Spot on..au users; set up your own bit-torrent based mirrors, but don't stop there; set up some other alternative service too; so that you are less tied to that supplier.
Use the problem as a stimulous to set yourselves and others free from idiot suppliers.
They'll soon come running back begging you to enslave yourselves again when they realise what you are doing.
IR35 was not an attack on sole traders but single-person companies who were taking dividends instead of wages as the tax came to half as much,
I've done consulting as a sole-trader (not as a company) and just have to fill in a self-employed tax return.
Because of IR35 I've also done consulting through an umbrella company (who treat me as an employee) as it is not worth the hassle to set up my own company.
(It's also not worth the hassle to work via an umbrella company so I do as little consulting as possible and work for a regular employee)
Your observation is spot on, and part of the cause is the iron fist of the original devs, often imitated by for forkers.
In time, they learn how to do things better, but (possibly sadly) a new cohort of devs come along ready to learn the same lessons.
It may not be good for the code-base but it's good for the humans. So we see how coding helps anti-social computer geeks learn how to be better humans! Pretty neat!
But science works by throwing away everything that the human can perceive but science can't handle.
Goethe and Newton both investigated the sources of colour in different ways.
Science will investigate green and reduce it to a wavelength and deliberately ignore non-quantifiable aspects of green-ness that are an important part of human experience.
In short, science doesn't try to have all of the answers, it is only one branch of philosphy.
The biggest laugh for religionists is the scientific engineers who want the race to grow up and engineer planets and effectively be the god that so many refuse to accept. How will they feel when their offspring on a newly minted planet dismiss them as the man-in-the sky?
Their are religious kooks and scientific kooks - but both make more of a statement about themselves than about religion or science; and I think it takes a religionist to spot a religious kook and a scientist to spot a scientific kook.
Look for truth however you find it; I find that not all teaching is scientifically based - good job, I havent time to learn everything that way.
I believe in God, but not the god most athiests disbelieve in - after all thats quite an unbelieveable god!
It's not there to help you it's there to help them (the Credit Card Companies). It helps them by reducing chance of fraud and blaming any fraud that does occur on you.
I called my credit card company and opted out.
And so I never see the verified-by-visa or mastercard equivalent when I purchase online.
The billion dollars will help argue and prove that the patents aren't valid.
And if it takes 5 years and the patents ARE valid then thats five happy years and a LOT of money wasted (dollar for dollar) and the litigant may wonder if it is ever really worth it - spending hundreds of millions of dollars over a patent case that they might lose.
The answer I submitted to FSF last time MS made noise like this was a grand fund raising of a billion dollars war chest to fight the patents.
We can help MS or any idiot corporation pour away their money on patent litigation and match it dollar for dollar - only our money will be collected precisely for that purpose, and their share holders will be cursing them for every dollar that vanishes.
The plan is that all open-source supporting companies, groups, agencies can become fund-members through which fans and supporters donate money.
Did you install Ubuntu for someone? Ask them for $10 and explain why. Donate the $10 to the fund via your local fund-member. Does your company use open source software and the authors won't take any money? (I'm looking at the squid guys here - it's hard to donate to them, I'm told) Then donate to the patent war chest. Did you just want to draw attention to the injustice? Sell open-source-software CDs or badges or mugs or tshirts talking about it. Run a switch-to-linux campaign where you switch 1,000 people to linux all in one go with an automated install. Thats newsworthy and will raise $10,000 The many and various ideas that individuals will come up with will be great and newsworthy in their own right.
All funds are donated via fund-member organizations, who also benefit directly because fund-member organizations receive from the fund ALL of the interest on the funds donated via them, and money spent is taken in equal proportion to the fund holding.
For example, if a billion dollars is raised and your Linux User Group donated $10,000; and if half a billion dollars is spent, then your groups holding is down to $5,000 and you get interest on that while it remains.
The other side is that the raising of the funds is a very good grassroots way to spread the word, one that cannot be matched by commercial advertising, and any attempt will generate a lot of media commentary.
A reputable company with a good history like FSF or EFF would have to be trustee of the fund.
So it has 3 wins:
1. raises lots of cash whose only purpose is to waste all of the assets of any patent litigator, or lobby lawmakers 2. supports open-source type organizations who raise money with income from interest 3. makes use of the brains of the masses to communicate the problem and raise the money
So you say, "Oh I don't make web pages, I write software that makes web pages - in fact the software is nearly as complicated as you are - not quite as complicated because it doesn't have to know how to use word"
You are more likely to lose your keys than your privacy; there's just so many ways to get it wrong, even on the lowly USB memory stick, and end up losing your own data.
On a similar topic (as the word guy reminds me), in Tigger the Movie, Tigger is made to sound english (as he is) by saying something like "hey, you blokes" which is quite wrong.
A bloke is almost always somewhere else and "bloke" signifies that the identity is not of interest; "I met a bloke" "See those blokes".
Tigger should have said "Hey, you chaps" which is more intimate, or maybe "Hey, you guys"
So he used an english word and immediately identified himself (or the script-writer) as a foreign johnny.
I was actually quoting from Commando comics (http://www.commandomag.com/) in which the Germans refer to the british as britishers; but of course that is probably the author trying to put german accent on the germans speaking english.
Now the nay-sayers can get a word in edgeways, now they are not being edged out by "non-conspiracists" who "aren't faking data" we can read a bit more:
This document from some German scientists attempts to shed new light on where some of the 'global warming' scientific conclusions may not be substantiated.
I got the 10^6 times less likely, the obscure point was the "chance of silent data loss because of hard drive failure" - perhaps you could tell us what chance that is?
So if your sales team meet their targets of 1 million installations you'll have maybe doubled the chance of a silent failure for one of your customers.
If you had 1 customer with 1 million installations who gets the bad luck on one machine, they may think it fair, but it's no consolation to the one customer who gets the bad luck on his only machine, with a designed failure scenario - and one that is conveniently not attributable to the cause!
I didn't use the word idiot; and I never said it can never work.
I did say that you will never know that it was the cause of the failure, and I don't like things that are designed to fail in detectable circumstances but don't try to detect the circumstances, especially when the highest paid division of the company has great financial incentives to bend the numbers to make it more and more likely to occur.
And when you've got 10^6 customers (and your sales people REALLY want to make it come true) or customers with 10^6 more files than most, it gets quite likely that a few of them are going to get "strange corruptions" which: 1) you won't be able to detect the cause of 2) everybody will think is bad memory/cables/software but really it will be your fault.
10^6 is a small number.
I caught someone using MD5 instead of RC5 to "encrypt" personal database keys once; not only were the chances of collision less that what you cite, the harm from collision was minimal (it was statistical research data for trend recognition) but they real key had less bits than MD5 output, so I think there was not actually any collision at all.
My labour MP in Loughborough (when I lived there) was proud of the fact that he was going to blindly follow the party leader. He was voted in on a party platform and felt that voters expected it of him. He didn't even seem to feel inclined to influence party policy.
This will stimulate growth in the weapons industry, and therefore growth in espionage operations, increase the likelyhood of serious diplomatic incidents and therefore War.
That's War with a capital W were the enemy has equipment that is not under your control.
So it's a nice idea, but it only works in the short term - i.e. until you use it. Then the clock ticks to when it's useless.
Slashdot Mirror
Saw this link: http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=adf37f5bc9893161b909b2f8ed3a15e7&t=2055944813
on this story: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/2/2010/06/28/ofcom_pln/
Which seems relevant to you - maybe a neighbour turns on something noisy.
Sam
Here's the Sam's Law: Anyone who tries to invoke Godwins law with an alternative reference in place of Nazi's has automatically lost.
perhaps that's because there is something fundamentally wrong with the universe after all?
Spot on. .au users; set up your own bit-torrent based mirrors, but don't stop there; set up some other alternative service too; so that you are less tied to that supplier.
Use the problem as a stimulous to set yourselves and others free from idiot suppliers.
They'll soon come running back begging you to enslave yourselves again when they realise what you are doing.
or caught fiddling taxes while committing all kinds of illegal activities which are hard to prove
IR35 was not an attack on sole traders but single-person companies who were taking dividends instead of wages as the tax came to half as much,
I've done consulting as a sole-trader (not as a company) and just have to fill in a self-employed tax return.
Because of IR35 I've also done consulting through an umbrella company (who treat me as an employee) as it is not worth the hassle to set up my own company.
(It's also not worth the hassle to work via an umbrella company so I do as little consulting as possible and work for a regular employee)
Your observation is spot on, and part of the cause is the iron fist of the original devs, often imitated by for forkers.
In time, they learn how to do things better, but (possibly sadly) a new cohort of devs come along ready to learn the same lessons.
It may not be good for the code-base but it's good for the humans.
So we see how coding helps anti-social computer geeks learn how to be better humans! Pretty neat!
Sam
However he does have the right to provide others the information they need to secure (or evaluate retirement of) their computers.
Which is the same thing...
Who marked this troll?
But science works by throwing away everything that the human can perceive but science can't handle.
Goethe and Newton both investigated the sources of colour in different ways.
Science will investigate green and reduce it to a wavelength and deliberately ignore non-quantifiable aspects of green-ness that are an important part of human experience.
In short, science doesn't try to have all of the answers, it is only one branch of philosphy.
The biggest laugh for religionists is the scientific engineers who want the race to grow up and engineer planets and effectively be the god that so many refuse to accept. How will they feel when their offspring on a newly minted planet dismiss them as the man-in-the sky?
Their are religious kooks and scientific kooks - but both make more of a statement about themselves than about religion or science; and I think it takes a religionist to spot a religious kook and a scientist to spot a scientific kook.
Look for truth however you find it; I find that not all teaching is scientifically based - good job, I havent time to learn everything that way.
I believe in God, but not the god most athiests disbelieve in - after all thats quite an unbelieveable god!
Sam
A note about verified-by-visa:
It's not there to help you it's there to help them (the Credit Card Companies). It helps them by reducing chance of fraud and blaming any fraud that does occur on you.
I called my credit card company and opted out.
And so I never see the verified-by-visa or mastercard equivalent when I purchase online.
The billion dollars will help argue and prove that the patents aren't valid.
And if it takes 5 years and the patents ARE valid then thats five happy years and a LOT of money wasted (dollar for dollar) and the litigant may wonder if it is ever really worth it - spending hundreds of millions of dollars over a patent case that they might lose.
The answer I submitted to FSF last time MS made noise like this was a grand fund raising of a billion dollars war chest to fight the patents.
We can help MS or any idiot corporation pour away their money on patent litigation and match it dollar for dollar - only our money will be collected precisely for that purpose, and their share holders will be cursing them for every dollar that vanishes.
The plan is that all open-source supporting companies, groups, agencies can become fund-members through which fans and supporters donate money.
Did you install Ubuntu for someone? Ask them for $10 and explain why. Donate the $10 to the fund via your local fund-member.
Does your company use open source software and the authors won't take any money? (I'm looking at the squid guys here - it's hard to donate to them, I'm told) Then donate to the patent war chest.
Did you just want to draw attention to the injustice? Sell open-source-software CDs or badges or mugs or tshirts talking about it.
Run a switch-to-linux campaign where you switch 1,000 people to linux all in one go with an automated install. Thats newsworthy and will raise $10,000
The many and various ideas that individuals will come up with will be great and newsworthy in their own right.
All funds are donated via fund-member organizations, who also benefit directly because fund-member organizations receive from the fund ALL of the interest on the funds donated via them, and money spent is taken in equal proportion to the fund holding.
For example, if a billion dollars is raised and your Linux User Group donated $10,000; and if half a billion dollars is spent, then your groups holding is down to $5,000 and you get interest on that while it remains.
The other side is that the raising of the funds is a very good grassroots way to spread the word, one that cannot be matched by commercial advertising, and any attempt will generate a lot of media commentary.
A reputable company with a good history like FSF or EFF would have to be trustee of the fund.
So it has 3 wins:
1. raises lots of cash whose only purpose is to waste all of the assets of any patent litigator, or lobby lawmakers
2. supports open-source type organizations who raise money with income from interest
3. makes use of the brains of the masses to communicate the problem and raise the money
Sam
So you say, "Oh I don't make web pages, I write software that makes web pages - in fact the software is nearly as complicated as you are - not quite as complicated because it doesn't have to know how to use word"
Sam
Encryption is a big problem to handle.
You are more likely to lose your keys than your privacy; there's just so many ways to get it wrong, even on the lowly USB memory stick, and end up losing your own data.
Thanks for that, it is very interesting.
On a similar topic (as the word guy reminds me), in Tigger the Movie, Tigger is made to sound english (as he is) by saying something like "hey, you blokes" which is quite wrong.
A bloke is almost always somewhere else and "bloke" signifies that the identity is not of interest; "I met a bloke" "See those blokes".
Tigger should have said "Hey, you chaps" which is more intimate, or maybe "Hey, you guys"
So he used an english word and immediately identified himself (or the script-writer) as a foreign johnny.
-hmmm, maybe this puts it better:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bloke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloke
Sam
Thanks for that.
I was actually quoting from Commando comics (http://www.commandomag.com/) in which the Germans refer to the british as britishers; but of course that is probably the author trying to put german accent on the germans speaking english.
And thanks to your comment I learn even more:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Britisher
Britisher is currently rumoured to originate in India!
As a britisher*, I thought "wait in line" was American.
The term I'm familiar with is "queue" as in "get to the back of the queue" and "form a queue please"
While in America I heard the phrase "wait in line"
Sam
*german for british
Now the nay-sayers can get a word in edgeways, now they are not being edged out by "non-conspiracists" who "aren't faking data" we can read a bit more:
This document from some German scientists attempts to shed new light on where some of the 'global warming' scientific conclusions may not be substantiated.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
If it's too much for you, start at page 92 and don't whine until you've read at least 92-94
Thanks for taking the time to explain this.
It reminds me of the story of the lisp student who initialized his AI matrix with random numbers.
When the lisp master asked why the did this, the student said "So that it has no preconceived strategy".
The lisp master then closed his eyes, and the student asked "Why do you close your eyes?"
The lisp master replied: So the room will be empty.
You've shown me that if I obscure knowledge of the probability of errors, that I think that there aren't any.
Thank-you.
Sam
I got the 10^6 times less likely, the obscure point was the "chance of silent data loss because of hard drive failure" - perhaps you could tell us what chance that is?
So if your sales team meet their targets of 1 million installations you'll have maybe doubled the chance of a silent failure for one of your customers.
If you had 1 customer with 1 million installations who gets the bad luck on one machine, they may think it fair, but it's no consolation to the one customer who gets the bad luck on his only machine, with a designed failure scenario - and one that is conveniently not attributable to the cause!
I didn't use the word idiot; and I never said it can never work.
I did say that you will never know that it was the cause of the failure, and I don't like things that are designed to fail in detectable circumstances but don't try to detect the circumstances, especially when the highest paid division of the company has great financial incentives to bend the numbers to make it more and more likely to occur.
Sam
And so I thank apple for being mean and stinky about ZFS, or we wouldn't get BTRFS
Good grief; I mean I thank SUN for being so mean and stinky
And so I thank apple for being mean and stinky about ZFS, or we wouldn't get BTRFS
And when you've got 10^6 customers (and your sales people REALLY want to make it come true) or customers with 10^6 more files than most, it gets quite likely that a few of them are going to get "strange corruptions" which:
1) you won't be able to detect the cause of
2) everybody will think is bad memory/cables/software
but really it will be your fault.
10^6 is a small number.
I caught someone using MD5 instead of RC5 to "encrypt" personal database keys once; not only were the chances of collision less that what you cite, the harm from collision was minimal (it was statistical research data for trend recognition) but they real key had less bits than MD5 output, so I think there was not actually any collision at all.
Sam
My labour MP in Loughborough (when I lived there) was proud of the fact that he was going to blindly follow the party leader. He was voted in on a party platform and felt that voters expected it of him. He didn't even seem to feel inclined to influence party policy.
Wretch!
Sam
This will stimulate growth in the weapons industry, and therefore growth in espionage operations, increase the likelyhood of serious diplomatic incidents and therefore War.
That's War with a capital W were the enemy has equipment that is not under your control.
So it's a nice idea, but it only works in the short term - i.e. until you use it. Then the clock ticks to when it's useless.