Get used to the term "interim president" being used in reference to the leader of the USA. Don't laugh - it's been done elsewhere before.
Bush set a US precedent in 2000, and now no mere voters or courts of law will stand between him and "the will of the people". Just at his finest hour, when triumph is so close...!
We've just seen "the will of the people" in Australia, who voted based on fear of change... which I find odd, since the current government is the one that got us into this mess in the first place.
Get a large group of people - around the nation or around the world - to work on a project to implement one idea that has been stupidly patented. Get a democracy together to publicly vote on the stupidity of the patent. Then implement that idea under GPL or public domain - IN VERY CLEAR VIOLATION of the patent.
Make certain the list of contributors is large and public. Make certain the goals are public. Make certain that when one person is hauled before the courts, it is absolutely obvious that they were not acting alone.
The question is - do enough people REALLY believe the law is stupid? Or is it somebody else's problem?
Good to see the ol' US of A fighting for democracy in every corner of the world. Yep - you can have democracy any way you like it, as long as you have it OUR way.
The problem is that most of what programmers do is not programming, but analysis and design. The fact that it isn't formalised just makes it harder for managers to see it as a separate step from programming.
From the manager's view, the manager gives the spec to the programmer, and the application takes form as expected.
From a programmer's perspective, the manager provides a bunch of expectations, and other teams to "interface with". There begins the truly creative effort of turning an idea into a process.
Only a process can be programmed, ideas just don't translate. But too few managers recognise the separate process - and too few programmers realise that they're only seen as glorified mechanics.
Arguably, the problem runs much deeper, in that our entire basis for civilisation is geared toward lookin forward, rather than back.
In our culture, we tend to look to the past only for affirmation that we are doing the right thing. So long as we're comforted on that front, our eyes remain firmly in the future. Censorship concerns aside, the Web is the perfect medium for this culture, as the content can vary to suit the times.
Peer review directs the attention of researchers to the present, and forces them to verify their assumptions by looking to the past. These must be rock-solid anchors to the past, otherwise their research is nothing but a house of cards.
This goes against the basic premise that propels commercial society forward - namely, that there is nothing to be learned from the past. The Web is ideal for commerce and pop culture, but simply the wrong medium for placing anchors in the past.
Increasingly, we look like Coyote from Road Runner cartoons - he runs off a cliff, then stops and looks down to oblivion shortly before gravity kicks in.
Germany had democracy since the late 19th century, up untill Hitler took absolute power.
...and that was through democratic processes. He simply told a once-great nation what the people wanted to believe - that they could achieve greatness once again.
Ring any parallels, people?
Sorry - I've just upset the majority of US folks here.
... because of civil rights issues, it is illegal to require voter ID here.
This is kind of a necessity for fair elections. It needs to be a two step operation, so you can't link the ID to the vote, but you need to know that a person's even allowed to vote in the first place! I thought this was the point of electoral rolls?
And the USA still believes it is the leading light of democracy? Sounds like the inmates are already running the asylum!
This is the classic mistake made by nearly all Americans (and increasing numbers around the world).
You have been told that a pure democracy is unworkable because everyone is so stupid. You look around and lo, everyone *IS* stupid - therefore, you think, any attempt at pure democracy will instead be mob rule. Why?
Give people the responsibility of ownership of their elected representative - force them to vote! Americans are pretty narrow-minded about being forced to do anything, but if you don't put anything in, you don't get anything back. Pretty soon, you'll find that people not only take an interest in who gets elected, but also in how they're elected, as well as a strong interest in punishing those who betray their trust.
When the public seeks education on domestic and foreign issues (as well as knowing the difference between Arnie's birthplace and Australia)... that's when you know that Democracy is starting to work again.
At the moment, the USA is just one short step away from losing Democracy, and the public have been successfully trained not to care.
Although I hate to bring this up, as it always brings out the "free speech" zealots, if the USA adopted compulsory voting, this would not be a problem.
In the USA, you rock up to vote out of a feeling of civic duty. If someone shoves a machine in front of you and says "press a button", you refuse on the basis that you don't trust the machine. You go home frustrated but unable to do anything - possibly part of a silent majority, but who'd ever know?
In Australia, I rock up to vote as required by the Constitution, or I get fined, etc. If someone shoves a machine in front of me and says "press a button", I refuse to vote on the basis that I don't trust the machine. I get a fine notice which I refuse to pay. I go to court, and it becomes a Constitutional issue - can't be ignored, and won't go away.
Now, whose Constitution gives its people real freedom?
This article in Wired magazine points out the false economies of PowerPoint, whereby slide presentations are being overused to sex-up a dull presentation to the extent that no effort is put into the data, and the "show" is everything.
There's small business, where Quick'n'Dirty is literally the difference between Life now, or a slow and lingering Death. But either way, you're still around for a bit longer.
There's mid-sized business, which is (hopefully) either growing too fast to know what it's really doing, or comfortably well-off (established products and/or customers, etc). If it's growing fast, Quick'n'Dirty is again the only way, because otherwise the momentum stops and you risk the whole house of cards crashing down.
If you're a comfortably established mid-sized business, or larger, then you really have to focus on keeping what you've got. Customers will leave if you don't look after them, and products will die if you don't maintain them. The only two uses for Quick'n'Dirty are:
1. QADFIP - The Quick And Dirty Fix-It Program, that overcomes a glaring error, or sudden change in requirements.
2. A competitor falters, and marketing have one chance - THIS WEEK! - to pick up their customers. See number 1.
If you deploy a QADFIP, the PHBs need to understand that it is a QADFIP, and that you willl spend the next week (or so) cleaning it up TO KEEP THE CUSTOMERS it won you.
To use Quick'n'Dirty programming under any other circumstance is self-defeating - and you will find yourself ultimately accountable for your actions, regardless of who told you to do it.
Remember - you did it, not that loser in marketing.
Simple solution - if it is to be a tax, you can claim a rebate at tax time. Something along the lines of:
Tax Return 2003-2004 Rebates - Other
CD-Rs purchased: 5000
Tax paid per CD-R: $ 0.04 Total tax paid: $200.00
CD-Rs used to publish stolen music: 0 CD-Rs used to backup licensed music: 3 CD-Rs used to publish personal art: 4997
Tax rebate claimed: $200.00
(Something I've found necessary with some of my CDs, is that my CD-ROM drive can read them, although my sound system cannot - probably due to scratches, etc. I have made copies of these few discs so that I can actually listen to the music. Don't know why I should be taxed for that?!)
50 years ago, many (if not most - if not all) large companies employed their own staff as accountants, engineers, chemists, project managers, etc, etc. This meant that the company always had direct access to the specialists who built The Thing, if The Thing ever stopped working.
Today few, if any, large companies (and probably fewer small companies as well) have this specialist knowledge in-house - consultants are employed to design the tricky stuff, and the work is farmed out to other "specialist" companies.
So today, there is a division of knowledge - your company knows what it wants, a consultant works out how to do it, while a third party provides a partial solution. Add in the localisations needed to get the third party solution to fit in with your existing processes, probably with a combination of your own (precious few) expert staff, and a few more contractors.
So where does this leave today's company? Utterly dependant on external consultants, who usually vanish once they stop being paid, and third party companies of varying quality.
My personal experience, of helping a small ISP grow into a corporate, is to rely on your own staff as much as possible. Information is hard to gain, but a lot easier to pick up through implementing the project yourself. When it comes to your first support call, you'll be glad that YOUR people spent the time learning the details of YOUR implementation.
More than once, this has been the difference between six months in call centre biffo, and a five minute response from THE expert on the other side of the world.
I'm using examples from my grandfather's engineering days, rather than modern nanometre engineering, but its all about the same thing.
Engineering has always been about taking known solutions, and putting them together in known ways. The "art" of engineering comes from taking these known structures, and putting them into unusual environments. This is where experience, through testing, makes a difference.
An apartment block has little (if any) "art" to it, while a massive-scale project (say, a dam, mine, or smelter) has oodles. All are using the same known materials and techniques, but are solving very different problems. An apartment engineer will have no chance of designing any dam wall, without a serious amount of simulation and testing. Fortunately, engineers with the experience of having built dam walls have already put their knowledge into the design and simulation software, and so little is lost.
Or is it? What if dam walls have always been built of concrete, steel, and stone, but along comes a radical who thinks he can build one out of a plastic? There is no body of existing knowledge to fall back on, and so the company can either spend a fortune on testing (making ever-larger models, perhaps), or it can insist the design stick to "existing methods" - all able to be simulated with their existing software.
Hmmm... "Existing Methods" is never going to produce another Thomas Edison. And software will always be limited by current experience.
In a past life, I did 5 years hard labour supporting accounting software. The software was text-only, and ran on around 20 versions of *nix, as well as MS-DOS with Netware.
Is good software possible?     A qualified "yes".
Sure, we had our share of disaster customers, where someone would appear out of the blue, using an advertised and documented feature... only to find that they were the first, ever, to use it in our region. (I am certain you can appreciate that each country has its own tax laws, and that these would have to be coded into the software - hence not every combination of features and legal code had necessarily been tested).
Anyway, as these customers had basically entrusted their livelihoods to us, we were obliged to spend any amount of time to find the problem, fix the code, and repair their data - even if that meant rekeying their orders for them!
We had customers happily using our original PC-DOS software for years, still on the original hardware.
The important point is - it is possible to write good software!
The software companies we hear of today, are all so focussed on staying ahead of the competition, through new features, etc, that they have possibly (just possibly?) forgotten that it is the customer that matters.
If I write any software - anything - and sell it to a customer, that customer will happily pay more for software from a company that doesn't force unneeded/unwanted feature and UI "upgrades", offers a customising service for specialised features, and genuinely treats the customer with respect. If this has to be legislated, then we have all lost.
Sadly, it seems that software has become such a commodity these days, that business software is at the bargain kitchens end of the market - it looks good, but it never suited you 100%, and you don't really expect it to last forever.
Someone tell me I'm wrong? I've been in Internet software for the past 8 years, so I may have missed the quality end of the market?
Speaking of Internet software, I know someone who has a fantastic Internet mail system half-written that knocks the pants of any commercial systems. Perfectly scalable. Anyone want to help fund it?:o)
And the US Government suddenly changing its tune on illegal immigrants - oh, but only ones who look "Middle-Eastern" - and detaining them for 3-4 months without reason, and not even mentioning it to their Embassy, differs how?
Sorry - I find it difficult to believe that an Australian Citizen has been detained in this manner (one of some 700 detained out of some 4 million illegals). As an Australian Citizen, the Australian Embassy had a right to know, but was not told by your own US Government.
How would you feel if the world started treating US Citizens the same way? Oh, hang on a moment - that was illustrated very clearly in your post:
One is far too many. But you don't care. You think it's "not that bad"?! That's a real person. Going through REAL SUFFERING! Sitting in a real jail, with bars and shitty food and not enough warmth. Dealing with real boredom and real loneliness. And you sit in your nice office with a hot cup of coffee saying "it's not that bad"!? It is that bad. I believe that compassion and empathy are a part of humanity. For you to sit there and not even care degrades us all. You can be apathetic, that's your opinion, here's mine: Not giving a damn about anothers suffering, and in fact helping it along, makes you scum. You are the lowest of the low. I hope you choose to disagree one day and rot in a cell for it.
Hmmm... powerful emotions! So much for your compassion, etc;-)
The interesting thing out of all this, is the Capitalist mentality shining through... The US is happy to accept the right sort of illegal immigrant, because they provide cheap labour, for the jobs that are below your dignity to do.
In an enlightened society, that smacks of racism.
In Australia, you don't expect to see Hispanics serving tables or cleaning rooms. We have, however, had some pretty hefty Parliamentary inquiries into semi-official attitudes of directed immigration, one of which was termed the White Australia Policy of the 1950's.
Australia's current treatment of genuine refugees is far from perfect, but at least we're trying to identify the problem when it is knocking at the door, and not trying to shut the gate a year after the horse has bolted.
A little global perspective never hurt anyone looking at another country's domestic attitudes.
Many years ago, at the start of the whole Dot-Com boom, sages could foresee the start of a cottage industry of Internet content development.
I am certain those sages had no idea how accurate they were to be - a shame the successful industries turned out to be address harvesting and spam generation:o(
What Microsoft is preparing us for is the next step: No root access to a machine
And while slashdotters get all up in arms about loss of control, etc, if you stop and think for a moment, this is an extoardinarily powerful idea!
"No root access to a machine" puts the onus fair-and-square on Microsoft's shoulders to provide a reliable operating environment.
We expect the Internet to be there (always), so why not allow someone else (M$) to provide a standard operating environment? You (Joe Schmoe) buy a PC (plenty powerful enough for any regular home use), Windows XP pre-installed, connect to the Internet, wait for the system to register itself to M$ central, and synchronise itself to the current M$ environment.
From Microsoft's perspective, this has to be an astonishingly compelling idea. If all installed drivers are at the same revision - they WILL hear about problems, and will HAVE to fix it. No sneaky work-arounds, where M$ never hear about the problem except annecdotally.
This, by the way, is similar to the advantages touted by web-based desktops in years gone by (are desktop.com still going?), and how Citrix, etc, are still finding corporate customers today.
If you turn the classic slashdot attitude around for a moment, the vendor (M$) may see that a standard environment for Internet access would provide exceptional opportunity for content development (developers need no longer worry about backwards compatability, nor "fringe" environments), and consumers (who would have a lovely, safe, corporate-supplied Internet experience).
Of course - this is Utopian. Anyone with a shred of reality (or cynicism?) knows that no corporate has ever had anything but money in mind.
But the dream may be a good one. There are down-sides, for sure. If the generic PC falls by the wayside, and is replaced by customised, DRMed, Home/Internet boxes (and its brother, the customised, DRMed, Corporate/Internet box), individuals will have lost many freedoms, and M$ will own us all.
For a corporation, that must always be the goal.
As consumers, no matter how comfortable and safe our world is made for us, our goal is always individual freedom.
And so you would expect this to fail - but once M$ own the Net, to the extent that all access and content is M$-oriented, the era of the hardware/software hacker-hobbyist is over.
Perhaps this is a little too extreme, but Microsoft can dream big, and bulldoze their way ahead regardless of time, money, or regulation.
egburr said:
> Give me the basics and throw out the fluff.
>...
> This would negate much of their costs, including tech support.
It would reduce their costs, certainly. However it would also reduce their revenues.
Most of this "fluff", especially portals, have very low incremental costs - you build it once, and the cost of providing it to 100,000 subscribers is maybe 10c per subscriber per month. This can come out of your connection fee, and you won't even notice it.
The company can then promote other products through this portal far more effectively than through TV, radio, or print media (as they own the media (portal)). Since you've already paid for the portal (in your monthly access charge), it costs them $0 to publish the ads.
Think of it from your provider's perspective, and the arguments for providing this fluff are very compelling! Sure - DNS, news, mail, and static IP, you can get elsewhere... but if they give you mail service, they can target YOU with "information" (promotions), while DNS, news, etc, will make you feel good about the company, and maybe look at their portal.
If you don't use their "fluff", then you are an expensive customer to them. They need you to look at their portal, to keep the monthly access costs low.
Yeah - it's arse-about. But welcome to the tightly-integrated 21st century!
Given Microsoft's past behaviour, we would expect them to clutch this patent VERY tightly.
So, law is passed making it mandatory that only DRM OSes can be sold - therefore, you must buy Windows DRM.
Microsoft has now painted itself into a corner, where there is no way to dispute their monopoly status -- therefore, they MUST act in the public interest, etc, at all times. Sure, Microsoft would be everywhere, but for how long, and at what cost?
As to what alternatives there are... oh, Linux, perhaps?
It sounds like most of your data is static:
- you rip an MP3 once, and that file never changes;
- you rip an album once, and that directory never changes again;
- you save your vacation photos once, and that directory never changes again;
- etc...
Sure, you want all that data instantly accessible, but there's only a small portion of your disk being actively modified daily.
When you rip an album, or store your vacation snaps, back them up. CD, DVD, another HDD - doesn't matter.
Also, backup your actively modified data (accounts, home directory, email, etc) to a separate location whenever you feel it appropriate. A multi-session CD-R works well for me - YMMV.
Maintain a manual index (write a label), and perhaps a speadsheet/text index as well in your home directory (so it gets backed up regularly).
Why would MS go to all the trouble of building a console which is almost a PC, and then "extend" Windows XP to allow those games to run on a PC?
Then they have to support two separate streams of game APIs - one into the XBox OS, and another into XP.
Why not, instead, use the XBox as the games platform, and slowly wean the gaming APIs out of XP (or just plain not develop them any further).
That way, MS get the gamers using a console (fewer of those nasty CD cracks and copies floating around), while only the "serious" computer user uses the "serious" PC running XP.
Even if the XBox is hardware hackable to turn it into a PC, how many home gamers are going to turn to hardware hacking and risk losing the use of their console?
"Can" take revenge? Hopefully you mean exactly what you say, and nothing more! America has no right to seek revenge, nor has anyone. But it is certainly available as an option.
America cannot be seen to be taking "revenge", as it would be seen by many in the world (not just cultures that currently clash with the USA, but current friends included) as a sign of American immaturity.
America must seek justice. The USA has always spoken from the moral high-ground, in international affairs. To stoop to mere revenge is to cause America to lose that, and to lose the hearts and minds of the world.
The USA must not keep up this "revenge" rhetoric - it may not be official, perhaps, but every American "knows" what the government means by "justice", especially when terms like "dead or alive" are used.
My question to you is - if YOU were President, and you knew that it was patriotic Americans who performed this act, would you:
- divert people's attention to a known face
- tell the public that it was an American
- tell the public that you will never know who did it?
It isn't really a "one-or-the-other" balancing act. I see it as more of a three-way tousle.
One the one hand you have Security, and on the other hand you have Freedom. But you also have Society in the equation.
What do I mean?
When a Society is working well together, Security is taken for granted, and individuals still have Freedom. Security and Freedom are givens, and not enforced, within a coherent Society.
It is only when Society falters, when it loses a sense of common purpose on an INDIVIDUAL level, that there is a failure of implicit Security and Freedom, and it becomes necessary to enforce them. In this modern age, it is all about "Me", hence a sense of Society is missing - little or no sense of "us" - and we acutely feel the impact on our sense of Security, and our loss of Freedom.
Looking back in history, we have examples of strong Societies, who obtained Security not through enforcement, but through the Social binding itself.
As the Societies grew larger, they lost their common sense of purpose, and individuals began to take matters into their own hands, to their own ends.
Looking back to the (arguably) golden era of British Society, those most able to wreak social havoc were constrained by the social system they lived in. Law enforcement was not a budernsome necessity, a man's word WAS enough, and social disgrace was sufficient punishment.
In this global culture, but most especially in the USA, this sense of common purpose has vanished - we live in an era of personal greed.
As Society declines, Security needs to be enforced, and loss of Freedoms becomes an issue.
The phrase "a city is a place where people are lonely together" never applied more!
Slashdot Mirror
Get used to the term "interim president" being used in reference to the leader of the USA. Don't laugh - it's been done elsewhere before.
Bush set a US precedent in 2000, and now no mere voters or courts of law will stand between him and "the will of the people". Just at his finest hour, when triumph is so close...!
We've just seen "the will of the people" in Australia, who voted based on fear of change... which I find odd, since the current government is the one that got us into this mess in the first place.
Surely another way is the way of the militant?
Get a large group of people - around the nation or around the world - to work on a project to implement one idea that has been stupidly patented. Get a democracy together to publicly vote on the stupidity of the patent. Then implement that idea under GPL or public domain - IN VERY CLEAR VIOLATION of the patent.
Make certain the list of contributors is large and public. Make certain the goals are public. Make certain that when one person is hauled before the courts, it is absolutely obvious that they were not acting alone.
The question is - do enough people REALLY believe the law is stupid? Or is it somebody else's problem?
Good to see the ol' US of A fighting for democracy in every corner of the world. Yep - you can have democracy any way you like it, as long as you have it OUR way.
Programming is purely mechanical.
The problem is that most of what programmers do is not programming, but analysis and design. The fact that it isn't formalised just makes it harder for managers to see it as a separate step from programming.
From the manager's view, the manager gives the spec to the programmer, and the application takes form as expected.
From a programmer's perspective, the manager provides a bunch of expectations, and other teams to "interface with". There begins the truly creative effort of turning an idea into a process.
Only a process can be programmed, ideas just don't translate. But too few managers recognise the separate process - and too few programmers realise that they're only seen as glorified mechanics.
Arguably, the problem runs much deeper, in that our entire basis for civilisation is geared toward lookin forward, rather than back.
In our culture, we tend to look to the past only for affirmation that we are doing the right thing. So long as we're comforted on that front, our eyes remain firmly in the future. Censorship concerns aside, the Web is the perfect medium for this culture, as the content can vary to suit the times.
Peer review directs the attention of researchers to the present, and forces them to verify their assumptions by looking to the past. These must be rock-solid anchors to the past, otherwise their research is nothing but a house of cards.
This goes against the basic premise that propels commercial society forward - namely, that there is nothing to be learned from the past. The Web is ideal for commerce and pop culture, but simply the wrong medium for placing anchors in the past.
Increasingly, we look like Coyote from Road Runner cartoons - he runs off a cliff, then stops and looks down to oblivion shortly before gravity kicks in.
Germany had democracy since the late 19th century, up untill Hitler took absolute power.
...and that was through democratic processes. He simply told a once-great nation what the people wanted to believe - that they could achieve greatness once again.
Ring any parallels, people?
Sorry - I've just upset the majority of US folks here.
This is kind of a necessity for fair elections. It needs to be a two step operation, so you can't link the ID to the vote, but you need to know that a person's even allowed to vote in the first place! I thought this was the point of electoral rolls?
And the USA still believes it is the leading light of democracy? Sounds like the inmates are already running the asylum!
This is the classic mistake made by nearly all Americans (and increasing numbers around the world).
You have been told that a pure democracy is unworkable because everyone is so stupid. You look around and lo, everyone *IS* stupid - therefore, you think, any attempt at pure democracy will instead be mob rule. Why?
Give people the responsibility of ownership of their elected representative - force them to vote! Americans are pretty narrow-minded about being forced to do anything, but if you don't put anything in, you don't get anything back. Pretty soon, you'll find that people not only take an interest in who gets elected, but also in how they're elected, as well as a strong interest in punishing those who betray their trust.
When the public seeks education on domestic and foreign issues (as well as knowing the difference between Arnie's birthplace and Australia)... that's when you know that Democracy is starting to work again.
At the moment, the USA is just one short step away from losing Democracy, and the public have been successfully trained not to care.
Although I hate to bring this up, as it always brings out the "free speech" zealots, if the USA adopted compulsory voting, this would not be a problem.
In the USA, you rock up to vote out of a feeling of civic duty. If someone shoves a machine in front of you and says "press a button", you refuse on the basis that you don't trust the machine. You go home frustrated but unable to do anything - possibly part of a silent majority, but who'd ever know?
In Australia, I rock up to vote as required by the Constitution, or I get fined, etc. If someone shoves a machine in front of me and says "press a button", I refuse to vote on the basis that I don't trust the machine. I get a fine notice which I refuse to pay. I go to court, and it becomes a Constitutional issue - can't be ignored, and won't go away.
Now, whose Constitution gives its people real freedom?
This article in Wired magazine points out the false economies of PowerPoint, whereby slide presentations are being overused to sex-up a dull presentation to the extent that no effort is put into the data, and the "show" is everything.
There's small business, where Quick'n'Dirty is literally the difference between Life now, or a slow and lingering Death. But either way, you're still around for a bit longer.
There's mid-sized business, which is (hopefully) either growing too fast to know what it's really doing, or comfortably well-off (established products and/or customers, etc). If it's growing fast, Quick'n'Dirty is again the only way, because otherwise the momentum stops and you risk the whole house of cards crashing down.
If you're a comfortably established mid-sized business, or larger, then you really have to focus on keeping what you've got. Customers will leave if you don't look after them, and products will die if you don't maintain them. The only two uses for Quick'n'Dirty are:
1. QADFIP - The Quick And Dirty Fix-It Program, that overcomes a glaring error, or sudden change in requirements.
2. A competitor falters, and marketing have one chance - THIS WEEK! - to pick up their customers. See number 1.
If you deploy a QADFIP, the PHBs need to understand that it is a QADFIP, and that you willl spend the next week (or so) cleaning it up TO KEEP THE CUSTOMERS it won you.
To use Quick'n'Dirty programming under any other circumstance is self-defeating - and you will find yourself ultimately accountable for your actions, regardless of who told you to do it.
Remember - you did it, not that loser in marketing.
Simple solution - if it is to be a tax, you can claim a rebate at tax time. Something along the lines of:
Tax Return 2003-2004
Rebates - Other
CD-Rs purchased: 5000
Tax paid per CD-R: $ 0.04
Total tax paid: $200.00
CD-Rs used to publish stolen music: 0
CD-Rs used to backup licensed music: 3
CD-Rs used to publish personal art: 4997
Tax rebate claimed: $200.00
(Something I've found necessary with some of my CDs, is that my CD-ROM drive can read them, although my sound system cannot - probably due to scratches, etc. I have made copies of these few discs so that I can actually listen to the music. Don't know why I should be taxed for that?!)
Go bite yourselves, music industry moguls!
Many Edgar Rice Burroughs books are out of copyright, and are available for free download from Project Gutenberg.
Perhaps this is a good counter-example to the DMCA, the "rights" of heirs, and "forever".
50 years ago, many (if not most - if not all) large companies employed their own staff as accountants, engineers, chemists, project managers, etc, etc. This meant that the company always had direct access to the specialists who built The Thing, if The Thing ever stopped working.
Today few, if any, large companies (and probably fewer small companies as well) have this specialist knowledge in-house - consultants are employed to design the tricky stuff, and the work is farmed out to other "specialist" companies.
So today, there is a division of knowledge - your company knows what it wants, a consultant works out how to do it, while a third party provides a partial solution. Add in the localisations needed to get the third party solution to fit in with your existing processes, probably with a combination of your own (precious few) expert staff, and a few more contractors.
So where does this leave today's company? Utterly dependant on external consultants, who usually vanish once they stop being paid, and third party companies of varying quality.
My personal experience, of helping a small ISP grow into a corporate, is to rely on your own staff as much as possible. Information is hard to gain, but a lot easier to pick up through implementing the project yourself. When it comes to your first support call, you'll be glad that YOUR people spent the time learning the details of YOUR implementation.
More than once, this has been the difference between six months in call centre biffo, and a five minute response from THE expert on the other side of the world.
Regards
I'm using examples from my grandfather's engineering days, rather than modern nanometre engineering, but its all about the same thing.
Engineering has always been about taking known solutions, and putting them together in known ways. The "art" of engineering comes from taking these known structures, and putting them into unusual environments. This is where experience, through testing, makes a difference.
An apartment block has little (if any) "art" to it, while a massive-scale project (say, a dam, mine, or smelter) has oodles. All are using the same known materials and techniques, but are solving very different problems. An apartment engineer will have no chance of designing any dam wall, without a serious amount of simulation and testing. Fortunately, engineers with the experience of having built dam walls have already put their knowledge into the design and simulation software, and so little is lost.
Or is it? What if dam walls have always been built of concrete, steel, and stone, but along comes a radical who thinks he can build one out of a plastic? There is no body of existing knowledge to fall back on, and so the company can either spend a fortune on testing (making ever-larger models, perhaps), or it can insist the design stick to "existing methods" - all able to be simulated with their existing software.
Hmmm... "Existing Methods" is never going to produce another Thomas Edison. And software will always be limited by current experience.
Idle musings...
Is good software possible?     A qualified "yes".
Sure, we had our share of disaster customers, where someone would appear out of the blue, using an advertised and documented feature... only to find that they were the first, ever, to use it in our region. (I am certain you can appreciate that each country has its own tax laws, and that these would have to be coded into the software - hence not every combination of features and legal code had necessarily been tested).
Anyway, as these customers had basically entrusted their livelihoods to us, we were obliged to spend any amount of time to find the problem, fix the code, and repair their data - even if that meant rekeying their orders for them!
We had customers happily using our original PC-DOS software for years, still on the original hardware.
The important point is - it is possible to write good software!
The software companies we hear of today, are all so focussed on staying ahead of the competition, through new features, etc, that they have possibly (just possibly?) forgotten that it is the customer that matters.
If I write any software - anything - and sell it to a customer, that customer will happily pay more for software from a company that doesn't force unneeded/unwanted feature and UI "upgrades", offers a customising service for specialised features, and genuinely treats the customer with respect. If this has to be legislated, then we have all lost.
Sadly, it seems that software has become such a commodity these days, that business software is at the bargain kitchens end of the market - it looks good, but it never suited you 100%, and you don't really expect it to last forever.
Someone tell me I'm wrong? I've been in Internet software for the past 8 years, so I may have missed the quality end of the market?
Speaking of Internet software, I know someone who has a fantastic Internet mail system half-written that knocks the pants of any commercial systems. Perfectly scalable. Anyone want to help fund it? :o)
Sorry - I find it difficult to believe that an Australian Citizen has been detained in this manner (one of some 700 detained out of some 4 million illegals). As an Australian Citizen, the Australian Embassy had a right to know, but was not told by your own US Government.
How would you feel if the world started treating US Citizens the same way? Oh, hang on a moment - that was illustrated very clearly in your post:
Hmmm... powerful emotions! So much for your compassion, etc ;-)
The interesting thing out of all this, is the Capitalist mentality shining through... The US is happy to accept the right sort of illegal immigrant, because they provide cheap labour, for the jobs that are below your dignity to do.
In an enlightened society, that smacks of racism.
In Australia, you don't expect to see Hispanics serving tables or cleaning rooms. We have, however, had some pretty hefty Parliamentary inquiries into semi-official attitudes of directed immigration, one of which was termed the White Australia Policy of the 1950's.
Australia's current treatment of genuine refugees is far from perfect, but at least we're trying to identify the problem when it is knocking at the door, and not trying to shut the gate a year after the horse has bolted.
A little global perspective never hurt anyone looking at another country's domestic attitudes.
I am certain those sages had no idea how accurate they were to be - a shame the successful industries turned out to be address harvesting and spam generation :o(
What Microsoft is preparing us for is the next step: No root access to a machine
And while slashdotters get all up in arms about loss of control, etc, if you stop and think for a moment, this is an extoardinarily powerful idea!
"No root access to a machine" puts the onus fair-and-square on Microsoft's shoulders to provide a reliable operating environment.
We expect the Internet to be there (always), so why not allow someone else (M$) to provide a standard operating environment? You (Joe Schmoe) buy a PC (plenty powerful enough for any regular home use), Windows XP pre-installed, connect to the Internet, wait for the system to register itself to M$ central, and synchronise itself to the current M$ environment.
From Microsoft's perspective, this has to be an astonishingly compelling idea. If all installed drivers are at the same revision - they WILL hear about problems, and will HAVE to fix it. No sneaky work-arounds, where M$ never hear about the problem except annecdotally.
This, by the way, is similar to the advantages touted by web-based desktops in years gone by (are desktop.com still going?), and how Citrix, etc, are still finding corporate customers today.
If you turn the classic slashdot attitude around for a moment, the vendor (M$) may see that a standard environment for Internet access would provide exceptional opportunity for content development (developers need no longer worry about backwards compatability, nor "fringe" environments), and consumers (who would have a lovely, safe, corporate-supplied Internet experience).
Of course - this is Utopian. Anyone with a shred of reality (or cynicism?) knows that no corporate has ever had anything but money in mind.
But the dream may be a good one. There are down-sides, for sure. If the generic PC falls by the wayside, and is replaced by customised, DRMed, Home/Internet boxes (and its brother, the customised, DRMed, Corporate/Internet box), individuals will have lost many freedoms, and M$ will own us all.
For a corporation, that must always be the goal.
As consumers, no matter how comfortable and safe our world is made for us, our goal is always individual freedom.
And so you would expect this to fail - but once M$ own the Net, to the extent that all access and content is M$-oriented, the era of the hardware/software hacker-hobbyist is over.
Perhaps this is a little too extreme, but Microsoft can dream big, and bulldoze their way ahead regardless of time, money, or regulation.
egburr said: ...
> Give me the basics and throw out the fluff.
>
> This would negate much of their costs, including tech support.
It would reduce their costs, certainly. However it would also reduce their revenues.
Most of this "fluff", especially portals, have very low incremental costs - you build it once, and the cost of providing it to 100,000 subscribers is maybe 10c per subscriber per month. This can come out of your connection fee, and you won't even notice it.
The company can then promote other products through this portal far more effectively than through TV, radio, or print media (as they own the media (portal)). Since you've already paid for the portal (in your monthly access charge), it costs them $0 to publish the ads.
Think of it from your provider's perspective, and the arguments for providing this fluff are very compelling! Sure - DNS, news, mail, and static IP, you can get elsewhere... but if they give you mail service, they can target YOU with "information" (promotions), while DNS, news, etc, will make you feel good about the company, and maybe look at their portal.
If you don't use their "fluff", then you are an expensive customer to them. They need you to look at their portal, to keep the monthly access costs low.
Yeah - it's arse-about. But welcome to the tightly-integrated 21st century!
This is the world we all want, isn't it?
Given Microsoft's past behaviour, we would expect them to clutch this patent VERY tightly.
So, law is passed making it mandatory that only DRM OSes can be sold - therefore, you must buy Windows DRM.
Microsoft has now painted itself into a corner, where there is no way to dispute their monopoly status -- therefore, they MUST act in the public interest, etc, at all times. Sure, Microsoft would be everywhere, but for how long, and at what cost?
As to what alternatives there are... oh, Linux, perhaps?
It sounds like most of your data is static:
- you rip an MP3 once, and that file never changes;
- you rip an album once, and that directory never changes again;
- you save your vacation photos once, and that directory never changes again;
- etc...
Sure, you want all that data instantly accessible, but there's only a small portion of your disk being actively modified daily.
When you rip an album, or store your vacation snaps, back them up. CD, DVD, another HDD - doesn't matter.
Also, backup your actively modified data (accounts, home directory, email, etc) to a separate location whenever you feel it appropriate. A multi-session CD-R works well for me - YMMV.
Maintain a manual index (write a label), and perhaps a speadsheet/text index as well in your home directory (so it gets backed up regularly).
Too easy!
Why would MS go to all the trouble of building a console which is almost a PC, and then "extend" Windows XP to allow those games to run on a PC?
Then they have to support two separate streams of game APIs - one into the XBox OS, and another into XP.
Why not, instead, use the XBox as the games platform, and slowly wean the gaming APIs out of XP (or just plain not develop them any further).
That way, MS get the gamers using a console (fewer of those nasty CD cracks and copies floating around), while only the "serious" computer user uses the "serious" PC running XP.
Even if the XBox is hardware hackable to turn it into a PC, how many home gamers are going to turn to hardware hacking and risk losing the use of their console?
> But no, in this case we can take revenge.
"Can" take revenge? Hopefully you mean exactly what you say, and nothing more! America has no right to seek revenge, nor has anyone. But it is certainly available as an option.
America cannot be seen to be taking "revenge", as it would be seen by many in the world (not just cultures that currently clash with the USA, but current friends included) as a sign of American immaturity.
America must seek justice. The USA has always spoken from the moral high-ground, in international affairs. To stoop to mere revenge is to cause America to lose that, and to lose the hearts and minds of the world.
The USA must not keep up this "revenge" rhetoric - it may not be official, perhaps, but every American "knows" what the government means by "justice", especially when terms like "dead or alive" are used.
My question to you is - if YOU were President, and you knew that it was patriotic Americans who performed this act, would you:
- divert people's attention to a known face
- tell the public that it was an American
- tell the public that you will never know who did it?
It isn't really a "one-or-the-other" balancing act. I see it as more of a three-way tousle.
One the one hand you have Security, and on the other hand you have Freedom. But you also have Society in the equation.
What do I mean?
When a Society is working well together, Security is taken for granted, and individuals still have Freedom. Security and Freedom are givens, and not enforced, within a coherent Society.
It is only when Society falters, when it loses a sense of common purpose on an INDIVIDUAL level, that there is a failure of implicit Security and Freedom, and it becomes necessary to enforce them. In this modern age, it is all about "Me", hence a sense of Society is missing - little or no sense of "us" - and we acutely feel the impact on our sense of Security, and our loss of Freedom.
Looking back in history, we have examples of strong Societies, who obtained Security not through enforcement, but through the Social binding itself.
As the Societies grew larger, they lost their common sense of purpose, and individuals began to take matters into their own hands, to their own ends.
Looking back to the (arguably) golden era of British Society, those most able to wreak social havoc were constrained by the social system they lived in. Law enforcement was not a budernsome necessity, a man's word WAS enough, and social disgrace was sufficient punishment.
In this global culture, but most especially in the USA, this sense of common purpose has vanished - we live in an era of personal greed.
As Society declines, Security needs to be enforced, and loss of Freedoms becomes an issue.
The phrase "a city is a place where people are lonely together" never applied more!