Have you ever heard of education? We're lucky that all our Java developers were born with Java skills, otherwise we would have had to use SUN consultants for $xxx / hour and sign a service agreement with SUN to maintain the application they developed...
Come to think of it, my first words were: System.out.println("ga,ga,ga, Mommy!");
Of course IBM aims to sell more "expensive" hardware with the help of Linux!
IBM is a company and does not aim to do stuff which make them loose money in the end.
Sure it's neat, but we need to remember that computers are supposed to do useful things
And how does this relate to running progams on a specific architecture?
What a collosal waste of cpu and memory to have 10,000 operating systems when the right one (yes, 1) would do the job just fine
I take it you've never been in a situation where you needed the ability do partition resources and access for specific purposes, people or customers?
As for the waste of resources. Do you know anything about how an S/390 handles resources?
Add to that the inherent performance hit from running on a "virtual machine" and it makes even less sense
<sarcasm> Ah, yes, and what an "incredible" performance hit it is...</sarcasm>
I actually tend to think that IBM's use of Linux is more self-serving than Sun's attack. It's just an attempt to sell more expensive proprietary hardware by capitalizing on the intellectual generosity of others.
Right. Thank god that SUN isn't using proprietary hardware, because that would make SUN just as bad.
I've always seen myself as a technical guy. I know about a rather wide range of technologies, languages, coding practices, designs etc. But where I lack is in depth. I know I'm not good at doing the "perfect" algorithm nor able to come up with a new cipher for cryptography.
Over the last few years a dreaded realization has come over me. The technical aspect which I love, really isn't my primary strength! Most all feedback I get on those yearly "employee evaluations", written by managers, PMs as well as customer project evaluations are all saying that I have "enough technical skills" and should really focus on management / project management.
The reason given, is that I am supposed to have the ability to talk, coordinate and enhance the performance of the team's I'm working with. This is like a big punch on my ego. _I_ want to be part of teams creating all these new cool technologies, not a "paper shuffler"!
Point is, some people obviously have some qualities / strengths, which might not be in line with what one desires to do for a living. Some people are good at certain stuff, some are not, regardless of their background.
As a side note. The way I'm currently handling this "crisis" is by entering projects or organizations and proposing changes (organizational or process wise), help planning these while making sure that everyone knows that IANAM (I Am Not A Manager) but only there for advising managers and helping / listening to the techies and assist getting their points across. (It's often a lot easier to cross the border of "management levels" / "management jurisdiction" in order to get changes through if one comes from the outside).
Perhaps this is just a "cowardly" result of not wanting to grasp the manager role as a whole?
I wonder, has anyone else been in a situation as this, where your strengths have not been in line with your internal image, and how have you handled it?
Yes, and most of the people here don't have root access on their Linux boxes at home, right?
As I see it, the only thing the Linux root enforcing is doing is mayhap prevent white-hat-hacker-jack from acting black-hat by spoofing packets in his sleep.
(This comment is limited to "single user systems" such as MS Windows 1..N and private desktop (Uni|Linu)xes )
I mean, the industry is in a low and will be for a while longer. Competence is cheap(er) than recently. Even the large dragons are lowering their hourly rates (for the first time in ages, the army of b.blue's consultants are no longer aiming at being "twice as expensive" as anyone else on the market). Anyway, it's easier to start up when money is flooding the market, unless you have a hefty starting capital to assist you during a year or so.
Also, going "solo" will take a lot more time and effort than you can ever imagine. Unless you are a CEO type of person, then please get one as soon as you can. I take it you like the "problem solving" aspect of the IT industry. Then it is essential that you realize what you are good at and not so good at. As a small firm, every person has to pull his or her weight to a maximum extent and this means "Do what you do best and get someone else to do the other stuff".
Take the last quote and read it again. I can't stress the importance of that one enough.
Mailing lists for example.
This was pointed out earlier in another post as a potential problem.
The thing about some kind of scoring system is that it will be very improbable that several spammers will "band together" to submit the sigs of legit mass-mailings. In the unlikely situation that this would actually happen, these people can be identified and their posting access revoked until they mail some admin person explaining their actions. This of cause assume the existence of some kind of super-node which will have some kind of administration (either by ordinary admins or by an early/. type of system where appointed people take turn to do the chores).
The implementation structure of how moderation will take place is not something I have bothered thinking about. These things have a tendency to work out in a fairly good way as history has shown.
To eliminate the situation where one person posts a lot of "incorrect" signatures, a ranking system could be applied.
The thought goes like this.
A person submits a signature of "identified" spam mail to a "supernode" for ex. and the submission gets a ranking of 1. Each additional submission (by other users) increases the score by a number.
This way, there are several classifications which could be used to filter incoming mail. For the mail providers, they could opt for only removing mail matching signatures with a very high score (thus very likely these will be actual spam) or they could filter anything reported.
The purpose of allowing the use of classifications is that it will take longer time to get higher scores, since more people have to report the specific spam mail. Some people whish to eliminate things the least bit suspected, but mileage may vary.
I am just curious. Did you find anything in my post to be contradictory to the main post?
As far as I can tell, you elaborate on exactly the findings I already presented,though with a voice as if I had written otherwise.
While on the topic, I read an interesting article this week in the press about "piracy".
The writer stated (this is a translation):
"Software does not follow the old laws of physics, new definitions have to be created. This is a conceptually difficult problem and many choose the easy way out. Piracy is stealing. If you steal a car, then the rightful owner will not be able to utilize it, the owner suffers from obvious damage/harm. What has been "stolen" by piracy is however a hypothetical revenue for the software company.
It's not a very large amount of revenue being lost.
On all my jobs the management, co-workers and myself included, have been very thorough making sure we use licensed software for all commercial activity. At home, for private use is the alternative not to buy a license, but to refrain from getting the program."
I think this applies exactly to how most people feel about music floating around on the P2P services as well. Music they download they either have already on CD / LP / Cassette or it's a gamble of finding new artists / music types or it's for getting music which they would never by anyway (perhaps suiting for backround buzz).
Personally I can't stand crappy MP3 music in 128-160KBit when I have to output it through a stereo equipment $3000 worth. I buy the freaking CDs until the RIAA makes them unplayable.
With price per MB dropping, I've started to rip my CDs "raw" without encoding. Heck, Maxtor has 160G drives cheap as hell and IBM promises about 500G drives in a year or two. That means ripping via my stereos' optical-out in the future (bummer though).
Will the IP mafia ever realize that they are not gods? That shrink-wrap agreements have gotten out of hand?
What I'm tired of is the frigging control of HOW I use whatever I purchase.
If I buy SW there is a gazillion pages of things I can not do with it. (Music CDs don't have this because the book wouldn't fit in the slim case.)
Who do they think they are to tell me what to do? I paid for the damn thing, it's mine. I'll stick the disc in a toaster if I want to regardless of what they write in the accompanying bible of legal-pretend-mumbo-jumbo.
What makes the IP companies so special that they are allowed to do this?
What if every company acted this way? Imagine purchasing a car and when you get home you read the legal bible which states you can only use the car in the state of Oregon (Because that model is intended for Oregonians, but sales people are sales people..). Tough for you, you live in FL and disregard this as utter rubbish. The next day five guys in suits come by, serve you a court order and claim damage for breaking the contract. Impound your car and tough luck getting your $50000 back.
Hey you broke the stupid agreement. Yes it was stupid, but that's no excuse that will help you in court.
As up to now, all around the world, a few players have gotten a solid grasp of the market. They sign up local landlords etc. for 10 year contracts which makes it impossible to switch without moving.
In Sweden there is basically only one company having the entire market for broadband on cable, UPC, a Dutch company whose shares are plummeting.
Perhaps it's just a matter of time before I loose my connection as well.
However.. there have been grumblings about monopolistic behavior for a while, and perhaps things are about to change. Governments have been thinking about forcing the large companies holding the infrastructure (and the customers as hostages) to open up for new players to produce a competitive market.
Generally, I'm not pro-forcing when it comes to the "free market". Some companies have made major investments in fiber and other infrastructure and just doing a Robin Hood on them seems a little unjust, but what are the alternatives?
When a company gets too large and start controlling the market and start changing the rules, at least the US have some anti-monopoly (antitrust) law, which is supposed to work in theory at least.
Well at least we all (or most?) still have DSL alternatives, so no need to really get upset.
IBM already have a mature *nix OS.
Why should they spend money, resources, marketing et al to supply a product for a niche in which they already have a product?
(I personally like AIX better than Linux for it's reliability and the fabulous smit,*grin*, and would hate if they dropped it for some Linux distro.)
Going with a well established alternative product from a third party, if the customers want one is imho. their best alternative at present.
IBM is smart enough to see the benefit of open source (ex. XML4J which they gave Apache and the Eclipse project) and they use it themselves and refine it or even create the initial material. However, what they are doing is making sure that they don't have a situation where the wheel is invented twice. Thus keeping AIX and letting the "duplicate" RedHat Linux be managed by a third party. Thus XML4J to a third party (They already have a Lotus parser for ex.)..
At my current company I "signed my life away" as part of the employment contract.
The contract basically states that anything I create while being employed by the current employer will be theirs. It does not seem to matter if I create it on my personal computer and use none of the company's resources.
As a matter of fact, most of the things I've created have not been based on anything provided by the company (aside from company paperwork which I'd be happy to give them the rights to:-).
Some software specific to integrate with the company's other software and hardware have I created on one of their Laptops. I could just as well have created everything on my own PCs, but since it's tied to stuff from the company (by use or intended use) I see no moral dilemma handing it to them.
The question is; where do you draw the line between what can be seen entitled to the company / university? If a CS student is "inventing" something and only uses his/her own equipment, is that enough to give him/her the rights to use it?
Do the universities include "knowledge", which the student paid to receive, as university "resource" and thus are eligible to make claims regardless? If CS students base all their work on material bought privately from, say "Amazon.com", would that be enough to get the University's IP hoard off their back?
For my part, I've seriously thought of jumping the boat next time I feel a discussion will come up about an "invention", claiming a patent, which I deem is valuable for a larger audience.This is before I make it known to the company.
As it is now, I might get a $5000 award for something regardless whether it's value is tens, hundreds or more.
Where are the rest of you standing on this delicate issue? How do you reason each time something you create are up for a patent?
A score of zero?
I though it was possible to mod up anonymous posts, or am I wrong in that assumption!?
Unfortunately I'm out of points, but the parent post, I think, deserves more than zero since it does point out some truths.
Good post.
A small comment. Having a separate web department handling everything related to the web effort might be viable for a large company.In the case of the company I work for, we have employees counting close to the same as a small country and creating departments for the tiniest detail is often not a problem. However, I see possible problems for companies not being of big blue's size or who are focusing on markets other than computers / IT (not having enough skills/resources in this area). Sometimes (personally I'd say often) it's better to leave information creation out of the IT related orgs. and let the IT people focus on the technical, functional aspects.
When it comes to conformity of the site and it's image, that can favourably be done by a function having this specific assignment.
I have not yet taken a look at what the company is doing for it's own site, perhaps it's worth a look though, as judging from the seminar you attended they seem to be doing this fairly well.
(My defence for ignorance: it's a large company and I don't have time to keep track of even 5% of what we're doing).
My experience tells me that separating information and function is essential and should be the first thing to do.
One of the more elegant approaches I've used here is having near 100% of the data on the site stored in a database (or databases).
(Performance is gained by good use of caching components in the application code)
Since you didn't describe what kind of functionality the "company" requires it's a bit more tricky to give a proposal on the technical side. However, going with a MVC (Model-View-Control) architecture will be fine regardless.
Application logic is run from and AS (Application Server) which is based upon templates for presentation. The templates could for be for ex. JSP pages using custom tags for creating the design of the pages. The data provided to the pages would be retrieved from the database by business objects and delivered (wrapped in data structure beans) to the JSP templates.
That way, you could have the designers focusing on creating templates, the programmers taking care of the business logic (and creating custom tags) and the database people making sure that the database is running at an optimal.
When it comes to updating information, I'd suggest spending some time creating a content mgmt. tool (not very hard), or let an outside company do it.
With this CMT "ordinary" employees could change the data without having to involve the IT department.
As for the organization structure regarding the web aspect, I'd suggest having each organization within the company appoint one responsible person, who is the one channelling and deciding what information will be allowed to be published on the site. This person can of couse appoint some other people whom have this authorization as well, but that is not for your IT group to decide or even bother with.
The focal points within each org. can send you an official request for people who should have the ability publish info and all you do is add these people as authorized users in the CMT application.
This way your group can focus on what you are good at while the other orgs. can do what they do best.
When a decision making person in an org. decide that some information is to be allowed to be published onto the site, they can enter the date and time for when the information goes live and press the "approve" button. The rest will be handled automatically.
As you see, this requires no specific restructuring of the company. Instead you can probably continue using a structure which the company has probably been using for years (and which is hopefully already working well).
I think it's important to realize that by utilizing the Web, companies do not have to radically change their way of working when it comes to publishing information. What was earlier published in press, ads, brochures etc. can be done much in the same way. The only difference is that a CMT tool is used instead of sending the info to the print house.
If you do not think your company will be able to create this kind of solution (provided this makes sense to you), I could probably get you in contact with one which have. In that case just drop me a line at: chris_7d0h.antijunk@yahoo.com
(Note remove the [.antijunk] spam protection from the address)
As for classifying Nuclear related facilities, I agree. I can't think of a good reason to have this available to people without professional interest.
Unfortunately I can imagine that the withdrawl will be drastic and include things which in fact DO have public interest, such as construction plans / locations of infrastructure, plans of coming constructions and other things which are interesting to ordinary people (weighing where to build houses, estimating real estate values etc.)
There are ofcourse more things than just construction plans which is of interest and could possibly be affected, but only time will tell.
It was on 60 minutes I seem to recall.
Unfortunately I do not have a VCR and did not tape it.
Ask around and perhaps someone has it taped for your viewing pleasure.
> The rest of what you said is just a rehash of the argument that I addressed.
As for the rest, they were a direct response and explanation to the points you addressed.
What other answer did you expect?
When it comes to opinions and late breaking news, sure, they get a lot of it wrong. However, when it comes to basic facts when they're not vieing for who can be first, it's pretty accurate
As for the specific example of CNN and the Gulf war, CNN did admit to the spreading of disinformation on purpose.
The reason according to them was to boost morale for the alies and to lower it for the enemy.
Media is to report objectivly the truth and not be an instrument of propaganda.
Since that admittance the credibility of named news network has hit bottom.
And what of this has changed one iota for you? Libraries still exist. Financial information on companies still exists (very much so). We're talking about very specific and detailed information that a very small part of the population can even claim to have the most remote of interest in.
Exactly, it has not change one iota for me. However, I doubt it has changed anything for the people with dubious agendas as well (terrorists/spies).
This act of post-classification is only hurting the casual readers (the general public) since anyone with specific interest in this information will already have it available for data mining or refence. If not, there are a bunch of ways/places to get hold of it.
As Vectus wrote on another thread:
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
- Plato
This applies to classification as well.
Oh please. Why? Justify your belief in reasoning that US policymakers are out to shaft its own people, rather that being motivated for the same reasons that I'm arguing for (e.g., the defence of Americans and other people). What do they gain by unreasonably restricting actual rights other than gaining the hate of certain interest groups? If this were say, no "hate speech" against Corporations, that might be one thing. But oppression for its own sake...? Gimme a break. These people need to get re-elected.
Why would politicians do anything wrong intentially or otherwise? *gee* I don't know.
Seriously. As history has shown; when someone become part of an elite group (ruling body for ex.) ideas and values often change (to a bit or more). As for people needed to be re-elected. Well there is a single digit number of people who you vote for (a few more for congress). At the same time there are millions of people working withing the gvt. Most of the decisions and actions which affect you are not taken by people on whom you can vote.
Also, not everyone sees re-election as gods ends. As one becomes part of a group (any group) one widens one's social network. In this case people in higher positions within gvt. will have an easy way to get appointed to other important offices later on (places without much scrutiny from the public for ex.). This unofficial way to "walk around the top" makes the need for reelection a bit less important than it had been, had all positions of importance been voted on.
Note, this situation is by no means unique for the US, but was given to emphasize why all is not as ideal as can be in a democratic system.
The only way the great mass of citizen can affect wrong doings is by knowing about them and harassing their few elected representatives in the hope that they will make a difference.
If people are not informed the system will colapse or be turned into a whatever the ruling body would like it to be.
Well, the press is hardly where one turns for reliable information.
Ex. CNN has on several occations made it clear that they are bias in reporting news. Especially the Gulf war was heavily angled. "Precision bombs" hitting home, while later revealing they missed 80-90% of their targets!
CNN is imho the least trusted source for information.
When it comes to general info. gathering, I can think of a number of better ways. None of which includes the media.
Heck, if I want to know something I just call and talk to someone directly informed, seek someone who was previously involved or who is otherwise related to the type of info I'm interested in.
Ofcourse all info must be weighed and given a "reliability classification" in order to reach the truth.
As a non-US citizen I have had no problem what-so-ever to get hold of whatever information I have been interested (regarding US, US-companies etc.). (Note I'm NOT a terrorist, just a regular Joe who, like anyone else, have the need to know things related to what I do).
By your governments decision to yank stuff from your public info. houses (libraries, public service houses et al) I see that the only the loosers are the american public. This will not affect one bit from where I get my information.
I assume the same is true for anyone looking to cause harm as well!
As someone else said, this feels like your government is taking maximum opportunity of a tragic incident to restrict your way of life and further convert your great nation into a totalitary police- / corporate ruled state.
I'll have to re-evaluate the idea of migrating to the US since your country seem to become ever less appealing to live in.
Exactly, and here is the big flaw in the reasoning of the music companies.
They admit that the protection will not stop "real crackers" / pirates but will prevent "casual Joe" from doing copies.
Now.. What does the music companies think casual Joe uses to make copies?
Hey, suprise, the same tools as the pirates!
This means that the protection will be useless for even casual copying.
Then what will the net result be? Well it will make everyone very pissed until "Frank Cracker" has figured out how to evade the protection, publised his findings onto the Net and X hundred of developers have made their own clones based upon these findings. These clones will be "Grandma" friendly and casual Joe will migrate to these tools.
The Music companies (still not getting it) will close the circle which has been going on since decades, by suing randomly, creating a new protection, releasing that to the public, it being cracked and the circle spin on and on.
It's amazing that IP interest groups haven't learned one bit in the last decades. Piracy has nothing to do with technology. It's a mindset that something is not right (or that it is the right thing to do?).
.. Or, the IP interest groups are the only ones sane on this planet, since 99,9% (rough estimation, I have no figures to back this claim) of the inhabitants of this planet do in fact have "pirated IP property" (Never mind that many hold these legally since laws differ from contry to country).
I agree with you, in principle.
However, it was a jest to the "Scientific Community" at large.
There is a disturbing pattern which re-emerge again and again.
Lights please (example x2)..
- - - - - - - - -
HSCS: The world is flat.
TSCL: THE WORLD IS FLAT.
SWNI: No it's round.
TSCL: SHUT UP! STONE HIM!
... a few hundred years pass by...
HSCS: Acupuncture is bogus. That it works more often than western medicine in some areas are pure coincidence. If it had worked we would already have thought of it.
TSCL: ACUPUNCTURE IS A JOKE!!
SWNI: But I took this idea from people who have practiced it and cured people for thousands of years.
TSCL: BOGUUUUS! THAT PROVES NOTHING! WE FORBID YOU FROM PRACTICE CHARLATAN! SUE HER!
- - - - - - - - -
HSCS = High Standing Contemporary Scientist.
SWNI = Scientist With New (/outrageous) Ideas.
TSCL = The Scientific Community at Large.
Hrm.. yes...
Re:Is it really hurting traditional retailers?
on
Internet Tax Ban Extended
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
True, and here I think you came upon something interesting (I choose to comment instead of modding it).
Why are the Internet prices so similar to the ones in the retail stores?
One might guess that not having large buildings in attractive and central areas along with a bundle of employees to fill the stores out would some how cost less money. One might also imagine that a new start-up Internet company does not have the financial leverage to get as good deals with their distributors as the large giants have.
So, what conclusions can be drawn from this (if any)?
As I see it, either one of the following might explain the situation.
* The price difference between a large and local retailer and an internet start-up is almost non-existing, since the distributors take a higher cut of the pie for the small firm than for the larger one. (The fat distributors get a higher fat/order ratio from a small firm than from a large one:)
* The small Internet company does indeed have high margins and earn a lot on each sale. If that money turns into profit is probably depending on a lot of other factors (such as the cost of the jet-set life of the employees in the internet start-up *grin*)
* The large companies are so financially strong that they can afford to do a Microsoft.
(That is sell at a loss and thus provide more value-add for each sale until the weaker competition has starved to death).
Regardless, I don't see why Internet based companies should have any special benefits. Especially as consumers are not seeing the benefits in the form of reduced prices.
If the companies can not turn a profit, then they have an invalid business model or a wrong company structure. This is a question of ordinary company management and is not unique to the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like you're working for "///".
Have you ever heard of education?
We're lucky that all our Java developers were born with Java skills, otherwise we would have had to use SUN consultants for $xxx / hour and sign a service agreement with SUN to maintain the application they developed...
Come to think of it, my first words were: System.out.println("ga,ga,ga, Mommy!");
I've always seen myself as a technical guy. I know about a rather wide range of technologies, languages, coding practices, designs etc. But where I lack is in depth. I know I'm not good at doing the "perfect" algorithm nor able to come up with a new cipher for cryptography.
Over the last few years a dreaded realization has come over me. The technical aspect which I love, really isn't my primary strength! Most all feedback I get on those yearly "employee evaluations", written by managers, PMs as well as customer project evaluations are all saying that I have "enough technical skills" and should really focus on management / project management.
The reason given, is that I am supposed to have the ability to talk, coordinate and enhance the performance of the team's I'm working with.
This is like a big punch on my ego. _I_ want to be part of teams creating all these new cool technologies, not a "paper shuffler"!
Point is, some people obviously have some qualities / strengths, which might not be in line with what one desires to do for a living.
Some people are good at certain stuff, some are not, regardless of their background.
As a side note.
The way I'm currently handling this "crisis" is by entering projects or organizations and proposing changes (organizational or process wise), help planning these while making sure that everyone knows that IANAM (I Am Not A Manager) but only there for advising managers and helping / listening to the techies and assist getting their points across.
(It's often a lot easier to cross the border of "management levels" / "management jurisdiction" in order to get changes through if one comes from the outside).
Perhaps this is just a "cowardly" result of not wanting to grasp the manager role as a whole?
I wonder, has anyone else been in a situation as this, where your strengths have not been in line with your internal image, and how have you handled it?
Yes, and most of the people here don't have root access on their Linux boxes at home, right?
As I see it, the only thing the Linux root enforcing is doing is mayhap prevent white-hat-hacker-jack from acting black-hat by spoofing packets in his sleep.
(This comment is limited to "single user systems" such as MS Windows 1..N and private desktop (Uni|Linu)xes )
I mean, the industry is in a low and will be for a while longer. Competence is cheap(er) than recently. Even the large dragons are lowering their hourly rates (for the first time in ages, the army of b.blue's consultants are no longer aiming at being "twice as expensive" as anyone else on the market). Anyway, it's easier to start up when money is flooding the market, unless you have a hefty starting capital to assist you during a year or so.
Also, going "solo" will take a lot more time and effort than you can ever imagine. Unless you are a CEO type of person, then please get one as soon as you can. I take it you like the "problem solving" aspect of the IT industry. Then it is essential that you realize what you are good at and not so good at. As a small firm, every person has to pull his or her weight to a maximum extent and this means "Do what you do best and get someone else to do the other stuff".
Take the last quote and read it again. I can't stress the importance of that one enough.
Mailing lists for example.
/. type of system where appointed people take turn to do the chores).
This was pointed out earlier in another post as a potential problem.
The thing about some kind of scoring system is that it will be very improbable that several spammers will "band together" to submit the sigs of legit mass-mailings. In the unlikely situation that this would actually happen, these people can be identified and their posting access revoked until they mail some admin person explaining their actions. This of cause assume the existence of some kind of super-node which will have some kind of administration (either by ordinary admins or by an early
The implementation structure of how moderation will take place is not something I have bothered thinking about. These things have a tendency to work out in a fairly good way as history has shown.
To eliminate the situation where one person posts a lot of "incorrect" signatures, a ranking system could be applied.
./ moderation?
The thought goes like this.
A person submits a signature of "identified" spam mail to a "supernode" for ex. and the submission gets a ranking of 1. Each additional submission (by other users) increases the score by a number.
This way, there are several classifications which could be used to filter incoming mail. For the mail providers, they could opt for only removing mail matching signatures with a very high score (thus very likely these will be actual spam) or they could filter anything reported.
The purpose of allowing the use of classifications is that it will take longer time to get higher scores, since more people have to report the specific spam mail. Some people whish to eliminate things the least bit suspected, but mileage may vary.
Do you see a resemblance with the
I am just curious. Did you find anything in my post to be contradictory to the main post? ,though with a voice as if I had written otherwise.
As far as I can tell, you elaborate on exactly the findings I already presented
While on the topic, I read an interesting article this week in the press about "piracy".
The writer stated (this is a translation):
"Software does not follow the old laws of physics, new definitions have to be created. This is a conceptually difficult problem and many choose the easy way out. Piracy is stealing. If you steal a car, then the rightful owner will not be able to utilize it, the owner suffers from obvious damage/harm. What has been "stolen" by piracy is however a hypothetical revenue for the software company.
It's not a very large amount of revenue being lost.
On all my jobs the management, co-workers and myself included, have been very thorough making sure we use licensed software for all commercial activity. At home, for private use is the alternative not to buy a license, but to refrain from getting the program."
I think this applies exactly to how most people feel about music floating around on the P2P services as well. Music they download they either have already on CD / LP / Cassette or it's a gamble of finding new artists / music types or it's for getting music which they would never by anyway (perhaps suiting for backround buzz).
Personally I can't stand crappy MP3 music in 128-160KBit when I have to output it through a stereo equipment $3000 worth. I buy the freaking CDs until the RIAA makes them unplayable.
With price per MB dropping, I've started to rip my CDs "raw" without encoding. Heck, Maxtor has 160G drives cheap as hell and IBM promises about 500G drives in a year or two. That means ripping via my stereos' optical-out in the future (bummer though).
Will the IP mafia ever realize that they are not gods? That shrink-wrap agreements have gotten out of hand?
What I'm tired of is the frigging control of HOW I use whatever I purchase.
If I buy SW there is a gazillion pages of things I can not do with it. (Music CDs don't have this because the book wouldn't fit in the slim case.)
Who do they think they are to tell me what to do? I paid for the damn thing, it's mine. I'll stick the disc in a toaster if I want to regardless of what they write in the accompanying bible of legal-pretend-mumbo-jumbo.
What makes the IP companies so special that they are allowed to do this?
What if every company acted this way? Imagine purchasing a car and when you get home you read the legal bible which states you can only use the car in the state of Oregon (Because that model is intended for Oregonians, but sales people are sales people..). Tough for you, you live in FL and disregard this as utter rubbish. The next day five guys in suits come by, serve you a court order and claim damage for breaking the contract. Impound your car and tough luck getting your $50000 back.
Hey you broke the stupid agreement. Yes it was stupid, but that's no excuse that will help you in court.
As up to now, all around the world, a few players have gotten a solid grasp of the market. They sign up local landlords etc. for 10 year contracts which makes it impossible to switch without moving.
In Sweden there is basically only one company having the entire market for broadband on cable, UPC, a Dutch company whose shares are plummeting.
Perhaps it's just a matter of time before I loose my connection as well.
However.. there have been grumblings about monopolistic behavior for a while, and perhaps things are about to change. Governments have been thinking about forcing the large companies holding the infrastructure (and the customers as hostages) to open up for new players to produce a competitive market.
Generally, I'm not pro-forcing when it comes to the "free market". Some companies have made major investments in fiber and other infrastructure and just doing a Robin Hood on them seems a little unjust, but what are the alternatives?
When a company gets too large and start controlling the market and start changing the rules, at least the US have some anti-monopoly (antitrust) law, which is supposed to work in theory at least.
Well at least we all (or most?) still have DSL alternatives, so no need to really get upset.
IBM already have a mature *nix OS.
Why should they spend money, resources, marketing et al to supply a product for a niche in which they already have a product?
(I personally like AIX better than Linux for it's reliability and the fabulous smit,*grin*, and would hate if they dropped it for some Linux distro.)
Going with a well established alternative product from a third party, if the customers want one is imho. their best alternative at present.
IBM is smart enough to see the benefit of open source (ex. XML4J which they gave Apache and the Eclipse project) and they use it themselves and refine it or even create the initial material. However, what they are doing is making sure that they don't have a situation where the wheel is invented twice. Thus keeping AIX and letting the "duplicate" RedHat Linux be managed by a third party. Thus XML4J to a third party (They already have a Lotus parser for ex.)..
And where would you draw the line?
:-).
At my current company I "signed my life away" as part of the employment contract.
The contract basically states that anything I create while being employed by the current employer will be theirs. It does not seem to matter if I create it on my personal computer and use none of the company's resources.
As a matter of fact, most of the things I've created have not been based on anything provided by the company (aside from company paperwork which I'd be happy to give them the rights to
Some software specific to integrate with the company's other software and hardware have I created on one of their Laptops. I could just as well have created everything on my own PCs, but since it's tied to stuff from the company (by use or intended use) I see no moral dilemma handing it to them.
The question is; where do you draw the line between what can be seen entitled to the company / university? If a CS student is "inventing" something and only uses his/her own equipment, is that enough to give him/her the rights to use it?
Do the universities include "knowledge", which the student paid to receive, as university "resource" and thus are eligible to make claims regardless? If CS students base all their work on material bought privately from, say "Amazon.com", would that be enough to get the University's IP hoard off their back?
For my part, I've seriously thought of jumping the boat next time I feel a discussion will come up about an "invention", claiming a patent, which I deem is valuable for a larger audience.This is before I make it known to the company.
As it is now, I might get a $5000 award for something regardless whether it's value is tens, hundreds or more.
Where are the rest of you standing on this delicate issue? How do you reason each time something you create are up for a patent?
A score of zero?
I though it was possible to mod up anonymous posts, or am I wrong in that assumption!?
Unfortunately I'm out of points, but the parent post, I think, deserves more than zero since it does point out some truths.
Good post.
A small comment. Having a separate web department handling everything related to the web effort might be viable for a large company.In the case of the company I work for, we have employees counting close to the same as a small country and creating departments for the tiniest detail is often not a problem. However, I see possible problems for companies not being of big blue's size or who are focusing on markets other than computers / IT (not having enough skills/resources in this area). Sometimes (personally I'd say often) it's better to leave information creation out of the IT related orgs. and let the IT people focus on the technical, functional aspects.
When it comes to conformity of the site and it's image, that can favourably be done by a function having this specific assignment.
I have not yet taken a look at what the company is doing for it's own site, perhaps it's worth a look though, as judging from the seminar you attended they seem to be doing this fairly well.
(My defence for ignorance: it's a large company and I don't have time to keep track of even 5% of what we're doing).
My experience tells me that separating information and function is essential and should be the first thing to do.
One of the more elegant approaches I've used here is having near 100% of the data on the site stored in a database (or databases).
(Performance is gained by good use of caching components in the application code)
Since you didn't describe what kind of functionality the "company" requires it's a bit more tricky to give a proposal on the technical side. However, going with a MVC (Model-View-Control) architecture will be fine regardless.
Application logic is run from and AS (Application Server) which is based upon templates for presentation. The templates could for be for ex. JSP pages using custom tags for creating the design of the pages. The data provided to the pages would be retrieved from the database by business objects and delivered (wrapped in data structure beans) to the JSP templates.
That way, you could have the designers focusing on creating templates, the programmers taking care of the business logic (and creating custom tags) and the database people making sure that the database is running at an optimal.
When it comes to updating information, I'd suggest spending some time creating a content mgmt. tool (not very hard), or let an outside company do it.
With this CMT "ordinary" employees could change the data without having to involve the IT department.
As for the organization structure regarding the web aspect, I'd suggest having each organization within the company appoint one responsible person, who is the one channelling and deciding what information will be allowed to be published on the site. This person can of couse appoint some other people whom have this authorization as well, but that is not for your IT group to decide or even bother with.
The focal points within each org. can send you an official request for people who should have the ability publish info and all you do is add these people as authorized users in the CMT application.
This way your group can focus on what you are good at while the other orgs. can do what they do best.
When a decision making person in an org. decide that some information is to be allowed to be published onto the site, they can enter the date and time for when the information goes live and press the "approve" button. The rest will be handled automatically.
As you see, this requires no specific restructuring of the company. Instead you can probably continue using a structure which the company has probably been using for years (and which is hopefully already working well).
I think it's important to realize that by utilizing the Web, companies do not have to radically change their way of working when it comes to publishing information. What was earlier published in press, ads, brochures etc. can be done much in the same way. The only difference is that a CMT tool is used instead of sending the info to the print house.
If you do not think your company will be able to create this kind of solution (provided this makes sense to you), I could probably get you in contact with one which have. In that case just drop me a line at: chris_7d0h.antijunk@yahoo.com
(Note remove the [.antijunk] spam protection from the address)
As for classifying Nuclear related facilities, I agree. I can't think of a good reason to have this available to people without professional interest.
Unfortunately I can imagine that the withdrawl will be drastic and include things which in fact DO have public interest, such as construction plans / locations of infrastructure, plans of coming constructions and other things which are interesting to ordinary people (weighing where to build houses, estimating real estate values etc.)
There are ofcourse more things than just construction plans which is of interest and could possibly be affected, but only time will tell.
> Prove this.
It was on 60 minutes I seem to recall.
Unfortunately I do not have a VCR and did not tape it.
Ask around and perhaps someone has it taped for your viewing pleasure.
> The rest of what you said is just a rehash of the argument that I addressed.
As for the rest, they were a direct response and explanation to the points you addressed.
What other answer did you expect?
This post if by far the most insightful one I've ever read on slash dot!
It deserves to be placed on a much needed "Hall of 50 top posts" on this board.
As Vectus wrote on another thread:
This applies to classification as well. Why would politicians do anything wrong intentially or otherwise? *gee* I don't know. Seriously. As history has shown; when someone become part of an elite group (ruling body for ex.) ideas and values often change (to a bit or more). As for people needed to be re-elected. Well there is a single digit number of people who you vote for (a few more for congress). At the same time there are millions of people working withing the gvt. Most of the decisions and actions which affect you are not taken by people on whom you can vote. Also, not everyone sees re-election as gods ends. As one becomes part of a group (any group) one widens one's social network. In this case people in higher positions within gvt. will have an easy way to get appointed to other important offices later on (places without much scrutiny from the public for ex.). This unofficial way to "walk around the top" makes the need for reelection a bit less important than it had been, had all positions of importance been voted on. Note, this situation is by no means unique for the US, but was given to emphasize why all is not as ideal as can be in a democratic system."Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
- Plato
The only way the great mass of citizen can affect wrong doings is by knowing about them and harassing their few elected representatives in the hope that they will make a difference. If people are not informed the system will colapse or be turned into a whatever the ruling body would like it to be.
Well, the press is hardly where one turns for reliable information.
Ex. CNN has on several occations made it clear that they are bias in reporting news. Especially the Gulf war was heavily angled. "Precision bombs" hitting home, while later revealing they missed 80-90% of their targets!
CNN is imho the least trusted source for information.
When it comes to general info. gathering, I can think of a number of better ways. None of which includes the media.
Heck, if I want to know something I just call and talk to someone directly informed, seek someone who was previously involved or who is otherwise related to the type of info I'm interested in.
Ofcourse all info must be weighed and given a "reliability classification" in order to reach the truth.
As a non-US citizen I have had no problem what-so-ever to get hold of whatever information I have been interested (regarding US, US-companies etc.). (Note I'm NOT a terrorist, just a regular Joe who, like anyone else, have the need to know things related to what I do).
By your governments decision to yank stuff from your public info. houses (libraries, public service houses et al) I see that the only the loosers are the american public. This will not affect one bit from where I get my information.
I assume the same is true for anyone looking to cause harm as well!
As someone else said, this feels like your government is taking maximum opportunity of a tragic incident to restrict your way of life and further convert your great nation into a totalitary police- / corporate ruled state.
I'll have to re-evaluate the idea of migrating to the US since your country seem to become ever less appealing to live in.
Exactly, and here is the big flaw in the reasoning of the music companies.
They admit that the protection will not stop "real crackers" / pirates but will prevent "casual Joe" from doing copies.
Now.. What does the music companies think casual Joe uses to make copies?
Hey, suprise, the same tools as the pirates!
This means that the protection will be useless for even casual copying.
Then what will the net result be? Well it will make everyone very pissed until "Frank Cracker" has figured out how to evade the protection, publised his findings onto the Net and X hundred of developers have made their own clones based upon these findings. These clones will be "Grandma" friendly and casual Joe will migrate to these tools.
The Music companies (still not getting it) will close the circle which has been going on since decades, by suing randomly, creating a new protection, releasing that to the public, it being cracked and the circle spin on and on.
It's amazing that IP interest groups haven't learned one bit in the last decades. Piracy has nothing to do with technology. It's a mindset that something is not right (or that it is the right thing to do?).
.. Or, the IP interest groups are the only ones sane on this planet, since 99,9% (rough estimation, I have no figures to back this claim) of the inhabitants of this planet do in fact have "pirated IP property" (Never mind that many hold these legally since laws differ from contry to country).
And the off-topic warning remains.
...
I agree with you, in principle.
However, it was a jest to the "Scientific Community" at large.
There is a disturbing pattern which re-emerge again and again.
Lights please (example x2)..
- - - - - - - - -
HSCS: The world is flat.
TSCL: THE WORLD IS FLAT.
SWNI: No it's round.
TSCL: SHUT UP! STONE HIM!
... a few hundred years pass by
HSCS: Acupuncture is bogus. That it works more often than western medicine in some areas are pure coincidence. If it had worked we would already have thought of it.
TSCL: ACUPUNCTURE IS A JOKE!!
SWNI: But I took this idea from people who have practiced it and cured people for thousands of years.
TSCL: BOGUUUUS! THAT PROVES NOTHING! WE FORBID YOU FROM PRACTICE CHARLATAN! SUE HER!
- - - - - - - - -
HSCS = High Standing Contemporary Scientist.
SWNI = Scientist With New (/outrageous) Ideas.
TSCL = The Scientific Community at Large.
Hrm.. yes...
True, and here I think you came upon something interesting (I choose to comment instead of modding it).
:)
Why are the Internet prices so similar to the ones in the retail stores?
One might guess that not having large buildings in attractive and central areas along with a bundle of employees to fill the stores out would some how cost less money. One might also imagine that a new start-up Internet company does not have the financial leverage to get as good deals with their distributors as the large giants have.
So, what conclusions can be drawn from this (if any)?
As I see it, either one of the following might explain the situation.
* The price difference between a large and local retailer and an internet start-up is almost non-existing, since the distributors take a higher cut of the pie for the small firm than for the larger one. (The fat distributors get a higher fat/order ratio from a small firm than from a large one
* The small Internet company does indeed have high margins and earn a lot on each sale. If that money turns into profit is probably depending on a lot of other factors (such as the cost of the jet-set life of the employees in the internet start-up *grin*)
* The large companies are so financially strong that they can afford to do a Microsoft.
(That is sell at a loss and thus provide more value-add for each sale until the weaker competition has starved to death).
Regardless, I don't see why Internet based companies should have any special benefits. Especially as consumers are not seeing the benefits in the form of reduced prices.
If the companies can not turn a profit, then they have an invalid business model or a wrong company structure. This is a question of ordinary company management and is not unique to the Internet.