Can't speak for other technologies, but when it comes to SQL Anywhere and its synchronization technology MobiLink, there is nothing limiting you from synchronizing subsets of the schema and/or synchronize from a variety of sources to an arbitrary mapping of tables.
For example, you can pull data for one table from your consolidated database while pulling data for another table from a web service.
There are very good reasons to replicate (or at least synchronize) between disparate DB systems. For example, you have a LAMP website but want to feed it data from your backend ERP system. Another fantastic example is mobility, where you have a mobile database like SQL Anywhere on your PDA and/or laptop synchronizing to your enterprise DBs.
But why in the world would I even consider putting time and resources into developing an app for a "platform", where a single party can decide to remove my app from the platform entirely for arbitrary reasons?
What if I develop an app that competes with one of Apple's "buddies"?
So then I have to get confirmation from Apple ahead of time that my new app will be "permitted" on the platform? They will let me sell to my customers?
No thanks. I'd rather deal with quantifiable business risks.
... a great job of chronicling Groklaws' hand in the demise of SCO's case
What is this article doing that is great? At best it is a 100,000 foot view of the past 5 years...but there is no "chronicling" going on.
The information in this article is barely worthwhile to someone who knows nothing about the SCO case (and that type of person wouldn't care about Groklaw anyways), and has ZERO information in it for everyone else.
Okay, so ignoring the piracy-is-not-theft angle you've trounced on, I didn't say anything about it being "right". What I am saying is that if the customer does value the product (or the results thereof, or the data stored within), then they'll eventually come around to paying for it.
If your product is something that people are using simply because it is there but don't care about whether it works beyond today, then fighting to get them to pay is a losing strategy for everyone.
If you make your paying customers jump through hoops to use your product, they waste time/money.
If you make it difficult/impossible for non-paying people to play with your product, then you are killing a potential (and powerful) sales strategy.
So rather than chasing down those who aren't currently paying, place your resources into those who do pay (i.e. support them) and work on making your product MORE VALUABLE for those who aren't paying (those using it and those not using it).
Valuable enough, they'll pay. Not valuable enough, they won't. It doesn't get more basic than that. Fighting this reality by going after non-paying users ends up hurting everyone.
The non-paying users are not stealing from you. They currently don't value the software the way that you do (or you wish they did). But their using it obviously continues to increase its value to them...to the point where they'll (a) want to upgrade/get support/customize and (b) let others know that they are using this product.
I'm not saying it isn't worth discussing the situation with them. But I think making a huge stink about it and turning to litigation is not helping anyone one out (except the lawyers, of course).
The only decision that a voter has to make is whether to vote the crusty been-there-not-overly-effective old guy or the to-be-crushed-by-big-monies newbie.
Even "knowing enough about science", how is that any more important than "knowing enough about economics, politics, world history/geography/religions, crisis management, military strategy, yada-yada-yada...."
If your software has real (business) value, then any customer will depend on its uptime, data consistency, optimal behaviour and enhanced future functionality. Therefore they'll pay for the software they are using.
If your software doesn't mean that much to them, in that they only are using whatever version they happened to have and don't care about any of the above, then the value of your software simply isn't worth what your company believes it to be.
It isn't how many lines of code there are. If the algorithm cannot be readily understood then it is dangerous to advocate using. Looking it over, I keep wondering how in the world anyone ever came up with it. There does not appear to be any hard-fast reason for any particular rule and the hacks are just that.
Being given the answer to a problem does not make the problem any less hard. I'd hate to be given that code and told that a particular browser is having problems rendering it. *shudder*
Their desktop software "transcodes" the PPT to a much more compact format. Then using your mobile, you download the transcoded file (which you can email to your mobile or copy to its file system) to the showmate device (anembedded Linux box the size of a bar of soap) and you control the playback using your mobile device. For the BB, you can either tether to the showmate using a USB cable or you can use Bluetooth.
It's a great device and reasonably priced; we bought two of them.
Their software improves with each new release and they support pretty solid list of PPT features.
You can also display the BB's screen in a recent update, so one can show off custom BB apps on a live device (lots of customers are (rightly) leery of demos using the device simulator).
Laugh all you want, but there is no doubt that innovation has happened here. Hasbro has had 15+ years that the internet has become "popular" and yet they failed to move their game (and business model) to the Web. Most definitely there is a market for that, and someone else innovated exceedingly well (innovation is about executing on an idea, not necessarily inventing a new one).
Hasbro instead came late to the game with a mediocre competitor that simply won't win. So instead of becoming the better product and competing for mindshare (the free market way!), they went to court (whose way is that??).
Hasbro has an ancient game that they has spent zero time innovating on. A market demand opens for the game on the Intertubes and Hasbro failed to identify and fulfill that niche.
These other guys built it, made money off it, and likely sent money Hasbro's way that they would not have otherwise had (new players wanting an offline version). I highly doubt people avoided buying the game because they could play it online...they wouldn't have FOUND the game if it wasn't online.
Hasbro has been raking in cash on an idea that they have effectively let die. Along comes someone who does a great job in a market they aren't servicing... and they whine all the way to the courts.
These guys did NOT "steal" money (copyright and trademark aren't theft, by the way). They serviced a market that Hasbro failed to find for the past 15 years or so.
The energy is one part of an ecosystem. I find it disconcerting that people would question if it is "harmful". It is part of a working system that has been in effect for millions of years...humanity mucking with almost certainly will be more "harmful" and in a much shorter period of time.
I do look forward to seeing the impact statements, and reviewing the background of them...
It is designed to remove energy from a system that I truly wonder how well we understand.
Given humanity's batting record of building systems and only recognizing impacts in hindsight, it would be nice to see that there's at least be a modicum of research in the area.
My concern is more for the effects of taking away that energy from the coastline. Build up enough of these things and I'm sure they begin to affect tides, beaches, marine life, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
For example, you can pull data for one table from your consolidated database while pulling data for another table from a web service.
There are very good reasons to replicate (or at least synchronize) between disparate DB systems. For example, you have a LAMP website but want to feed it data from your backend ERP system. Another fantastic example is mobility, where you have a mobile database like SQL Anywhere on your PDA and/or laptop synchronizing to your enterprise DBs.
What if I develop an app that competes with one of Apple's "buddies"?
So then I have to get confirmation from Apple ahead of time that my new app will be "permitted" on the platform? They will let me sell to my customers?
No thanks. I'd rather deal with quantifiable business risks.
Yes, parts of government continuously look like a joke and not serious business
There, fixed it for you.
Unlike the rest of you, I am not an elitist.
I don't see a difference. Can you spot the difference?
Not they cannot. Certainly a watch can have a phone function. Yellow(tm) would sue the telephone maker into oblivion.
And what if Yellow(tm) decided to come out with a line of hats with a built in watch? Or even just a "hat clip" for their watch?
What is this article doing that is great? At best it is a 100,000 foot view of the past 5 years...but there is no "chronicling" going on.
The information in this article is barely worthwhile to someone who knows nothing about the SCO case (and that type of person wouldn't care about Groklaw anyways), and has ZERO information in it for everyone else.
If your product is something that people are using simply because it is there but don't care about whether it works beyond today, then fighting to get them to pay is a losing strategy for everyone.
If you make your paying customers jump through hoops to use your product, they waste time/money.
If you make it difficult/impossible for non-paying people to play with your product, then you are killing a potential (and powerful) sales strategy.
So rather than chasing down those who aren't currently paying, place your resources into those who do pay (i.e. support them) and work on making your product MORE VALUABLE for those who aren't paying (those using it and those not using it).
Valuable enough, they'll pay. Not valuable enough, they won't. It doesn't get more basic than that. Fighting this reality by going after non-paying users ends up hurting everyone.
The non-paying users are not stealing from you. They currently don't value the software the way that you do (or you wish they did). But their using it obviously continues to increase its value to them...to the point where they'll (a) want to upgrade/get support/customize and (b) let others know that they are using this product.
I'm not saying it isn't worth discussing the situation with them. But I think making a huge stink about it and turning to litigation is not helping anyone one out (except the lawyers, of course).
Even "knowing enough about science", how is that any more important than "knowing enough about economics, politics, world history/geography/religions, crisis management, military strategy, yada-yada-yada...."
If your software doesn't mean that much to them, in that they only are using whatever version they happened to have and don't care about any of the above, then the value of your software simply isn't worth what your company believes it to be.
Being given the answer to a problem does not make the problem any less hard. I'd hate to be given that code and told that a particular browser is having problems rendering it. *shudder*
Will this book have a single iota of information in it that I can't get from the w3c?
The W3C specs don't provide you with the nit-pickinesses of various browsers/versions/OSes and their crazy-silly workarounds.
Their desktop software "transcodes" the PPT to a much more compact format. Then using your mobile, you download the transcoded file (which you can email to your mobile or copy to its file system) to the showmate device (anembedded Linux box the size of a bar of soap) and you control the playback using your mobile device. For the BB, you can either tether to the showmate using a USB cable or you can use Bluetooth.
Their software improves with each new release and they support pretty solid list of PPT features.
You can also display the BB's screen in a recent update, so one can show off custom BB apps on a live device (lots of customers are (rightly) leery of demos using the device simulator).
These guys innovated by bringing a popular game to an entirely new format, and thereby to an entirely new audience.
What Hasbro hasn't done is innovate; They've remained with their 60 year old design.
Hasbro instead came late to the game with a mediocre competitor that simply won't win. So instead of becoming the better product and competing for mindshare (the free market way!), they went to court (whose way is that??).
Just as the forefathers had intended
Hasbro has an ancient game that they has spent zero time innovating on. A market demand opens for the game on the Intertubes and Hasbro failed to identify and fulfill that niche.
These other guys built it, made money off it, and likely sent money Hasbro's way that they would not have otherwise had (new players wanting an offline version). I highly doubt people avoided buying the game because they could play it online...they wouldn't have FOUND the game if it wasn't online.
Hasbro has been raking in cash on an idea that they have effectively let die. Along comes someone who does a great job in a market they aren't servicing ... and they whine all the way to the courts.
These guys did NOT "steal" money (copyright and trademark aren't theft, by the way). They serviced a market that Hasbro failed to find for the past 15 years or so.
I do look forward to seeing the impact statements, and reviewing the background of them...
Given humanity's batting record of building systems and only recognizing impacts in hindsight, it would be nice to see that there's at least be a modicum of research in the area.
My concern is more for the effects of taking away that energy from the coastline. Build up enough of these things and I'm sure they begin to affect tides, beaches, marine life, etc.
Guess you guys aren't into virtualization then?