ITs true that you never know what the future might hold. it just seems like a hard thing to overcome, sicne the publishing houses are so entrenched. It will take a lot of effort to build up the level of respect of a new journal such as this.
The march of progress is cruel. Even Microsoft, the wealthiest corporation in the world, may not be able to stop the onslaught of the open source movement.
Top it off with the fact that there are still a lot of older faculty members that hardly know how to check their email, let alone review papers on the web. However, they are still contributing greatly to the scientific community.
To be blunt, the will retire. And as you point out, they will die.
Cool, so if you go on a 3 week vacation, I can use your house for my own puposes, as long as I move out before you get back? You didn't lose anything (you were gone), but I gained something, because I was homeless, in need of a place to party, or whatever. No need for to ask permission, right?
That's a crap comparison.
If I could duplicate my house at zero cost, then I would be happy for you to live in one of the copies. In fact, I would house the homeless of the world.
But...the journal companies ahve a LOT of overhead to deal with. Mainly coordinating the review process that gives any jounral its credibility.
Yes. Printing, distributing and coordinating input from (unpaid) peer reviewers has been expensive in the past.
Fortunately, we have now have this wonderful thing called the World Wide Web, which makes it much easier to do these things and can reduce the afore mentioned costs to a fraction.
You never know, in the future it might be a prerequisite that a science faculty scores 50 karma points for papers posted on ScienceDot.
Agreed, but the problem with your mindset is that it leads directly to the "Tragedy of the Commons". For example, using your scale we might have 100,000 people x 0.01 = 1000.
The same logic (or lack thereof) applies to other "harmless" activities like littering, watering the lawn during a drought, etc.
I was talking about a scale of morality for the individual. It does not make sense to do maths with it, just as it doesn't make sense to say ten force-ten earthquakes are equivalent to 100 on the Richter Scale. Obviously it is nonsensical to compare 100,000 people copying Madonna's Greatest Hits with ten murders!
Where should be we send the dollar? Or will you accept PayPal?
Don't tempt me...
But it is an interesting point. I published my work in a medium that is copiable, demanded fees for you to read my copyrighted material, as is my right, but provided no mechanism for you to pay me. Think about that for a moment...
There is no mechanism by which I can pay Madonna directly for her Greatest Hits I downloaded off the Internet. I like it. I would pay Madonna a couple of dollars directly to her for it, if she provided me a mechanism for me to do that. But I'm not going to spend $20 dollars on the CD. That's too much. And I want Madonna to benefit, not 100 middlemen.
Perhaps Madonna should provide a mechanism on her web site by which we could pay her a reasonable sum for the MP3 files we have copied off the Internet. She might be suprised about how many people paid. But of course she won't do that, and her record company would never consider it, so she's the loser.
The problem is there is not as big a difference in sharing physical and non-physical things a most of us slashdotters would like to believe.
There's a huge difference.
I have decided that since I have spend some of my valuable time thinking about this, and I am providing a service to you by responding to your message, you should send me a dollar.
By reading beyond the copyright statement below, you are agreeing to my terms and conditions for my copyrighted thoughts. My terms are that you send me one US dollar.
The following material is copyright (c) 2002 Pubjames
You're still reading? Where's my dollar? Seriously!
According to your argument, you are now a thief. It is up to me to be able to set my own price for my copyrighted material, I've decided my price, I've made my terms clear. You are now robbing me. I am down a dollar.
Of course, if this was a physical thing, I could prevent you from having it until you gave me your dollar. I would be really angry if you took it, because then I would lose it. And you would rightly feel bad about taking it. But it's not a physical thing. It's bits and bytes. So you're getting it for free.
there is not as big a difference in sharing physical and non-physical things
If you believe that you should be able to enjoy someone else's work without justly compensating them for it, then you are a thief.
Firstly let me point out that I did not take any moral high ground that copying is ok. The jist of my argument is that copying digital works is a much lesser immoral act than stealing physical goods.
Let's pretend for a moment that there is a quantitative scale for immoral acts. Let's say murder scores 100. Acts of violence might score 50. Stealing someones TV on this scale might score, say 15. Personally I think that copying Madonna's greatest hits off the Internet would score about 0.01, if that.
We all have our own moral systems. All of us do things that would score tiny scores on our own personal immorality scales, every day. What annoys me is when I hear people talk about things like music copying as if it were a terrible immoral act. It is a immoral act, but it is a tiny little one. You are a thief on the same scale as a married man who admires another woman is an adulturer, or as someone who smokes in a public space is a murderer.
The sad part is that my kids are growing up in a time where the message is that it's ok to steal what you don't want to pay for, if you feel the price is too high.
I assume that you are referring to software and music here. Why might your children think this way?
There is a fudamental difference between stealing, say, someone's TV, and downloading music from the Internet. In the first case, the owner no longer has a TV. The original owner loses something, you gain something. In the second case, the original owner (the artist) does not lose anything, but you gain something. Let's make this clear - when you download music from the internet, the artist does not lose anything. They don't gain anything either, but absence of gain is not a loss, a basic point that often confuses people debating this issue. You have not taken anything from the artist, nor have you given them anything.
So don't confuse your kids "stealing" music or software off the net with them shoplifting or pickpocketing. They are completely different. Your kids understand this difference, which is why they don't feel bad about doing it, and they are right to feel like that because from a moral viewpoint what they are doing is an extremely petty "sin" (for want of a better word - I'm not talking in a religious sense).
Your kids probably have sound moral judgement. Most kids do. Don't corrupt them with your own confused ideas about right and wrong.
The division between lending and copying is pretty clear.
With physical objects it is, yes.
Many years before electronic computers were invented George Bernard Shaw observed :
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
Thus demonstrating a basic difference between sharing physical and non-physical things. They are different. It is pointless making comparisons.
Before recorded media was invented, if you wanted to share a song, you would sing it so that others could learn it. Similarly with stories. Then we developed ways to make these entertainments into physical objects. This cost effort/money, but allowed these entertainments to be brought and sold, and their distribution could be controlled and limited. We have now invented technology which means that they can be shared in a non-physical way again, digitally via networks, and copied at virtually zero cost.
We have a choice now. We can deliberately create mechanism and laws to limit the copying and distribution of digital files, or we can choose not to. The debate should be "What is the most civilized thing to do? What would be best for mankind?" Unfortunately these days global lawmaking is heavily influenced by America, and America has been corrupted by corporate power arising from a basic selfishness in the modern America value system. This means that civilized debate about this very important issue is not occuring.
It wasn't always this way. There used to be things called vision, ideals, morals, justice and great men who fought for them. America was founded by great men. Today it is run by corrupt, small-minded intellectual dwarfs.
Time for a change.
Re:The kicker's in the tail
on
SuSE 7.3 vs XP
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· Score: 2
Why would a IT professional replace Win2K with XP?
I kind of assumed that because it was called Windows XP Professional that it would be designed for professionals, and that since it was the version after Windows 2000 then it would be better. I know, I'm a sucker and should have read a few reviews first.
Re:The kicker's in the tail
on
SuSE 7.3 vs XP
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
Thanks. That works.
Re:The kicker's in the tail
on
SuSE 7.3 vs XP
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· Score: 5, Funny
I agree.
I'm an XP user (Linux too!) and one thing that really pisses me off is that they've taken away the little icon that used to be bottom left of the screen that would give quick access to the desktop.
Personally I think that it is a good thing to have a simplified desktop for my old ma and pa, but I am what Microsofties might call a 'power user', or I prefer to call an IT professional. I think it would be simple to make it so that when you set up your account on your machine for the first time they ask you "Do you have difficulty using computers?" or whatever and if you reply yes then they give you the simplifed desktop.
I have Windows XP Professional. When I set up my user account it assigned me an icon of a yellow plastic duck. I mean, a bloody yellow plastic duck on a professional level computer! That will really impress my clients. What are MS thinking? But thankfully, this is one configuration option that is easy to change. I can change it from a bloody yellow plastic duck to a fucking green stuffed frog.
Oh, only the process. I'm not sure if bodily excretions are patentable. But the way things are going, perhaps they will be one day...
Is it possible to have, like, a holding patent, for something that isn't currently patentable but will be once the megacorps finally decide all laws in America? I guess if there is then the Megacorps will have already done it. They'll have like a Meta-patent that covers everything.
You know when you get really bored at work and so you decide to scrape all the finger-cheese off the keys on your keyboard?
I've got a patent on that, I have.
Re:Mediocre people can no longer get good jobs! D'
on
The Laid-off Techie
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· Score: 2
Yeah, now we just need to get rid of mediocre CEOs who think that a full time software engineer should also be able to do the full time jobs of a sysadmin and web designer.
Did I say that? No, I didn't.
The point of my post was that there have been a lot of people who wouldn't cut it as professional graphic designers or programmers who have managed to make a good living during the dot-com boom as "web designers", when in reality all they really know is HTML and understand a bit of Javascript. There are a lot of these people around, and frankly they are just mediocre people doing a realively simple task. That's one reason why they're having so many problems getting work now the dot-com boom is over.
Re:Mediocre people can no longer get good jobs! D'
on
The Laid-off Techie
·
· Score: 2
Believe it or not, tech companies need non-techies to succeed.
No! You don't say! Thank God for that. I'm doing something right! I've got business managers, graphic designers, a journalist and marketing specialists on my team, and only a couple of techies.
What made/makes the web a success is simplicity. It is the simplicity fo the web that made it a success. If it required people to know C++ or other "real programming or project management skills" then it never would have taken off.
Yes. Google is wonderfully simple, for instance. But that doesn't mean that it is simple to create a system like Google. Buying a book on Amazon with one-click is really simple, but that doesn't mean that it was simple to create Amazon's web site. I could go on...
We use graphic designers on all our projects, believe me. We specify the requirements of the interface, the designers do drafts, the clients approve them, and then the techies make the system look like the designs. But the graphic design work is often only about 10% of the overall project, both in cost and importance.
Look at pretty much any major, successful web site. They are often driven by complex content management systems, linked into ERM and CRM systems, and often legacy systems.
The fact of the matter is that many people in the "web design" industry up until now have been neither professional graphic designers nor professional programmers. Knowing 'now to make a web page' is not difficult. Being an excellent graphic designer or programmer is difficult. That's why I do not feel sorry for all these people who are finding it difficult to find work now. It's because they were getting well paid for a relatively simple job.
I would think a CEO would know these things. But then again since I don't have a degree in Computer Science and have only worked in multimedia and web design/production since '94 I may be wrong.
You are a web design/production specialist? Can you make me a site like Slashdot then? Can you create a site on top of a clients in-house created CRM system? Can you create a site with a single point of data entry, but output in HTML, WAP, and WebTV format using XML and XSL? I would have thought a professional web designer with so many years experience would know these things... Or are you really just a mediocre graphic designer that knows HTML and a bit of Javascript?
Re:Mediocre people can no longer get good jobs! D'
on
The Laid-off Techie
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· Score: 2
Just out of interest though, what skills would you be looking to aquire for your company right now?
We've just recruited a very experienced business development manager. Other than that, we're not recruiting, but we're not laying off either.
Mediocre people can no longer get good jobs! D'oh!
on
The Laid-off Techie
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I am CEO of a small company which specialises in web development. It is still true (at least in my part of the world) that many "web design" companies have staff whos only qualification is to have taught themselves to "program" in HTML. Many of them are from non-techy backgrounds, often design or Mickey Mouse degrees like Media Studies. These companies often offer all types of services (such as those that really require real programming or project management skills) which they don't have the skills and experience to offer. So if these people are being made redundant and having a hard time finding new jobs - well, tough.
To get a good job is hard. Always has been, apart from temporary crazy blips like the dot-com boom. Just because it is now hard to get a good job does not mean that good jobs do not exist, rather it means that the brief period of crazyness when mediocre people could get good jobs is over!
News Flash! Corporation wants to maximize market share!
Different companies have different strategies. Look at IBM - it's strategy is one of partnership with other IT companies, and it is proving very successful. Few companies in the IT industry have the warlike "kill the competition at any cost and get 100% of the market" mentality that Microsoft does.
SHould we then succumb to the Not Invented Here syndrome and ignoring the technology just because of its origin?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Microsoft do it all the time. That's why they're promoting C#, and not trying to improve Java. They're great strategists. Some parts of the OS community has recently shown itself not to be.
A lot of the debate about.NET and the open source focuses on the technology, and not the strategy.
Let's consider some facts first. One of Microsoft's basic strategies is the complete domination of markets. They make no secret of this (although they have not been successful at it outside of the desktop space). Here are some instances where senior Microsoft people have stated they want to completely dominate a market:
1) Internet access with MSN.
2) The handheld market with Windows CE
3) The game console market with X-Box.
In all three cases above, they have made it clear that they intend to dominate that market, and have even stated that it is "the Microsoft way" to do so. They're not interested in 50%, they want 100. Admittedly they haven't yet been successful in this any of the above markets (in fact I think we can now safely say that they've failed with Internet access), but that is their intent.
So, what has this to do with.NET? Well,.NET is a technology, but it is also a strategy. Its aim is to completely dominate software development in the future.
Now, Microsoft's strategists will have spent a long time thinking about this. They will have hypothosized about potential problems, and developed contingency plans. Microsoft knows that in order for.NET to be successful, they need to win developers over to it. In order to do that, they need to give the appearence of it being an open and non-threatening platform to use. But that's only appearances. Their aim with.NET is to completely dominate the provision of any type of software service over the internet (which will include pretty much everything within a decade) and to get their slice of every transaction made.
That's why I despair when I hear people in the Open Source community talk about implenting stuff in.NET. If you think you will ever beat Microsoft by playing by their rules then you have your head in the sand. Think about what contingency plans Microsoft might have in place. Remember that they have a war mentality - what would you do if you were Microsoft? Think about the Haloween memos.
Has anyone, for instance, looked through all Microsoft's patents, to check that their isn't a surprise that they could pull out of the sack if things aren't going their way? Has the Gnome Foundation, for instance, got the financial means to defend itself should Microsoft attack it legally? Why are some parts of the.NET strategy still vague, when Microsoft is "betting the barn" on it?
.NET is perhaps great technology. But I implore everyone in the OSS community to stay away from it. Bill Gates will tell you that the best technology doesn't necessarily win in the long term, it is what has mindshare. OSS is getting more mindshare every day. Don't help MS by supporting their technologies. Your software project will get killed if it starts to threaten MS if you do.
The UK gov have just signed deals with MS for software for parliamant and the National Health Service.
OK. But actually I was thinking about The Infrastructure Forum, which represents many big IT purchasers in the UK, including some government departments. See here and here. To my knowledge nothing like this exists in the US.
Er, yes, and if I found out my competitors were slandering my name and calling me undemocratic, I'd complain.
Except many of the signitories are actually the client, not a competitor. I think most suppliers would act differently in this situation.
or do you find it a bit difficult to step back from problems and look at them with an open mind?
Since you are insinuating things about me, I'll do the same for you. I suggest that you've not been in the situation of being directly responsible for a major client account when that client is seriously considering alternatives.
Slashdot Mirror
ITs true that you never know what the future might hold. it just seems like a hard thing to overcome, sicne the publishing houses are so entrenched. It will take a lot of effort to build up the level of respect of a new journal such as this.
The march of progress is cruel. Even Microsoft, the wealthiest corporation in the world, may not be able to stop the onslaught of the open source movement.
Top it off with the fact that there are still a lot of older faculty members that hardly know how to check their email, let alone review papers on the web. However, they are still contributing greatly to the scientific community.
To be blunt, the will retire. And as you point out, they will die.
Major changes often come with new generations.
Cool, so if you go on a 3 week vacation, I can use your house for my own puposes, as long as I move out before you get back? You didn't lose anything (you were gone), but I gained something, because I was homeless, in need of a place to party, or whatever. No need for to ask permission, right?
That's a crap comparison.
If I could duplicate my house at zero cost, then I would be happy for you to live in one of the copies. In fact, I would house the homeless of the world.
But...the journal companies ahve a LOT of overhead to deal with. Mainly coordinating the review process that gives any jounral its credibility.
Yes. Printing, distributing and coordinating input from (unpaid) peer reviewers has been expensive in the past.
Fortunately, we have now have this wonderful thing called the World Wide Web, which makes it much easier to do these things and can reduce the afore mentioned costs to a fraction.
You never know, in the future it might be a prerequisite that a science faculty scores 50 karma points for papers posted on ScienceDot.
Agreed, but the problem with your mindset is that it leads directly to the "Tragedy of the Commons". For example, using your scale we might have 100,000 people x 0.01 = 1000.
The same logic (or lack thereof) applies to other "harmless" activities like littering, watering the lawn during a drought, etc.
I was talking about a scale of morality for the individual. It does not make sense to do maths with it, just as it doesn't make sense to say ten force-ten earthquakes are equivalent to 100 on the Richter Scale. Obviously it is nonsensical to compare 100,000 people copying Madonna's Greatest Hits with ten murders!
Where should be we send the dollar? Or will you accept PayPal?
Don't tempt me...
But it is an interesting point. I published my work in a medium that is copiable, demanded fees for you to read my copyrighted material, as is my right, but provided no mechanism for you to pay me. Think about that for a moment...
There is no mechanism by which I can pay Madonna directly for her Greatest Hits I downloaded off the Internet. I like it. I would pay Madonna a couple of dollars directly to her for it, if she provided me a mechanism for me to do that. But I'm not going to spend $20 dollars on the CD. That's too much. And I want Madonna to benefit, not 100 middlemen.
Perhaps Madonna should provide a mechanism on her web site by which we could pay her a reasonable sum for the MP3 files we have copied off the Internet. She might be suprised about how many people paid. But of course she won't do that, and her record company would never consider it, so she's the loser.
The problem is there is not as big a difference in sharing physical and non-physical things a most of us slashdotters would like to believe.
There's a huge difference.
I have decided that since I have spend some of my valuable time thinking about this, and I am providing a service to you by responding to your message, you should send me a dollar.
By reading beyond the copyright statement below, you are agreeing to my terms and conditions for my copyrighted thoughts. My terms are that you send me one US dollar.
The following material is copyright (c) 2002 Pubjames
You're still reading? Where's my dollar? Seriously!
According to your argument, you are now a thief. It is up to me to be able to set my own price for my copyrighted material, I've decided my price, I've made my terms clear. You are now robbing me. I am down a dollar.
Of course, if this was a physical thing, I could prevent you from having it until you gave me your dollar. I would be really angry if you took it, because then I would lose it. And you would rightly feel bad about taking it. But it's not a physical thing. It's bits and bytes. So you're getting it for free.
there is not as big a difference in sharing physical and non-physical things
Oh yes there is!
If you believe that you should be able to enjoy someone else's work without justly compensating them for it, then you are a thief.
Firstly let me point out that I did not take any moral high ground that copying is ok. The jist of my argument is that copying digital works is a much lesser immoral act than stealing physical goods.
Let's pretend for a moment that there is a quantitative scale for immoral acts. Let's say murder scores 100. Acts of violence might score 50. Stealing someones TV on this scale might score, say 15. Personally I think that copying Madonna's greatest hits off the Internet would score about 0.01, if that.
We all have our own moral systems. All of us do things that would score tiny scores on our own personal immorality scales, every day. What annoys me is when I hear people talk about things like music copying as if it were a terrible immoral act. It is a immoral act, but it is a tiny little one. You are a thief on the same scale as a married man who admires another woman is an adulturer, or as someone who smokes in a public space is a murderer.
The sad part is that my kids are growing up in a time where the message is that it's ok to steal what you don't want to pay for, if you feel the price is too high.
I assume that you are referring to software and music here. Why might your children think this way?
There is a fudamental difference between stealing, say, someone's TV, and downloading music from the Internet. In the first case, the owner no longer has a TV. The original owner loses something, you gain something. In the second case, the original owner (the artist) does not lose anything, but you gain something. Let's make this clear - when you download music from the internet, the artist does not lose anything. They don't gain anything either, but absence of gain is not a loss, a basic point that often confuses people debating this issue. You have not taken anything from the artist, nor have you given them anything.
So don't confuse your kids "stealing" music or software off the net with them shoplifting or pickpocketing. They are completely different. Your kids understand this difference, which is why they don't feel bad about doing it, and they are right to feel like that because from a moral viewpoint what they are doing is an extremely petty "sin" (for want of a better word - I'm not talking in a religious sense).
Your kids probably have sound moral judgement. Most kids do. Don't corrupt them with your own confused ideas about right and wrong.
The division between lending and copying is pretty clear.
With physical objects it is, yes.
Many years before electronic computers were invented George Bernard Shaw observed :
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
Thus demonstrating a basic difference between sharing physical and non-physical things. They are different. It is pointless making comparisons.
Before recorded media was invented, if you wanted to share a song, you would sing it so that others could learn it. Similarly with stories. Then we developed ways to make these entertainments into physical objects. This cost effort/money, but allowed these entertainments to be brought and sold, and their distribution could be controlled and limited. We have now invented technology which means that they can be shared in a non-physical way again, digitally via networks, and copied at virtually zero cost.
We have a choice now. We can deliberately create mechanism and laws to limit the copying and distribution of digital files, or we can choose not to. The debate should be "What is the most civilized thing to do? What would be best for mankind?" Unfortunately these days global lawmaking is heavily influenced by America, and America has been corrupted by corporate power arising from a basic selfishness in the modern America value system. This means that civilized debate about this very important issue is not occuring.
It wasn't always this way. There used to be things called vision, ideals, morals, justice and great men who fought for them. America was founded by great men. Today it is run by corrupt, small-minded intellectual dwarfs.
Time for a change.
Why would a IT professional replace Win2K with XP?
I kind of assumed that because it was called Windows XP Professional that it would be designed for professionals, and that since it was the version after Windows 2000 then it would be better. I know, I'm a sucker and should have read a few reviews first.
Thanks. That works.
I agree.
I'm an XP user (Linux too!) and one thing that really pisses me off is that they've taken away the little icon that used to be bottom left of the screen that would give quick access to the desktop.
Personally I think that it is a good thing to have a simplified desktop for my old ma and pa, but I am what Microsofties might call a 'power user', or I prefer to call an IT professional. I think it would be simple to make it so that when you set up your account on your machine for the first time they ask you "Do you have difficulty using computers?" or whatever and if you reply yes then they give you the simplifed desktop.
I have Windows XP Professional. When I set up my user account it assigned me an icon of a yellow plastic duck. I mean, a bloody yellow plastic duck on a professional level computer! That will really impress my clients. What are MS thinking? But thankfully, this is one configuration option that is easy to change. I can change it from a bloody yellow plastic duck to a fucking green stuffed frog.
On the crud, or on the process of de-crudding?
Oh, only the process. I'm not sure if bodily excretions are patentable. But the way things are going, perhaps they will be one day...
Is it possible to have, like, a holding patent, for something that isn't currently patentable but will be once the megacorps finally decide all laws in America? I guess if there is then the Megacorps will have already done it. They'll have like a Meta-patent that covers everything.
Way too much coffee.
You know when you get really bored at work and so you decide to scrape all the finger-cheese off the keys on your keyboard?
I've got a patent on that, I have.
Yeah, now we just need to get rid of mediocre CEOs who think that a full time software engineer should also be able to do the full time jobs of a sysadmin and web designer.
Did I say that? No, I didn't.
The point of my post was that there have been a lot of people who wouldn't cut it as professional graphic designers or programmers who have managed to make a good living during the dot-com boom as "web designers", when in reality all they really know is HTML and understand a bit of Javascript. There are a lot of these people around, and frankly they are just mediocre people doing a realively simple task. That's one reason why they're having so many problems getting work now the dot-com boom is over.
Believe it or not, tech companies need non-techies to succeed.
No! You don't say! Thank God for that. I'm doing something right! I've got business managers, graphic designers, a journalist and marketing specialists on my team, and only a couple of techies.
What made/makes the web a success is simplicity. It is the simplicity fo the web that made it a success. If it required people to know C++ or other "real programming or project management skills" then it never would have taken off.
Yes. Google is wonderfully simple, for instance. But that doesn't mean that it is simple to create a system like Google. Buying a book on Amazon with one-click is really simple, but that doesn't mean that it was simple to create Amazon's web site. I could go on...
We use graphic designers on all our projects, believe me. We specify the requirements of the interface, the designers do drafts, the clients approve them, and then the techies make the system look like the designs. But the graphic design work is often only about 10% of the overall project, both in cost and importance.
Look at pretty much any major, successful web site. They are often driven by complex content management systems, linked into ERM and CRM systems, and often legacy systems.
The fact of the matter is that many people in the "web design" industry up until now have been neither professional graphic designers nor professional programmers. Knowing 'now to make a web page' is not difficult. Being an excellent graphic designer or programmer is difficult. That's why I do not feel sorry for all these people who are finding it difficult to find work now. It's because they were getting well paid for a relatively simple job.
I would think a CEO would know these things. But then again since I don't have a degree in Computer Science and have only worked in multimedia and web design/production since '94 I may be wrong.
You are a web design/production specialist? Can you make me a site like Slashdot then? Can you create a site on top of a clients in-house created CRM system? Can you create a site with a single point of data entry, but output in HTML, WAP, and WebTV format using XML and XSL? I would have thought a professional web designer with so many years experience would know these things... Or are you really just a mediocre graphic designer that knows HTML and a bit of Javascript?
Just out of interest though, what skills would you be looking to aquire for your company right now?
We've just recruited a very experienced business development manager. Other than that, we're not recruiting, but we're not laying off either.
I am CEO of a small company which specialises in web development. It is still true (at least in my part of the world) that many "web design" companies have staff whos only qualification is to have taught themselves to "program" in HTML. Many of them are from non-techy backgrounds, often design or Mickey Mouse degrees like Media Studies. These companies often offer all types of services (such as those that really require real programming or project management skills) which they don't have the skills and experience to offer. So if these people are being made redundant and having a hard time finding new jobs - well, tough.
To get a good job is hard. Always has been, apart from temporary crazy blips like the dot-com boom. Just because it is now hard to get a good job does not mean that good jobs do not exist, rather it means that the brief period of crazyness when mediocre people could get good jobs is over!
Naturally, companies aren't happy, and trade groups are suing the state, claiming the law will raise costs of doing business and hurt consumers.
I'm a bar owner and I've decided the sue the state because not serving beer to juniors makes them unhappy and is hurting my profits.
With C# and the CLR, well, it's an ECMA standard.
That's a gross simplification. If you use C#, then you'll be using the APIs, which are not ECMA standards.
News Flash! Corporation wants to maximize market share!
Different companies have different strategies. Look at IBM - it's strategy is one of partnership with other IT companies, and it is proving very successful. Few companies in the IT industry have the warlike "kill the competition at any cost and get 100% of the market" mentality that Microsoft does.
SHould we then succumb to the Not Invented Here syndrome and ignoring the technology just because of its origin?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Microsoft do it all the time. That's why they're promoting C#, and not trying to improve Java. They're great strategists. Some parts of the OS community has recently shown itself not to be.
A lot of the debate about .NET and the open source focuses on the technology, and not the strategy.
.NET? Well, .NET is a technology, but it is also a strategy. Its aim is to completely dominate software development in the future.
.NET to be successful, they need to win developers over to it. In order to do that, they need to give the appearence of it being an open and non-threatening platform to use. But that's only appearances. Their aim with .NET is to completely dominate the provision of any type of software service over the internet (which will include pretty much everything within a decade) and to get their slice of every transaction made.
.NET. If you think you will ever beat Microsoft by playing by their rules then you have your head in the sand. Think about what contingency plans Microsoft might have in place. Remember that they have a war mentality - what would you do if you were Microsoft? Think about the Haloween memos.
.NET strategy still vague, when Microsoft is "betting the barn" on it?
Let's consider some facts first. One of Microsoft's basic strategies is the complete domination of markets. They make no secret of this (although they have not been successful at it outside of the desktop space). Here are some instances where senior Microsoft people have stated they want to completely dominate a market:
1) Internet access with MSN.
2) The handheld market with Windows CE
3) The game console market with X-Box.
In all three cases above, they have made it clear that they intend to dominate that market, and have even stated that it is "the Microsoft way" to do so. They're not interested in 50%, they want 100. Admittedly they haven't yet been successful in this any of the above markets (in fact I think we can now safely say that they've failed with Internet access), but that is their intent.
So, what has this to do with
Now, Microsoft's strategists will have spent a long time thinking about this. They will have hypothosized about potential problems, and developed contingency plans. Microsoft knows that in order for
That's why I despair when I hear people in the Open Source community talk about implenting stuff in
Has anyone, for instance, looked through all Microsoft's patents, to check that their isn't a surprise that they could pull out of the sack if things aren't going their way? Has the Gnome Foundation, for instance, got the financial means to defend itself should Microsoft attack it legally? Why are some parts of the
.NET is perhaps great technology. But I implore everyone in the OSS community to stay away from it. Bill Gates will tell you that the best technology doesn't necessarily win in the long term, it is what has mindshare. OSS is getting more mindshare every day. Don't help MS by supporting their technologies. Your software project will get killed if it starts to threaten MS if you do.
The UK gov have just signed deals with MS for software for parliamant and the National Health Service.
OK. But actually I was thinking about The Infrastructure Forum, which represents many big IT purchasers in the UK, including some government departments. See here and here. To my knowledge nothing like this exists in the US.
Er, yes, and if I found out my competitors were slandering my name and calling me undemocratic, I'd complain.
Except many of the signitories are actually the client, not a competitor. I think most suppliers would act differently in this situation.
or do you find it a bit difficult to step back from problems and look at them with an open mind?
Since you are insinuating things about me, I'll do the same for you. I suggest that you've not been in the situation of being directly responsible for a major client account when that client is seriously considering alternatives.