There is also a risk for people, especially simple consumers and small businesses, to store things at their own site, if they have a less than ample backup strategy.
But that is a manageable risk. Trusting a random third party with your criticial, confidential information is not a manageable risk; if they lose it it, you're screwed, and if they leak it, you're screwed. In fact, data protection legislation would make even using a service like this legally dicey in some places, for precisely this reason.
As for broadband, my ISP was excellent and I had near 100% uptime for a year. And then two weeks ago, something went wrong, and since then (i.e., for the whole intervening two weeks), I have had intermittent trouble connecting, connections dropped while in use, etc. If I'd been a business, I might have been out of business by now with that level of downtime.
Sorry, but that just doesn't have the ring of truth to it. There is a reason that every major corporate IT group in the world field tests upgrades, uses things like SUS, etc. We used to have some systems at work set to pull from Microsoft Update automatically. One day, a patch for a known vulnerability took down the entire office network when it "fixed" Samba so that none of our Windows machines could talk to any of our *nix servers. The following day, no machines in the office were set to pull updates automatically.
That's all very well until they roll out an upgrade, without notice or without your having any control over it, that breaks your business's criticial documents.
What will be the primary elements of an Office Suite for the Web be?
Failure, I suspect.
What advantage does any web-based office application have to justify the incredible risks of allowing your data out-of-house and being dependent on a working Internet connection to be able to do anything?
But once you see the difference 1080i or 1080p makes over standard definition TV, it's very hard to go back.
I wouldn't know; I've never seen a TV set in real life that's capable of displaying 1080-line images. And I'm about to spend a fortune on a brand new, high-end LCD TV after several weeks of research, so if I haven't seen them, I'll bet you at least five 9s of the market in the UK hasn't either.
Only in IT could something that was state-of-the-art five years ago and a clear industry standard even a couple of years ago possibly be described as "vintage" today.:-)
But seriously, kiddie slang is one thing, but when the degradation reaches the point at which the writer is no longer understandable, that's not language evolution as part of some natural process of change, that's just illiteracy, pure and simple.
Here's a small anecdote I sometimes relate when this subject comes up. When I'm not messing around on Slashdot, I often help out on some on-line programming forums, particularly those dedicated to helping less experienced people learn new skills. The quality of posts there vary from nicely written, polite, clear requests for help, to L337sp33k "can u do my homework 4 me kthx" drivel. Guess which posts the expert volunteers invest their time answering?
The really saddening thing, though, is when you see a post from someone who clearly is making a genuine effort, but simply isn't making sense because their language skills are so poor. Some of us try to help those people to clarify what they're asking and to form their questions more helpfully, but at the end of the day, their lack of literacy is directly disadvantaging them. If that's what they get on a board dedicated to helping them and run by volunteers who are willing to give up a certain amount of their time for that purpose, what are they going to get in the job market, for example?
I was thinking much the same. For example, when I read this...
Translucent icons, program windows, and other elements not only look cool, they add depth and context to the interface.
...I thought most usability research had pretty much thrown out this sort of visual jiggery-pokery some time ago now, having discovered that since monitors are basically flat, 2D surfaces, trying to project things in funky 3D or to impose layers through transparency just disorientates users. It's always possible that Microsoft have come up with a new and qualitatively different approach to that of the research labs at other big software places like Sun or IBM, of course, but I'm betting heavily on "gimmick" until I see any evidence to the contrary.
It seems to me that the vast majority of the 10 "reasons to buy" have already been more than adequately addressed on Windows platforms by third party software, some of which will presumably still be necessary since it sounds like MS isn't going to include any anti-virus software unless you pay for it. On other platforms, it either was never an issue, or is likewise addressed by third party add-ons. Putting it into the OS may or may not be an advantage relative to starting with nothing, but relative to where we are, who cares?
Of the remainder, if they're genuinely getting serious about security, that's great, but on the flip-side, we all know about the Trusted Computing rubbish, DRM, and all that jazz. On top of that, we have the recent stories about national governments wanting backdoors and entering talks with Microsoft to ensure they get them. If a government cracker can break my system, so can a script kiddie with the right friends, and that's game over for Microsoft's security drive. It's not secure if it has deliberate backdoors!
The more I read about Vista, the less I care, and I'm someone who (at present) does run XP both at home and at work, and uses some OSS for practical rather than philosophical reasons. I've been looking seriously at shifting to an alternative platform for a while, and with all the security and DRM badness going around lately, the obvious commercial alternative -- Apple -- is pretty much ruled out of the game by its own actions. This could be the best thing to happen to open source software since forever.
Sorry, but I just can't see the benefits for the job seeker in your advice.
First of all, many companies will immediately shut you out for not disclosing that.
Do you want to work for such a company anyway? That's certainly never been the norm where I work, only the practice of predatory large corporations that don't pay well.
If, for example, you make $55k, but want $60k, but you make them say a number first, there are scenarios where you can end up fighting an uphill battle. What if they offer you $50k? What, suddenly you're willing to disclose your old salary and tell them their offer is too low? Then all that talk about it not being "relevant" goes out the window and you look like a fool.
I don't see how that follows at all. Why do you need to disclose anything about your old salary to say "Sorry, that offer is too low for me to accept. How about this instead?"
Instead, had you made it explicitly clear your currently salary is FAR too low, told them what it is, and asked for $65k, then you place them in the position to have to fight their way down to $60k.
Which they will do with the sentence "Unfortunately, as you're already aware, the market rate for this position is considerably less than what you're asking, and we can only offer you this instead." And you will have gifted it to them on a silver platter.
If you don't tell them what your salary was up front, they won't know where you are coming from and your salary request will seem like some phantom number you got from salary.com.
Anyone who assumes that because you choose not to disclose your salary you just went to some web site and looked it up is a fool, and if you're dealing with fools, you have bigger problems already, and again you should ask whether you really want to work there.
You want credibility? If you can't justify why you should get paid what you are worth, you don't deserve the salary anyway.
You're worth as much as an employer is prepared to pay you. That may or may not be the number you'll get if you give up your biggest bargaining chip before you even start the game.
In an employer's market, where there are far more qualified staff than jobs needing them and all employers act the same way towards recruitment, there might be some merit to going with the flow as you describe. Most of the time, and in most places, it's not that much of an employer's market, and I just don't see the upside to your approach.
There may be legal restrictions on what your past employers can disclose, but let's face it, that doesn't stop someone asking and someone else telling. If they do, you may get to hose your previous employer (or not, as the case may be), but for sure if you lied on an application that's instant dismissal and a bad reference from the new job.
Never tell them what you currently earn. Just tell them what sort of range you're looking for. If it's the kind of organisation that's worth working for, they'll understand that this is the relevant piece of information for you to provide anyway and not even question it.
If they start trying to dig, politely decline to tell them, saying that you don't think it's relevant and/or that you feel it's inappropriate to discuss the specific details of a professional relationship with another employer. (In some places, talking about salaries is bizarrely taboo, and most businesses will respect that the same way they'd respect you if you declined to talk about specifics of previous work because of a confidentiality clause: they'd hope for the same professional conduct if you were leaving them and working for someone else.)
If they persist even then, then they're the kind of place that pays what it can get away with and not what it should pay on merit, and you probably don't want the job anyway.
I never said everything should be free. Nor did I say people should not be compensated for their work.
And nor, if you actually read my post before flaming it, did I say that you did. There are, however, several posters in this discussion who very much are saying that, and it was to them that my later comments were directed.
I think you misunderstood me. My point was that you quite literally don't have the content at all until the creator (a) actually creates it, and (b) chooses to give it to you (or to someone who will directly or indirectly share it with you).
You can't read the creator's mind. If you don't give a sufficient incentive -- whatever that may be for that particular artist and that particular work -- then you simply won't have the content, ever. Good content will not propagate or be free if it's never created in the first place, or if the creator chooses to keep it to him- or herself rather than to share it.
This is why copyright exists, and a lot of people around here seem to forget that in their rush to condemn it.
Somewhere along the line people got convinced that copyright was actually a right and not a social contract, and now we have people suggesting compromises when the system is already overfair for the copyright holder.
Somewhere along the line, a lot of people in these discussions got convinced that having access to good material was actually a right and not something that absolutely required the creator to let them have it, and that such good material appears by magic and does not require vast amounts of hard work on the part of skilled people to produce, and now we have these asinine comments about how "unfair" copyright is, all of which ignore the possibility that without that framework, you might not have most of the good material at all, ever.
BTW, I write this as someone who's involved with copyright from both sides and for multiple types of media in each case, so I have no particular axe to grind here. I just want to see a fair deal that both recognises the valuable contribution of those who create works and helps to distribute that work for the benefit of society at large in due course. I find it annoying when all these economically-deluded, "everything should be free!" fanboys start telling us how evil/unnecessary/unfair copyright is; it's almost as bad as when people object to common terminology on the basis of irrelevant technicalities instead of making a real argument!
Vista will require HDCP-encrypted channels to display restricted content, which will include purchased online content, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD content, as well as CableCard and DBS content.
Vista is still a considerable time away, and when it ships, it will no doubt require exactly what Microsoft feels it needs to require in order to maximise Microsoft's profits. Whether that includes HDCP is a different question entirely; if HDCP comes to be associated with "stuff that doesn't work properly" then you can bet MS will drop it faster than Bob.
Since most, if not all, computer monitors do not support HDCP right now, that'll be the place there will be issues. But none of them will cause HDCP to fail.
But this is where the media industry may have seriously misjudged this issue. Who drives the latest, greatest, most expensive tech sales? Early adopters. Geeks. People like many of those reading this thread.
And who have already bought large amounts of very expensive, very high spec equipment that's perfectly good for displaying HD content except for not being HDCP-compliant? Early adopters. Geeks. People like many of those reading this thread.
I'm betting that the kind of person who takes the time to research these things and buys early and expensive enough to drive the whole hardware industry (since early adopters drive later sales as well) isn't going to give up perfectly good, highly expensive equipment just to play nice with the media industry. And if they don't, it's unlikely large numbers of others will. And if they don't either, there is no market for HDCP-protected content.
And what are the big media companies going to do then? They can pay to get this or that outlawed, but at the end of the day, there is nothing that says consumers must buy any product they make. If the public is only prepared to buy something they can make reasonable use of (and that's the public's definition of "reasonable", not anyone else's!) then that's the only thing the corporations can sell, and sell it they will.
Well, always one to return a favour, I'm going to help Sony manage their access to my money when I buy my new TV next week... by buying a Loewe instead.
Objectively, I think you're clearly right. It's just that objectivity can be lacking at times like this.
I came at the same point from a slightly different angle: if, as the government claims but won't prove, three further terrorist attacks have been prevented since last July, then the cost in human life would presumably have been around 150, and the disruption to others, economic and infrastructure damage, etc. around 3x as great.
Since that time, how many lives could we have improved or even saved by investing the resources expended on the "war on terror" in better healthcare, transport safety, education initiatives, or a hundred other good causes?
And as you say, the message it sends to those who would try to scare us with terrorist attacks is a powerful one, whereas the current approach by the government is surely exactly what the terrorists would have wanted.
They still don't seem to understand. Despite the government already having pushed for the apparently random figure of 90 days, and Parliament already making a firm decision to go for 28 days instead, Gordon Brown has this week brought up the 90 days again...
When did a healthy mis-trust of government suddenly get you tin-foil hat status, and a visit from the FBI?
In the US, 12 September 2001.
In the UK, 8 July 2005.
You get the idea.
After a major terrorist act, the population is angry, not rational. Many are personally affected by the attacks. Thoughts of proportionate responses and civil liberties are overwhelmed by fear and grief.
This is, of course, the ideal time for a government to try to increase its own power at the expense of the people it should represent. This goes double for governments with only a tenuous hold on power, as is usually the case in the US because of its two-party politics, or for governments whose very mandate is dubious, as is the case of Blair's UK government (which didn't actually win the popular vote in England, and has often relied on the votes of Scottish MPs to push through controversial legislation to which their own constituents will be immune because the Scottish Parliament will decide for them separately).
Hence it is precisely in the wake of a terrorist atrocity that we should be keenest to protect our civil liberties, for it is at these times that they will naturally come under the gravest threat.
Now we just have to wait for the media companies, that lobbied for TCP in the first place, to demand access to the back door so that they can check machines for illegal movies.
And so, inevitably, the Powers That Be(TM) competing to dominate the lives of the Minions(TM) come into conflict.
If the governments get their way, there will be no true encryption permitted, because otherwise they can't spy on people.
If there is no true encryption, there is no point whatsoever to having the TPM, the entire DRM concept just got screwed, etc. It doesn't matter whether it's "only governments" who can break the codes, because someone will crack/leak/otherwise work around that restriction within days, and the Internet will do the rest within hours.
So, the media industry's current prime directive and major investment just came into direct opposition with the government's current prime directive and major political hot potato. The blue touch paper has been lit; please retire to a safe distance, and wait to see which of the rights you thought you were losing will be staying after all...
Slashdot Mirror
But that is a manageable risk. Trusting a random third party with your criticial, confidential information is not a manageable risk; if they lose it it, you're screwed, and if they leak it, you're screwed. In fact, data protection legislation would make even using a service like this legally dicey in some places, for precisely this reason.
As for broadband, my ISP was excellent and I had near 100% uptime for a year. And then two weeks ago, something went wrong, and since then (i.e., for the whole intervening two weeks), I have had intermittent trouble connecting, connections dropped while in use, etc. If I'd been a business, I might have been out of business by now with that level of downtime.
Sorry, but that just doesn't have the ring of truth to it. There is a reason that every major corporate IT group in the world field tests upgrades, uses things like SUS, etc. We used to have some systems at work set to pull from Microsoft Update automatically. One day, a patch for a known vulnerability took down the entire office network when it "fixed" Samba so that none of our Windows machines could talk to any of our *nix servers. The following day, no machines in the office were set to pull updates automatically.
That's all very well until they roll out an upgrade, without notice or without your having any control over it, that breaks your business's criticial documents.
The security model would be fundamentally flawed in several ways, so I'm afraid you're almost certainly right. :-/
Failure, I suspect.
What advantage does any web-based office application have to justify the incredible risks of allowing your data out-of-house and being dependent on a working Internet connection to be able to do anything?
The most optimistic job ad I saw recently did indeed want 5+ years' experience with Pearl 6.
(There are no typos in the above sentence.)
As recruiters like to say, it's the personal touch of someone who knows the field that makes all the difference...
I wouldn't know; I've never seen a TV set in real life that's capable of displaying 1080-line images. And I'm about to spend a fortune on a brand new, high-end LCD TV after several weeks of research, so if I haven't seen them, I'll bet you at least five 9s of the market in the UK hasn't either.
Only in IT could something that was state-of-the-art five years ago and a clear industry standard even a couple of years ago possibly be described as "vintage" today. :-)
i cnt c ur problem m8. :)
But seriously, kiddie slang is one thing, but when the degradation reaches the point at which the writer is no longer understandable, that's not language evolution as part of some natural process of change, that's just illiteracy, pure and simple.
Here's a small anecdote I sometimes relate when this subject comes up. When I'm not messing around on Slashdot, I often help out on some on-line programming forums, particularly those dedicated to helping less experienced people learn new skills. The quality of posts there vary from nicely written, polite, clear requests for help, to L337sp33k "can u do my homework 4 me kthx" drivel. Guess which posts the expert volunteers invest their time answering?
The really saddening thing, though, is when you see a post from someone who clearly is making a genuine effort, but simply isn't making sense because their language skills are so poor. Some of us try to help those people to clarify what they're asking and to form their questions more helpfully, but at the end of the day, their lack of literacy is directly disadvantaging them. If that's what they get on a board dedicated to helping them and run by volunteers who are willing to give up a certain amount of their time for that purpose, what are they going to get in the job market, for example?
I was thinking much the same. For example, when I read this...
...I thought most usability research had pretty much thrown out this sort of visual jiggery-pokery some time ago now, having discovered that since monitors are basically flat, 2D surfaces, trying to project things in funky 3D or to impose layers through transparency just disorientates users. It's always possible that Microsoft have come up with a new and qualitatively different approach to that of the research labs at other big software places like Sun or IBM, of course, but I'm betting heavily on "gimmick" until I see any evidence to the contrary.
It seems to me that the vast majority of the 10 "reasons to buy" have already been more than adequately addressed on Windows platforms by third party software, some of which will presumably still be necessary since it sounds like MS isn't going to include any anti-virus software unless you pay for it. On other platforms, it either was never an issue, or is likewise addressed by third party add-ons. Putting it into the OS may or may not be an advantage relative to starting with nothing, but relative to where we are, who cares?
Of the remainder, if they're genuinely getting serious about security, that's great, but on the flip-side, we all know about the Trusted Computing rubbish, DRM, and all that jazz. On top of that, we have the recent stories about national governments wanting backdoors and entering talks with Microsoft to ensure they get them. If a government cracker can break my system, so can a script kiddie with the right friends, and that's game over for Microsoft's security drive. It's not secure if it has deliberate backdoors!
The more I read about Vista, the less I care, and I'm someone who (at present) does run XP both at home and at work, and uses some OSS for practical rather than philosophical reasons. I've been looking seriously at shifting to an alternative platform for a while, and with all the security and DRM badness going around lately, the obvious commercial alternative -- Apple -- is pretty much ruled out of the game by its own actions. This could be the best thing to happen to open source software since forever.
Hmm... If the sun's gone nova, maybe aiming for sales to Martians isn't the smartest business strategy... :-)
Well, the clue is in the name: "Ask Slashdot". In English, questions end in a question mark, you see. :-)
Sorry, but I just can't see the benefits for the job seeker in your advice.
Do you want to work for such a company anyway? That's certainly never been the norm where I work, only the practice of predatory large corporations that don't pay well.
I don't see how that follows at all. Why do you need to disclose anything about your old salary to say "Sorry, that offer is too low for me to accept. How about this instead?"
Which they will do with the sentence "Unfortunately, as you're already aware, the market rate for this position is considerably less than what you're asking, and we can only offer you this instead." And you will have gifted it to them on a silver platter.
Anyone who assumes that because you choose not to disclose your salary you just went to some web site and looked it up is a fool, and if you're dealing with fools, you have bigger problems already, and again you should ask whether you really want to work there.
You're worth as much as an employer is prepared to pay you. That may or may not be the number you'll get if you give up your biggest bargaining chip before you even start the game.
In an employer's market, where there are far more qualified staff than jobs needing them and all employers act the same way towards recruitment, there might be some merit to going with the flow as you describe. Most of the time, and in most places, it's not that much of an employer's market, and I just don't see the upside to your approach.
There may be legal restrictions on what your past employers can disclose, but let's face it, that doesn't stop someone asking and someone else telling. If they do, you may get to hose your previous employer (or not, as the case may be), but for sure if you lied on an application that's instant dismissal and a bad reference from the new job.
Never tell them what you currently earn. Just tell them what sort of range you're looking for. If it's the kind of organisation that's worth working for, they'll understand that this is the relevant piece of information for you to provide anyway and not even question it.
If they start trying to dig, politely decline to tell them, saying that you don't think it's relevant and/or that you feel it's inappropriate to discuss the specific details of a professional relationship with another employer. (In some places, talking about salaries is bizarrely taboo, and most businesses will respect that the same way they'd respect you if you declined to talk about specifics of previous work because of a confidentiality clause: they'd hope for the same professional conduct if you were leaving them and working for someone else.)
If they persist even then, then they're the kind of place that pays what it can get away with and not what it should pay on merit, and you probably don't want the job anyway.
And nor, if you actually read my post before flaming it, did I say that you did. There are, however, several posters in this discussion who very much are saying that, and it was to them that my later comments were directed.
I think you misunderstood me. My point was that you quite literally don't have the content at all until the creator (a) actually creates it, and (b) chooses to give it to you (or to someone who will directly or indirectly share it with you).
You can't read the creator's mind. If you don't give a sufficient incentive -- whatever that may be for that particular artist and that particular work -- then you simply won't have the content, ever. Good content will not propagate or be free if it's never created in the first place, or if the creator chooses to keep it to him- or herself rather than to share it.
This is why copyright exists, and a lot of people around here seem to forget that in their rush to condemn it.
Blockquoth the AC:
Somewhere along the line, a lot of people in these discussions got convinced that having access to good material was actually a right and not something that absolutely required the creator to let them have it, and that such good material appears by magic and does not require vast amounts of hard work on the part of skilled people to produce, and now we have these asinine comments about how "unfair" copyright is, all of which ignore the possibility that without that framework, you might not have most of the good material at all, ever.
BTW, I write this as someone who's involved with copyright from both sides and for multiple types of media in each case, so I have no particular axe to grind here. I just want to see a fair deal that both recognises the valuable contribution of those who create works and helps to distribute that work for the benefit of society at large in due course. I find it annoying when all these economically-deluded, "everything should be free!" fanboys start telling us how evil/unnecessary/unfair copyright is; it's almost as bad as when people object to common terminology on the basis of irrelevant technicalities instead of making a real argument!
Vista is still a considerable time away, and when it ships, it will no doubt require exactly what Microsoft feels it needs to require in order to maximise Microsoft's profits. Whether that includes HDCP is a different question entirely; if HDCP comes to be associated with "stuff that doesn't work properly" then you can bet MS will drop it faster than Bob.
But this is where the media industry may have seriously misjudged this issue. Who drives the latest, greatest, most expensive tech sales? Early adopters. Geeks. People like many of those reading this thread.
And who have already bought large amounts of very expensive, very high spec equipment that's perfectly good for displaying HD content except for not being HDCP-compliant? Early adopters. Geeks. People like many of those reading this thread.
I'm betting that the kind of person who takes the time to research these things and buys early and expensive enough to drive the whole hardware industry (since early adopters drive later sales as well) isn't going to give up perfectly good, highly expensive equipment just to play nice with the media industry. And if they don't, it's unlikely large numbers of others will. And if they don't either, there is no market for HDCP-protected content.
And what are the big media companies going to do then? They can pay to get this or that outlawed, but at the end of the day, there is nothing that says consumers must buy any product they make. If the public is only prepared to buy something they can make reasonable use of (and that's the public's definition of "reasonable", not anyone else's!) then that's the only thing the corporations can sell, and sell it they will.
Mmmmmm. Begun, this rootkit war... Oh, never mind.
Well, always one to return a favour, I'm going to help Sony manage their access to my money when I buy my new TV next week... by buying a Loewe instead.
Objectively, I think you're clearly right. It's just that objectivity can be lacking at times like this.
I came at the same point from a slightly different angle: if, as the government claims but won't prove, three further terrorist attacks have been prevented since last July, then the cost in human life would presumably have been around 150, and the disruption to others, economic and infrastructure damage, etc. around 3x as great.
Since that time, how many lives could we have improved or even saved by investing the resources expended on the "war on terror" in better healthcare, transport safety, education initiatives, or a hundred other good causes?
And as you say, the message it sends to those who would try to scare us with terrorist attacks is a powerful one, whereas the current approach by the government is surely exactly what the terrorists would have wanted.
They still don't seem to understand. Despite the government already having pushed for the apparently random figure of 90 days, and Parliament already making a firm decision to go for 28 days instead, Gordon Brown has this week brought up the 90 days again...
In the US, 12 September 2001.
In the UK, 8 July 2005.
You get the idea.
After a major terrorist act, the population is angry, not rational. Many are personally affected by the attacks. Thoughts of proportionate responses and civil liberties are overwhelmed by fear and grief.
This is, of course, the ideal time for a government to try to increase its own power at the expense of the people it should represent. This goes double for governments with only a tenuous hold on power, as is usually the case in the US because of its two-party politics, or for governments whose very mandate is dubious, as is the case of Blair's UK government (which didn't actually win the popular vote in England, and has often relied on the votes of Scottish MPs to push through controversial legislation to which their own constituents will be immune because the Scottish Parliament will decide for them separately).
Hence it is precisely in the wake of a terrorist atrocity that we should be keenest to protect our civil liberties, for it is at these times that they will naturally come under the gravest threat.
And so, inevitably, the Powers That Be(TM) competing to dominate the lives of the Minions(TM) come into conflict.
If the governments get their way, there will be no true encryption permitted, because otherwise they can't spy on people.
If there is no true encryption, there is no point whatsoever to having the TPM, the entire DRM concept just got screwed, etc. It doesn't matter whether it's "only governments" who can break the codes, because someone will crack/leak/otherwise work around that restriction within days, and the Internet will do the rest within hours.
So, the media industry's current prime directive and major investment just came into direct opposition with the government's current prime directive and major political hot potato. The blue touch paper has been lit; please retire to a safe distance, and wait to see which of the rights you thought you were losing will be staying after all...