Microsoft giving away software for free.
I don't mind MS giving stuff away for free. Netscape was free too. It's not like they were undercutting Netscape's price. The problem is that MS leveraged their operating system monopoly to kill an oponent.
Microsoft needs to be split into a minimum of an OS company and an "everything else" company. Preferably even three or four companies. Anything less will result in continued abuse by Microsoft.
I hate lawsuits, generally, especially opportunists that want to make a quick buck. But in this case I'd like to see TW win just so someone, somehow makes it clear to MS that their practices aren't acceptable. The DOJ lawsuit hasn't done anything so far--perhaps treble damages to TW would wake MS up.
I don't know how MS does it, but they just always bloat things. This is a fact, not anti-MS rhetoric.
I've programmed for both WinCE and Palm. My WinCE app, when clicked on, took a detectable amount of time to open. When I click on my Palm app, it opens by the time I've raised my sylus.
Let's be honest. Microsoft, the king of bloat, is just doesn't have the mindset to be in the PDA market.
Again, I think WinCE machines should be compared to very lightweight, low-capabity laptops. They should not be considered PDAs. And both they're price and weight reflect that.
The people I know who have PDAs all have Palms. And they aren't businesspeople in the sense of being executives or anything. They work in banks, insurance companies, etc.
These are "common people," not tech people by any sense of the word. And they chose Palm because it's what everyone knows, what everyone can afford, and because it does everything they need.
But even then, Palm won't be a viable company for more than five years
I disagree. Palm does everything most people need in a PDA. It does color (if you want to spend your batteries on that), it does GPS (if you need to know where you are), it does barcode scanning (if you want to pay the bucks for a scanner), it is being implemented in cell phones. And there's so much free and shareware software available for it that does everything you can imagine.
WinCE is, exactly as Palm's man says in the Yahoo news article said, a very bloated carry-over from the PC. Windows is bloat for the PC, WindowsCE is bloat for a PDA.
I've developed applications both for WinCE and for Palm. Palm has a much more stable, easy-to-use OS. It's fast. It does everything you need and nothing you don't.
And until energy efficiency is improved, WinCE machines will continue to be battery-hungry mini-laptops while Palm will continue to service the PDA market.
Going to the movies is an activity people enjoy. Millions of people go to see movies at $8/person when they know they can wait 6 months and the whole family can rent it for $3. But yet we go to the movies.
What will probably dry up in the end is the residual income that the MPAA is used to earning from rentals and PPV. I believe that form of income is as good as dead. Technology and laws will not stop that form of income from disappearing. But plenty of money was made from movies when the only income was made in the theaters, and that will continue to be the case.
The RIAA, however, will become extinct. They no longer serve a useful purpose.
Not to imply that everyone that works at call centers are dumb, but they're hardly high-tech.
These are not menial jobs. They are complex jobs that require good English and awareness of America's financial industry laws and practices.
Again, this is not to say that people that speak English and know about American financial industrial laws are stupid; I'm sure they are quite intelligent. But again, these are not high-tech jobs.
They will process scanned in account applications, take instructions from clients, and research archives that are based on scanned paperwork. The workers there are not robots
They are huamn beings, but the jobs you just described are definitely repetitive, low-thought tasks. Again, not high-tech.
they are intelligent human beings that are operating under wage circumstances that are so far below the United States/rest of Western World that a global economic reality regression to the mean will mean empowerment for those workers and a declining work climate for us.
You see things very differently than I do. I see these as low-paying jobs by nature, and are repetitive boring jobs that many Americans don't want. It's not just the low wages that attract companies to export these kinds of jobs; it's that it's hard to find Americans willing to do them and get paid what the job is worth (not much).
I stand to lose my job to these very talented people
The talented people answering the phone or looking up research in files? You lost your job to them?
Not surprising since we just went through the "dot.com crash." That will change.
The difference between an unemployed programmer and an unemployed unskilled laborer is that the unemployed programmer potentially can be a millionaire in a few months by thinking creatively and applying his skills.
Yes, the "dot.com crash" was rough. It was also inevitable. It was a craze and was not sustainable; I'm surprised so many people were surprised. If you're making $50,000 one year and $100,000 the next, you better not get used to it--in most cases it's unsustainable.
But the fact that we went through the dot.com crash doesn't mean that there's no money to be made in technology or software. There's plenty of money to be made in both; and programming is one of the coolest professions in that any programmer worth his weight in salt that has a good idea has a shot at making it big. We have the tools, we have the talnet (It's Miller Time)...
How many janitors that get layed off can really hope to use their skillset to make a make millions in the next year? I'm not saying that every programmer will achieve it, but any good programmer can.
I'm not convinced that's the case.
As someone else mentioned, the jobs that usually go to India involve migrating existing huge applications to a new platform or operating system. There is no innovation there, no real thought work. It's grunt work. That can sometimes be outsourced to the lowest bidder.
Having said that, I already know of several cases of companies that will never again outsource any project to India and other low-wage companies because they've been burned in the past. These companies have delt with constant delays caused by a lack of communication with the Indian company, absurdly optimistic milestone dates that are constantly missed (but not before having invested so much money that they no longer want to cancel the project), the time lost due to the fact that when we're coming to work they're going home, and when we're going home, they're getting ready to go to work.
I don't doubt there will be more technical work in developing countries. Entrepreneurs in these countries are in a position to make a lot of money, especially by local standards. But economics is not a zero-sum game; their gains are not my losses. In fact, their gains open up new markets for my products and services.
I welcome the new programmers that will be creating new technology in developing countries along with those of us who have been doing it for decades.
There's room for everybody. Don't worry, be happy. :)
What I do believe is that adding additional TLDs, for the most part, will not help free up names. Currently companies will typically purcase theircompany.com, theircompany.net, and some even go as far as getting theircompany.org. If you start adding additional TLDs all it means is that companies will start buying theircomany.TLD, where TLD is the new TLD that is available to them.
This won't increase available names... it'll increase revenues to registrars that end up selling the same domain name in more TLDs, costing companies and other domain name owners more money.
That's the world they're trying to move us toward in desperation and greed.
1. They worry that their content is going to be distributed massively via the Internet. They're right. Their content will be distributed on a massive scale via the Internet. So they make efforts, legal and technical, to try to keep this form happening. Hence copy protection, DMCA, etc.
2. They worry that they won't be able to stop #1, even with technology and laws. They're right. They can't stop it. So they make efforts to try to charge on a per-use basis; micro-payments, whatever.
What none of the content producers seem to have realized is that their has been a paradigm shift. They won't suceed with #1 and won't suceed with #2.
Music is now free. Any attempts to charge, even micro-payments, will fail because music is now free. Music is now the advertisement to encourage the public to go see the artists concert. Artists will make money by going on tour and selling merchandise.
The movie has less to worry about. They can still make mega-bucks because people want to go to the movies to get out for awhile, buy the popcorn, etc. So they'll still make plenty of money there. However, they should expect to make much less in the video/DVD market beause, like music, that will be freely traded long after the movie has left the movie theaters.
Exactly.
For example, I can understand why DirectTV doesn't want people to decode their transmission without paying for it. I can see why they would make every effort to make doing so as expensive and inconvenient as possible. It's in their best interest.
However, when they decided to build a satellite-based delivery system they knew that their signal would be available to anyone who wanted to pick it up--even if they were not subscribers. As such, they knew there would be people that would receive and use the signal without paying for it.
If, knowing all that, they still decided to deploy a satellite system it is because they made the business decision that they'd still be able to make a profit. If they had considered non-subscriber use of their signal to be a show-stopper then they would have deployed a cable or fiber-optic system that is more difficult to intercept. But they opted for a satellite system because it was probably cheaper and, with it, the risks and costs of busines that go with it--which include use by non-subscribers.
It may be illegal to listen in on a cell phone call, but it shouldn't be. And anyone who says something on a cell phone expecting privacy or secrecy is an order of fries short of a happy meal...
Anyway, I believe that people and companies ought to only transmit that information they are comfortable having intercepted and used. If they are comfortable with their encryption, transmit away. If they aren't, don't.
Meanwhile, I'm going to use anything I find on my private property. Including RF signals.
It also seems to be a contradiction. DirectTV can transmit from their satellite to almost every square foot of North America, but if someone grabs that signal on their private property and decodes it then the person who received it is legally responsible, not DirectTV. But here, for some reason, they believe it is necessary for the sender to have some kind of permission to transmit with a range of a few hundred feet?
Who even cares? I suspect DirectTV provides a lot more free content to pirates than neighbors transmitting via RF do or will.
Everyone thought that Internet was great, that the new economy was great, and that all this communication and information would enlighten and unite the world. That was until companies started realizing exactly what that meant...
This is off-topic, but I'll bite anyway.
What's the problem calling someone from the United States of America an American?
Often, people from Europe are called Europeans. People from Asia are called Asians. But there is no continent called "America." There is a North America and a South America. So Colombians can certainly call themselves South Americans if they want to, but calling themselves Americans is confusing since no such continent exists.
Better yet, did you know the official name of Mexico is "Estados Unidos Mexicanos", i.e., United States of Mexico. They are universally called Mexicans.
If citizens of the United States of Mexico are Mexicans, what do we call citizens of the United States of America? I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader.
I still use Win98SE. It doesn't usually crash, but I do usually reboot it every couple of days to make sure I clean any memory leaks. But other than that, it's pretty decent. I'll switch to Linux as soon as there is enough of a market to justify developing programs for it.
But XP? Never.
A friend of mine just bought a new laptop which, of course, came with XP installed. I had heard that XP was as much as 40% slower than 98 on the same hardware. I have a Pentium II-550 (bought it 1.5 years ago) and he has some new fangled 1.0GHz+ machine. The details are unimportant. The fact is, we did some speed tests and my machine ran several tests faster using the same software. And his hardware is at least twice as fast as mine!
Another friend of mine purchased a new desktop system, I believe it was HP. Came pre-installed with XP (his coice). The hardware came and we tried to get some of his favorite games working. They would not, or executed too slowly. He later tried to get the thing to dual boot between Win98SE and WinXP. He couldn't make it happen. A few days later he emailed me and told me he had returned the machine to HP and he would be receiving a "custom-built" system from HP... With Win2K, I believe.
There is nothing in WinXP that is worth your time and money. It is slower than previous versions of Windows. The look-and-feel has changed (again). It looks like a kiddie cartoon, not a serious OS. I don't believe it to be any more reliable than the uncounted times in the past that MS has said their new OS was "the most reliable yet." They've said that with every release of Windows since 3.1.
I'll be helping my laptop friend install either Win98SE or Win2K on his laptop sometime in the next week.
The only cool thing about WinXP is the Ray of Light music they play in the commercials. Unfortunately, they have ruined that song for me since I can't listen to the song without thinking of XP.
I agree. I believe Bin Laden did it, and I think the Taliban either had direct knowledge or a basic idea of what he was doing.
And I think the Taliban, and maybe even Bin Laden, miscalculated how successful the attacks would be, how destructive they would be, and more than anything how united the entire world would be in its response.
The Taliban and Bin Laden are denying they did it because now they know how successful the attack was, they know the United States is hopping mad, they know even Muslim countries and two of their three allies are with the United States, and they know no country in the world is going to even try to stop the United States.
They're running to the hills, and for good reason.
The ants kept biting the lion until they finally stung the lion in the eye and it really hurt. The lion woke up, woke up everyone else in the area, and they are now going to pound the anthill into the ground. The ant bit one too many times, and bit in the wrong place.
Yes, and the United States has a history of successfully winning wars.
I've been researching the past invasions of Afghanistan that have failed and which are now being trumpeted as cowardly reasons to refrain from attacking. This is not the same situation, and Afghanistan's past performance is not representative of what they can hope for this time.
First, UK's invasions of Afghanistan cannot be used to guage what will happen this time. The UK attacked several times in the 1800's and were involved in a final conflict in Afghanistan after WWI. The UK was just starting to recover from the first World War and was tired and uninterested in an umimportant foreign battle far from home that posed no threat to the UK. Also, in those times, the differences between the occupying military and a bunch of people with guns was not so significant, except the occupying military was an easily identifiable target and the people with guns weren't. So the UK failure in Afghanistan is not a valid comparison. The situation is too different to make a useful comparison.
More recently, the Soviets failed in their Afghanistan invasion from 1979-1989. A great deal of this failure was due to a lack of resolve at the highest levels of Soviet government and a resulting lack of commitment to the cause. Additionally, they had a very real concern about alienating almost the entire world in a time where it was important to have as many, or more, friends than their cold-war enemy, the United States. They lost Afghanistan for the same reasons the U.S. lost Vietnam: The politicians back home didn't allow them to go in with everything they had to win.
Additionally, Afghanistan was receiving support from Iran, Pakistan and, yes, the United States' CIA.
Given the Soviet politicians' unwillingness to give the military the green light to win, and considering all the countries that were supporting the Afghan opposition, it is not surprising that that invasion failed.
The difference here is:
I agree that Afghanistan is not the easiest target. They have no significant infrastructure to target.
But we can, and I suspect will, easily take Kabul, get the Taliban running into the hills where the opposition forces on the ground will be able to help take care of them, radio in their positions for air support, strifing runs, carpet boming. We have night-vision and infrared equipment that will make it harder for them to hide than normal.
And remember, I don't think we're looking at a long-term invasion. We're not looking to annex or particulary control Afghanistan, we're going to topple a terrorist government and probably give control to the opposition forces. Whether the opposition later starts killing themselves again and Afghanistan returns to civil war is not our problem here--as long as Afghanistan keeps the killing inside its borders.
So be skeptical of those that suggest that Afghanistan is somehow a force to be reckoned with; they just had favorable conditions in the past. This time everything is against them with the one and only exception being it could be a guerilla war.
Also, remember people were making similar warnings about Saddam's fearsome military. No need to remind anyone how fearsome that military really turned out to be.