I've said it before, but people don't seem to get it yet: The music industry has a larger plan, namely to seize on the issue of "piracy" to justify purchasing legislation mandating the infrastructure required to support ubiquitous pay-per-use. Today's battles aren't about unit sales of music, but rather about shifting America to a pay-per-use entertainment business model.
This is why the RIAA is perfectly willing to shoot itself in the foot in the short term (5 years). It lets them bleat about piracy while they try to get rid of that revenue-limiting buy-once play-many business model
The Nasdaq has been running on-line "auctions" for quite some time now. The patent claims the autions are for "used goods and collectibles", and stocks probably don't count as "used goods or collectibles" (except for my portfolio...) but come on, that's a pretty small difference...
Bzzt... wrong. Nasdaq is not an auction system. In between the buyers and sellers you have market makers who create "liquidity" (translation: milk the spread between bid and asked price). When you sell a stock on nasdaq, you're selling to a market maker, who then turns around and sells it to a buyer, usually within a second. This is one of the reasons Nasdaq's volume numbers are considered inflated. Sound needlessly complex, and easily replaceable by a transparent auction system? Yes, but then how would insiders milk the system for a guaranteed profit on every trade?
Thank you... receiving the occasional straightworfard answer temporarily restores my faith in humanity.
BTW, I already use Mozilla, and I was so happy to kill the popups I didn't notice the image controls.
If you read the next sentence in the report, you'd see that Potashner's loan was *not* "non-recourse", and in fact he was (is) personally liable for it. The board members certainly were looting the company, though.
and what actually is college? What is left after you strip away all the preconceptions and illusions society has built around them?
Knowledge of how to learn, how to interact with people in a competitive goals-oriented environment, and a dawning realization that you might not be the smartest person in the world after all.
Best Post! This guy gets it. Only thing I would add is the use of code reviews, first as a teaching tool (review the better coders' work first), then to improve the lesser coders quality after they've gotten accustomed to the review process.
You don't say much about the culture of the place you're working--maybe projects are expected to take 6 months, and you're screwing things up by moving in real time? If so, there's not much you do about it unless you're prepared to do all the work yourself.
If you think there really is opportunity to effect change in people's coding practices, try to gently lead people in the right direction:
Have a code review--of *your* code. Be sure to accept a few suggestions even if they're a bit suboptimal. Reviewers will be exposed to better coding practices, and will be less hostile to suggestions about their own code.
Team up developers. I'm not talking about XP here, but how on earth did six weeks go by without you noticing a lack of code? Create two 2-person teams, pairing a code-skills person with a domain-skills person. On your team, spend more time exploring the domain space, and set small goals daily or at least 2 or 3 times a week. It's not micromanagement, its setting the tone for how to work. If you don't have a 2nd code-skills person, maybe you need a personnel change.
Managing isn't as much fun, but that's why you get the big bucks (right?)
While our "friends" and M$ could sell sand to a man stranded in the desert
Actually, Microsoft would require you to purchase 3 tons of sand right now along with that bottle of water you desperately need, and then require you to order another ton of sand for every additional bottle you want.
, IBM -can- make good, rock-solid products...however, they couldn't market themselves out of a wet paper bag.
IBM's marketing actually is pretty good, at least when they market to medium-large businesses. The marketing to small businesses and consumers was atrocious. I'd say IBM's product limitations are more due to a deliberate decision to leave their enterprise products almost opaque, in order to create more opportunities for their consulting and services organizations. I mean, WebSphere is a fucking nightmare to set up and maintain--this late in the game, they must have deliberately decided to leave it screwed up.
As a side note, I consider the indentured servitude argument to be also something of a sensationalist rhetoric. The US has immigration policies. Just because someone wanted to short circuit them, and then didn't like the conditions that they agreed to , I have a tough time feeling sorry. I call that entering into a contract with your eyes open, and then whining to get out of it after the fact.
Most people's problem with the with indentured servitude nature of H1B isn't that the visa holders get screwed. The problem is that the screwing of the visa-holders depresses wages and working conditions across the entire industry.
One of the problems with the H1B program is that the participants are essentially indentured servants--they do not enjoy the same job mobility freedoms of full citizens. This makes it easy to exploit them, whether for lower wages, increased hours, mowing the boss' lawn, etc. An insidious side effect of this is to hold back compensation for all tech workers.
So, I propose that H1B visa holders should have the right to change jobs at will, without losing their visa or resetting the clock on a permanent resident application. Maybe cap the number of at-will transfers at 3, but GIVE THEM SOME MOBILITY. If an employer is at risk of losing their H1B personnel, they will be forced to compensate them at the same level they do citizens. Then, any competition between citizens and H1B holders for jobs is on merit, rather than the structural ability to screw the H1B holder.
While a useful current metaphor for the difficulties in managing a shared resource without it being exploited to extinction, the original "tragedy of the commons" was a rationalization for the walling off (actually hedging off) of common lands in Britain.
Basically, your local potentate would do a favor for the crown, and receive a grant of lands that were previously "common". The first thing the new landowner would do was grow impassable hedges around his new lands, effectively walling of a 500-2000 acre chunk of the commons. The concept of the "tragedy of the commons" was invented as an excuse to take the land away from those commoners, who were "obviously" not going to use it effectively anyway.
As more and more land was removed from the commons (by the aristocracy, *not* despoiled by commoner overuse), problems of resources to feed the populace arose. But the overpopulation problems did not start until well after much of the prize real estate was placed in private hands.
So, something to think about when you hear "The Tragedy of the Commons" cliche trotted out--the concept was invented to blame the prior holders of the common for an economic crime being committed against them. Kind of like how the internet needs to taken away from its creators and placed in private hands, because the current situation is, well, too "anarchic".
> Yet prison construction and technology is one of the highest growth industries in the U.S., and it's basically corporate welfare.
In some states they are going further, contracting out the administration of prison facilities to privately held corporations, as well as the construction.
Actually, the even greater extreme is usage of inmate labor, whether to work the nearby farms (inmate work teams contracted out to local landowners) or as telephone order takers. There are entire counties and industries that are dependant on cheap inmate labor.
If you belive in the "follow the money" brand of analysis, that's why crack cocaine possession results in a 5 year medium security sentence, whereas looting the pension fund is 12 months plus probation.
Actually, today we refer to doublethink as "cognitive dissonance." eg.
All Congresscritters are slimy, bought, and corrupt, but my district's guy is ok.
We can bomb other countries via remote control without creating new generations of vengeful survivors.
I can buy this massively overpriced stock because Wall Street wouldn't be touting it if it wasn't good.
I support Republicans because they're more fiscally responsible and support smaller government. (never mind the tax cuts, the deregulation of industries designed to maneuver the fed. gov. into holding the bag when the industry implodes, creation of whole new beaurocracies to fend off a few thousand terrorists)
Social policy that favors the rich at the expense of the middle class is good, because, hey, I might be rich someday.
Someone will make a box to put between the signal and the TV that will run a pattern recognizing algorhitm on the signal and blank out the adds. Just wait an see:)
I'm pretty sure that will be considered illegal under some provision of some acronym legislation produced by your wholly owned corporate congresscritter subsidiary.
Or your local cable provider will simply refuse to provide service to users who attempt to intercept ads.
On some of their Vaio's, Sony's been selling them with a cheap-ass 45 minute battery (which of course rounds up to 1-2 hours in the sales literature). This lets them shave $200 off the list price, until you get it home and discover that your laptop is only portable for 45 minutes (less if you actually use the hd or cd/dvd). A decent Sony battery (2700 maH) is a BP71A, listing at about $240. The crappy one is the BP-1A, though part numbers will change.
So, before you buy, look at the maH rating of the battery. Or have fun getting Sony to upgrade your laptop with a battery that at least meets the low end of their claimed life.
"Anything that crashes the OS is a bug. Very radical thinking inside of Microsoft considering Win16 was cooperative multi-tasking in a single address space,..."
So the BSODs were caused by the old-timers? Were they also the ones who designed in the feature that every fucking install of an application requires a reboot?
A side effect of Palladium that nobody seems to pick up on is that it will make feasible the distribution of use-count limited content. You download a movie or album, and it is only allowed to play a limited number of times or days until your "license" expires. Having strong, trusted software signature capability on the motherboard means that Circuit City's DIVX model will work without requiring users to buy hardware or plug in a phone line. If you try to hack the content to reset the use-counter, it no longer passes the signature check.
Now, what odds RIAA/MPAA would distribute limited use content at a steep discount to unlimited use? I didn't think so--expect to pay 50-80% of a current CD/DVD price for your 20-use wav or 3-day movie license. And forget about loaning a CD to a friend, or taking it into your car.
So before you jump on the bandwagon of "blame the rich guys who pirated the corporate accounts and stole nearly $4B and kept it for themselves" wait for the actual story. Chances are that money was never in the door, and profits were inflated to trick the public into thinking things were okay. Granted this is fradulent and deceptive, but its probably not how you describe it: a case of a few people stealing to enrich themselves.
Much as I'd like to join you planet Naive (soon to appear in a bad Lucas movie), perhaps you might consider stock options, which are worth a lot more if you kite the stock upwards? Or incentive clauses, such as forgivement of loans if stock price targets are met? I don't know if WorldCom execs made use of these standard vehicles for executive compensation, but that's been SOP in other corporate meltdowns. They don't steal cash, they prop up the stock with fraud while exercising their options (which although they are not yet required to be considered a hit against company earnings, definitely do reduce the company's equity dollar for dollar when exercized.)
one slap on the wrist, and a fine of whatever pocket change you happen to have on you
The scary thing is how accurate this comment is--we've reached a state where if you're a major company insider, your best path financially is to loot the company of 20-100 million, and then spend a fraction of it on your legal defense/settlement.
Until crooked CEO/CFO/CoBs start doing major jail time, this is going to keep happening. And with a wholly owned Shrub in the White House and soft-money campaign contributions owning Congress, real securities reform with meaningful deterrent provisions just aren't very likely.
What's even more scary is that even with all the accounting scandals and insider rip-offs, the US stocks are still considered one of world's most legitimate. Me? I'm going to invest my money in beer--at least the empties will be worth something.
There's no mention of throughput or latency on their flash-ridden website. I wouldn't bother with them.
Re:Now, I know this goes against the party line...
on
ICANN Releases Reform Plan
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It's been said on here before: the only force that can really act against spam is the government. "There oughta be a law", in so many words. Every day our inboxes are packed to the eyeteeth with ads for diplomas, penis pumps, and vitamins from Korea. No technical solution has proven itself, so it's obvious that we need outside help. I think we're all agreed on that.
Um, governments can already do something about spam--pass a law against it, and choose to enforce it--and slowly that is happening, as people begin to understand that freedom of speech doesn't mean an unlimited license to advertise. Governments that don't regulate spam will simply find themselves blacklisted at routers.
So I'm thinking, is "Stop the Spammers" going to be the rallying cry for giving up the internet commons to corporate interests? Is this the latest slogan in the long line of "Stop the Commies!/Save the Children/Make the World Safe from Terrorism!" slogans to steamroller the public good?
To a corporation where control==profit, anything they don't control is "anarchic".
Slashdot Mirror
I've said it before, but people don't seem to get it yet: The music industry has a larger plan, namely to seize on the issue of "piracy" to justify purchasing legislation mandating the infrastructure required to support ubiquitous pay-per-use. Today's battles aren't about unit sales of music, but rather about shifting America to a pay-per-use entertainment business model.
This is why the RIAA is perfectly willing to shoot itself in the foot in the short term (5 years). It lets them bleat about piracy while they try to get rid of that revenue-limiting buy-once play-many business model
The Nasdaq has been running on-line "auctions" for quite some time now. The patent claims the autions are for "used goods and collectibles", and stocks probably don't count as "used goods or collectibles" (except for my portfolio...) but come on, that's a pretty small difference...
Bzzt... wrong. Nasdaq is not an auction system. In between the buyers and sellers you have market makers who create "liquidity" (translation: milk the spread between bid and asked price). When you sell a stock on nasdaq, you're selling to a market maker, who then turns around and sells it to a buyer, usually within a second. This is one of the reasons Nasdaq's volume numbers are considered inflated. Sound needlessly complex, and easily replaceable by a transparent auction system? Yes, but then how would insiders milk the system for a guaranteed profit on every trade?
Thank you... receiving the occasional straightworfard answer temporarily restores my faith in humanity. BTW, I already use Mozilla, and I was so happy to kill the popups I didn't notice the image controls.
And just what is the difference between and dynamic gifs that would cause epilepsy in a blind mole?
grumble...
If you read the next sentence in the report, you'd see that Potashner's loan was *not* "non-recourse", and in fact he was (is) personally liable for it. The board members certainly were looting the company, though.
rant on...
and what actually is college? What is left after you strip away all the preconceptions and illusions society has built around them?
Knowledge of how to learn, how to interact with people in a competitive goals-oriented environment, and a dawning realization that you might not be the smartest person in the world after all.
Best Post! This guy gets it. Only thing I would add is the use of code reviews, first as a teaching tool (review the better coders' work first), then to improve the lesser coders quality after they've gotten accustomed to the review process.
You don't say much about the culture of the place you're working--maybe projects are expected to take 6 months, and you're screwing things up by moving in real time? If so, there's not much you do about it unless you're prepared to do all the work yourself.
If you think there really is opportunity to effect change in people's coding practices, try to gently lead people in the right direction:
Have a code review--of *your* code. Be sure to accept a few suggestions even if they're a bit suboptimal. Reviewers will be exposed to better coding practices, and will be less hostile to suggestions about their own code.
Team up developers. I'm not talking about XP here, but how on earth did six weeks go by without you noticing a lack of code? Create two 2-person teams, pairing a code-skills person with a domain-skills person. On your team, spend more time exploring the domain space, and set small goals daily or at least 2 or 3 times a week. It's not micromanagement, its setting the tone for how to work. If you don't have a 2nd code-skills person, maybe you need a personnel change.
Managing isn't as much fun, but that's why you get the big bucks (right?)
While our "friends" and M$ could sell sand to a man stranded in the desert
Actually, Microsoft would require you to purchase 3 tons of sand right now along with that bottle of water you desperately need, and then require you to order another ton of sand for every additional bottle you want.
, IBM -can- make good, rock-solid products...however, they couldn't market themselves out of a wet paper bag.
IBM's marketing actually is pretty good, at least when they market to medium-large businesses. The marketing to small businesses and consumers was atrocious. I'd say IBM's product limitations are more due to a deliberate decision to leave their enterprise products almost opaque, in order to create more opportunities for their consulting and services organizations. I mean, WebSphere is a fucking nightmare to set up and maintain--this late in the game, they must have deliberately decided to leave it screwed up.
As a side note, I consider the indentured servitude argument to be also something of a sensationalist rhetoric. The US has immigration policies. Just because someone wanted to short circuit them, and then didn't like the conditions that they agreed to , I have a tough time feeling sorry. I call that entering into a contract with your eyes open, and then whining to get out of it after the fact.
Most people's problem with the with indentured servitude nature of H1B isn't that the visa holders get screwed. The problem is that the screwing of the visa-holders depresses wages and working conditions across the entire industry.
One of the problems with the H1B program is that the participants are essentially indentured servants--they do not enjoy the same job mobility freedoms of full citizens. This makes it easy to exploit them, whether for lower wages, increased hours, mowing the boss' lawn, etc. An insidious side effect of this is to hold back compensation for all tech workers.
So, I propose that H1B visa holders should have the right to change jobs at will, without losing their visa or resetting the clock on a permanent resident application. Maybe cap the number of at-will transfers at 3, but GIVE THEM SOME MOBILITY. If an employer is at risk of losing their H1B personnel, they will be forced to compensate them at the same level they do citizens. Then, any competition between citizens and H1B holders for jobs is on merit, rather than the structural ability to screw the H1B holder.
While a useful current metaphor for the difficulties in managing a shared resource without it being exploited to extinction, the original "tragedy of the commons" was a rationalization for the walling off (actually hedging off) of common lands in Britain.
Basically, your local potentate would do a favor for the crown, and receive a grant of lands that were previously "common". The first thing the new landowner would do was grow impassable hedges around his new lands, effectively walling of a 500-2000 acre chunk of the commons. The concept of the "tragedy of the commons" was invented as an excuse to take the land away from those commoners, who were "obviously" not going to use it effectively anyway.
As more and more land was removed from the commons (by the aristocracy, *not* despoiled by commoner overuse), problems of resources to feed the populace arose. But the overpopulation problems did not start until well after much of the prize real estate was placed in private hands.
So, something to think about when you hear "The Tragedy of the Commons" cliche trotted out--the concept was invented to blame the prior holders of the common for an economic crime being committed against them. Kind of like how the internet needs to taken away from its creators and placed in private hands, because the current situation is, well, too "anarchic".
> Yet prison construction and technology is one of the highest growth industries in the U.S., and it's basically corporate welfare. In some states they are going further, contracting out the administration of prison facilities to privately held corporations, as well as the construction.
Actually, the even greater extreme is usage of inmate labor, whether to work the nearby farms (inmate work teams contracted out to local landowners) or as telephone order takers. There are entire counties and industries that are dependant on cheap inmate labor.
If you belive in the "follow the money" brand of analysis, that's why crack cocaine possession results in a 5 year medium security sentence, whereas looting the pension fund is 12 months plus probation.
Actually, today we refer to doublethink as "cognitive dissonance." eg.
All Congresscritters are slimy, bought, and corrupt, but my district's guy is ok.
We can bomb other countries via remote control without creating new generations of vengeful survivors.
I can buy this massively overpriced stock because Wall Street wouldn't be touting it if it wasn't good.
I support Republicans because they're more fiscally responsible and support smaller government. (never mind the tax cuts, the deregulation of industries designed to maneuver the fed. gov. into holding the bag when the industry implodes, creation of whole new beaurocracies to fend off a few thousand terrorists)
Social policy that favors the rich at the expense of the middle class is good, because, hey, I might be rich someday.
Someone will make a box to put between the signal and the TV that will run a pattern recognizing algorhitm on the signal and blank out the adds. Just wait an see :)
I'm pretty sure that will be considered illegal under some provision of some acronym legislation produced by your wholly owned corporate congresscritter subsidiary.
Or your local cable provider will simply refuse to provide service to users who attempt to intercept ads.
On some of their Vaio's, Sony's been selling them with a cheap-ass 45 minute battery (which of course rounds up to 1-2 hours in the sales literature). This lets them shave $200 off the list price, until you get it home and discover that your laptop is only portable for 45 minutes (less if you actually use the hd or cd/dvd). A decent Sony battery (2700 maH) is a BP71A, listing at about $240. The crappy one is the BP-1A, though part numbers will change.
So, before you buy, look at the maH rating of the battery. Or have fun getting Sony to upgrade your laptop with a battery that at least meets the low end of their claimed life.
From the presentation:
"Anything that crashes the OS is a bug. Very radical thinking inside of Microsoft considering Win16 was cooperative multi-tasking in a single address space,..."
So the BSODs were caused by the old-timers? Were they also the ones who designed in the feature that every fucking install of an application requires a reboot?
A side effect of Palladium that nobody seems to pick up on is that it will make feasible the distribution of use-count limited content. You download a movie or album, and it is only allowed to play a limited number of times or days until your "license" expires. Having strong, trusted software signature capability on the motherboard means that Circuit City's DIVX model will work without requiring users to buy hardware or plug in a phone line. If you try to hack the content to reset the use-counter, it no longer passes the signature check.
Now, what odds RIAA/MPAA would distribute limited use content at a steep discount to unlimited use? I didn't think so--expect to pay 50-80% of a current CD/DVD price for your 20-use wav or 3-day movie license. And forget about loaning a CD to a friend, or taking it into your car.
If it contained seats wide enough for an average adult male, I'd cheerfully fly on it instead of banging shoulders with my seatmates.
So before you jump on the bandwagon of "blame the rich guys who pirated the corporate accounts and stole nearly $4B and kept it for themselves" wait for the actual story. Chances are that money was never in the door, and profits were inflated to trick the public into thinking things were okay. Granted this is fradulent and deceptive, but its probably not how you describe it: a case of a few people stealing to enrich themselves.
Much as I'd like to join you planet Naive (soon to appear in a bad Lucas movie), perhaps you might consider stock options, which are worth a lot more if you kite the stock upwards? Or incentive clauses, such as forgivement of loans if stock price targets are met? I don't know if WorldCom execs made use of these standard vehicles for executive compensation, but that's been SOP in other corporate meltdowns. They don't steal cash, they prop up the stock with fraud while exercising their options (which although they are not yet required to be considered a hit against company earnings, definitely do reduce the company's equity dollar for dollar when exercized.)
one slap on the wrist, and a fine of whatever pocket change you happen to have on you
The scary thing is how accurate this comment is--we've reached a state where if you're a major company insider, your best path financially is to loot the company of 20-100 million, and then spend a fraction of it on your legal defense/settlement.
Until crooked CEO/CFO/CoBs start doing major jail time, this is going to keep happening. And with a wholly owned Shrub in the White House and soft-money campaign contributions owning Congress, real securities reform with meaningful deterrent provisions just aren't very likely.
What's even more scary is that even with all the accounting scandals and insider rip-offs, the US stocks are still considered one of world's most legitimate. Me? I'm going to invest my money in beer--at least the empties will be worth something.
Actually, thats the "Mushroom Management" antipattern--kept in the dark, and fed shit.
There's no mention of throughput or latency on their flash-ridden website. I wouldn't bother with them.
It's been said on here before: the only force that can really act against spam is the government. "There oughta be a law", in so many words. Every day our inboxes are packed to the eyeteeth with ads for diplomas, penis pumps, and vitamins from Korea. No technical solution has proven itself, so it's obvious that we need outside help. I think we're all agreed on that.
Um, governments can already do something about spam--pass a law against it, and choose to enforce it--and slowly that is happening, as people begin to understand that freedom of speech doesn't mean an unlimited license to advertise. Governments that don't regulate spam will simply find themselves blacklisted at routers.
So I'm thinking, is "Stop the Spammers" going to be the rallying cry for giving up the internet commons to corporate interests? Is this the latest slogan in the long line of "Stop the Commies!/Save the Children/Make the World Safe from Terrorism!" slogans to steamroller the public good?
To a corporation where control==profit, anything they don't control is "anarchic".
Quick! Pirate that testimony! Put it on a tshirt! Set it to music, dictate it and sample it!