I think a lot of people are completely missing the point of the article. The hysteria around the Human-Influence Global Warming THEORY (and it IS ONLY a theory at this point), has a huge problem: people are getting so emotional, and so politicized that they are not entertaining the views and opinions of others. String theory in physics is another area science where this is occurring. People become so convinced, so enamored with an idea or concept they lose sight of the fact that it is only a *theory*, and not a proven fact/law. In doing so (as in the case of string theory), we run the risk of going many years/decades without any real progress in solving the problems in the knowledge domain.
That is to say, IF humans didn't influence global warming and we cut emissions back to the cave man days, and the temperature STILL goes up....we have really just shot ourselves in the foot. If however, we foster more opinions, and theories; possibly disproving competing ones we can then be either more certain or more doubtful of the current leading theory in the area of interest. Competing theories in science are a must, and shame on us all for not allowing them in the global warming debate.
Personally, the hysteria around Global Warming has me highly dubious of the entire movement, as many scientists and individuals are being attacked and discredited merely for doing what they are supposed to be doing. Being scientists and looking at the world in a variety of different ways, each applying their life experience and individual creativity to learn/hypothesize about the problem at hand. I really do hope our kids won't be laughing at us or worse yet angry at us (for screwing them over because we chose to buy into the WRONG theory) in the future.
"In order to properly understand string theory requires understanding conformal field theory, supersymmetry and supergravity, Riemann surfaces, Kaluza-Klein theory, and so on, just to name a few of the introductory ideas."
As soon as I people say things like this, I go wow....String Theory will turn out to be so wrong. It reminds me when I was back in University taking calculus or physics, as soon as my solution started to get too complex, I would rethink my strategy as I knew calculus problems always had a certain elegance to their solutions. Think about it, most the fundamental equations that model/explain fundamental aspects of energy, electro magnetics, gravity etc have amazingly simple equations, which are easy to understand and test. Do you REALLY think the unifying theory for all the forces of nature will be explain by something so complex? If so "God" has a hellva sense of humor.
Fermet's last theorem is another example. Fermet scribbled this problem in a margin as a doodle and the best we came up with to solve it is 20 some odd pages of math that 5 people in the world can actually reliably confirm. Highly doubtful this is the solution Fermet had in mind.
Even if this theory was able to unify all forces of nature, a theory so complex would be almost useless to we people that actually apply them in the real world. We engineers would I suspect be waiting around for a few more centuries for your physists to come up with a much cleaner model/approach. The call from the engineering to physics world would go something like this "Uhhhh....Wow....that's really great guys....call us when you have something that we can actually use."
I find it ironic, and shocking that a country which prides itself as being on of the most open free market economies in the world have it's highest court render such an appalling ruling.
If a home owner wishes to hold out for more money that is their prerogative, if the developer feels they are being treated unfairly they have the right to build some where else. Period.
This ruling completely short circuits the above process in favor of some undefined form of "compensation", which is highly subjective and open to outside influence (e.g. corruption).
I fear this is a case of judges living in glass houses without considering real-life political (corruption) and human weaknesses (greed). In short, they have put too much stock in in "local officials".
I only hope that there is such disgust and outrage at this ruling that the senate and congress will take notice and enact a law which will negate this ruling.
"95% are not delivering some number of projects on time or to the full satisfaction of the business executive."
This could means that 99% of the projects attempted were delivered on time by all IT groups which is a more, or it could mean 99% of the projects were delivered late. By using the phrase "some number" this statistic is utterly general, and wholely useless.
Oddly enough, later in the same report they state "the majority of IT projects are in fact delivered on time" which really what counts.
The fact that IT groups do not deliver on time 100% of the time should be no surprise. The fact is that there simply aren't any professions which bat 100.
Considering you are perhaps the least taxed industrialized nation in the world, I would count my blessings, suck it up and buy turbo tax, and then go buy my honking SUV with my nice big refund:D.
The Europeans simply won't be able to gather how things can get so complicated because they most likely don't have nearly as many deductions as those in the USA (mortgage/car interest, depreciation for various assets etc).
In any event....I only wish here in Canada we had the tax system you guys in the USA have. I'll take the extra $$$ along with some extra complexity any day:).
Funny....Canada has made many discoveries and contributions to the World's medicine cabinets. Yet those drugs developed here still cost less.
I offer a conclusion:
Americans are getting gouged and ripped off by their very own drug manufacturers.
Still in disbelief?
Guess which industry has historically had the best returns dollar per dollar. Pharmacuticals.
Novartis: 12.9B in cash, $5B made last year Pfizer: 17.5B in cash, $8B made last year
Check out quote.yahoo.com and look up some of your favorites. But shed no tears for these companies. They are well run and simply doing what the US market allows them to do, set high prices. Believe me they WOULD do the same in other countries if they could.
Keep in mind these are "bad years". DL their annual reports look at their profit margins INCLUDING R&D, it's not nearly as bad as their lobbiest say.
If more people would become educated about how drug companies actually work, perhaps things would change in the US. In the mean time, buy some drug stocks and at least you can make some cash off the gouging in the mean time.
Well, I totally agree that this new form of glass won't "bend", however the article mentions this material is stronger that glass. No mention of the degree to which the strength is increased, but this itself is promising.
I think the fact that this stuff doesn't bend doesn't reduce its impact that much, possible uses might still include:
- Larger/thinner portals in underwater/space faring craft - Stronger windows (who cares if it doesn't bend, last I checked glass doesn't either and we still use it) - Large aquarium tanks with thin paned walls (hmmm sound familiar?:) )
So somebody try to explain this for me....I get my longitude/latitude coordinate from my GPS unit....and you mean to say there is MORE processing I can do on this?
Funny you should bring that up:). I was originally going to go with profit figures, however there was little profit to be seen in the music arms of the various conglomerates that own these companies. So I opted to go for revenue.
Had I gone with profit, the figures would be hugely skewed in favor of electronics. Furthermore, employees (read: executives) are not bonused/rewarded in accordance with profit margins, their primary metric is revenue (the assumption bad or not is margins over time will be more or less stable).
HOWEVER, that all said here are the operating income/loss numbers:
2002 Warner Music Group (sold in 2003): Whopping -$1.3B USD (Loss) 2003 Sony Music: -$72M (Loss) 2003 Universal Music: $70M
They've made the call to go with ATRAC3 MP3 for portable audio for technical reasons (read: geeky engineers), the ease of conversion from mp3 to ATRAC3 indicates this isn't a copyright issue.
For mobile audio however, they've clearly opted to support MP3 as a format.
As you can see, the COMBINED revenue for the top 3 music companies can't come close to Sony's electronic arm ALONE. Pick some other electronic companies and you'll arrive at exactly the same answer.
This is exactly the reason Sony manufactures MP3 players today. Companies can make far money from electronics than they ever will from music, and this simple economic fact does not bode well for the music companies.
They can pay lobbyist, the electronics companies can pay MORE lobbyist. They can pay off politicians, the electronics companies can pay off MORE politicians and on and on.
...these "investment" bankers are the same toads which suggested Timer-Warner merge with AOL and the many other content & distribution companies which are all now being sold off in pieces (i.e. DE-merged).
As such, I hope these software companies ignore this "advice". These bankers are proven investment moron in it for themselves and their greedy friends.
The only benifit to this might be we'll be able to see some more perp walks on CNN.
The fact that no voters watched isn't even Cringly's point, it's that they CAN watch, which is in stark contrast to the way things work in the US.
Secondly, it should be noted that in Canada the federal government controls all elections laws, from University Student Union Presidential Elections, right up to Parliamentary elections. Again, a huge advantage over the US system where by every state has their own mess of laws governing their elections. And if there is a problem with the way elections are being run it's a NATIONAL issue, not just some issue a state is left to figure out all by itself (to the oblivion of everyone else).
I can only hope our neighbors to the south come up with some solution to this problem. If anything, at least this electronic voting machine debate has sparked interest in how US elections are actually carried out.
They won't be able to buy any of our politicians. The political campaign finance reform that goes into effect Jan. 1, 2004 terminates nearly all but the smallest corporate political contributions.
Parties will be funded via public money based on the percentage of the vote they got in the last election.
Anyone else still believe that Globalization is good for anyone but large corporation multi-national corporations? Or is the (1st) world populous still unconvinced?
As for IT workers & outsourcing, I think the solution here is two fold:
1. Domestic IT workers have to keep on the leading edge. The logic here is that there is a significant lag in the time it takes for new knowledge and skills to propagate to the 2nd/3rd world countries. This means specialize in new software development areas such as wireless, do research oriented work etc. The days of getting paid 60-70k/yr for lemming C++/C, SAP coding are fast coming to a close I'm afraid.
2. Perhaps it's time for some larger groups of programmers and developers (read: Microsoft, IBM, Oracle etc) to organize into trade unions to help protect jobs and hold governments accountable for the decisions they make, and provide some counter lobbying to the corporate lobbyists.
In anycase, you unemployed American techies out there don't get too depressed. I'm sure the wall feel like they are falling in right now, but once that monster of an economy you guys have gets rolling again I bet you'll be in alot better shape.
Rich...
The Other Variable: Linux
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I fear nobody has mentioned the simple yet profound fact that will drive many towards.NET & Java/J2EE. It's Linux! It's free, it's stable, it's secure (relative to MS OS's). Put it together with Apache Open Source products such as Tomcat & Apache httpd, or JBoss if you are into EJBs and you can't go wrong.
I feel that the technical debate between.NET and Java/J2EE more irrelevant than most will admit. They are both very well designed development languages, and can accomplish most projects in a similar amount of time, with similar numbers of developers.
Just one problem, most businesses wish to make $$$, and if you haven't noticed the tech sector barely able to keep it's head above water right now. Thus, all things equal I'd bet most businesses will probably opt for a Java (or J2EE)/Linux solution as the overall price can't be beat, and you don't have to waste you development time creating valueless libraries that others must have had to create already. Not to say.NET add-in dev libraries aren't available, they just aren't provided in an FREE manner as frequently as they are in the Java world.
(Excuse the purple prose if there is any, didn't have much time to proof read:))
Well as with much in contract & IP law, much of words printed on the paper aren't worth the paper they are written on until they are tested by the courts.
Since this arena of law is rather new, there is RELATIVELY little case law specific to this domain applicable on the books. Just the same, I'm sure many a lawyer will contest this fact and simply say this is simply contract/IP law period, and that there is no distinction between digital and traditional IP rights, case closed. That is, the various acts passed in the last decade merely clarified IP/contract laws already on the books.
That being said, if the courts and IP lawyers feel compelled to continue with this irrelevant (however legally proper) line of reasoning they will most likely find themselves in a hopeless battle. The dragon they are trying to slay with these outdated laws and concepts is hugely different due to a number of reasons including:
1. We are know dealing with a distribution medium which allows true anonymity (the next generation P2P will truly provide anonymity through encryption and sophisticated routing and transfer mechanisms). How to you enforce a law which you can have know real PROOF of it's violation?
2. The social phenomena going on here is worthy of a study. Put a proverbial bowl of candy in front of the masses and say "Don't touch!" and expecting them to listen is just plain delusional. A significant portion of people will simply not pay a price for something they can get freely, and easily, irregardless of the laws in place prohibiting it (assuming they have little chance of getting caught, see point 1). There are few parallels to situation that I can think of in history.
In conclusion, I find that laws which are unenforceable (and if you call suing college students enforcement, you fool no one but yourself) are about as useless as the law makers who create them, and until our elected officials start to realize this fact, we will stuck in this digital rights quagmire for years to come.
I would tend to second this particular notion. After all....most governments would happily steam roll over a corporation or entire industry if the voters get ticked off.
Here in Canada this is exactly what is happening to our so called "private auto-insurance" companies. Voters got miffed at 300% increases, tossed 3-4 provincial governments and boom public auto-insurance is back in town. The provinces that kept public insurance won't even entertain the idea of privatizing now.
Governments here have also ran scared on the whole notion of privatized electric companies after looking at what happened in the states and in Alberta up here.
Again my point is, that governments are known to do drastic things to get (re-)elected. Perhaps softening of copyright law might be the next?
If not, it probably wonâ(TM)t even matter, as the technology is so far ahead of where the RIAA is focusing. Kazaa and Napster are old schoolâ¦..the Free Network Project (and future P2P based around itâ(TM)s technology) will cripple the last remnants of their power. You canâ(TM)t sue what you canâ(TM)t identify or even prove exists (i.e. a complete anonymous encrypted store entity).
Short of unplugging the internet, the RIAA is fighting a hopeless cause. But I give them credit for fighting the good fight. This is David vs. Goliath, and for once we consumers get to be the Goliath:).
Well, I wouldn't defend JAVA for one second for apps which require an extremely high degree of CPU or memory efficiency (3D, CAD, simulation, numerical analysis etc), as C/C++ implementations can clearly do these tasks better.
However IMHO, when it comes to internet related applications (web services, web apps etc.), or enterprise apps, I feel Java clearly comes out ahead. I doubt the same apps, same features and same stability cannot be programmed (by the AVERAGE developer) in C & C++ in a comparable amount of time.
In addition, CPU's & memory are far cheaper to buy than developers. Thus given the choice of creating highly efficient apps with more developers or less efficient apps with fewer developers I would expect most companies will chose the latter.
Regarding court challenges, I should clarify that I was refering to "sketchy" laws. Obviously a law which disallows some sort of theft, and assault would probably not ever be challenged:). I was more refering to the sketchy civil laws enacted by governments.
Here in Canada the satellite piracy "grey" area was one such example. Nobody really considered it breaking the law until first a law was created and it was finally upheld a few times in the courts. Now people have taken notice and piracy of US sat signals is no considered a clearly illegal act.
So let me get this straight. I write some stupid song which you inherently hold the copyright via federal & international laws, and now, according to the RIAA I can now make software for all intents and purposes is a virus?
The RIAA is either being advised by those that excel at incompetence, or they simply have the collective intelligence of a drunken band of chimps.
By this methodology anyone who rights a poem (or anything which can be copyrighted) can create malicious code which makes a "reasonable" effort to only go after those files which it thinks have some relation to the copyrighted files in question.
I'm no lawyer, but I i have a hunch that this won't survive it's first court challenge. This whole notion of what is and isn't "reasonable" opens up far too many loopholes, and no court in the world would rule in their favor should somebody sue them.
From my experience, it would seem that although governments can pass any law they wish, it's only REALLY valid until it survives it's first few court challenges.
Unfortunately "dude", appearances can be deceiving . Were I you, I would hesitate to connect the fact I didn't care to proof read my message with a lack of intelligence or education. The engineering degree which is firmly attached to my wall supports this:P.
Cheers!
P.S. Btw, by use of your obviously stellar logic, the use of the word "dude" doesn't go along way in professing genius either.
Sorry Mr. Spelling Bee. I'll be more careful next time and spell check:P. You'll forgive me if I don't care too much about my credibility on SlashDot, as I'm mearlying trying to challenge people to think about and research this topic using their own heads instead of blinding following fictitious warnings (god bless Michael Moore:) ).
Slashdot Mirror
I think a lot of people are completely missing the point of the article. The hysteria around the Human-Influence Global Warming THEORY (and it IS ONLY a theory at this point), has a huge problem: people are getting so emotional, and so politicized that they are not entertaining the views and opinions of others. String theory in physics is another area science where this is occurring. People become so convinced, so enamored with an idea or concept they lose sight of the fact that it is only a *theory*, and not a proven fact/law. In doing so (as in the case of string theory), we run the risk of going many years/decades without any real progress in solving the problems in the knowledge domain.
That is to say, IF humans didn't influence global warming and we cut emissions back to the cave man days, and the temperature STILL goes up....we have really just shot ourselves in the foot. If however, we foster more opinions, and theories; possibly disproving competing ones we can then be either more certain or more doubtful of the current leading theory in the area of interest. Competing theories in science are a must, and shame on us all for not allowing them in the global warming debate.
Personally, the hysteria around Global Warming has me highly dubious of the entire movement, as many scientists and individuals are being attacked and discredited merely for doing what they are supposed to be doing. Being scientists and looking at the world in a variety of different ways, each applying their life experience and individual creativity to learn/hypothesize about the problem at hand. I really do hope our kids won't be laughing at us or worse yet angry at us (for screwing them over because we chose to buy into the WRONG theory) in the future.
Rich...
"In order to properly understand string theory requires understanding conformal field theory, supersymmetry and supergravity, Riemann surfaces, Kaluza-Klein theory, and so on, just to name a few of the introductory ideas."
As soon as I people say things like this, I go wow....String Theory will turn out to be so wrong. It reminds me when I was back in University taking calculus or physics, as soon as my solution started to get too complex, I would rethink my strategy as I knew calculus problems always had a certain elegance to their solutions. Think about it, most the fundamental equations that model/explain fundamental aspects of energy, electro magnetics, gravity etc have amazingly simple equations, which are easy to understand and test. Do you REALLY think the unifying theory for all the forces of nature will be explain by something so complex? If so "God" has a hellva sense of humor.
Fermet's last theorem is another example. Fermet scribbled this problem in a margin as a doodle and the best we came up with to solve it is 20 some odd pages of math that 5 people in the world can actually reliably confirm. Highly doubtful this is the solution Fermet had in mind.
Even if this theory was able to unify all forces of nature, a theory so complex would be almost useless to we people that actually apply them in the real world. We engineers would I suspect be waiting around for a few more centuries for your physists to come up with a much cleaner model/approach. The call from the engineering to physics world would go something like this "Uhhhh....Wow....that's really great guys....call us when you have something that we can actually use."
My 2 cents.
Rich....
I find it ironic, and shocking that a country which prides itself as being on of the most open free market economies in the world have it's highest court render such an appalling ruling.
If a home owner wishes to hold out for more money that is their prerogative, if the developer feels they are being treated unfairly they have the right to build some where else. Period.
This ruling completely short circuits the above process in favor of some undefined form of "compensation", which is highly subjective and open to outside influence (e.g. corruption).
I fear this is a case of judges living in glass houses without considering real-life political (corruption) and human weaknesses (greed). In short, they have put too much stock in in "local officials".
I only hope that there is such disgust and outrage at this ruling that the senate and congress will take notice and enact a law which will negate this ruling.
Rich...
They state:
"95% are not delivering some number of projects on time or to the full satisfaction of the business executive."
This could means that 99% of the projects attempted were delivered on time by all IT groups which is a more, or it could mean 99% of the projects were delivered late. By using the phrase "some number" this statistic is utterly general, and wholely useless.
Oddly enough, later in the same report they state "the majority of IT projects are in fact delivered on time" which really what counts.
The fact that IT groups do not deliver on time 100% of the time should be no surprise. The fact is that there simply aren't any professions which bat 100.
Botton line, stat is completely pointless.
Rich...
Considering you are perhaps the least taxed industrialized nation in the world, I would count my blessings, suck it up and buy turbo tax, and then go buy my honking SUV with my nice big refund :D.
:).
The Europeans simply won't be able to gather how things can get so complicated because they most likely don't have nearly as many deductions as those in the USA (mortgage/car interest, depreciation for various assets etc).
In any event....I only wish here in Canada we had the tax system you guys in the USA have. I'll take the extra $$$ along with some extra complexity any day
Rich...
Funny....Canada has made many discoveries and contributions to the World's medicine cabinets. Yet those drugs developed here still cost less.
I offer a conclusion:
Americans are getting gouged and ripped off by their very own drug manufacturers.
Still in disbelief?
Guess which industry has historically had the best returns dollar per dollar. Pharmacuticals.
Novartis: 12.9B in cash, $5B made last year
Pfizer: 17.5B in cash, $8B made last year
Check out quote.yahoo.com and look up some of your favorites. But shed no tears for these companies. They are well run and simply doing what the US market allows them to do, set high prices. Believe me they WOULD do the same in other countries if they could.
Keep in mind these are "bad years". DL their annual reports look at their profit margins INCLUDING R&D, it's not nearly as bad as their lobbiest say.
If more people would become educated about how drug companies actually work, perhaps things would change in the US. In the mean time, buy some drug stocks and at least you can make some cash off the gouging in the mean time.
Well, I totally agree that this new form of glass won't "bend", however the article mentions this material is stronger that glass. No mention of the degree to which the strength is increased, but this itself is promising.
:) )
I think the fact that this stuff doesn't bend doesn't reduce its impact that much, possible uses might still include:
- Larger/thinner portals in underwater/space faring craft
- Stronger windows (who cares if it doesn't bend, last I checked glass doesn't either and we still use it)
- Large aquarium tanks with thin paned walls (hmmm sound familiar?
etc etc. etc.
Rich...
So somebody try to explain this for me....I get my longitude/latitude coordinate from my GPS unit....and you mean to say there is MORE processing I can do on this?
What role do the features of this library play?
Oh and that op income for Sony's Electronic's arm was for 2003.
Funny you should bring that up :). I was originally going to go with profit figures, however there was little profit to be seen in the music arms of the various conglomerates that own these companies. So I opted to go for revenue.
Had I gone with profit, the figures would be hugely skewed in favor of electronics. Furthermore, employees (read: executives) are not bonused/rewarded in accordance with profit margins, their primary metric is revenue (the assumption bad or not is margins over time will be more or less stable).
HOWEVER, that all said here are the operating income/loss numbers:
2002 Warner Music Group (sold in 2003): Whopping -$1.3B USD (Loss)
2003 Sony Music: -$72M (Loss)
2003 Universal Music: $70M
Sony Electronics Operating Income: $345M
Source: Respective 2002/2003 annual reports.
Rich...
Yes they do:
http://www.cardomain.com/item/SONCDXF5500
They've made the call to go with ATRAC3 MP3 for portable audio for technical reasons (read: geeky engineers), the ease of conversion from mp3 to ATRAC3 indicates this isn't a copyright issue.
For mobile audio however, they've clearly opted to support MP3 as a format.
RIch...
I think we can all agree that in our profit obsessed society most electronic gadget manufacturing companies care about one thing: profit.
That said, consider the following:
Current Revenue Figures for Major Record Companies:
2002 Warner Music Group (sold in 2003): $4.2B USD
2003 Sony Music: $5.3B USD
2003 Universal Music: $5.0B USD
2003 Sony Electronics Revenue: $41.1B
SOURCE: Respective 2002, & 2003 corporate annual reports.
As you can see, the COMBINED revenue for the top 3 music companies can't come close to Sony's electronic arm ALONE. Pick some other electronic companies and you'll arrive at exactly the same answer.
This is exactly the reason Sony manufactures MP3 players today. Companies can make far money from electronics than they ever will from music, and this simple economic fact does not bode well for the music companies.
They can pay lobbyist, the electronics companies can pay MORE lobbyist. They can pay off politicians, the electronics companies can pay off MORE politicians and on and on.
Rich...
...these "investment" bankers are the same toads which suggested Timer-Warner merge with AOL and the many other content & distribution companies which are all now being sold off in pieces (i.e. DE-merged).
As such, I hope these software companies ignore this "advice". These bankers are proven investment moron in it for themselves and their greedy friends.
The only benifit to this might be we'll be able to see some more perp walks on CNN.
Rich...
The fact that no voters watched isn't even Cringly's point, it's that they CAN watch, which is in stark contrast to the way things work in the US.
Secondly, it should be noted that in Canada the federal government controls all elections laws, from University Student Union Presidential Elections, right up to Parliamentary elections. Again, a huge advantage over the US system where by every state has their own mess of laws governing their elections. And if there is a problem with the way elections are being run it's a NATIONAL issue, not just some issue a state is left to figure out all by itself (to the oblivion of everyone else).
I can only hope our neighbors to the south come up with some solution to this problem. If anything, at least this electronic voting machine debate has sparked interest in how US elections are actually carried out.
Rich...
....these people have lost their minds. Secondly, this won't make it past it's first court challenge.
And finally, after watching Bowling for Columbine I can't say I'm surprised. Fear fear fear.
Rich...
They won't be able to buy any of our politicians. The political campaign finance reform that goes into effect Jan. 1, 2004 terminates nearly all but the smallest corporate political contributions.
Parties will be funded via public money based on the percentage of the vote they got in the last election.
Cheers to that!
Anyone else still believe that Globalization is good for anyone but large corporation multi-national corporations? Or is the (1st) world populous still unconvinced?
As for IT workers & outsourcing, I think the solution here is two fold:
1. Domestic IT workers have to keep on the leading edge. The logic here is that there is a significant lag in the time it takes for new knowledge and skills to propagate to the 2nd/3rd world countries. This means specialize in new software development areas such as wireless, do research oriented work etc. The days of getting paid 60-70k/yr for lemming C++/C, SAP coding are fast coming to a close I'm afraid.
2. Perhaps it's time for some larger groups of programmers and developers (read: Microsoft, IBM, Oracle etc) to organize into trade unions to help protect jobs and hold governments accountable for the decisions they make, and provide some counter lobbying to the corporate lobbyists.
In anycase, you unemployed American techies out there don't get too depressed. I'm sure the wall feel like they are falling in right now, but once that monster of an economy you guys have gets rolling again I bet you'll be in alot better shape.
Rich...
I fear nobody has mentioned the simple yet profound fact that will drive many towards .NET & Java/J2EE. It's Linux! It's free, it's stable, it's secure (relative to MS OS's). Put it together with Apache Open Source products such as Tomcat & Apache httpd, or JBoss if you are into EJBs and you can't go wrong.
.NET and Java/J2EE more irrelevant than most will admit. They are both very well designed development languages, and can accomplish most projects in a similar amount of time, with similar numbers of developers.
.NET add-in dev libraries aren't available, they just aren't provided in an FREE manner as frequently as they are in the Java world.
I feel that the technical debate between
Just one problem, most businesses wish to make $$$, and if you haven't noticed the tech sector barely able to keep it's head above water right now. Thus, all things equal I'd bet most businesses will probably opt for a Java (or J2EE)/Linux solution as the overall price can't be beat, and you don't have to waste you development time creating valueless libraries that others must have had to create already. Not to say
Anyhow, my 2 cents.
(Excuse the purple prose if there is any, didn't have much time to proof read :))
Well as with much in contract & IP law, much of words printed on the paper aren't worth the paper they are written on until they are tested by the courts.
Since this arena of law is rather new, there is RELATIVELY little case law specific to this domain applicable on the books. Just the same, I'm sure many a lawyer will contest this fact and simply say this is simply contract/IP law period, and that there is no distinction between digital and traditional IP rights, case closed. That is, the various acts passed in the last decade merely clarified IP/contract laws already on the books.
That being said, if the courts and IP lawyers feel compelled to continue with this irrelevant (however legally proper) line of reasoning they will most likely find themselves in a hopeless battle. The dragon they are trying to slay with these outdated laws and concepts is hugely different due to a number of reasons including:
1. We are know dealing with a distribution medium which allows true anonymity (the next generation P2P will truly provide anonymity through encryption and sophisticated routing and transfer mechanisms). How to you enforce a law which you can have know real PROOF of it's violation?
2. The social phenomena going on here is worthy of a study. Put a proverbial bowl of candy in front of the masses and say "Don't touch!" and expecting them to listen is just plain delusional. A significant portion of people will simply not pay a price for something they can get freely, and easily, irregardless of the laws in place prohibiting it (assuming they have little chance of getting caught, see point 1). There are few parallels to situation that I can think of in history.
In conclusion, I find that laws which are unenforceable (and if you call suing college students enforcement, you fool no one but yourself) are about as useless as the law makers who create them, and until our elected officials start to realize this fact, we will stuck in this digital rights quagmire for years to come.
Cheers!
I would tend to second this particular notion. After all....most governments would happily steam roll over a corporation or entire industry if the voters get ticked off.
:).
Here in Canada this is exactly what is happening to our so called "private auto-insurance" companies. Voters got miffed at 300% increases, tossed 3-4 provincial governments and boom public auto-insurance is back in town. The provinces that kept public insurance won't even entertain the idea of privatizing now.
Governments here have also ran scared on the whole notion of privatized electric companies after looking at what happened in the states and in Alberta up here.
Again my point is, that governments are known to do drastic things to get (re-)elected. Perhaps softening of copyright law might be the next?
If not, it probably wonâ(TM)t even matter, as the technology is so far ahead of where the RIAA is focusing. Kazaa and Napster are old schoolâ¦..the Free Network Project (and future P2P based around itâ(TM)s technology) will cripple the last remnants of their power. You canâ(TM)t sue what you canâ(TM)t identify or even prove exists (i.e. a complete anonymous encrypted store entity).
Short of unplugging the internet, the RIAA is fighting a hopeless cause. But I give them credit for fighting the good fight. This is David vs. Goliath, and for once we consumers get to be the Goliath
Well, I wouldn't defend JAVA for one second for apps which require an extremely high degree of CPU or memory efficiency (3D, CAD, simulation, numerical analysis etc), as C/C++ implementations can clearly do these tasks better.
However IMHO, when it comes to internet related applications (web services, web apps etc.), or enterprise apps, I feel Java clearly comes out ahead. I doubt the same apps, same features and same stability cannot be programmed (by the AVERAGE developer) in C & C++ in a comparable amount of time.
In addition, CPU's & memory are far cheaper to buy than developers. Thus given the choice of creating highly efficient apps with more developers or less efficient apps with fewer developers I would expect most companies will chose the latter.
Rich...
Regarding court challenges, I should clarify that I was refering to "sketchy" laws. Obviously a law which disallows some sort of theft, and assault would probably not ever be challenged :). I was more refering to the sketchy civil laws enacted by governments.
Here in Canada the satellite piracy "grey" area was one such example. Nobody really considered it breaking the law until first a law was created and it was finally upheld a few times in the courts. Now people have taken notice and piracy of US sat signals is no considered a clearly illegal act.
Cheers!
So let me get this straight. I write some stupid song which you inherently hold the copyright via federal & international laws, and now, according to the RIAA I can now make software for all intents and purposes is a virus?
The RIAA is either being advised by those that excel at incompetence, or they simply have the collective intelligence of a drunken band of chimps.
By this methodology anyone who rights a poem (or anything which can be copyrighted) can create malicious code which makes a "reasonable" effort to only go after those files which it thinks have some relation to the copyrighted files in question.
I'm no lawyer, but I i have a hunch that this won't survive it's first court challenge. This whole notion of what is and isn't "reasonable" opens up far too many loopholes, and no court in the world would rule in their favor should somebody sue them.
From my experience, it would seem that although governments can pass any law they wish, it's only REALLY valid until it survives it's first few court challenges.
L8r...
Unfortunately "dude", appearances can be deceiving . Were I you, I would hesitate to connect the fact I didn't care to proof read my message with a lack of intelligence or education. The engineering degree which is firmly attached to my wall supports this :P.
Cheers!
P.S. Btw, by use of your obviously stellar logic, the use of the word "dude" doesn't go along way in professing genius either.
Sorry Mr. Spelling Bee. I'll be more careful next time and spell check :P. You'll forgive me if I don't care too much about my credibility on SlashDot, as I'm mearlying trying to challenge people to think about and research this topic using their own heads instead of blinding following fictitious warnings (god bless Michael Moore :) ).
Rich...