This is not the case. When I said I analyzed where the spam came from, it took the location of the company behind the spam into account (the company advertising).
Most spam was regarding mortgages, penile enlargement, pornography and dodgy degrees - all from the US.
From Canada I got spam re cheaper generic medications
The little spam I got from China was mostly re pirated software, and some fake "Viagra".
I welcome any effort to reduce Spam anywhere. However, I just went through the hassle of analyzing what has been caught inmy spam trap today: 243 spam messages total of which 4 (four!) apparently came from China. 7 came from Russia, 1 came from Germany 19 I haven't been able to work out yet the rest comes from... USA. That's 212 out of 243, or almost a whopping 90%
Guys, the problem is with the good old US, at least for the spam I receive. The legislation there is not biting at all.
Anybody got a link regarding larger and long term spam statistics re country of origin?
"Ok, folks, read it; and keep it in mind when you hear a political candidate, of either party, tell you that Iraqis aren't better off."
Oh yes? Then read this: two decades ago I spent time in Iraq. It was always a relief crossing the borders into that country because it felt so "Western": unveiled women to which you could actually talk on the streets, no curfews, intellectual discussion.
Then, some insane "world leader" decided to use far away Iraq as it's warhound against the building up fundamentalism in neighbouring Iran. This insane leader gave Iraq money to buy weapons and sent military people to train them. We all know what came out of this. Both Iraq and Iran being bombed into stone age, countless civilians dead or starving, and fundamentalists getting the boost of their lifes.
Now another insane leader of the same country invaded Iraq, destroyed virtually all infrastructure, and possibly killed more civilians than the dictator Iraq was suffering from during his whole regency. All this just so that they can pilfer Iraq's oil and boost their own rotten economy (of which only the trade deficit can impress nowadays) with lucrative rebuilding contracts
Reality check: the US are the only country having such ridiculous cryptography export regulations. Much of cryptographic research goes on in Europe and other countries (Where do you think the Rijndael algorithm came from ? Or the GnuPG suite?), and these countries actually practice freedom instead of just preaching it. Hence, regardless of what US regulations pretend to do, you could always get top notch cryptographic software anywhere in the world. Including Iraq. The US might as well have attempted to regulate which country is allowed to get a share of sun shine.
I am a physician too. For me, it was the other way around - I used the profits of my sucessful IT business to study medicine while providing a living for wife and kids.
In both careers I am/was earning reasonably well, a nice 6 figure. Money is not the difference.
The important thing is: do whatever you think you can do well, with *passion*. Do what you would do even if you wouldn't get money for it. Money is just a bonus, your well done work should be satisfying in itself.
For me, this formula worked well. I am still doing some IT contract work on the side for fun and pleasure, bust mostly health related open source projects (like gnumed.net, or drugref.org).Software engineering now is my hobby, medicine my passion, and money just happens. Plenty of it, since my passion for both guarantees "customer satisfaction" which transmogrifies somehow into hard bucks. I have far more patients than I can cope with, and more lucrative IT contract offers than I can even read.
If employment prospects scare you into studying or training for a job you potentially dislike, you have lost before you even start. If you can't achieve what you want in one country, move to another - the world is large, full of opportunities (I have been working on four continents in search of the greenest pasture, and ended up in Australia)
Everybody hates paying taxes - to a degree. Interesting again, when Norwegians were asked in a referendum whether they have rather tax cuts or improvements on their public health system, they opted for the latter.
Look at it that way: what ultimately counts is your general satisfaction with your life. Fear considerably dimishes quality of life. As Michael Moore so nicely pointed it out in "Bowling for Columbine", the US live in a culture of fear. Which is sad, because this fear destroys the many good things the US would have to offer otherwise.
If you are alone (not married, no kids) and young, fearing health problems might not be a big deal. But for the majority of the population it is. It is a different scenario when you are diagnosed with cancer or diabetes and you have 4 young kids - then all of a sudden quality health care availability becomes the centre of your life. There is no month I don't get at least one young patient struck by an unexpected health problem that would be beyond their means to "finance" if it wasn't for our public health system.
Just face it (look at the available statistics): the US health system does not work. It costs almost twice as much as other systems with comparable outcome. If you save $10,000 in tax, but spend $20,000 on health - where are the savings? There is only one group benefitting: the share holders of HMOs and especially their CEOs.
And even if you are not ill yourself - poor publci health can have devastating effects on any economy. Think of sick days, early retirement, poor productivity, child care expenses etc.
Not a cheap shot. It is actually the achilles heel of the USA (poor health care and poor public education): the USA spend more than most countries on health, yet they have a rather mediocre outcome at best as compared to OECD standards. Health is no business, it is compassionate help for which skilled professionals should get adequate remuneration regardless whether their "client" can afford it or not.
I have practised as a a surgeon and family doctor in Germany (mixed private/public system), Norway (100% public system) and now in Australia (again mixed system), so I can compare a bit. I also have spent some time in the US, but not practising as a doctor there.
Interestingly, Norway has the best overall outcome - at about half the cost of the US health system. In terms of UN criteria, Norway has the highest overall standard of living, and one of the highest life expectancies in the whole world (the US just ranging in a middle field there, now why is that?)
To come back to your statement: it is NOT true that everyone has a fair chance, especially not in health. Diabetics in the USA fair among the worst of all OECD countries for lack of access to affordable medication, for example. I was apalled by the number of late diabetic complications I saw in the US, something that is pretty much history and rarely seen any more in the countries I have been practising.
To make this reply on topic: the correlation between free and timely access to healthcare and overcoming addictions of any kind has been demonstrated many times.
There is a reason why many European countries provide free college education: It keeps a lot of young people off of the unemployment statistics.
This may well be. But consider this: - Is it better to send people for which the employment market has currently no good use to university in order to learn something that might make the useful, or... - is it better to create fictive non-productive jobs for them, of which some (like lawyers) will create considerable harm to society?
Don't misunderstand me: I deem law a honourable and much needed profession; only if you produce too many of lawyers, they stop doing something useful and start harming society in a devastating way, as the example of the USA so well demonstrates. This includes of cause these dreaded IP and patent excesses.
However, If I were a textbook author, I still would legitimately feel I had been ripped off if someone were to copy my work.
This might surprise you - but most medical text book authors don't get a cent for their work. And some medical publishers even operate in "cost recovery mode", meaning they don't expect to make a profit, happy if they can cover their costs.
I know this because I did co-author a pharmacological text book, and I know it too from quite a number of first class medical text book authors.
The goal of writing a medical text book is spreading knowledge. The reward for this work is peer recognition and perhaps increasing influence (power?), but certainly not money.
And I'm sure that your medical school was quite willing to do the same for you free of charge, right?
Actually... YES! Neither in Germany nor in Norway where I studied and did my specialist training in General Surgery students or trainees have to pay a single cent for tuition. It is taxpayer funded, because it is an excellent investment for the taxpayer. Countries doing this get a lot better bang for buck than those corporatising their universities. They tend to have higher life expectancy, higher numeracy, higher literacy, less child and maternal morbidity and mortality etc - meaning they fare better in all objective criteria of quality of life.
Now I live in Australia. Here, students have to pay. I feel sorry for those really gifted people not able to afford uni, while a lot of morons make it with the help of rich parents pushing them through private schools. This changes society. From the current "fair go" to a society where morons and brown nosers rule. Sad.
... but the ideas behind free software are incomprehensible to non-programmers...
How wrong can one be. What makes you think so? In my profession (medicine), knowledge is completely unlicensed. If you are interested in a particular piece of knowledge, like how to operate a hernia - I am happy to share this with you. No royalties, no licensing fees. You may have to pay for my time if you need me to teach you, buts that's all. After that, you can do whatever you like with your knowledge - share it, multiply it, APPLY it!
It is even tradition in my profession to provide services for free to those who can't afford them - in most countries legislation even compells us to do so (in most civilized countries, a doctor cannot walk away unpunished from a patient in danger of life or limb regardless whether the patient is able to pay anything for the services rendered).
"IP" however is an artefact created by people who either see their purpose in life in amassing as much money as possible regardless of the damage they do to society or by people who would not have any purpose at all if they wouldn't create such artefacts.
Doctors all over the world are fighting drug patents and similar "IP" that actually kill more people every single day than the whole gulf war did.
We certainly have no sympathy for putting people into jail for replicating an indefinite ressource. How can you steal what can be replicated indefinitely?
Not free - not interested
on
Kylix in Limbo
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· Score: 5, Insightful
On Linux, there is a cornucopia of free programming languages and tool boxes ready to use. Why then should I use a commercial closed implementation of a proprietary non-standard language with non-standard libraries, not portable beyond merely Linux and Windows, and then only some versions of those?
I don't mind spending big bucks on good tools. After all, it is magnitudes more expensive to familairize oneself with new tools than actually buying them. But I do mind when my favourite tools suddenly become deprecated at the mere whim of a corporate - and Borland has a poor track record here.
Thus, no matter how good the performance of Kylix, and no matter how excellent and slick the IDE and libraries, I would not touch it with a ten foot pole unless I have some guarantee that I will be able to access the full source when I really need to.
Most people knowledgeable enough to develop on Linux have been burnt in the past by proprietary tools, have learnt expensive and painful lessons that way. Never more! Our freedom is too precious to sell out ever again.
The author is commiting a grave error in his assessment, stemming from not understanding what he is talking about.
"Free software" as we understand the term nowadays is all about basic freedoms, not about getting a free ride. The freedom to inspect and modify for example, and the freedom to reuse.
The annual IT budget of our clinic is about $30,000. Most of that money goes into "free software" development. We pay software engineers per project or per hour, and we pay decent. But once a project is completed, it belongs to us. And we release it under the GPL.
It makes economical sense: if everybody does the same, developers still get paid well for their work, and everybody can build and extend upon an increasing heap of quality software components.
Everybody wins, only the big coporates depending on cutomer lock in would lose out. I wouldn't shed a tear for them.
I quote: "We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support, but it's FREE and we get the ability to modify the source code ourselves, something that is extremely dangerous to do, was discredited decades ago, and few people do anyway."
Doesn't really require a comment. Discredits the author, just shows that he hasn't got a clue. This would not matter, would this person not be in the position he is. That level of incompetence is shocking.
I am a medical doctor with a past history as software engineer. I run a paperless clinic (Dorrigo Medical Centre). There may be situations where patient's lifes depend on what our software does or doesn't do, not just the flawless running of a university department. To us and our patients, robustness and reliability of software is crucial.
Yet we use free software to this purpose, almost to exclusion. Why? Trust. Peer review. Accountability. All issues not covered by shrink wrap software with general disclaimers, where the end user is disempowered to the degree of a mere slave.
We never would pur our patients at risk by using software of a company with such abysmal reputation regarding stability, reliability and security such as Microsoft. We don't trust free software either right our of the box for that matter - but here at least we can investigate and verify, or pay competent people to do it for us.
Shame on this man and his unsubstantiated statements. Reality check strongly recommended (like what software is keeping the Internet alive and working, and what software is running some of the worlds most powerful and expensive computers liek Blue Gene)
Dr Horst Herb, MD Principal, Dorrigo Medical Centre, Australia Management Committee Member, General Practice Computing Group
In our medical centre, we use Linux to exclusion. On the desktop, on the server. And we are happy that way.
What's more, we couldn't care less what RedHat does or doesn't, recommends or thinks. We don't need them, never did. We use Debian.
If there is one thing we believe that has slowed Linux' uptake on the desktop, it is RPM - RedHat's package management. Would they have settled for the vastly superior Debian package management system - where could we be today?
But then, freeing customers from these artificial update cycles would mean losing revenue, losing stronghold on customers, and what corporate entity likes that idea?
We are experienced in writing standard database applications with standard audit trails (for example our health record system at http://www.gnumed.net). In fact, as you can see from the drugref.org website, we are using a PostgreSQL based drug database at present.
However, the granularity of versioning and audit trailing typically used in relational daabases does not suit our needs, see my coments to other replies.
As far as "being employable" goes: I don't. I do employ people, including doctors, since I am in the fortunate position of owning my own clinic (http://www.dorrigomedical.com) and being completely independent.:-) If somebody comes up with a really smart solution, I might employ him as developer.
What I don't seem to have made clear enough that this is about highly structured data that needs to be modified by hundreds of health professionals with little to no knowledge from a multitude of different platforms.
Hence, we need a web interface and cannot use a more suitable tool like a XML editor which would enforce compliance of entered data with a DTD.
For medicolegal and other reasons, we need to be able to backtrack which junk of information has been modified by whom and when.
Currently, as you can see from our web site, we are using a PHP driven web frontend for a highly normalized database running on PostgreSQL. Data entry and display works fine, but the audit trailing still doesn't - gets rather complex.
Our scope goes beyond the Merck Index. Correctness of data is checked by peer review. We have literally hundreds of volunteering qualified physicians and pharmacologists to perform data entry and peer review - any hands make any work small.
The medicolegal aspect of it is exactly the reason why we need a finer granularity of database auditing than most projects do.
Our intended "customers" (our work is free in every aspect!) are health professionals wanting to use independent medical software and decision support - which is probably the majority of non-corporate doctors. We need the database desperately for our own health software project (http://www.gnumed.net)
Just to make clear that I do understand the implications: I am a M.D. with dual qualification in informatics, writing health domain software (mostly pharmaceutical simulations) for more than 15 years. Our core contributors have similar qualifications.
This is about collaborating on highly structured data. We can't require users to run specific software, it must run via web interface. In fact, currently we are using PostgreSQL as backend and a simple web interface as frontend.
The problem is the version tracking - assigning authorship to the differences between records - since no matter how normalized a record (table row) is, it might always have a number of authors. OTOH, this tracking/auditing must not obfuscate the record text (inline tagging not feasible)
One would think that events like this one would be an eye opener for the industry. It proves once again that Microsoft's band-aid approach to security is not acceptable; a guaranteed recipe for disaster, downtime, and loss of data.
Especially in the realm of database servers where updates are always applied with reluctance (downtime, data corruption) one should reasonably expect more proactive development from a vendor instead of this "let's release it, cash in some upgrade money, and see what happens - we can always patch it later".
I never have understood how anybody in his right mind would use MS SQL server, even if it would be free:
the only SQL server that runs only on one single platform
and worse, it runs only at a platform that will always have this unneccessary resource wasting and server destabilizing GUI! I mean, a server is a server, there is absolutely no point in having a GUI on it.
Given that there are so many excellent choices out there (PostgreSQL, SAP-DB, Interbase/Phoenix, Oracle to name a few), ranging from free to expensive, can please anybody name me one single good reason why MS SQL is used?
What makes you believe that the EU is not a democracy? The EU is a loose union of independent nations, which are all democratic - some more, others less.
In fact, some of the EU nations are definitely more democratic than the USA. Especially Norway, where Jon has been tried (and won, though appeal is on the way).
In these countries, elections are not a commercialized spectacle or a farce. Courts are not just the brainless muscles of the corporates, and individuals do stand a chance in court. After all, legal expenses in Jons case were born by the public system, he wouldn't have faced ruin as he would have in the states even if he would have lost.
It is rather issues like Sklyarovs illegal detention (by international legal standards) that scare me and reveal which country respects basic human rights and which doesn't give a hoot.
By looking superficially at this issue, you would be right. However, there are issues at stake that are more important than the revenue of a single company, no matter how big.
This issue is foreign relations. The war mongering is already antagonizing most of the world against the USA, with the UK and Australia possibly being the last official allies - thus anything to antagonize the people in other countries further may cost the US very dearly in the future. Hegemonialism and imperialism are attitudes that do not stand in high regard any more.
I am a doctor, operating a group practice. Each day, we burn 8 CDs and 2 DVDs - data backups of our health recordsand financial records. That is 2920 blank CDs and 730 DVDs a year, coasters not counted. I can account for every single medium I burn - I have to in fact, for tax deduction reasons.
I do not pirate copy CDs or DVDs (I do not even own a TV, and in our waiting room we play exclusively recordings from local artists), thus my patience with those shameless parasites (RIAA, APRA and the likes) has reached the limits.
What right do they have to abuse law abiding citizens and steal their money? Yes, steal, sine they would take my money against my will without giving anything in return.
Their wrists should be smacked forcefully and repeatedly, and they should be subjected to a class action for libel.
> Is the United States still the best choice of a place to live for safety, freedom, and quality of life?
Was it ever? People from many countries like Australia, Germany or Scandinavia think twice before travelling to the US because of the shocking crime rate. You certainly live safer elsewhere, especially here in Australia:-).
Quality of life? Check the WHO ratings for that,... the US don't score well there either. Little wonder with a virtually non existing public health or welfare system, no job security, and virtually no privacy - let alone complete lack of decent public education.
After living & working on 4 continents (and I have been in the US about 30 times), I certainly know that the US would not be the place where I raise my children - because they do need safety and quality of life!
Slashdot Mirror
This is not the case. When I said I analyzed where the spam came from, it took the location of the company behind the spam into account (the company advertising).
Most spam was regarding mortgages, penile enlargement, pornography and dodgy degrees - all from the US.
From Canada I got spam re cheaper generic medications
The little spam I got from China was mostly re pirated software, and some fake "Viagra".
I welcome any effort to reduce Spam anywhere. ... USA. That's 212 out of 243, or almost a whopping 90%
However, I just went through the hassle of analyzing what has been caught inmy spam trap today:
243 spam messages total
of which
4 (four!) apparently came from China.
7 came from Russia,
1 came from Germany
19 I haven't been able to work out yet
the rest comes from
Guys, the problem is with the good old US, at least for the spam I receive. The legislation there is not biting at all.
Anybody got a link regarding larger and long term spam statistics re country of origin?
Oh yes? Then read this: two decades ago I spent time in Iraq. It was always a relief crossing the borders into that country because it felt so "Western": unveiled women to which you could actually talk on the streets, no curfews, intellectual discussion.
Then, some insane "world leader" decided to use far away Iraq as it's warhound against the building up fundamentalism in neighbouring Iran. This insane leader gave Iraq money to buy weapons and sent military people to train them. We all know what came out of this. Both Iraq and Iran being bombed into stone age, countless civilians dead or starving, and fundamentalists getting the boost of their lifes.
Now another insane leader of the same country invaded Iraq, destroyed virtually all infrastructure, and possibly killed more civilians than the dictator Iraq was suffering from during his whole regency. All this just so that they can pilfer Iraq's oil and boost their own rotten economy (of which only the trade deficit can impress nowadays) with lucrative rebuilding contracts
Wow, improvement. I am impressed.
Reality check: the US are the only country having such ridiculous cryptography export regulations. Much of cryptographic research goes on in Europe and other countries (Where do you think the Rijndael algorithm came from ? Or the GnuPG suite?), and these countries actually practice freedom instead of just preaching it. Hence, regardless of what US regulations pretend to do, you could always get top notch cryptographic software anywhere in the world. Including Iraq. The US might as well have attempted to regulate which country is allowed to get a share of sun shine.
I am a physician too. For me, it was the other way around - I used the profits of my sucessful IT business to study medicine while providing a living for wife and kids.
In both careers I am/was earning reasonably well, a nice 6 figure. Money is not the difference.
The important thing is: do whatever you think you can do well, with *passion*. Do what you would do even if you wouldn't get money for it. Money is just a bonus, your well done work should be satisfying in itself.
For me, this formula worked well. I am still doing some IT contract work on the side for fun and pleasure, bust mostly health related open source projects (like gnumed.net, or drugref.org).Software engineering now is my hobby, medicine my passion, and money just happens. Plenty of it, since my passion for both guarantees "customer satisfaction" which transmogrifies somehow into hard bucks. I have far more patients than I can cope with, and more lucrative IT contract offers than I can even read.
If employment prospects scare you into studying or training for a job you potentially dislike, you have lost before you even start. If you can't achieve what you want in one country, move to another - the world is large, full of opportunities (I have been working on four continents in search of the greenest pasture, and ended up in Australia)
Everybody hates paying taxes - to a degree. Interesting again, when Norwegians were asked in a referendum whether they have rather tax cuts or improvements on their public health system, they opted for the latter.
Look at it that way: what ultimately counts is your general satisfaction with your life. Fear considerably dimishes quality of life. As Michael Moore so nicely pointed it out in "Bowling for Columbine", the US live in a culture of fear. Which is sad, because this fear destroys the many good things the US would have to offer otherwise.
If you are alone (not married, no kids) and young, fearing health problems might not be a big deal. But for the majority of the population it is. It is a different scenario when you are diagnosed with cancer or diabetes and you have 4 young kids - then all of a sudden quality health care availability becomes the centre of your life. There is no month I don't get at least one young patient struck by an unexpected health problem that would be beyond their means to "finance" if it wasn't for our public health system.
Just face it (look at the available statistics): the US health system does not work. It costs almost twice as much as other systems with comparable outcome. If you save $10,000 in tax, but spend $20,000 on health - where are the savings? There is only one group benefitting: the
share holders of HMOs and especially their CEOs.
And even if you are not ill yourself - poor publci health can have devastating effects on any economy. Think of sick days, early retirement, poor productivity, child care expenses etc.
Not a cheap shot. It is actually the achilles heel of the USA (poor health care and poor public education): the USA spend more than most countries on health, yet they have a rather mediocre outcome at best as compared to OECD standards. Health is no business, it is compassionate help for which skilled professionals should get adequate remuneration regardless whether their "client" can afford it or not.
I have practised as a a surgeon and family doctor in Germany (mixed private/public system), Norway (100% public system) and now in Australia (again mixed system), so I can compare a bit. I also have spent some time in the US, but not practising as a doctor there.
Interestingly, Norway has the best overall outcome - at about half the cost of the US health system. In terms of UN criteria, Norway has the highest overall standard of living, and one of the highest life expectancies in the whole world (the US just ranging in a middle field there, now why is that?)
To come back to your statement: it is NOT true that everyone has a fair chance, especially not in health. Diabetics in the USA fair among the worst of all OECD countries for lack of access to affordable medication, for example. I was apalled by the number of late diabetic complications I saw in the US, something that is pretty much history and rarely seen any more in the countries I have been practising.
To make this reply on topic: the correlation between free and timely access to healthcare and overcoming addictions of any kind has been demonstrated many times.
There is a reason why many European countries provide free college education: It keeps a lot of young people off of the unemployment statistics.
...
This may well be. But consider this:
- Is it better to send people for which the employment market has currently no good use to university in order to learn something that might make the useful, or
- is it better to create fictive non-productive jobs for them, of which some (like lawyers) will create considerable harm to society?
Don't misunderstand me: I deem law a honourable and much needed profession; only if you produce too many of lawyers, they stop doing something useful and start harming society in a devastating way, as the example of the USA so well demonstrates. This includes of cause these dreaded IP and patent excesses.
However, If I were a textbook author, I still would legitimately feel I had been ripped off if someone were to copy my work.
This might surprise you - but most medical text book authors don't get a cent for their work. And some medical publishers even operate in "cost recovery mode", meaning they don't expect to make a profit, happy if they can cover their costs.
I know this because I did co-author a pharmacological text book, and I know it too from quite a number of first class medical text book authors.
The goal of writing a medical text book is spreading knowledge. The reward for this work is peer recognition and perhaps increasing influence (power?), but certainly not money.
And I'm sure that your medical school was quite willing to do the same for you free of charge, right?
Actually... YES! Neither in Germany nor in Norway where I studied and did my specialist training in General Surgery students or trainees have to pay a single cent for tuition. It is taxpayer funded, because it is an excellent investment for the taxpayer. Countries doing this get a lot better bang for buck than those corporatising their universities. They tend to have higher life expectancy, higher numeracy, higher literacy, less child and maternal morbidity and mortality etc - meaning they fare better in all objective criteria of quality of life.
Now I live in Australia. Here, students have to pay. I feel sorry for those really gifted people not able to afford uni, while a lot of morons make it with the help of rich parents pushing them through private schools. This changes society. From the current "fair go" to a society where morons and brown nosers rule. Sad.
... but the ideas behind free software are incomprehensible to non-programmers ...
How wrong can one be. What makes you think so? In my profession (medicine), knowledge is completely unlicensed. If you are interested in a particular piece of knowledge, like how to operate a hernia - I am happy to share this with you. No royalties, no licensing fees. You may have to pay for my time if you need me to teach you, buts that's all. After that, you can do whatever you like with your knowledge - share it, multiply it, APPLY it!
It is even tradition in my profession to provide services for free to those who can't afford them - in most countries legislation even compells us to do so (in most civilized countries, a doctor cannot walk away unpunished from a patient in danger of life or limb regardless whether the patient is able to pay anything for the services rendered).
"IP" however is an artefact created by people who either see their purpose in life in amassing as much money as possible regardless of the damage they do to society or by people who would not have any purpose at all if they wouldn't create such artefacts.
Doctors all over the world are fighting drug patents and similar "IP" that actually kill more people every single day than the whole gulf war did.
We certainly have no sympathy for putting people into jail for replicating an indefinite ressource. How can you steal what can be replicated indefinitely?
On Linux, there is a cornucopia of free programming languages and tool boxes ready to use. Why then should I use a commercial closed implementation of a proprietary non-standard language with non-standard libraries, not portable beyond merely Linux and Windows, and then only some versions of those?
I don't mind spending big bucks on good tools. After all, it is magnitudes more expensive to familairize oneself with new tools than actually buying them. But I do mind when my favourite tools suddenly become deprecated at the mere whim of a corporate - and Borland has a poor track record here.
Thus, no matter how good the performance of Kylix, and no matter how excellent and slick the IDE and libraries, I would not touch it with a ten foot pole unless I have some guarantee that I will be able to access the full source when I really need to.
Most people knowledgeable enough to develop on Linux have been burnt in the past by proprietary tools, have learnt expensive and painful lessons that way. Never more! Our freedom is too precious to sell out ever again.
The author is commiting a grave error in his assessment, stemming from not understanding what he is talking about.
"Free software" as we understand the term nowadays is all about basic freedoms, not about getting a free ride. The freedom to inspect and modify for example, and the freedom to reuse.
The annual IT budget of our clinic is about $30,000. Most of that money goes into "free software" development. We pay software engineers per project or per hour, and we pay decent. But once a project is completed, it belongs to us. And we release it under the GPL.
It makes economical sense: if everybody does the same, developers still get paid well for their work, and everybody can build and extend upon an increasing heap of quality software components.
Everybody wins, only the big coporates depending on cutomer lock in would lose out. I wouldn't shed a tear for them.
I quote: "We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support, but it's FREE and we get the ability to modify the source code ourselves, something that is extremely dangerous to do, was discredited decades ago, and few people do anyway."
Doesn't really require a comment. Discredits the author, just shows that he hasn't got a clue. This would not matter, would this person not be in the position he is. That level of incompetence is shocking.
I am a medical doctor with a past history as software engineer. I run a paperless clinic (Dorrigo Medical Centre). There may be situations where patient's lifes depend on what our software does or doesn't do, not just the flawless running of a university department. To us and our patients, robustness and reliability of software is crucial.
Yet we use free software to this purpose, almost to exclusion. Why? Trust. Peer review. Accountability. All issues not covered by shrink wrap software with general disclaimers, where the end user is disempowered to the degree of a mere slave.
We never would pur our patients at risk by using software of a company with such abysmal reputation regarding stability, reliability and security such as Microsoft. We don't trust free software either right our of the box for that matter - but here at least we can investigate and verify, or pay competent people to do it for us.
Shame on this man and his unsubstantiated statements. Reality check strongly recommended (like what software is keeping the Internet alive and working, and what software is running some of the worlds most powerful and expensive computers liek Blue Gene)
Dr Horst Herb, MD
Principal, Dorrigo Medical Centre, Australia
Management Committee Member, General Practice Computing Group
In our medical centre, we use Linux to exclusion. On the desktop, on the server. And we are happy that way.
What's more, we couldn't care less what RedHat does or doesn't, recommends or thinks. We don't need them, never did. We use Debian.
If there is one thing we believe that has slowed Linux' uptake on the desktop, it is RPM - RedHat's package management. Would they have settled for the vastly superior Debian package management system - where could we be today?
But then, freeing customers from these artificial update cycles would mean losing revenue, losing stronghold on customers, and what corporate entity likes that idea?
We are experienced in writing standard database applications with standard audit trails (for example our health record system at http://www.gnumed.net). In fact, as you can see from the drugref.org website, we are using a PostgreSQL based drug database at present.
:-) If somebody comes up with a really smart solution, I might employ him as developer.
However, the granularity of versioning and audit trailing typically used in relational daabases does not suit our needs, see my coments to other replies.
As far as "being employable" goes: I don't. I do employ people, including doctors, since I am in the fortunate position of owning my own clinic (http://www.dorrigomedical.com) and being completely independent.
What I don't seem to have made clear enough that this is about highly structured data that needs to be modified by hundreds of health professionals with little to no knowledge from a multitude of different platforms.
Hence, we need a web interface and cannot use a more suitable tool like a XML editor which would enforce compliance of entered data with a DTD.
For medicolegal and other reasons, we need to be able to backtrack which junk of information has been modified by whom and when.
Currently, as you can see from our web site, we are using a PHP driven web frontend for a highly normalized database running on PostgreSQL. Data entry and display works fine, but the audit trailing still doesn't - gets rather complex.
Our scope goes beyond the Merck Index.
Correctness of data is checked by peer review.
We have literally hundreds of volunteering qualified physicians and pharmacologists to perform data entry and peer review - any hands make any work small.
The medicolegal aspect of it is exactly the reason why we need a finer granularity of database auditing than most projects do.
Our intended "customers" (our work is free in every aspect!) are health professionals wanting to use independent medical software and decision support - which is probably the majority of non-corporate doctors. We need the database desperately for our own health software project (http://www.gnumed.net)
Just to make clear that I do understand the implications: I am a M.D. with dual qualification in informatics, writing health domain software (mostly pharmaceutical simulations) for more than 15 years. Our core contributors have similar qualifications.
We ARE using Postgresql and PHP currently. But the problem is NOT solved.
Just copying the whole record for autit purposes does not help, since we need to assign authorship to the changes, not to the whole record.
This is about collaborating on highly structured data. We can't require users to run specific software, it must run via web interface. In fact, currently we are using PostgreSQL as backend and a simple web interface as frontend.
The problem is the version tracking - assigning authorship to the differences between records - since no matter how normalized a record (table row) is, it might always have a number of authors. OTOH, this tracking/auditing must not obfuscate the record text (inline tagging not feasible)
Alas, not as simple as it looks.
Especially in the realm of database servers where updates are always applied with reluctance (downtime, data corruption) one should reasonably expect more proactive development from a vendor instead of this "let's release it, cash in some upgrade money, and see what happens - we can always patch it later".
I never have understood how anybody in his right mind would use MS SQL server, even if it would be free:
- the only SQL server that runs only on one single platform
- and worse, it runs only at a platform that will always have this unneccessary resource wasting and server destabilizing GUI! I mean, a server is a server, there is absolutely no point in having a GUI on it.
Given that there are so many excellent choices out there (PostgreSQL, SAP-DB, Interbase/Phoenix, Oracle to name a few), ranging from free to expensive, can please anybody name me one single good reason why MS SQL is used?What makes you believe that the EU is not a democracy? The EU is a loose union of independent nations, which are all democratic - some more, others less.
In fact, some of the EU nations are definitely more democratic than the USA. Especially Norway, where Jon has been tried (and won, though appeal is on the way).
In these countries, elections are not a commercialized spectacle or a farce. Courts are not just the brainless muscles of the corporates, and individuals do stand a chance in court. After all, legal expenses in Jons case were born by the public system, he wouldn't have faced ruin as he would have in the states even if he would have lost.
It is rather issues like Sklyarovs illegal detention (by international legal standards) that scare me and reveal which country respects basic human rights and which doesn't give a hoot.
Horst
By looking superficially at this issue, you would be right. However, there are issues at stake that are more important than the revenue of a single company, no matter how big.
This issue is foreign relations. The war mongering is already antagonizing most of the world against the USA, with the UK and Australia possibly being the last official allies - thus anything to antagonize the people in other countries further may cost the US very dearly in the future. Hegemonialism and imperialism are attitudes that do not stand in high regard any more.
I am a doctor, operating a group practice. Each day, we burn 8 CDs and 2 DVDs - data backups of our health recordsand financial records. That is 2920 blank CDs and 730 DVDs a year, coasters not counted. I can account for every single medium I burn - I have to in fact, for tax deduction reasons.
I do not pirate copy CDs or DVDs (I do not even own a TV, and in our waiting room we play exclusively recordings from local artists), thus my patience with those shameless parasites (RIAA, APRA and the likes) has reached the limits.
What right do they have to abuse law abiding citizens and steal their money? Yes, steal, sine they would take my money against my will without giving anything in return.
Their wrists should be smacked forcefully and repeatedly, and they should be subjected to a class action for libel.
> Is the United States still the best choice of a place to live for safety, freedom, and quality of life? Was it ever? People from many countries like Australia, Germany or Scandinavia think twice before travelling to the US because of the shocking crime rate. You certainly live safer elsewhere, especially here in Australia :-).
Quality of life? Check the WHO ratings for that,... the US don't score well there either. Little wonder with a virtually non existing public health or welfare system, no job security, and virtually no privacy - let alone complete lack of decent public education.
After living & working on 4 continents (and I have been in the US about 30 times), I certainly know that the US would not be the place where I raise my children - because they do need safety and quality of life!