But choice is GOOD! The more choice the better! Look at the reason linux was able to step in the gap when Microsoft introduced Vista, going on to win the desktop wars! Linux won because of all the effort that was expended into making 619 different linux distros with 487 different desktops - there's GOT to be one for every type of user. Can't you see its the same with programming languages?
Can you imaging what would have happened if all that effort had been concentrated in just one or two distros, and maybe 1 or two desktop environments? 99% of the market wouldn't have found anything useful! Why, Windows would still be #1, and Apple with their FreeBSD-based OS would have absolutely creamed Linux. Linux would have only had maybe 1% market share.
And instead of the Free APP Internet Grand Distributed Open Group Share model (FAppInG DOGS), and the Universal Internet-Secure Adaptive Bittorrent Extensible Open Transfer Code Hive (aka U-IS-A-BEOTCH) to distribute everything everywhere for free, we'd have had developers leeching money - maybe even thousands of dollars a month if we count everyone - off of people by actually SELLING stuff through company stores from Apple and Microsoft. That would have totally turned the Cathedral vs Bazaar argument on its head! Worse, it would have invalidated BOTH models!
We can't have that. Everyone knows that developers don't want to make money selling software - they only want to make money competing with everyone else trying to sell support for the original software they sweated and bled for! It's the only way!
So please, get with the program, learn your new language of the week - it's the only way we'll continue to progress. After all, how else are you going to get people to soak up all those cpu cycles in their 16-core machines in 2016? Think of the POWER you'll wield when "Hello World!" takes up 4 cores!!!
And if that's not enough, think of the children in 3rd-world countries who won't have their 16-hour-a-day jobs because people won't need to upgrade their hardware every 4 months! And all those people in eastern Europe and India who depend on being able to buy the latest O'Reilly book so companies can continue to outsource your job, giving you more leisure time!
After all, not everyone can actually learn how to program... so we need languages for the masses. If you throw enough different languages at some random text, ONE of them is bound to be able to compile it. After all, it worked for perl!
RMS hasn't written any useful code any time this century - he wouldn't know what to do with it if you GAVE him the source, except to try to farm it out to someone else, like he's been doing for years and years.
The fact is that RMS has no street cred any more to anyone who does a bit of digging. It's why years ago he had to abandon emacs, and "bless" xemacs code as the new codebase, same thing with gcc and egcs. He goes on and on about how programmers can earn a living by writing open source code, but he himself can't. He's just a parasite. And he's jealous of anyone who writes closed source (even if they also work on open source), going so far as to urge people in his speeches to stick it to devs by pirating their work "because they deserve it."
Citing RMS is like citing any other nutty zealot. But don't take my word for it - research it. Check out his FUD against linux and how android is risky because linux uses the gpl, just not his business-unfriendly gpl3 (which if linux HAD been switched to, would have been immediately abandoned for a bsd-based host os, but the smelly freetard can't see it).
[/rant]
Seriously, do some research. The guy is worse than useless - he does way more harm than good nowadays.
Please, if you're not going to RTFA, or even RTFS, please at least RTFP (or at least the first line of it) before replying. The third-party browser is being run by the facebook user, not the 3rd party.
Any violation of the ToS is by the facebook user. Suing your customers because they want features you don't want to give them is a great way to go out of business.
WINE is trying to do something different. They have to recreate the whole series of APIs, not just protect an existing instance of code.
It's the difference between building a house from scratch, including having to make the bricks, drywall, and nails yourself, and just doing some quick fixes to bring things back the way they were.
Google and Facebook simply have to add some terms of service to their API. By changing the TOS to include a restriction on ads they will have the legal right to force these companies out of business for violating the terms of using their APIs. I believe that we will see this change happen very quickly!
Won't work, because it's the end user who downloads the applications that customize the look and insert the ads. So, it's the end user who would be in violation of any ToS. As the article notes, there is NO contractual relationship between Facebook or Google and the company doing this.
If (to take an example) Facebook were to buy a clue, they would notice that people want what this company is offering (customizable backgrounds, etc) and offer it themselves - problem solved, AND you're giving the customer what they want.
Of course, it's easier to whine. Stupid Facebook! Bad Facebook!
the A/V vendors can't provide secuirity for XP once MS stops patching it, except by disconnecting it from the network and preventing it from running program
Absolutely false reasoning. You don't need the source to patch, just like you don't need the source to make a virus in the first place.
Now, what you'll see in the future is businesses buying new computers with whatever version of windows, and running XP in a VM. It's easier than paying to update and test all those legacy apps.
So how do you deal with XP re-installation when MS will no longer activate it?
You must be new here. No wonder you're posting A.C.
First, not all versions of XP need activation. Second, there are plenty of ways of bypassing activation for those that do require it. Third, if you're restoring from an image that is already activated, you don't need to do anything.
In such cases the feds will contact the employer and give them a choice - either pay the extra employer taxes or contest it. If they just pay the extra taxes, that ends it. If not, or if it's happened too often before, then they will contact you, at which point you have to contest it, and submit whatever supporting documents you have.
When you contest it, they contact the employer a second time. If the employer doesn't agree, and you have good documentation, you're again contacted, and given the option to continue to maintain your position. If you do, and the docs you supplied are good, they will be audited.
Once the determination is made that you are an employee, they can't fire you for taking the action you did, nor can they attempt a "constructive dismissal".
Of course they are... but next they'll step in to fix it so that they can offer a "complete solution". For example, hardening it so that system files are unmodifiable, and that in a worse-case scenario, restoration of even an unbootable system is (1) boot off usb key (2) wait 10 minutes (3) reboot into fully restored system.
XP will be around for a LONG time after Microsoft stops with the updates. It's not like it's going to suddenly stop working on April 9th, 2014. Microsoft by law can't "remote-kill" it, any more than they could DOS, WIn3x, and Win9x (there are plenty of those still running). And it's not like you're going to hit update.microsoft.com after the EOL date.
I expect to see all the AV vendors branching out into "protecting" your now unsupported XP as part of their enhanced anti-virus suites. Businesses will snap it up rather than pay the cost of fixing their software against the latest moving target.
Your example was completely silly, and you know it. Programmers have always been able to alter the functionality of programs w/o needing the source code (even binaries that have had their symbol table stripped from them). It doesn't take more than a debugger and the ability to read assembler. And yes, I've done it, and no, I didn't have the source.
I'm not saying this to get you down, but the way I see it, the problem with trying to adapt by becoming the go-between is three-fold:
1. There are already plenty of people doing the same thing - acting as go-betweens between customers and 3rd-world contractors.
2. Potential customers are doing it directly themselves.
3. People doing this in the 3rd world don't care if they drop the ball half-way through - suing them is pretty darn hard, whereas if you're located locally, you'll have to make good or go broke trying.
As one pundit put it, you're in danger of being outsourced if your skillset is in O'Reilly books.
In so many cases, it's simply not worth it any more. The quality of life in IT is simply terrible. The stress can permanently damage your health. Once you hit "a certain age", you're regarded as obsolete, even if you've stayed on top of the latest tech. And now throw in gender discrimination... if I had to do it over again, I would choose pretty much any other career path.
Do I see a solution? Unfortunately, no, not directly. It's going to be a long time (at least 20 years) before things even start to get better. The best option is probably to work at some job that can't be outsourced, at least not so easily, and work on your own dream projects on your own time - either alone or with a few friends - and if you come up with something that works, at least you don't owe venture capitalists 90%+ of your future by the time it gets to market.
It's gotten so bad locally that someone starting out as a secretary is being offered more money than someone with a couple of years experience as a coder, and the decrease in wages at all levels because of declining need is accelerating.
Really, why can't they do both? Use Watson to combat trolls going after their products, as well as finding other patentable stuff? It doesn't take a Sherlock (or even a Watson) to figure that one out.
Doesn't matter if it's "property" or not - you still get fined and/or closed down for violating it because the law treats it the same. Same as your identity isn't "property," but we all acknowledge that the crime of "identity theft" exists.
What if I'm thinking rather than working away at my keyboard? I hear that's part of the job for IT too.
Management hasn't got a clue when it comes to work metrics. "How many lines of code did you write today?" "I deleted 1,000 lines." "So you didn't actually do any work today."
Q. Why didn't management cross the road?
A. They got distracted by the white line and tried to snort it.
Q. How do you kill a manager?
A. Wave to him from the other side of main street during rush hour.
Contract work is abused, and employers will NOT follow the letter of the law. They've done the cost-benefit analysis, and it's cheaper to just fire you and hire someone else than it is to actually follow all the rules. It's why they use contracts like this in the first place.
Every ad in my area for IT work is all contract 1040 and pays by the hour and you are treated like an employee but with no benefits. With over 10% unemployment in my area you have to do it. Infact, everyone where I am at does this for at least 90 days. Sucks for the contractors but it is a big win for employers.
IT unemployment where I am is worse... the jobs have simply disappeared... but that doesn't mean I'm going to take some "independent contractor" junk - I'll go work as a secretary first. It's what I did between my last 2 jobs, and while it pays less than programming, at the end of the day I go home, the work environment is a lot less toxic than IT, and I got to see and deal with a lot more people, and frankly, was more appreciated.
Why not take a break from programming? You might enjoy it.
You're putting words in other people's mouths. The protesters have been pretty consistent in their actions about defying the government, which is the antithesis of wanting a more powerful government.
It's more likely your logic that is messed up in this respect, drawing a deduction 180% opposite of the visible evidence.
A less powerful government wouldn't have bailed out GM or Wall Street - they would have feared the voters reaction.
The fact of the matter is that no information is "your information". Information simply cannot be owned.
Wrong. Many countries have legislation in place that state clearly that personal information, beyond what you'd find in a telephone book, is your own. Things like social insurance numbers, drivers license number and picture, birth certificate, all are protected information in, for example, Canada.
No, it's only because Obama was a public figure, and public figures have less protection. If you actually read the article, you'd see that the court ruled on that particular issue. Cox tried to argue that the target of her innuendo was a public figure; the judge ruled otherwise.
There's an additional problem nobody's pointed out yet. Even contractors working by the hour are covered by things such as minimum wage and working condition laws - and the applicable law is where the worker lives, not the company doing the hiring.
This includes such things as mandatory payment for morning and afternoon breaks, and time to go to the bathroom.
Slashdot Mirror
But choice is GOOD! The more choice the better! Look at the reason linux was able to step in the gap when Microsoft introduced Vista, going on to win the desktop wars! Linux won because of all the effort that was expended into making 619 different linux distros with 487 different desktops - there's GOT to be one for every type of user. Can't you see its the same with programming languages?
Can you imaging what would have happened if all that effort had been concentrated in just one or two distros, and maybe 1 or two desktop environments? 99% of the market wouldn't have found anything useful! Why, Windows would still be #1, and Apple with their FreeBSD-based OS would have absolutely creamed Linux. Linux would have only had maybe 1% market share.
And instead of the Free APP Internet Grand Distributed Open Group Share model (FAppInG DOGS), and the Universal Internet-Secure Adaptive Bittorrent Extensible Open Transfer Code Hive (aka U-IS-A-BEOTCH) to distribute everything everywhere for free, we'd have had developers leeching money - maybe even thousands of dollars a month if we count everyone - off of people by actually SELLING stuff through company stores from Apple and Microsoft. That would have totally turned the Cathedral vs Bazaar argument on its head! Worse, it would have invalidated BOTH models!
We can't have that. Everyone knows that developers don't want to make money selling software - they only want to make money competing with everyone else trying to sell support for the original software they sweated and bled for! It's the only way!
So please, get with the program, learn your new language of the week - it's the only way we'll continue to progress. After all, how else are you going to get people to soak up all those cpu cycles in their 16-core machines in 2016? Think of the POWER you'll wield when "Hello World!" takes up 4 cores!!!
And if that's not enough, think of the children in 3rd-world countries who won't have their 16-hour-a-day jobs because people won't need to upgrade their hardware every 4 months! And all those people in eastern Europe and India who depend on being able to buy the latest O'Reilly book so companies can continue to outsource your job, giving you more leisure time!
After all, not everyone can actually learn how to program ... so we need languages for the masses. If you throw enough different languages at some random text, ONE of them is bound to be able to compile it. After all, it worked for perl!
RMS hasn't written any useful code any time this century - he wouldn't know what to do with it if you GAVE him the source, except to try to farm it out to someone else, like he's been doing for years and years.
The fact is that RMS has no street cred any more to anyone who does a bit of digging. It's why years ago he had to abandon emacs, and "bless" xemacs code as the new codebase, same thing with gcc and egcs. He goes on and on about how programmers can earn a living by writing open source code, but he himself can't. He's just a parasite. And he's jealous of anyone who writes closed source (even if they also work on open source), going so far as to urge people in his speeches to stick it to devs by pirating their work "because they deserve it."
Citing RMS is like citing any other nutty zealot. But don't take my word for it - research it. Check out his FUD against linux and how android is risky because linux uses the gpl, just not his business-unfriendly gpl3 (which if linux HAD been switched to, would have been immediately abandoned for a bsd-based host os, but the smelly freetard can't see it).
[/rant] Seriously, do some research. The guy is worse than useless - he does way more harm than good nowadays.
Any violation of the ToS is by the facebook user. Suing your customers because they want features you don't want to give them is a great way to go out of business.
Anyone who calls themselves a webmaster deserves to die die die! You're a big part of the problem.
It's the difference between building a house from scratch, including having to make the bricks, drywall, and nails yourself, and just doing some quick fixes to bring things back the way they were.
Won't work, because it's the end user who downloads the applications that customize the look and insert the ads. So, it's the end user who would be in violation of any ToS. As the article notes, there is NO contractual relationship between Facebook or Google and the company doing this.
If (to take an example) Facebook were to buy a clue, they would notice that people want what this company is offering (customizable backgrounds, etc) and offer it themselves - problem solved, AND you're giving the customer what they want.
Of course, it's easier to whine. Stupid Facebook! Bad Facebook!
Absolutely false reasoning. You don't need the source to patch, just like you don't need the source to make a virus in the first place.
Now, what you'll see in the future is businesses buying new computers with whatever version of windows, and running XP in a VM. It's easier than paying to update and test all those legacy apps.
You must be new here. No wonder you're posting A.C.
First, not all versions of XP need activation. Second, there are plenty of ways of bypassing activation for those that do require it. Third, if you're restoring from an image that is already activated, you don't need to do anything.
In such cases the feds will contact the employer and give them a choice - either pay the extra employer taxes or contest it. If they just pay the extra taxes, that ends it. If not, or if it's happened too often before, then they will contact you, at which point you have to contest it, and submit whatever supporting documents you have.
When you contest it, they contact the employer a second time. If the employer doesn't agree, and you have good documentation, you're again contacted, and given the option to continue to maintain your position. If you do, and the docs you supplied are good, they will be audited.
Once the determination is made that you are an employee, they can't fire you for taking the action you did, nor can they attempt a "constructive dismissal".
Of course they are ... but next they'll step in to fix it so that they can offer a "complete solution". For example, hardening it so that system files are unmodifiable, and that in a worse-case scenario, restoration of even an unbootable system is (1) boot off usb key (2) wait 10 minutes (3) reboot into fully restored system.
XP will be around for a LONG time after Microsoft stops with the updates. It's not like it's going to suddenly stop working on April 9th, 2014. Microsoft by law can't "remote-kill" it, any more than they could DOS, WIn3x, and Win9x (there are plenty of those still running). And it's not like you're going to hit update.microsoft.com after the EOL date.
I expect to see all the AV vendors branching out into "protecting" your now unsupported XP as part of their enhanced anti-virus suites. Businesses will snap it up rather than pay the cost of fixing their software against the latest moving target.
Your example was completely silly, and you know it. Programmers have always been able to alter the functionality of programs w/o needing the source code (even binaries that have had their symbol table stripped from them). It doesn't take more than a debugger and the ability to read assembler. And yes, I've done it, and no, I didn't have the source.
I'm not saying this to get you down, but the way I see it, the problem with trying to adapt by becoming the go-between is three-fold:
1. There are already plenty of people doing the same thing - acting as go-betweens between customers and 3rd-world contractors.
2. Potential customers are doing it directly themselves.
3. People doing this in the 3rd world don't care if they drop the ball half-way through - suing them is pretty darn hard, whereas if you're located locally, you'll have to make good or go broke trying.
As one pundit put it, you're in danger of being outsourced if your skillset is in O'Reilly books.
In so many cases, it's simply not worth it any more. The quality of life in IT is simply terrible. The stress can permanently damage your health. Once you hit "a certain age", you're regarded as obsolete, even if you've stayed on top of the latest tech. And now throw in gender discrimination ... if I had to do it over again, I would choose pretty much any other career path.
Do I see a solution? Unfortunately, no, not directly. It's going to be a long time (at least 20 years) before things even start to get better. The best option is probably to work at some job that can't be outsourced, at least not so easily, and work on your own dream projects on your own time - either alone or with a few friends - and if you come up with something that works, at least you don't owe venture capitalists 90%+ of your future by the time it gets to market.
It's gotten so bad locally that someone starting out as a secretary is being offered more money than someone with a couple of years experience as a coder, and the decrease in wages at all levels because of declining need is accelerating.
Since when? Home Depot is proof that any dufus can replace a window pane.
Really, why can't they do both? Use Watson to combat trolls going after their products, as well as finding other patentable stuff? It doesn't take a Sherlock (or even a Watson) to figure that one out.
Greater regulation of banks, along with removing laws favouring banksters and lobbyists, is an overall reduction in government powers.
Just not passing the bank and wall street bail-outs would have met the definition of fewer laws.
Or even - just enforce the existing anti-fraud laws. No new powers required.
Please do the math.
That depends ... *cough* Sarah Palin *cough* Herman Cain *cough* Barack Obama *cough* Bill Clinton *cough* George W. Bush *cough*
Wow, cold season came early this year :-p
No no, comrade. In Soviet Russia, hash tags YOU!
Funny how the governments and the political chattering class put more importance on twitter than the average person does.
I can't remember the last time I even looked at twitter.
Doesn't matter if it's "property" or not - you still get fined and/or closed down for violating it because the law treats it the same. Same as your identity isn't "property," but we all acknowledge that the crime of "identity theft" exists.
Management hasn't got a clue when it comes to work metrics. "How many lines of code did you write today?" "I deleted 1,000 lines." "So you didn't actually do any work today."
Q. Why didn't management cross the road?
A. They got distracted by the white line and tried to snort it.
Q. How do you kill a manager?
A. Wave to him from the other side of main street during rush hour.
IT unemployment where I am is worse ... the jobs have simply disappeared ... but that doesn't mean I'm going to take some "independent contractor" junk - I'll go work as a secretary first. It's what I did between my last 2 jobs, and while it pays less than programming, at the end of the day I go home, the work environment is a lot less toxic than IT, and I got to see and deal with a lot more people, and frankly, was more appreciated.
Why not take a break from programming? You might enjoy it.
It's more likely your logic that is messed up in this respect, drawing a deduction 180% opposite of the visible evidence.
A less powerful government wouldn't have bailed out GM or Wall Street - they would have feared the voters reaction.
Wrong. Many countries have legislation in place that state clearly that personal information, beyond what you'd find in a telephone book, is your own. Things like social insurance numbers, drivers license number and picture, birth certificate, all are protected information in, for example, Canada.
The US is behind the curve.
Your "facts" aren't. :-)
This includes such things as mandatory payment for morning and afternoon breaks, and time to go to the bathroom.