Three questions for you.
1) did you build it in kylix or delphi?
2) can you build a self contained SOAP server without needing IIS or APACHE?
3)Are you really telling me that I can use http as a transport layer between client and the server databases? That would be cool as hell.
I make a ton of money when compared to you but a pittance when compared to Bill Gates. Alas I am an atheist and don't believe in god. So for me I have no qualms making money and hoarding to myself.
Debian needs to find another way. Even the packages on woody are starting to get old. Anymore you have no choice but to run unstable and sometimes that can bite you in the ass.
What is needed is better isolation of the apps so that one bad app does not break the whole system. The idea that the entire system must be sealed off in order to achieve stability is plain wrong.
Either that or apt.preferences ought to be better implemented so that you can specify that you want to run stable except for apache,php,mysql and postgres for example.
"I don't know of any religion that says, fast people should not compete in the 100 meter, strong people should not compete in greco-roman wresting, and tall people should not compete in basketball."
We are not talking about a foot race. Nor are we talking about competition in the abstract sense. What we are talking about is abandoning your sense of right and wrong and being influenced by money.
The top 4 religions (christianity, islam, judaism, and budhism) all advocate a life of simplicity and charity. None of them advocates a life dedicated to accumulation of money and all of them warn that wealth is not compatible with moral behaviour. How many times did Christ speak out against accumulation of wealth?
Only satanism advocates that the act of accumulation of wealth and power is a virtue and not a sin.
BTW I guess you agree that MS is evil because they "deliberately hinder other racers". Even according to your definition of evil they are immoral.
"Seeking a competitive advantage is a natural, legal, ethical and moral course of action for companies, unless you have been declared a monopoly. "
You must have weird sense of ethics and morals. I can think of no religion which advocates seeking a competitive advantage. I take that back satanism does.
Alas most business people tend to abandon their moral and ethical upbringing the minute they form a business and live a life of satanism. They start worshipping money and the mindless accumulation thereof and try to cloak in some some moral imperitive even though their religion warns them against a life of chasing money.
I don't think we disagree.
Of course you need money to survive and of course that's not a sin. But after a point (I used a million a year) then it becomes silly. In your words if you have accumulated over a million then it's probably because you are valuing acquisition of that money over and above real goals.
Well I think he was implying that MS fights dirty not that they were the only ones who fight dirty. All in all you are right. Most business people are slimy scum who have a very warped sense of ethics and morals.
No real difference. You would not collect it if you did not love it. Ill give you a Virginia Wolf quote.
"The dress in the closet belongs to the poor".
If rich people didn't love money they would give the excess away. I figure just about anybody can lead a pretty good life on 1 million a year the rest belongs to the poor.
The CIOs of most large companies are pretty technologically inept. These same guys were stuck on mainframe for a long time when the PC revolution happened. Hell a ton of them still nurce COBOL apps.
The change won't come from above it will happen just like the PC revolution, from the bottom up. Big companies have too much invested in legacy windows apps and have painted themselves into a vendor lock from which they can't escape. The younger, faster, more innovative up and coming companies will be adopting linux and dragging the rest of the industry along with them. This is the cycle of the industry.
So don't worry that the CIO of exxon will never switch. Go get that mom and pop operation down the street on linux. They will be more receptive because they have no money and they can't buy the MS licenses anyway.
Also consider this most businesses which have less then 50 employees in this country are using windows illegally anyways. Call them into the pirate hotline and get them audited that will kick them in the ass to switch. You can do it anonymously and then ride in to save the day making a few bucks while you are at it. Microsoft audited a few non profits (including meals on wheels if you can believe it) in my town and at least one of them switched to linux. The cost of the audit almost broke them.
"Market share does not determine monopoly status. Even if they had 100% of all desktops with sign of moving, they wouldnt necessarily make them a monopoly."
Where do you get this stuff? Of course market share determines a monopoly. I forget the exact number but legally it's somewhere around 80%. It's not illegal to be a monopoly but it's illegal to abuse that monopoly.
Now despite your ridiculus claims two courts have decided that not only is MS a monopoly but that they have abused that monopoly and have caused harm to the public at large. Thus they are going to be punished.
Now in this case they are getting a wrist slap which will be ineffective punishment. They will simply ignore this consent degree just like they did the last one. They have no morals or ethics or a sense of responsibility to the public at large. They are also above the law and now can do anything they want.
Bill Gates can rape Dubyas daughter and snort coke off of dubyas ass in front of the supreme court and he would be offered a ride home by the secret service. That's the kind of a justice dept he bought.
Wow how ridiculus is this argument. To suggest that the clinton white house went after MS because they didn't pay is just silly. Did they go after any other businesses that didn't pay them? You have absolutely zero evidence that this was the reason they "pursued them vigorously". Guess what it's their job to pursue them vigorously. Just like it was the Bush justice depts job to pursue the case vigorously. It's the job of every prosecutor to do every thing in their power to get a conviction and to send the offender to jail. Prosecutors work for us (the public) and not the defendent (the criminal). Too bad Ashcroft decided that donations were more important then the rule of law and that the interest of the public didn't amount to hill of beans.
Please point to one piece of paper (and not some republicans opinion) or one shred of evidence that this suit was started because MS did not fork over the money.
"This is purely a case for behavioural rememedies. Futhermore most people at large and most legal types would probably tell that if held today, those hearings that led the finding of fact would fall strongly in the corner of MS. The market isnt the same today as in 1995, mostly because of Linux and other Free Software projects."
More nonsense.
First of all it does not matter what the market is like today. they are on trial and have been found guilty of breaking the law. You can't argue that the circumstances are different now and that the law should let you go (unless you are the riches man in the world of course).
Besides circumstances are not really different. MS still has a monopoly, it still abuses that monopoly, it still bundles, it still uses monopoly products to gain monopolies in other markets. XP is a prime example of this. The entire purpose of XP is to get people signed up on passport, using MSN, using MS media formats etc. It has nothing to do with being an OS and everything to do with delivering advertising to windows users.
And even if we were to buy your ridiculus arguments how does a consent degree enforce behavioural rememedies. Bill Gates has already shit on the last remedy and Ballmer is getting ready to piss on this one as we speak. This punishment is a joke and everybody knows that. The justice system in this country is corrupt beyond belief.
The end result of this case will be formal acknowledgement that Bill Gates is officially above the law.
You don't have to be smart to get a degree from Harvard or Princeton or Yale. If you are rich that will suffice. Lots of actors and actresses have degrees from Yale, Harvard, princeton etc. All it takes is money.
" I don't think you've thought this through very well. What happens to all the people who work in the junkfood industry, and all the people all over the world that get affected by the ripples of its disappearance?"
I think I have thought it through more then you have. It certainly sounds like I have done more research then you have too. Of course if we shrink the economy more people will be laid off, more people will be poorer thems the breaks. It sucks that we have put ourselves into this situation. Either we keep playing this ponzi game and crash later or we try for a "soft landing" do a control slowing of economic activity. Take for example the individually wrapped plastic straws I talked about. here is a absolutely unneeded bit of stuff. It takes materials to make, ship, store, buy and sell this stuff. For all that the total lifespan of this product is like 10 minutes and then it sits in a dump for the rest of eternity. You tell me why that's a good idea.
"Run out of plankton? You've got to be joking. Plankton makes up (and this is only a slightly informed guess) like half the biomass on the planet"
I guess you havent read up on the effects of increased ultraviolet radiation on plankton. Also You probably havent read about the changes taking place in the so called "oceanic conveyor belt" and what threat that may pose to the health of the plankton on this planet. I urge you to take some time and study the health of our oceans and atmosphere. As for bacteria what we do our soils destroys healthy bacteria and our soils become lifeless. We then have to mix artificial fertilizers just to make the soild productive, this leads to all kinds of other problems. Again read up on this stuff it's interesting and important.
"Now, eco-doom: this planet has already survived a catastrophe humans would be very hard pressed to replicate."
Of course this planet has survived many catastrophies. The asteroid that wiped out the dinasours also wiped out most of the life on this planet at the time. But the life itself went on and all that's left of that long period of darkness, cold and silence is three inches of dirt. I am talking about the ability of people to survive.
Like you said though we are fairly adaptable we will most likely stay around but in much diminished numbers. As resources get scarce we will first star killing each other to get at them and that will slow the burn rate. As clean water and air become scarce so will a huge number of animals and plants. Food will be extremely expensive and many millions will die from starvation and that will slow the burn rate down. As the the atmosphere and the oceans become unstable many people will die from weather and releated phenomena and that will slow the burn rate.
This is exact scenario that I am talking about. Either we slow down now and seek to build a sustainable economic model or we live it up knowing that we will die before we see the final consequences of our actions. I have zero faith in the ability of humans to sacrifice for their great grandchildren let alone sacrifice their plastic straws for some pride of lions or coral (have you read about the coral?). It's matter of ethics really. Greed vs sacrifice. Greed will win out every time.
When Freud read the communist manifesto he is rumored to have said "it will never work because people are just not that good". He had great insight into humanity.
To me coding is coding. writing another bit of code because you are using a different delimeter or whatever is no more or less painful then writing another piece of code to try and deal with some goofy XML someone sent you. I swear this is true.
I have a client who built a SOAP server. This bozo changes the XML every time he signs on a new client and tries to pass their order to me. It's a nightmare to parse to say the least even though it's all XML and based on "standards".
Like I said if I have to agree on every little bit anyway and if I have to re-write the receiving interface every time he adds a client then why not at least try and save some bandwith and CPU power and send me delimeted data in the first place.
"Now, onward: You're right! We take out more oil than we put back. Same thing with the other fossil fuels. The solution to this is, of course, to kill enough people that the tide turns back. "
Well certainly that's one solution. And in the end it might be the only solution I don't know. Personally I think it won't matter whether we kill the people or the people die out of starvation or whatnot but at the current rate of consumption of natural resources (not just oil but also soil, bacteria etc) you are bound to crash sooner or later.
having said that we can certainly try other things first. We could try shrinking the economy and living simpler. I know no american will ever give up their individually wrapped palstic straws or fritos for the long term survival of the planet but maybe if we educate we could convince some people that they can do without them. We could certainly try to be more efficient in our use of materials and of course we could recycle more aggresively. Maybe it won't put us in a positive balance but it would slow the burn rate.
Now your examples of groceries and amazon are examples of greater efficiencies (more wealth created with fewer natural resources) and certainly we need to foster those kinds of innovations but those books are still made out of paper and those books still have to be shipped in trucks etc. We should take it to the next step and convert them to pure electronic format and deliver them via the internet. We will never get rid of manufacturing and we probably will never get back to sustainability but like I said we need to slow the burn rate. Eventually we will run out of clean air, clean water, oil, trees, plankton, fish, arable soil or something. Already we are losing fauna and flora at an amazing pace it remains to be seen how long the ecosystem can go on before it crashes catastraphicly.
BTW my point is certainly not off-point. My point is exactly this. No discussion of economics is complete without taking the consumption of natural resources into account. Yet I have never ever heard any economist raise these points. They (much like your original post) pretend that money comes into this world from another dimention where there is an infinate amount of it. Everybody can be millionaires whoo hoo!. There is not an infinite amount of it and everybody can't be millionaires. There are not enough natural resources to make everybody a millionaire.
"The great thing is that it solves the PARSING problem."
Not really. I guess it depends on what your parsing problem is in the first place. Here some real world examples of crap I have had to deal with.
1) I specify that a date field. Customer 1 sends me "1/27/63" customer 2 sends me "1963-01-27T00:00:00". Well both are dates no?
2) Customer 1 sends me customer 2 sends me John01/27/63
3) Big Customer 1 tells you they use SQL server and that they will send you XML from their database, Big customer 2 tells you they use Oracle and they will send you XML generated fromt their database.
4) The idiot vendor decides that sometimes the date of birth will be in the DateOfBirth attribute and sometimes it will be in the DOB attribute depending on the subject type or the place of birth.
So you see just specifying XML is not enough. Both parties have to agree of everything. Whether things are attributes or nodes, how they are to be formatted etc. The end result is that XML really does not help at all. For each customer you have to write a new "parser" to take their XML and turn it into something you can use.
The real question is. If you have to agree on everything anyways why not just use a simpler EDI format that takes less bandwidth and inserts into your database easier and can be parsed with a split() function.
" Baah!! There is not a finite amount of money in the country!!! ARGH!!!!"
Well yes and no.
No there is not a finite amount of money (they can allways print more right?). Also money can flow in and out of the country.
The important thing to remember is that the economy grows at the expense of natural resources. In fact economy is nothing more then taking natural resources and turning them into products and services. Even in a pure service model (I get you groceries you pay me $20) natural resources are consumed (I ate, I drove, I wore clothes, I have a house, I shit, I wipe my butt with paper). While some resources are renewable I can think of no resource that is being used at or below the rate of replenishment.
The so called rising tide argument allways fails to take this simple fact into account. They pretend that money is springing into this universe from some other universe and the economy of the world is growing without consequence. Alas it's not true.
So on a micro scale it's a zero sum. Since I am not allowed to print my own money I have to convince someone else to give it to me and that someone else now has less money. And on a macro scale it's a zero sum because as the economy grows we have less trees, less oil, less land, less fertile soil, less clean water and less clean air worldwide. Logging, mining etc get shifted around some but worldwide it's an inevitable march downhill.
First of all if you think corporations are efficient it's obvious you have never worked for a big one. Most large corporations I know are horribly inneficient with clueless management.
"The real difference is: when a corporation gets really big and it is no longer in your best interest to "support" them with your hard earned dollars, you can choose not to."
Actually maybe you can't. Most corporations have interests in other corporations. So you want to boycott phillip morris but in order to do that you have to stop buying nabisco products too. Who knows all the products that phillip morris has their hands into? Certainly not your average consumer.
In the end the consumer gets screwed no matter what. All thos charitable contributions, political bribes, dividends etc are all passed on to the consumer. The consumer can't boycott the corporations because the corporation is like the terrorists cells. They are diffuse and spread themselves amongs markets. Look at how many things MS is into? How are you going to boycott MS?
Not this particular error. I checked it's a mystery error whose error message is really "exception occured". Nobody seems to know why it happens or how to fix it. I wish I had the number handy but it's at work.
Slashdot Mirror
Three questions for you.
1) did you build it in kylix or delphi?
2) can you build a self contained SOAP server without needing IIS or APACHE?
3)Are you really telling me that I can use http as a transport layer between client and the server databases? That would be cool as hell.
I make a ton of money when compared to you but a pittance when compared to Bill Gates. Alas I am an atheist and don't believe in god. So for me I have no qualms making money and hoarding to myself.
Debian needs to find another way. Even the packages on woody are starting to get old. Anymore you have no choice but to run unstable and sometimes that can bite you in the ass.
What is needed is better isolation of the apps so that one bad app does not break the whole system. The idea that the entire system must be sealed off in order to achieve stability is plain wrong.
Either that or apt.preferences ought to be better implemented so that you can specify that you want to run stable except for apache,php,mysql and postgres for example.
"I don't know of any religion that says, fast people should not compete in the 100 meter, strong people should not compete in greco-roman wresting, and tall people should not compete in basketball."
We are not talking about a foot race. Nor are we talking about competition in the abstract sense. What we are talking about is abandoning your sense of right and wrong and being influenced by money.
The top 4 religions (christianity, islam, judaism, and budhism) all advocate a life of simplicity and charity. None of them advocates a life dedicated to accumulation of money and all of them warn that wealth is not compatible with moral behaviour. How many times did Christ speak out against accumulation of wealth?
Only satanism advocates that the act of accumulation of wealth and power is a virtue and not a sin.
BTW I guess you agree that MS is evil because they "deliberately hinder other racers". Even according to your definition of evil they are immoral.
"Seeking a competitive advantage is a natural, legal, ethical and moral course of action for companies, unless you have been declared a monopoly. "
You must have weird sense of ethics and morals. I can think of no religion which advocates seeking a competitive advantage. I take that back satanism does.
Alas most business people tend to abandon their moral and ethical upbringing the minute they form a business and live a life of satanism. They start worshipping money and the mindless accumulation thereof and try to cloak in some some moral imperitive even though their religion warns them against a life of chasing money.
I don't think we disagree.
Of course you need money to survive and of course that's not a sin. But after a point (I used a million a year) then it becomes silly. In your words if you have accumulated over a million then it's probably because you are valuing acquisition of that money over and above real goals.
Well I think he was implying that MS fights dirty not that they were the only ones who fight dirty. All in all you are right. Most business people are slimy scum who have a very warped sense of ethics and morals.
No real difference. You would not collect it if you did not love it. Ill give you a Virginia Wolf quote.
"The dress in the closet belongs to the poor".
If rich people didn't love money they would give the excess away. I figure just about anybody can lead a pretty good life on 1 million a year the rest belongs to the poor.
The CIOs of most large companies are pretty technologically inept. These same guys were stuck on mainframe for a long time when the PC revolution happened. Hell a ton of them still nurce COBOL apps.
The change won't come from above it will happen just like the PC revolution, from the bottom up. Big companies have too much invested in legacy windows apps and have painted themselves into a vendor lock from which they can't escape. The younger, faster, more innovative up and coming companies will be adopting linux and dragging the rest of the industry along with them. This is the cycle of the industry.
So don't worry that the CIO of exxon will never switch. Go get that mom and pop operation down the street on linux. They will be more receptive because they have no money and they can't buy the MS licenses anyway.
Also consider this most businesses which have less then 50 employees in this country are using windows illegally anyways. Call them into the pirate hotline and get them audited that will kick them in the ass to switch. You can do it anonymously and then ride in to save the day making a few bucks while you are at it. Microsoft audited a few non profits (including meals on wheels if you can believe it) in my town and at least one of them switched to linux. The cost of the audit almost broke them.
If you need that box they you can't run windows on it anyway. It just does not scale that high.
"Market share does not determine monopoly status. Even if they had 100% of all desktops with sign of moving, they wouldnt necessarily make them a monopoly."
Where do you get this stuff? Of course market share determines a monopoly. I forget the exact number but legally it's somewhere around 80%. It's not illegal to be a monopoly but it's illegal to abuse that monopoly.
Now despite your ridiculus claims two courts have decided that not only is MS a monopoly but that they have abused that monopoly and have caused harm to the public at large. Thus they are going to be punished.
Now in this case they are getting a wrist slap which will be ineffective punishment. They will simply ignore this consent degree just like they did the last one. They have no morals or ethics or a sense of responsibility to the public at large. They are also above the law and now can do anything they want.
Bill Gates can rape Dubyas daughter and snort coke off of dubyas ass in front of the supreme court and he would be offered a ride home by the secret service. That's the kind of a justice dept he bought.
As a percentage it's still insignificant.
It depends on the honesty record of the zealot in question I suppose.
Wow how ridiculus is this argument. To suggest that the clinton white house went after MS because they didn't pay is just silly. Did they go after any other businesses that didn't pay them? You have absolutely zero evidence that this was the reason they "pursued them vigorously". Guess what it's their job to pursue them vigorously. Just like it was the Bush justice depts job to pursue the case vigorously. It's the job of every prosecutor to do every thing in their power to get a conviction and to send the offender to jail. Prosecutors work for us (the public) and not the defendent (the criminal). Too bad Ashcroft decided that donations were more important then the rule of law and that the interest of the public didn't amount to hill of beans.
Please point to one piece of paper (and not some republicans opinion) or one shred of evidence that this suit was started because MS did not fork over the money.
"This is purely a case for behavioural rememedies. Futhermore most people at large and most legal types would probably tell that if held today, those hearings that led the finding of fact would fall strongly in the corner of MS. The market isnt the same today as in 1995, mostly because of Linux and other Free Software projects."
More nonsense.
First of all it does not matter what the market is like today. they are on trial and have been found guilty of breaking the law. You can't argue that the circumstances are different now and that the law should let you go (unless you are the riches man in the world of course).
Besides circumstances are not really different. MS still has a monopoly, it still abuses that monopoly, it still bundles, it still uses monopoly products to gain monopolies in other markets. XP is a prime example of this. The entire purpose of XP is to get people signed up on passport, using MSN, using MS media formats etc. It has nothing to do with being an OS and everything to do with delivering advertising to windows users.
And even if we were to buy your ridiculus arguments how does a consent degree enforce behavioural rememedies. Bill Gates has already shit on the last remedy and Ballmer is getting ready to piss on this one as we speak. This punishment is a joke and everybody knows that. The justice system in this country is corrupt beyond belief.
The end result of this case will be formal acknowledgement that Bill Gates is officially above the law.
You don't have to be smart to get a degree from Harvard or Princeton or Yale. If you are rich that will suffice. Lots of actors and actresses have degrees from Yale, Harvard, princeton etc. All it takes is money.
"Sure, you can say that Linux has a lower TCO then MS, but MS is claiming otherwise."
Ask yourself this question. When was the last time you read any statement from an MS executive that did not contain at least one lie?
While you are thinking ask yourself this question. Under what cicumstances would MS ever admit that windows had a higher TCO?
After you have asked and answered those questions you can then consider if you actually believes what MS says.
" I don't think you've thought this through very well. What happens to all the people who work in the junkfood industry, and all the people all over the world that get affected by the ripples of its disappearance?"
I think I have thought it through more then you have. It certainly sounds like I have done more research then you have too. Of course if we shrink the economy more people will be laid off, more people will be poorer thems the breaks. It sucks that we have put ourselves into this situation. Either we keep playing this ponzi game and crash later or we try for a "soft landing" do a control slowing of economic activity. Take for example the individually wrapped plastic straws I talked about. here is a absolutely unneeded bit of stuff. It takes materials to make, ship, store, buy and sell this stuff. For all that the total lifespan of this product is like 10 minutes and then it sits in a dump for the rest of eternity. You tell me why that's a good idea.
"Run out of plankton? You've got to be joking. Plankton makes up (and this is only a slightly informed guess) like half the biomass on the planet"
I guess you havent read up on the effects of increased ultraviolet radiation on plankton. Also You probably havent read about the changes taking place in the so called "oceanic conveyor belt" and what threat that may pose to the health of the plankton on this planet. I urge you to take some time and study the health of our oceans and atmosphere. As for bacteria what we do our soils destroys healthy bacteria and our soils become lifeless. We then have to mix artificial fertilizers just to make the soild productive, this leads to all kinds of other problems. Again read up on this stuff it's interesting and important.
"Now, eco-doom: this planet has already survived a catastrophe humans would be very hard pressed to replicate."
Of course this planet has survived many catastrophies. The asteroid that wiped out the dinasours also wiped out most of the life on this planet at the time. But the life itself went on and all that's left of that long period of darkness, cold and silence is three inches of dirt. I am talking about the ability of people to survive.
Like you said though we are fairly adaptable we will most likely stay around but in much diminished numbers. As resources get scarce we will first star killing each other to get at them and that will slow the burn rate. As clean water and air become scarce so will a huge number of animals and plants. Food will be extremely expensive and many millions will die from starvation and that will slow the burn rate down. As the the atmosphere and the oceans become unstable many people will die from weather and releated phenomena and that will slow the burn rate.
This is exact scenario that I am talking about. Either we slow down now and seek to build a sustainable economic model or we live it up knowing that we will die before we see the final consequences of our actions. I have zero faith in the ability of humans to sacrifice for their great grandchildren let alone sacrifice their plastic straws for some pride of lions or coral (have you read about the coral?). It's matter of ethics really. Greed vs sacrifice. Greed will win out every time.
When Freud read the communist manifesto he is rumored to have said "it will never work because people are just not that good". He had great insight into humanity.
To me coding is coding. writing another bit of code because you are using a different delimeter or whatever is no more or less painful then writing another piece of code to try and deal with some goofy XML someone sent you. I swear this is true.
I have a client who built a SOAP server. This bozo changes the XML every time he signs on a new client and tries to pass their order to me. It's a nightmare to parse to say the least even though it's all XML and based on "standards".
Like I said if I have to agree on every little bit anyway and if I have to re-write the receiving interface every time he adds a client then why not at least try and save some bandwith and CPU power and send me delimeted data in the first place.
"Now, onward: You're right! We take out more oil than we put back. Same thing with the other fossil fuels. The solution to this is, of course, to kill enough people that the tide turns back. "
Well certainly that's one solution. And in the end it might be the only solution I don't know. Personally I think it won't matter whether we kill the people or the people die out of starvation or whatnot but at the current rate of consumption of natural resources (not just oil but also soil, bacteria etc) you are bound to crash sooner or later.
having said that we can certainly try other things first. We could try shrinking the economy and living simpler. I know no american will ever give up their individually wrapped palstic straws or fritos for the long term survival of the planet but maybe if we educate we could convince some people that they can do without them. We could certainly try to be more efficient in our use of materials and of course we could recycle more aggresively. Maybe it won't put us in a positive balance but it would slow the burn rate.
Now your examples of groceries and amazon are examples of greater efficiencies (more wealth created with fewer natural resources) and certainly we need to foster those kinds of innovations but those books are still made out of paper and those books still have to be shipped in trucks etc. We should take it to the next step and convert them to pure electronic format and deliver them via the internet. We will never get rid of manufacturing and we probably will never get back to sustainability but like I said we need to slow the burn rate. Eventually we will run out of clean air, clean water, oil, trees, plankton, fish, arable soil or something. Already we are losing fauna and flora at an amazing pace it remains to be seen how long the ecosystem can go on before it crashes catastraphicly.
BTW my point is certainly not off-point. My point is exactly this. No discussion of economics is complete without taking the consumption of natural resources into account. Yet I have never ever heard any economist raise these points. They (much like your original post) pretend that money comes into this world from another dimention where there is an infinate amount of it. Everybody can be millionaires whoo hoo!. There is not an infinite amount of it and everybody can't be millionaires. There are not enough natural resources to make everybody a millionaire.
Webobjects from apple does this beautifully too.
"The great thing is that it solves the PARSING problem."
Not really. I guess it depends on what your parsing problem is in the first place. Here some real world examples of crap I have had to deal with.
1) I specify that a date field. Customer 1 sends me "1/27/63" customer 2 sends me "1963-01-27T00:00:00". Well both are dates no?
2) Customer 1 sends me customer 2 sends me John01/27/63
3) Big Customer 1 tells you they use SQL server and that they will send you XML from their database, Big customer 2 tells you they use Oracle and they will send you XML generated fromt their database.
4) The idiot vendor decides that sometimes the date of birth will be in the DateOfBirth attribute and sometimes it will be in the DOB attribute depending on the subject type or the place of birth.
So you see just specifying XML is not enough. Both parties have to agree of everything. Whether things are attributes or nodes, how they are to be formatted etc. The end result is that XML really does not help at all. For each customer you have to write a new "parser" to take their XML and turn it into something you can use.
The real question is. If you have to agree on everything anyways why not just use a simpler EDI format that takes less bandwidth and inserts into your database easier and can be parsed with a split() function.
Oh man you really don't know. It's not just storing the data it's also querying, sorting, and re-arranging the data. It's really tough.
" Baah!! There is not a finite amount of money in the country!!! ARGH!!!!"
Well yes and no.
No there is not a finite amount of money (they can allways print more right?). Also money can flow in and out of the country.
The important thing to remember is that the economy grows at the expense of natural resources. In fact economy is nothing more then taking natural resources and turning them into products and services. Even in a pure service model (I get you groceries you pay me $20) natural resources are consumed (I ate, I drove, I wore clothes, I have a house, I shit, I wipe my butt with paper). While some resources are renewable I can think of no resource that is being used at or below the rate of replenishment.
The so called rising tide argument allways fails to take this simple fact into account. They pretend that money is springing into this universe from some other universe and the economy of the world is growing without consequence. Alas it's not true.
So on a micro scale it's a zero sum. Since I am not allowed to print my own money I have to convince someone else to give it to me and that someone else now has less money. And on a macro scale it's a zero sum because as the economy grows we have less trees, less oil, less land, less fertile soil, less clean water and less clean air worldwide. Logging, mining etc get shifted around some but worldwide it's an inevitable march downhill.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
First of all if you think corporations are efficient it's obvious you have never worked for a big one. Most large corporations I know are horribly inneficient with clueless management.
"The real difference is: when a corporation gets really big and it is no longer in your best interest to "support" them with your hard earned dollars, you can choose not to."
Actually maybe you can't. Most corporations have interests in other corporations. So you want to boycott phillip morris but in order to do that you have to stop buying nabisco products too. Who knows all the products that phillip morris has their hands into? Certainly not your average consumer.
In the end the consumer gets screwed no matter what. All thos charitable contributions, political bribes, dividends etc are all passed on to the consumer. The consumer can't boycott the corporations because the corporation is like the terrorists cells. They are diffuse and spread themselves amongs markets. Look at how many things MS is into? How are you going to boycott MS?
Not this particular error. I checked it's a mystery error whose error message is really "exception occured". Nobody seems to know why it happens or how to fix it. I wish I had the number handy but it's at work.