I suddenly feel a little bit smug having only spent $25 on my vibrator, and the occasional pocket change on lotion and AA batteries. Why anyone would spend hundreds of dollars on a sex toy is beyond me. It feels good to be a girl right now. ^___^
It's like any other hobby - you can spend as much or as little as you want on it; with varying results. I'm sure a guy can save themselves a considerable amount over the cost of one of these dolls by buying a Fleshlight. Meanwhile, a girl might want to spend more than your toy's ticket price on a Symbian. And there's undoubtedly whole lines of mass-produced, small-run production, and custom equipment out there for every aspect of human sexuality.
The slave morality of MySQL freeloaders is mind-boggling here! People who choose to devote their time and talent to developing free software are not your slaves! They have rights too, including the right to do what's in their own personal interest. Free / open source software is a natural consequence of free market competition, not government force!
At first, I was in general agreement with what you were saying. Developers are affected by market forces and are free to take actions that benefit themselves as they desire. But then you dove right in to this freedom-is-tyranny anti-GPL litany. The mental gymnastics involved are what's mind-boggling here. It's rather amusing how BSD fanatics are using this case to push an agenda.
If a product can't be effectively forked, it's not completely open source.
If a GPL fork of MySQL isn't good enough, then whose fault is that? And what does that mean for other dual-licensed GPL+Proprietary products?
The only one that seems to be having trouble with this is Monty Widenius. And it seems his issue is being unable to re-create a proprietary fork. So if your goal is to maintain a proprietary product, and you don't own the copyright to the code, then big surprise... the GPL is an issue. But then, that's kind of the point of the GPL.
Companies just don't get it. We have a way to get your shit for free. If you find ANY way to get us to pay for it then count your lucky stars and hope we keep using that method. Try anything that aggravates us though and we go back to getting it for free.
Actually, no... you don't get it for free. There's always a cost. You're putting time, effort, and resources in to making that copy. Ignoring legal risk and morality as these are wild cards person to person, if a content producer can beat you on one or more of these points, their copy is going to be much more attractive than making it on your own. What's going on here is risking raising an artificial barrier that upsets that balance against the studios' favor.
Why do slashdot users insist on perpetuating the myth that the general population is completely clueless about anything hardware? If someone's going to invest $2,580 for a nexus one (or $3780 for an iPhone) chance are they're going to know a decent amount about it.
You've just described the purchase in a context that is lost on the majority of consumers. People don't look at these things in terms of a lifetime cost. On geek sites you see things like hardware specs. On phone geek sites you see discussions of lifetime cost (as well as hardware specs). On mainstream forums, the conversation is more about how cool a phone is or, in very general terms, which is "best."
Pretty sure that the iPhone was never king among the geeks that care about hardware specs.
I'm not so sure, the biggest phone geek I know has switched to an iphone. "User experience" is important for geeks too, and I have to say the iphone seems to deliver a great one (at a price).
Yes - because a user experience is one of the most important hardware specs to consider!
What you've described is a single difference; hardly everything. The issue I have with this "everything changed" sentiment is that it ignores a lot of history (see the link in my earlier reply). Oddly enough, if you look through that link, you'll see a pretty common pattern of attacks; car and truck bombs. In the middle of those are various unique attacks. The 9/11 attacks were likewise unique. Yet the car and truck bombs continue. Modes of attack didn't even change after 9/11.
There are also a hwhole lot more people working to prevent it. Taken together we have more people trying to stop it, but more things happening anyway (you admit there are more attacks than before) and you have the logical conclusion that if we still had the same amount of people working to stop it now as we did before then there would be more attacks now than there already are.
You should be thanking me for preventing tigers from savaging you in your sleep. I've spent a lot of hours on the problem. I've even spent a lot of money. The logical conclusion is that without all that effort and money on my part, you would be facing far more tigers.
Or maybe not.
I'm not claiming that terrorism is a myth. I agree that it's a valid national security concern. But at the same time, I'm saying we need to keep it in perspective. The GP was right - we don't need to lose our heads due to fear and hand away our liberty. And we don't need to waste resources on activities that do nothing to actually counter terrorism just for the sake of doing something.
Really? I honestly don't think I see more terrorist attacks today than prior to 9/11. Don't forget Oklahoma City, the first WTC bombing, the Unabomber, etc. etc. Terrorist attacks are a fact of life, and are most certainly not limited to attacks on aircraft.
Yeah, if you dig around a bit, you'll find that the frequency of attacks have increased. However, the deeper you dig, the more you find a rather lengthy history of terrorism. I agree that terrorism has existed for quite a long time. But there has been an increased frequency of attacks on US and/or US interests in the last 8 years. Of course, at the same time, those attacks still represent a insignificant risk compared to other risks most of us are exposed to daily.
What I *do* see is a lot of mis-characterized "terrorist" attacks around the globe. An IED blows up a humvee in Iraq? Terrorist! (No, it's a military strike.)
I'm not even considering these sorts of attacks. But it's very interesting that you make note of it. This points to the twisty rabbit hole that is the definitions of criminal acts, armies, nations, and other associated "rules" of war. I don't really want to follow the rabbit hole in this post. But I'll agree that it's there but not part of my scope.
Past frequency does not tell us much about future frequency when the context changes. For example, if a terrorist group has a nuke, will previous frequency data still apply?
Show that the context has changed. As you said, back that up. Fear mongers like to throw around the phrase "everything changed with 9/11." Yet in the past 8 years, the statistics have barely moved a blip. Sure - we see more attacks. We get more news stories going over every detail of the newest failed attempt. But the statistics are still pretty solidly in your favor for avoiding a terrorist attack.
...except that if Oracle owns the copyrights to MySQL, they can close source future versions of MySQL and/or let mainline development languish. I don't know if they also own the name "MySQL" but if they do they can forbid any forks of MySQL from being called "MySQL" as well.
Of course, the existing source will live forever, but any forks will not have the advantage of the "MySQL" brand name or the ability to dual-license the code for situations where more restrictive licensing might be desired by their customers.
It's kind of surprising how few people realize this disadvantage of the GPL. Keep that in mind the next time you use it on a project.
So I'm curious - what license does a better job at this than the GPL? What license specifically provides access to a trademark and negates dual-licensing? Or was dual-licensing the advantage? You know - the advantage of shutting down future forks. Just like Oracle is feared to do. Which is an issue. Except when everyone else wants to do it. Then that's an advantage. Right?
I must stress that I don't believe it's all roses for the music industry. They're facing harder times, to be sure. But the devil of those hard times are in the details.
The RIAA-sourced chart brit74 linked to is rather misleading. It shows just what the RIAA wants; look at that big huge glob that represents the glory year of 1999! It must be horrible for them to look at that tapering edge that represents 2008 and wistfully wonder what could have been if things just kept waxing instead of waning. But the chart hides more important information. Namely, exactly what were the sales outside those halcyon years bookending 1999?
Finding those numbers aren't easy. Part of it, like a lot of these things, is getting representative data - not just the RIAA's data. One attempt at that is Nielsen which published it's numbers for 2008. Some articles based on that:
It's hard to find exact matches to compare; apples to apples. But for a "failing" industry, there's a heck of a lot of sales going on. The common theme seems to be that the higher-profit album market is disappearing as consumers and retailers are spending less and less attention on it.
And 1999 was a record breaking year for the music industry; surpassing sales for all time. It also was a time of economic boom. But then that bubble burst.
The same thing happened with radio. Free music was the death knell of the industry! Sales were at an all-time low! Nevermind that little thing called The Great Depression. Radio killed the music industry.
Like I noted, the music industry isn't immune to economic downturn. But look at what they're doing even in this economy (and that's using RIAA's numbers).
A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.
If you'd read TFA, you'd know that. But this is/. so..
You picked a great quote. A decode worth of file-sharing and swiping has left the industry... where, exactly? I haven't seen a failing music industry yet. In fact, it's an industry affected by rough economic patches but faring far better than many other industries hit by economic dips. And meanwhile - there are service providers with swollen profits perfectly mirroring this imagined loss in receipts? Oh. I get it. This is another one of these "Google is evil" things big media likes to slip under the door in the hopes nobody realizes it's their own gambit.
Now, now... if Bono wants to compare the music industry with Child Pornographers and the RIAA with a tyrannical Government, who are we to argue with him?
The Government is us and the Government is the enemy. This isn't a black-and-white kind of thing. It is never a static state of affairs.
I agree that government doesn't "want" things. And we don't do ourselves any favors demonizing government and agents of a Government. But we should always be wary of the tendency of both the individuals and, in turn, the Governments they run to trod over the rights of citizens in their zeal to be rightous.
Your logic escapes me. I understand technology very well and I understand his concern. Piracy is much easier and cheaper in a digital world than in a print world. It is a threat to the business of content creators (authors) and their publishers. Ads won't pay the bills. All the clowns on this site who think people should or can work for free or a pittance need to get of their mommas' basements and try to support a family.
Aren't those clowns called authors? Not every author has best-seller credentials backing their latest project. And, consequently, there are some seriously lean times ahead of any new author - even some established authors. Yet we still have authors writing despite the uncertain economics of it all.
How much of a threat "piracy" represents is very much up to debate. But clearly the quoted author has no concept of the technology - right down to naming "open-source". They're full of fear for a mystery that they have no insight or understanding. The author offers no insight that uncovers that mystery as a boogie-man or real threat.
The problem is that content industry representatives see every case of copyright infringement as a lost sale. So while there are statistics that show quite decent sales figures, the industry reps focus on "loss sales" and paint a picture of doom and gloom.
With said doom and gloom on the horizon, authors are spooked. J.K. Rowling avoids eBooks because of this fear. Yet I have a digital facsimile of every one of her Harry Potter series. I also have the entire collection in hardback on shelves but the digital (DRM free) files are much easier to carry around and read. I suppose she's doomed. But does she has the publishing industry or people like me to thank for it?
Book authors are yet another content producer being dragged in to the digital age. I doubt they're going the way of the buggy whip manufacturers. But individual publishing houses might. The question is, will they drag their feet like the music industry has for the past millennium or will they look forward and figure out how to gracefully make that transition and start making money?
It defined the end of the Win 9x line. For the first time most people's PCs became relatively stable. For those of us that were Linux or Unix users, it wasn't a big deal, but for the average user it was very significant. Windows XP, unlike the 9x line or Vista, focused more on being a stable operating system than being an application. After the optical mouse and the old 1980s Olympics game, it might be the best product Microsoft ever released. And for Microsoft, it was probably their hardest business decision: build an operating system that people won't feel they need to upgrade from or lose angry customers to Linux and Unix derived lines (like Mac OS X).
[In this Intel-sponsored feature, part of the Visual Computing section, the technical experts behind Mythic and EA's Warhammer Online discuss the mechanics of keeping the MMO running across multiple servers and data centers.]
So yeah - if you start picking up on the glossy brochure language... it's because it is, in fact, marketingspeek. But burried in all the "gosh golly isn't this product swell" blather is some interesting little tidbits about the environment; wheat from chaff.
I'm curious. I use OO at work all the time (today, in fact). The only time I've ever felt inclined to turn to Google Docs was to toy with shared access (and limited syncing to my Droid). And the only time I've had to turn to MS Word was when someone generated a MS Word doc that OO couldn't handle properly (or rather - once OO saved it, Word couldn't handle the formatting). Maybe I'm missing something very important about Google Docs? And likewise, I've never hit the need for complexity with Word docs that seem to drive some folks.
Look at the details of the kinds of low level agreements the US makes with other countries. Look at the way we refuse to participate on an equal basis in major areas of international law. The US is not often willing to live by the same rules it wants the rest of the world to follow. Go to some of these developing countries and look at what's actually going on on the ground. Its a LOT uglier than you think.
Oh, I don't think it's all that pretty at all. Like I noted, the world is a rough and violent place. The US has operated in that world, competing with interests, and has done ugly things in some situations. But that doesn't make the US lord and master of the world.
And yes - the US is very influential. It uses that influence to strike favorable exchanges. I'm sure some of those are incredibly one-sided. The question is how those bargains were made.
The devil's in the details. Generalities fail at this point. There are some situations that I'd be willing to defend and some that I would find inexcusable. My issue is that some criticisms seem to consider every situation inexusable.
Look at most of the money we supposedly contribute to development overseas. 86% or so of it is tied up with stipulations that it has to be spent HERE. Oh, you can have this 50 million $ to build X piece of infrastructure, but you have to hire Bechtel to do all the work, at some ridiculously inflated prices and all the jobs go to overseas contractors.
Aren't those earmarks? If so - welcome to the world of Congressional spending. This isn't the US lording power over disadvantaged nations. This is business as usual for Congress. They do the exact same thing within US borders as well. Check out NASA's budget. In fact, the CAIB Report even has a little sub-section talking about how earmarks impact NASA's budget (indirectly causing the Columbia incident).
Of course there are a whole slew of things we never get credit for either, but there's a heck of a lot of arm twisting that goes on. And a heck of a lot of supporting of some very shady people that do a lot of very shady things behind the scenes.
Again - the world is a dangerous and violent place. Such a world is full of shady folks doing shady things. You aren't going to operate in such an environment without bumping up against some of them.
Slashdot Mirror
I suddenly feel a little bit smug having only spent $25 on my vibrator, and the occasional pocket change on lotion and AA batteries. Why anyone would spend hundreds of dollars on a sex toy is beyond me. It feels good to be a girl right now. ^___^
It's like any other hobby - you can spend as much or as little as you want on it; with varying results. I'm sure a guy can save themselves a considerable amount over the cost of one of these dolls by buying a Fleshlight. Meanwhile, a girl might want to spend more than your toy's ticket price on a Symbian. And there's undoubtedly whole lines of mass-produced, small-run production, and custom equipment out there for every aspect of human sexuality.
The slave morality of MySQL freeloaders is mind-boggling here! People who choose to devote their time and talent to developing free software are not your slaves! They have rights too, including the right to do what's in their own personal interest. Free / open source software is a natural consequence of free market competition, not government force!
BSD is the most restrictive license a freedom-loving person should ever want to use. GPL is even more dependent on government force than proprietary software is, but usually doesn't come close to it in terms of quality or convenience.
At first, I was in general agreement with what you were saying. Developers are affected by market forces and are free to take actions that benefit themselves as they desire. But then you dove right in to this freedom-is-tyranny anti-GPL litany. The mental gymnastics involved are what's mind-boggling here. It's rather amusing how BSD fanatics are using this case to push an agenda.
If a product can't be effectively forked, it's not completely open source.
If a GPL fork of MySQL isn't good enough, then whose fault is that? And what does that mean for other dual-licensed GPL+Proprietary products?
The only one that seems to be having trouble with this is Monty Widenius. And it seems his issue is being unable to re-create a proprietary fork. So if your goal is to maintain a proprietary product, and you don't own the copyright to the code, then big surprise... the GPL is an issue. But then, that's kind of the point of the GPL.
Companies just don't get it. We have a way to get your shit for free. If you find ANY way to get us to pay for it then count your lucky stars and hope we keep using that method. Try anything that aggravates us though and we go back to getting it for free.
Actually, no... you don't get it for free. There's always a cost. You're putting time, effort, and resources in to making that copy. Ignoring legal risk and morality as these are wild cards person to person, if a content producer can beat you on one or more of these points, their copy is going to be much more attractive than making it on your own. What's going on here is risking raising an artificial barrier that upsets that balance against the studios' favor.
Sea Shanties were sung in association with ship-board tasks (often repetitious in nature). Is Google paving the way for the Librarian chantey?
1998 called - something about wanting its post back.
Why do slashdot users insist on perpetuating the myth that the general population is completely clueless about anything hardware? If someone's going to invest $2,580 for a nexus one (or $3780 for an iPhone) chance are they're going to know a decent amount about it.
You've just described the purchase in a context that is lost on the majority of consumers. People don't look at these things in terms of a lifetime cost. On geek sites you see things like hardware specs. On phone geek sites you see discussions of lifetime cost (as well as hardware specs). On mainstream forums, the conversation is more about how cool a phone is or, in very general terms, which is "best."
Could you be any more smug and arrogant?
I suppose he could have talked about how "insanely great" his Apple product was.
Pretty sure that the iPhone was never king among the geeks that care about hardware specs.
I'm not so sure, the biggest phone geek I know has switched to an iphone. "User experience" is important for geeks too, and I have to say the iphone seems to deliver a great one (at a price).
Yes - because a user experience is one of the most important hardware specs to consider!
What you've described is a single difference; hardly everything. The issue I have with this "everything changed" sentiment is that it ignores a lot of history (see the link in my earlier reply). Oddly enough, if you look through that link, you'll see a pretty common pattern of attacks; car and truck bombs. In the middle of those are various unique attacks. The 9/11 attacks were likewise unique. Yet the car and truck bombs continue. Modes of attack didn't even change after 9/11.
There are also a hwhole lot more people working to prevent it. Taken together we have more people trying to stop it, but more things happening anyway (you admit there are more attacks than before) and you have the logical conclusion that if we still had the same amount of people working to stop it now as we did before then there would be more attacks now than there already are.
You should be thanking me for preventing tigers from savaging you in your sleep. I've spent a lot of hours on the problem. I've even spent a lot of money. The logical conclusion is that without all that effort and money on my part, you would be facing far more tigers.
Or maybe not.
I'm not claiming that terrorism is a myth. I agree that it's a valid national security concern. But at the same time, I'm saying we need to keep it in perspective. The GP was right - we don't need to lose our heads due to fear and hand away our liberty. And we don't need to waste resources on activities that do nothing to actually counter terrorism just for the sake of doing something.
Sure - we see more attacks.
Really? I honestly don't think I see more terrorist attacks today than prior to 9/11. Don't forget Oklahoma City, the first WTC bombing, the Unabomber, etc. etc. Terrorist attacks are a fact of life, and are most certainly not limited to attacks on aircraft.
Yeah, if you dig around a bit, you'll find that the frequency of attacks have increased. However, the deeper you dig, the more you find a rather lengthy history of terrorism. I agree that terrorism has existed for quite a long time. But there has been an increased frequency of attacks on US and/or US interests in the last 8 years. Of course, at the same time, those attacks still represent a insignificant risk compared to other risks most of us are exposed to daily.
What I *do* see is a lot of mis-characterized "terrorist" attacks around the globe. An IED blows up a humvee in Iraq? Terrorist! (No, it's a military strike.)
I'm not even considering these sorts of attacks. But it's very interesting that you make note of it. This points to the twisty rabbit hole that is the definitions of criminal acts, armies, nations, and other associated "rules" of war. I don't really want to follow the rabbit hole in this post. But I'll agree that it's there but not part of my scope.
Past frequency does not tell us much about future frequency when the context changes. For example, if a terrorist group has a nuke, will previous frequency data still apply?
Show that the context has changed. As you said, back that up. Fear mongers like to throw around the phrase "everything changed with 9/11." Yet in the past 8 years, the statistics have barely moved a blip. Sure - we see more attacks. We get more news stories going over every detail of the newest failed attempt. But the statistics are still pretty solidly in your favor for avoiding a terrorist attack.
...except that if Oracle owns the copyrights to MySQL, they can close source future versions of MySQL and/or let mainline development languish. I don't know if they also own the name "MySQL" but if they do they can forbid any forks of MySQL from being called "MySQL" as well.
Of course, the existing source will live forever, but any forks will not have the advantage of the "MySQL" brand name or the ability to dual-license the code for situations where more restrictive licensing might be desired by their customers.
It's kind of surprising how few people realize this disadvantage of the GPL. Keep that in mind the next time you use it on a project.
So I'm curious - what license does a better job at this than the GPL? What license specifically provides access to a trademark and negates dual-licensing? Or was dual-licensing the advantage? You know - the advantage of shutting down future forks. Just like Oracle is feared to do. Which is an issue. Except when everyone else wants to do it. Then that's an advantage. Right?
I must stress that I don't believe it's all roses for the music industry. They're facing harder times, to be sure. But the devil of those hard times are in the details.
The RIAA-sourced chart brit74 linked to is rather misleading. It shows just what the RIAA wants; look at that big huge glob that represents the glory year of 1999! It must be horrible for them to look at that tapering edge that represents 2008 and wistfully wonder what could have been if things just kept waxing instead of waning. But the chart hides more important information. Namely, exactly what were the sales outside those halcyon years bookending 1999?
Finding those numbers aren't easy. Part of it, like a lot of these things, is getting representative data - not just the RIAA's data. One attempt at that is Nielsen which published it's numbers for 2008. Some articles based on that:
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/01/music-sales-up-10-in-2008-thanks-to-downloads-and-vinyl.ars
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2009-01-01-soundscan-numbers_N.htm
It's hard to find exact matches to compare; apples to apples. But for a "failing" industry, there's a heck of a lot of sales going on. The common theme seems to be that the higher-profit album market is disappearing as consumers and retailers are spending less and less attention on it.
And 1999 was a record breaking year for the music industry; surpassing sales for all time. It also was a time of economic boom. But then that bubble burst.
The same thing happened with radio. Free music was the death knell of the industry! Sales were at an all-time low! Nevermind that little thing called The Great Depression. Radio killed the music industry.
Like I noted, the music industry isn't immune to economic downturn. But look at what they're doing even in this economy (and that's using RIAA's numbers).
A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.
If you'd read TFA, you'd know that. But this is /. so..
You picked a great quote. A decode worth of file-sharing and swiping has left the industry... where, exactly? I haven't seen a failing music industry yet. In fact, it's an industry affected by rough economic patches but faring far better than many other industries hit by economic dips. And meanwhile - there are service providers with swollen profits perfectly mirroring this imagined loss in receipts? Oh. I get it. This is another one of these "Google is evil" things big media likes to slip under the door in the hopes nobody realizes it's their own gambit.
Now, now... if Bono wants to compare the music industry with Child Pornographers and the RIAA with a tyrannical Government, who are we to argue with him?
The Government is us and the Government is the enemy. This isn't a black-and-white kind of thing. It is never a static state of affairs.
I agree that government doesn't "want" things. And we don't do ourselves any favors demonizing government and agents of a Government. But we should always be wary of the tendency of both the individuals and, in turn, the Governments they run to trod over the rights of citizens in their zeal to be rightous.
Your logic escapes me. I understand technology very well and I understand his concern. Piracy is much easier and cheaper in a digital world than in a print world. It is a threat to the business of content creators (authors) and their publishers. Ads won't pay the bills. All the clowns on this site who think people should or can work for free or a pittance need to get of their mommas' basements and try to support a family.
Aren't those clowns called authors? Not every author has best-seller credentials backing their latest project. And, consequently, there are some seriously lean times ahead of any new author - even some established authors. Yet we still have authors writing despite the uncertain economics of it all.
How much of a threat "piracy" represents is very much up to debate. But clearly the quoted author has no concept of the technology - right down to naming "open-source". They're full of fear for a mystery that they have no insight or understanding. The author offers no insight that uncovers that mystery as a boogie-man or real threat.
The problem is that content industry representatives see every case of copyright infringement as a lost sale. So while there are statistics that show quite decent sales figures, the industry reps focus on "loss sales" and paint a picture of doom and gloom.
With said doom and gloom on the horizon, authors are spooked. J.K. Rowling avoids eBooks because of this fear. Yet I have a digital facsimile of every one of her Harry Potter series. I also have the entire collection in hardback on shelves but the digital (DRM free) files are much easier to carry around and read. I suppose she's doomed. But does she has the publishing industry or people like me to thank for it?
Book authors are yet another content producer being dragged in to the digital age. I doubt they're going the way of the buggy whip manufacturers. But individual publishing houses might. The question is, will they drag their feet like the music industry has for the past millennium or will they look forward and figure out how to gracefully make that transition and start making money?
You and me both.
It defined the end of the Win 9x line. For the first time most people's PCs became relatively stable. For those of us that were Linux or Unix users, it wasn't a big deal, but for the average user it was very significant. Windows XP, unlike the 9x line or Vista, focused more on being a stable operating system than being an application. After the optical mouse and the old 1980s Olympics game, it might be the best product Microsoft ever released. And for Microsoft, it was probably their hardest business decision: build an operating system that people won't feel they need to upgrade from or lose angry customers to Linux and Unix derived lines (like Mac OS X).
Win2k never happened.
From the beginning of the article:
[In this Intel-sponsored feature, part of the Visual Computing section, the technical experts behind Mythic and EA's Warhammer Online discuss the mechanics of keeping the MMO running across multiple servers and data centers.]
So yeah - if you start picking up on the glossy brochure language... it's because it is, in fact, marketingspeek. But burried in all the "gosh golly isn't this product swell" blather is some interesting little tidbits about the environment; wheat from chaff.
I'm curious. I use OO at work all the time (today, in fact). The only time I've ever felt inclined to turn to Google Docs was to toy with shared access (and limited syncing to my Droid). And the only time I've had to turn to MS Word was when someone generated a MS Word doc that OO couldn't handle properly (or rather - once OO saved it, Word couldn't handle the formatting). Maybe I'm missing something very important about Google Docs? And likewise, I've never hit the need for complexity with Word docs that seem to drive some folks.
Look at the details of the kinds of low level agreements the US makes with other countries. Look at the way we refuse to participate on an equal basis in major areas of international law. The US is not often willing to live by the same rules it wants the rest of the world to follow. Go to some of these developing countries and look at what's actually going on on the ground. Its a LOT uglier than you think.
Oh, I don't think it's all that pretty at all. Like I noted, the world is a rough and violent place. The US has operated in that world, competing with interests, and has done ugly things in some situations. But that doesn't make the US lord and master of the world.
And yes - the US is very influential. It uses that influence to strike favorable exchanges. I'm sure some of those are incredibly one-sided. The question is how those bargains were made.
The devil's in the details. Generalities fail at this point. There are some situations that I'd be willing to defend and some that I would find inexcusable. My issue is that some criticisms seem to consider every situation inexusable.
Look at most of the money we supposedly contribute to development overseas. 86% or so of it is tied up with stipulations that it has to be spent HERE. Oh, you can have this 50 million $ to build X piece of infrastructure, but you have to hire Bechtel to do all the work, at some ridiculously inflated prices and all the jobs go to overseas contractors.
Aren't those earmarks? If so - welcome to the world of Congressional spending. This isn't the US lording power over disadvantaged nations. This is business as usual for Congress. They do the exact same thing within US borders as well. Check out NASA's budget. In fact, the CAIB Report even has a little sub-section talking about how earmarks impact NASA's budget (indirectly causing the Columbia incident).
Of course there are a whole slew of things we never get credit for either, but there's a heck of a lot of arm twisting that goes on. And a heck of a lot of supporting of some very shady people that do a lot of very shady things behind the scenes.
Again - the world is a dangerous and violent place. Such a world is full of shady folks doing shady things. You aren't going to operate in such an environment without bumping up against some of them.