Show me the law passed that mandates Gmail use, & you would have a valid point.
If you're that worried about Gmail, then don't use it
gMail will make an excellent outsourced e-mail provider, certainly for private corporations and potentially for government agencies as well. In fact I have sent them an e-mail asking if they have a program set up for that purpose as it would solve a lot of problems for me as a mail admin;-).
So you may end up with zero chance that you will not be using gMail, whether you like it or not.
If you've got a trust-nobody mentality then what Google has to say means nothing, they're going to rip up their privacy policy and send every e-mail that goes through their system directly to John Ashcroft using their PageRank sorting technology to indicate which e-mails are most relavant to his desire to repeal every amendment in numbered order...
Not saying I disagree, but you gloss right over two points:
Just because a corporate entity behaves one way today, does not mean it will behave another way next week. Public offerings and bankruptcy courts, in particular, can change how an entity operates. In fact I once worked for an organization which treated its employes well for 105 years based on unwritten promises, then over 3 years voided all those promises and dumped thousands out on the street with no contractual protection. Oops. And you may also wish to look into what happened to the data collected by those dotcoms under privacy policies when the bankruptcy courts took charge of the databases. Double oops.
The Patriot Act prohibits a subpoena-ee of any terrorism investigation from disclosing that its data have been taken to anybody for any reason, under penalty of prosecution. That's why many libraries are changing their checkout systems to no longer maintain circulation history. Google might be providing that informaton to the FBI right now and you would not know. In fact, Google might be operated by the NSA (I won't say FBI to keep it at least somewhat believable;-) ) and you would not know.
You can disagree with those points if you wish. But you can't ignore them.
What does this have to do with testing the GPL? I thought SCO was suing for copyright infringment.[...] this is not a test of the GPL.
You need to go back and read IBM's counterclaims. So yes, the SCO vs. IBM case does include GPL claims, which will logically require a decision on the validity of the GPL before they can be resolved.
Ok, a bit conspiracy-theoryish, but many including myself have speculated that there was someone behind the scenes of the entire SCO mess pulling the strings.
Could it be that said string-puller has decided that there is too much risk that (a) SCO will not only lose its suits, but do so in a way that validates the GPL (b) IBM might break through the Canopy/Baystar corporate veil and find out who the string puller is? And therefore that person has taken some action to force SCO into bankruptcy and pull the plug on the lawsuits?
MS got to be market dominant (which is NOT a true monopoly) by making genuinely good programs
Out of curosity, how old are you, and how long have you been using small / personal computers?
Microsoft got its market share because (a) Bill Gates had better foresight than IBM about the potential of the PC market (b) Bill Gates and his mother wrote a contract (for MS-DOS, which of course at that time didn't exist) that outsmarted all of IBM's team of super-lawyers and allowed Gates to take advantage of point a.
A very very smart thing to do I will grant you. But nothing Microsoft produced was "better" than its competition until the 2nd or 3rd version of Excel for Windows, and not much since (compare Netware 4.11 to Microsoft's current F&P offerings for example). All of Microsoft's success has been based on that MS-DOS tax, leived with the assistance of IBM and now enforced by the network effect.
MS is not a monopoly.
Microsoft has been found to be an abusive monopoly by a United States Federal Court, affirmed by the Court of Appeals and review denied by the Supreme Court. I therefore must disagee with this statement;-).
he full new file system feature has been moved to Blackcomb.
Wow, my memory starts to dim. Wasn't the first iteration of this file system supposed to debut in the Cairo follow-on to NT 3.1, around 1995 or so?
OT, I always that it funny that trade pubs used graphics and maps of Cairo, Egypt to illustrate stories about that release. Cairo, Illinois, USA is of course about halfway between Chicago (code name for Windows 95) and Memphis, Tenn. (another release that I don't think ever happened).
True, but in the long run whats better? Switching over to Linux and have no one to sue if your server gets hacked due to a security flaw?
OK, now its my turn;-)
Please name the last time any organization of any size successfully sued Microsoft over a product liability issue. I'll even take FOAF references to orgs getting under-the-table reimbursments if that's all you have.
The canonical example is Windows NT Service Pack 6, which broke Lotus Notes (both server and client). Note (ha ha) that Notes had at that time both the largest market share and by far the largest installed base of any corporate e-mail system. Microsoft denied the problem for about 6 weeks, then suddenly released SP6a with no explanation.
That's the worst I know of (since it was marked a security release, and since it affected so many sites), but I have certainly run across others.
And while I agree Microsoft can't test _every_ 3rd party app out there, I do think that given their 96% desktop market share (at that time; closer to 99% today) that they have a responsibility to test the leading apps of the leading functions, whether or not they are Microsoft's. Novell certainly used to do that.
I read in a magazine recently that a Microsoft exec said Windows users would be "much safer" if we all would just download software patches from Windows Update. According to the article, no one took him seriously.
Well, there's that little problem where Microsoft patches tend to break other applications, particularly competitor's applications. Which makes automatic patching a bit of a concern when mission-critical apps get broken.
> For a potential online email user, choosing > not to use gmail results in no limitations > of any sort at all and has no impact on > one's email access/usage at all.
That, I am afraid, often turns out not to be the case. It is virtually impossible to earn a living in the United States without a drivers license and credit card, two "optional" documents that many citizens didn't have 50 years ago, just to use one example.
Google currently controls 80% of Internet search and is now digging into other Internet services. I don't doubt that governments are watching them very carefully. Just as the UK recently announced that use of Internet Explorer would be required to do business on government web sites, I can easily see citizens being required to use a specific mail provider (such as Gmail) if the "want" to, for example, renew their license plates on-line. And oh yeah, we moved the only physical license plate office to East Nowheresville. Sorry about that.
Also,when your employers outsources their e-mail service to Google (which occured to me 30 seconds after reading the description of the service), you will have no choice but to use it. Yeah, yeah, you can keep your personal mail separate. Everyone does that.
Dude, I will take my lumps here or in any other public forum. But I think you have taken a round swing and missed on this one. If privacy is considered a fundamental or inalienable right (an arguable question I will note), then it lies in the same area of the law as other fundamental rights, such as those that prohibit slavery.
The treatment of the servant was harsh and often brutal.
Well, we are headed way off topic here. And I don't want to sound as if I am defending the practice. But you leave out two other factors: those who accepted the indentures often had a very low life expectancy and low chances of having children if they stayed where they were (serfs, etc). And the immigrants who come to North American in the 1700s and survived (which I am not saying all of them did!) had a very high percentage chance of entering the middle or even upper middle class by the 2nd or 3rd generation - not something that was happening very much in Europe or Asia at the time.
So it was a gamble: stay here and probably die, or take a chance of dying as an indentured servant but, if I survive, having a much better life.
Seems to me that if they give you a free gig of space, some targeted ads aren't too much to pay.
That's the current line of thought, particularly on the libertarian side of the Internet.
I will note, however, that at least in the United States we went ahead and outlawed indentured servitude, even though (a) it was usually entered into voluntarily (b) it often had a net benefit to the indentured party. Still, we felt that the moral and social cost of the "servitude" part was too high to allow individuals to enter into that sort of contract.
Perhaps the privacy advocates are arguing along the same lines here.
I will also note that while Google claims that one of their corporate policies is "don't be evil", they also absolutely refuse to discuss or explain almost any facet of their operations. Just a thought.
What really gets to me about this policy of cheating hourly workers out of bits of overtime is that it hurts the people who are trying hardest the worst. The theory is that you start out poor, you get a job, keep your nose clean and to the grindstone, work your way up; your children end up with a better life.
And that can be true. But here, the people who work the hardest / complain the least / are the most loyal to their employer, get hurt the worst. That's a great signal for our society to send.
And as we all know, anecdotes are the most scientifically sound method of determining widespread fact.
Actually, I can't really disagree with your reply;-)
And I am sorry that we somehow got distracted from what I considered my real point, which is that the employer is certainly legally obligated to pay overtime, and IMHO morally obligated as well. If the hourly employees were caught stealing merchandise, they would be escorted out the door and their names turned over to the police. But when the managers steal their overtime...
Oh, and if a daycare did charge $1,000/hr as a late fee the daycare would probably never see them again, and good luck taking it to court because no small claims court would grant the daycare $1,000/hr since it's completely unreasonable.
Can I ask you guys a couple of questions? How poor have you ever been as head of household? If your parents were poor, how old were you during the depths of their poverty, and how much of the family finances did they share with you? Or, perhaps more realistically given the Slashdot demographic, how many single mothers with incomes less than 12,500 USD/year do you have working for you?
I mean, sure, no one is going to pay those fees. They will just pick up their kid, head home, and..... then what? Do you have any idea how hard it is to find child care for 5 PM to midnight? I won't even mention trying to find overnight care. The care provider has all the power in that situation, not the working parent.
No, they won't really pay $1,000,000,000. They will just pay $100 or $500 or whatever they can't afford, with a warning not to do it again. Hell, my professional employees, who can afford lawyers, have the same problem.
And the next time the employer demands unscheduled overtime, then what? When the care provider drops them, then what?
Sheesh guys, move out of Silicon Valley for a while to a neighborhood where people are fighting to earn a living and spend some time talking to the people who live there. And talk to some of your low-income, low-status employees before you jump on my ass. Just keep in mind that if you are a man, they are most likely hiding all this from you out of fear and shame.
I am very familiar with the King of Persia story. That is a fairly typical policy for child care centers in working class neighborhoods, particularly ones which provide evening and night-time care.
See "All Quiet on the Western Front" for a discussion of the difference between rich families and poor families when it comes to paying for vital services (doctor's care in that case, but the point applies). Nothing new there since 1918 I guess. Or 0018 for that matter.
Overtime isn't always something you plan out and have happen. Sometimes things go wrong, or emergencies occur and people stay late. Are you suggesting all stores should hire 6-12+ people and simply keep them on retainer on the off chance that they're needed for those 2-4 hours a week most overtimes accrue to?
OK, that's fine. But these are hourly employees, not Kozlowski-style CEOs with million dollar bonuses. Why not, say, pay them the overtime that law and morality entitles them to?
For many of these people, BTW, the penalties they will have to pay their babysitters for picking up late (which can be as high as $1/minute, DOUBLING every minute) will vastly outweigh any additional amount they earn from unscheduled, forced overtime.
An incredible burden is shifted to the 'customer' in eXtreme Programming. The customer (representative), in the room at all times, is responsible for expressing all the requirements in the form of short use stories (which can be jotted down on a card) and in the form of code, as acceptance tests. The customer is now responsible for everything, and if anything doesn't work, it's the customer's fault for not making their tests stringent enough.
Well, that's pretty much how all other professional disciplines work (except architecture, which tends to have the same problems as software development for some strange reason). If you give a set of specs for a bridge to a civil enginering design/build firm, and those specs don't call for the bridge deck to actually meet in the middle, you have no one to blame except yourself when the completed bridge doesn't bridge anything (unless you were smart enough to write a "professional responsibility" clause into the contract).
But for some reason, business units think they can toss some poorly written requirements at a software team, "dedicate" a junior supervisor or even a junior secretary (seen it happen) at less than 25% of full time as the project representative, and expect to get a usable product back. Of course, when they don't it is the "techies" fault for having "poor communication skills".
So while I am not a big fan of the total XP package, this one is actually right on the money. If the customer can't do the acceptance test, who can?
You might want to go back and read some of his archived columns. He has been writing the "Personal Technology" and "Mossberg's Mailbag" for the Wall Street Journal for about five years (since a heart attack took him off the full-time technology reporting beat). He is very knowledgeable, experienced, and insightful - as are most of the WSJ's senior writers.
I would say that he is one of the more influential personal technology writers today, given the relative influence and circulation of the WSJ compared to the tech trade press. Certainly any cell phone, PDA, or similar gadget he gives a good review disappears from store shelves the following weekend.
However, in his role as "defender of the average computer user" (not that anyone who reads the WSJ falls into the "average" category) he has fallen into the "its all the fault of the evil techies" routine. I am not sure exactly why, given his overall level of insight. Perhaps he needs to think more deeply about the old proverb: be careful of what you wish for - you may get it.
Slashdot Mirror
So you may end up with zero chance that you will not be using gMail, whether you like it or not.
sPh
- Just because a corporate entity behaves one way today, does not mean it will behave another way next week. Public offerings and bankruptcy courts, in particular, can change how an entity operates. In fact I once worked for an organization which treated its employes well for 105 years based on unwritten promises, then over 3 years voided all those promises and dumped thousands out on the street with no contractual protection. Oops. And you may also wish to look into what happened to the data collected by those dotcoms under privacy policies when the bankruptcy courts took charge of the databases. Double oops.
You can disagree with those points if you wish. But you can't ignore them.The Patriot Act prohibits a subpoena-ee of any terrorism investigation from disclosing that its data have been taken to anybody for any reason, under penalty of prosecution. That's why many libraries are changing their checkout systems to no longer maintain circulation history. Google might be providing that informaton to the FBI right now and you would not know. In fact, Google might be operated by the NSA (I won't say FBI to keep it at least somewhat believable ;-) ) and you would not know.
sPh
sPh
Well, Linus does look a little bit like Yoda, so all may not be lost....
Ok, a bit conspiracy-theoryish, but many including myself have speculated that there was someone behind the scenes of the entire SCO mess pulling the strings.
Could it be that said string-puller has decided that there is too much risk that (a) SCO will not only lose its suits, but do so in a way that validates the GPL (b) IBM might break through the Canopy/Baystar corporate veil and find out who the string puller is? And therefore that person has taken some action to force SCO into bankruptcy and pull the plug on the lawsuits?
sPh
sPh
- Companies can be bought out or change hands
So, as well-intentioned as Google may be today, you cannot assume that this never-deleted, fully-archived index will always be used to your benefit.No US court has so far enforced a privacy policy made by a primary entity against the actions of a successor
The Bankruptcy Court has the authority to terminate just about any contractual agreement, including a privacy policy
The Patriot Act requires that entities whose data is subpoeaned by federal authorities NOT inform the owners of the data
sPh
Microsoft got its market share because (a) Bill Gates had better foresight than IBM about the potential of the PC market (b) Bill Gates and his mother wrote a contract (for MS-DOS, which of course at that time didn't exist) that outsmarted all of IBM's team of super-lawyers and allowed Gates to take advantage of point a.
A very very smart thing to do I will grant you. But nothing Microsoft produced was "better" than its competition until the 2nd or 3rd version of Excel for Windows, and not much since (compare Netware 4.11 to Microsoft's current F&P offerings for example). All of Microsoft's success has been based on that MS-DOS tax, leived with the assistance of IBM and now enforced by the network effect.
Microsoft has been found to be an abusive monopoly by a United States Federal Court, affirmed by the Court of Appeals and review denied by the Supreme Court. I therefore must disagee with this statementsPh
OT, I always that it funny that trade pubs used graphics and maps of Cairo, Egypt to illustrate stories about that release. Cairo, Illinois, USA is of course about halfway between Chicago (code name for Windows 95) and Memphis, Tenn. (another release that I don't think ever happened).
sPh
sPh
Please name the last time any organization of any size successfully sued Microsoft over a product liability issue. I'll even take FOAF references to orgs getting under-the-table reimbursments if that's all you have.
sPh
The canonical example is Windows NT Service Pack 6, which broke Lotus Notes (both server and client). Note (ha ha) that Notes had at that time both the largest market share and by far the largest installed base of any corporate e-mail system. Microsoft denied the problem for about 6 weeks, then suddenly released SP6a with no explanation.
That's the worst I know of (since it was marked a security release, and since it affected so many sites), but I have certainly run across others.
And while I agree Microsoft can't test _every_ 3rd party app out there, I do think that given their 96% desktop market share (at that time; closer to 99% today) that they have a responsibility to test the leading apps of the leading functions, whether or not they are Microsoft's. Novell certainly used to do that.
sPh
sPh
Too close to a Larry Niven copyright, actually.
sPh
> not to use gmail results in no limitations
> of any sort at all and has no impact on
> one's email access/usage at all.
That, I am afraid, often turns out not to be the case. It is virtually impossible to earn a living in the United States without a drivers license and credit card, two "optional" documents that many citizens didn't have 50 years ago, just to use one example.
Google currently controls 80% of Internet search and is now digging into other Internet services. I don't doubt that governments are watching them very carefully. Just as the UK recently announced that use of Internet Explorer would be required to do business on government web sites, I can easily see citizens being required to use a specific mail provider (such as Gmail) if the "want" to, for example, renew their license plates on-line. And oh yeah, we moved the only physical license plate office to East Nowheresville. Sorry about that.
Also,when your employers outsources their e-mail service to Google (which occured to me 30 seconds after reading the description of the service), you will have no choice but to use it. Yeah, yeah, you can keep your personal mail separate. Everyone does that.
sPh
sPh
So it was a gamble: stay here and probably die, or take a chance of dying as an indentured servant but, if I survive, having a much better life.
Just glad I don't face that choice.
sPh
I will note, however, that at least in the United States we went ahead and outlawed indentured servitude, even though (a) it was usually entered into voluntarily (b) it often had a net benefit to the indentured party. Still, we felt that the moral and social cost of the "servitude" part was too high to allow individuals to enter into that sort of contract.
Perhaps the privacy advocates are arguing along the same lines here.
I will also note that while Google claims that one of their corporate policies is "don't be evil", they also absolutely refuse to discuss or explain almost any facet of their operations. Just a thought.
sPh
And that can be true. But here, the people who work the hardest / complain the least / are the most loyal to their employer, get hurt the worst. That's a great signal for our society to send.
sPh
And I am sorry that we somehow got distracted from what I considered my real point, which is that the employer is certainly legally obligated to pay overtime, and IMHO morally obligated as well. If the hourly employees were caught stealing merchandise, they would be escorted out the door and their names turned over to the police. But when the managers steal their overtime...
sPh
I mean, sure, no one is going to pay those fees. They will just pick up their kid, head home, and..... then what? Do you have any idea how hard it is to find child care for 5 PM to midnight? I won't even mention trying to find overnight care. The care provider has all the power in that situation, not the working parent.
No, they won't really pay $1,000,000,000. They will just pay $100 or $500 or whatever they can't afford, with a warning not to do it again. Hell, my professional employees, who can afford lawyers, have the same problem.
And the next time the employer demands unscheduled overtime, then what? When the care provider drops them, then what?
Sheesh guys, move out of Silicon Valley for a while to a neighborhood where people are fighting to earn a living and spend some time talking to the people who live there. And talk to some of your low-income, low-status employees before you jump on my ass. Just keep in mind that if you are a man, they are most likely hiding all this from you out of fear and shame.
sPh
I am very familiar with the King of Persia story. That is a fairly typical policy for child care centers in working class neighborhoods, particularly ones which provide evening and night-time care.
See "All Quiet on the Western Front" for a discussion of the difference between rich families and poor families when it comes to paying for vital services (doctor's care in that case, but the point applies). Nothing new there since 1918 I guess. Or 0018 for that matter.
sPh
For many of these people, BTW, the penalties they will have to pay their babysitters for picking up late (which can be as high as $1/minute, DOUBLING every minute) will vastly outweigh any additional amount they earn from unscheduled, forced overtime.
sPh
But for some reason, business units think they can toss some poorly written requirements at a software team, "dedicate" a junior supervisor or even a junior secretary (seen it happen) at less than 25% of full time as the project representative, and expect to get a usable product back. Of course, when they don't it is the "techies" fault for having "poor communication skills".
So while I am not a big fan of the total XP package, this one is actually right on the money. If the customer can't do the acceptance test, who can?
sPh
You might want to go back and read some of his archived columns. He has been writing the "Personal Technology" and "Mossberg's Mailbag" for the Wall Street Journal for about five years (since a heart attack took him off the full-time technology reporting beat). He is very knowledgeable, experienced, and insightful - as are most of the WSJ's senior writers.
I would say that he is one of the more influential personal technology writers today, given the relative influence and circulation of the WSJ compared to the tech trade press. Certainly any cell phone, PDA, or similar gadget he gives a good review disappears from store shelves the following weekend.
However, in his role as "defender of the average computer user" (not that anyone who reads the WSJ falls into the "average" category) he has fallen into the "its all the fault of the evil techies" routine. I am not sure exactly why, given his overall level of insight. Perhaps he needs to think more deeply about the old proverb: be careful of what you wish for - you may get it.
sPh