NOTE: This isn't intended to be a troll or flamebait post.
One of the issues that surrounds the music industry is the way that large record labels treat the artists who have signed with them.
Now a record company has suddenly made it (more or less) convenient to download songs legally, and as soon as it gets easy, the ol' consumer mentality will kick back in and the artists will end up forgotten.
The artists won't be thought of, just like most people don't really think about the sweatshop laborers in foreign countries who make clothing, or code cheap software, assemble appliances, etc. Give us what we want, and give it to us cheap. To hell with the people who have to work to produce the lifestyle we get to take advantage of.
*sigh*
The music industry isn't really upset that you're copying copyrighted material. They're upset that you're no longer a consumer. They want you to consume their services, and if they re-work their existing services in a manner so the production costs are cheaper than current costs, but still charge you the same and still screw over the recording artists, then they see it as a major win.
Maybe I'll get lucky and someone will reply and tell me why UMG isn't as bad as the others.
If we could use whatever we wanted, I'd stick with TextPad at this rate. My machine originally had 256 MB of RAM and the damn thing spent more time swapping than a Three Card Monte dealer. Doubling the RAM has made it at least usable, but it's still a little flakey. It swaps at weird times, uses way too much RAM, and can't seem to figure out when to pop-up autocompletion boxes at all.
Please tell me you have a better IDE to suggest. I won't get to use it at work, but if I have to do Java programming for a class project, I'll certainly look into it.
I think software is becoming cheaper and more reliable, but not much more efficient.
I notice the original post mentions several things that could influence the development time of a software project. I will address a few of these below:
1) Object Oriented Programming
This is one of the bigger Silver Bullets to be unleased upon the programming world. I don't think it entirely lived up to the hype. Most OOP is just for local project design, and heaven help you if you have to reuse code somewhere else. It isn't just a case of bad design. Problems like software design are actually ambiguous. The design process is not algorithmic; rather, it's heuristic. You use "templates" and "patterns" to represent your ideas. Trying to shoehorn real-world complexities into these cookie-cutter styles is difficult at best. Trying to further take those styles and integrate them with each other in a very large scale product is a hair-tearing nightmare. I think Tablizer would agree with me on this...:)
2) Reusable components
The most visible place reusable components come into play is GUI programming. It's very, VERY simple to use a visual-based system (like Visual Basic, C++ Builder, Delphi, etc.) to create a GUI simply by dragging the desired components onto the blank form window. If anything has been sped up significantly in the past several years, it has been the GUI development.
Components are, of course, used in a variety of other places, particularly in run-time libraries of various programming languages. However, learning to use these components effectively takes more time and dedication than one might suspect as the syntax tends to be rather cryptic looking.;)
3) Java
Don't get me started. I am currently employed as a Java developer. I don't really like it a lot. The file scoping rules bug me. (Similarly, I don't like Python because of the way it enforces indentation.) Also, the Java IDE sucks. Whoever thought the entire GUI needed to actually be written in Java needs to be taken out and beaten with a stick. A large stick.
4) The Internet (and OSS)
One thing I noticed that you hadn't mentioned is the Internet. I have never been exposed to so many programming concepts and new languages. There is an astounding variety of tools, and thanks to Open Source and researchers at various universities, you can try your hand at as many of them as you have disk space for. The 'Net can be a wonderful place, after all.;)
My advice to any new programmer would be to get online and start reading. Download and try out new languages, especially ones in different paradigms, like functional programming. The tools you need (such as compilers, editors, databases, GUI component libraries, etc.) are ALL there, free for the taking. The only real "silver bullet" is to make yourself the best programmer you can be.
Actually, SimVirus might be a more interesting game. You have a world of inhabitants, and you try to evolve viruses that will manage to infect them.
Since this is a Sim type game, you want the host to have time to adapt to the virus, but not get over it so quickly that it can't spread. Having a virus that swiftly kills all the hosts would end the game pretty quickly.
Cross-species jumping, modes of transmission, type of organs infected, and of course your virus could always accidentally borrow RNA from some other virus already in the host, so you have to watch out for that. Fun fun fun!!;)
Hmm... I actually remember those. I probably never used one, though, since my character's alignments were never evil enough.;)
By the way, Tera has 150 levels, and lots of interesting options for high level characters (like resurrecting and retaining 80% of lost exp after death, summoning your corpse so you don't risk dying trying to recover it, faster healing, etc.)
They also recently added a javascript interpreter so builders can write scripts in their areas. This is just beginning to be taken advantage of, and should add some interesting elements to MUDding. More intelligent monsters, custom spells and abilities, dynamic zones... Its like GURPS, but in a MUD.
I think the difference is in the suspension of disbelief. Now, MUDs and LARP may seem worlds apart, and of course in many ways they are, but MUDs allow you to pretend more thoroughly in the ways that are important.
On a MUD, if I'm playing a character with the ability to eavesdrop on other conversations unobserved, I can do exactly that. All I have to do is become invisible and hide in a room. No one (other than someone higher level than me) would have any idea I was there unless I decided to make my presence known.
In a LARP, everyone has to just pretend you're not there. There isn't the element of "plausible deniability" that the MUD-style environment brings you.
Now, while MUD combat isn't very life-like, I find it more appealing than the LARP version of paper-rock-scissors. Personally, I'd like game combat to be modeled on real combat. This can't be accurately handled in either game style, but MUDs at least give you some imaginative feedback. "The smell of searing flesh assaults your nostrils as you engulf the Evil Knight in a surge of hellfire," is more satisfying than "One-two-three! Paper!"
Anyway, LARPing definitely wasn't for me. I'm not really social enough for that kind of interaction. I want my gaming interaction to be as socially artificial, but as physically real, as possible.;)
I never understood the obsession with "The Sims". I tried it out, but ultimately I just can't play a game populated with characters that are actually LESS motivated than I am.
The damn people won't get out of bed when the alarm goes off, and there's no way to get to work other than car pool. If the Sim has to be at work at 8, so you have the alarm set for 6, they'll STILL miss their ride because it apparently takes 3 hours to get showered and dressed in the morning.
I can only imagine what it would be like if they had pets in the game. A bunch of dead neglected dogs, cats, birds, hamsters, etc.
FWIW, I won't be into gaming until games become Matrix-like. Current games miss out in three major areas:
1) The experience isn't 1st person enough. FPS games are one thing, but the networked versions only allow interaction in an extremely narrow set of circumstances (like CounterStrike, with all the pre-defined missions, etc.) Multiplayer worlds use a 3rd person perspective, which obviously doesn't lend itself to a "realistic" seeming game.
2) The group interaction in games feels fake. It works better (for me) in FPS games simply because having that first-person perspective draws you into the game a little more. Still, there is a lot to be desired.
3) Current games simply aren't realistic enough. I want to feel like I'm actually inhabiting a fantasy world. Let's use Vampire, for instance. Not the computer game this time. LARP (Live-Action Role Playing for those of you who don't follow this junk). Now, exactly how much can you get into this game when a person using their "vampric" hearing sense is standing right next to you while you're supposed to ignore them? And certain actions are executed against other vampires on the basis of a rock-paper-scissors match!? Come ON! If I'm going to play a game, I want to feel like I really have those abilities, whether I'm playing something like Vampire, or Diablo, or CounterStrike. Simulating it with graphics doesn't help matters a bit.
Perhaps this is still why I like mudding. There are other people to talk to, and, while the game is only text, it has a first person perspective and a flexibility that no other kind of game can truly match. (ObPlug: If you think you'd be interested in the mud diversion [or used to be, but haven't mudded in ages], try it out! Just telnet to tera.teralink.com 4000.)
I have a partition with Windows on my computer so I can (someday) finish playing "Vampire: The Redeption". Occasionally, I use it because the CD burner is easier to use under Windows, or if someone sends me an MS Office document, since OpenOffice is still too buggy for general use, and KWord doesn't convert well.
Other than that, my computer is always booted to Gentoo. Even my wife's computer runs Gentoo. Our internal server runs RedHat, but may end up with some BSD variant.
As soon as CD writing software gets more reliable under linux, and OpenOffice gets more stable, I probably won't have a need for the partition. Well, until I finish that damn gamn, anyway.;)
And of course, what's to stop the FBI/CIA/NSA/Homeland security from wondering in and demanding certain data?
My point exactly. Nothing. Just like there was nothing to stop them from enlisting military planes to assist the police in looking for the D.C. snipers. (Oh, the military was just there to provide "taxi service"? uh huh... So how much longer until the military obtains civilian police powers for purposes of "homeland security"?)
Anyway, there is nothing at all to prevent the government from eventually coming in and tying tax data, marketing data, and "security" data all into one cohesive system. The databases are already in place, and so is the technological infrastructure.
The company I worked for has a system that allows their clients to take their customer databases, match them against the "master" database, then obtain a special "link" (basically, a primary key) into the master database that could be stored in their own system. From then on, client companies no longer have to keep updated marketing information on their customers; they can just cross-reference their "link" to the master database and have an instant (literally, within milliseconds) view of a customer's entire profile.
By the way, a client company may not purchase all of the available fields. They will probably only purchase a relevant subset of fields to make sure their money is being spent as efficiently as possible. On the other hand, the "links" are not unique from one company to the next, so if two companies both using this technology were to merge, their customer marketing information databases would be instantly combined.
The government could easily index security information databases against this master database, store the "link", and that would be all there is to it. Instant Big Brother.
Does this company offer people a way to review these records?
I don't know if they provide reviews, but you can certainly tell them if there are mistakes. This company actually has every reason to want to keep "tracked consumers" happy. If they have a bunch of inaccurate data, or a lot of people who aren't supposed to receive marketing promotions start complaining, then the company's data will be perceived as useless, and they'll have a harder time selling it.
That, and not allowing you to do so is (currently) against the law.
However, I don't know how the process for verifying your data works. You can probably just call their main number, tell them there's a mistake, and they'll put you through to the "Department of Consumer Privacy" (read that with a 1984-ish doublespeak connotation).
Heh... actually, I left out the really scary part. The company also has a database for "skip tracing". If you get a loan and skip town without paying, they can follow you.
So, they actually have two databases, one for skip tracing, and one for marketing. The databases are not, under any circumstances, to be used for cross-purposes. The company can not use skip trace data to market to people, nor can they use the marketing data to do skip traces.
At least, that's how it works under current law. In the current political climate, I wouldn't be surprised to see the law modified to allow the databases to be merged.
As soon as digital money becomes secure (from the government's standpoint of monitoring, not from our standpoint of privacy), we're screwed. Why bother keeping cash around (which costs money to make), when eletronic money is, by comparison, practically free.
But anyway, another advance in currency could help the government out, even if they don't opt to do away with cash. Enter plastic currency. Much harder to forge, and could easily be printed with magnetic ink that contained the ID number of the bill, so any time it was withdrawn from a bank or used at a federally registered place of business, it could be scanned and processed.
Millions upon millions of digital transactions are processed every day. There's no reason to think that doing the same for cash transactions would be a particularly overwhelming task, especially if the system were properly distributed.
Also, some people think that giving trackable cash to another person will throw the system out of whack because now the money wouldn't correspond to the original receiver. The government is perfectly aware that the average number of hands any single bill goes through before being spent at a tracking point is pretty small. If you loan someone ten bucks, chances are they'll spend it, not give it to someone else. So the government not only knows who you are and where you shop, but to whom you loan money. Now if something suspicious goes on, they can track your network of acquaintances, too. This is a BONUS for them, not a complication.
I used to work at a company that was involved in customer data mining. During orientation, they have someone come out whose job it is to convince all the new employees that the company is not evil and is providing a valuable service.
See, everyone in the room is freaked out when they learn the company has over 300 pieces of data (including things like name, SSN, birth date, address, marital status, kids, cars, salary, credit history, home value, pets, etc.) on over 150 million people in the United States. I watched a room full of people all look at each other with a slight amount of fear and uncertainty in their eyes. Then out came the propaganda machine to try to set us at ease.
Now, current law prohibits this company from using marketing data in any kind of legal procedings, but that could easily change. The company uses extremely complex algorithms to consolidate data from different sources (which source for birthdate should we believe? how about home value?) into a single record. Client companies (such as stores, banks, etc.) can then take their own customer databases and match them up with the huge store of information that my former employer could provide.
The government could easily have major companies (like banks, car dealers, mortgage companies, grocery stores, gas stations, utility companies, etc.) tie their customer databases to the "master" database my ex-company provided. Tracking the daily activities of almost any given individual from that point would be depressingly simple.
Just thought I should warn you.
By the way, last I heard when I was still working there, that company is the only consumer data tracking company allowed to combine disparate data sources into a single "view" of an individual. Normally datamining companies are legally barred from doing this. If they get a data element from a particular source, then they must sell ALL the data elements from that source together. The place I worked at began the process before the law took effect, so the company was grandfathered in, so they can take income from one place, name and SSN from another, address from yet another, etc.
A few quotes from the article:
We built our system on Microsoft Windows because Windows is a reliable, solid, reasonably priced, nearly universal platform - and for the software future, "universal" is nonnegotiable.
And...
Each [of linux and Windows] is nonetheless still solid enough to be a good, steady platform for the next step in software.
This does not indicate a future in which operating systems are really irrelevant. In fact, it would appear to be the opposite. Now, the operating system may appear to be invisible to the end user, but that isn't the same thing. People like Alan Cooper have been pushing for this kind of computing interface for ages.
The underlying operating system must be transparent, and rock-solid, fast, correct, and efficient.
Again, from the article:
nearly universal platform - and for the software future, "universal" is nonnegotiable.
Why does the OS have to be universal? The operating system may become invisible, but a properly written interface will be portable. No one will have to know how to use the "operating system" that powers their hardware, but they may figure out that some are more reliable at running their Interface Of The Future (TM) than others.
Last week, I was driving out to get some donuts and I saw a dog running in the middle of the road towards the car. This isn't terribly unusual where I live, and I thought I recognized the dog, but it started looking less familiar as I got closer. At first, I thought it was a chihuahua (very common in these parts), but when I got close enough, I realized it was a puppy.
I stopped the car, grabbed it, and went on for the donuts. The pup was on the verge of starving to death. It had no fat on it whatsoever, and its belly was completely distended from worms. He would have only probably lived another three or four days under those conditions.
My wife and I took him in and got him all fixed up (food, water, shelter, shots, flea bath, dewormer, antibiotics, neutering, and lots of love and attention). He was obviously neglected, and for a few days he wasn't sure how to handle getting attention from humans.
The original owners, whoever they may be, are not getting this dog back. It could be the drug dealers who raise vicious dogs, or just an idiot who thought the dog was fat (from the worms), so should be put on a diet (not fed at all). I don't care.
In the former case, I hope the community pulls together to put an end to this activity. In the latter, the idiot should probably stick with an Aibo because that's about all s/he is smart enough to deal with. (And that's only if the Aibo is entirely capable of self-operation from the moment you open the box.)
Slashdot Mirror
NOTE:
This isn't intended to be a troll or flamebait post.
One of the issues that surrounds the music industry is the way that large record labels treat the artists who have signed with them.
Now a record company has suddenly made it (more or less) convenient to download songs legally, and as soon as it gets easy, the ol' consumer mentality will kick back in and the artists will end up forgotten.
The artists won't be thought of, just like most people don't really think about the sweatshop laborers in foreign countries who make clothing, or code cheap software, assemble appliances, etc. Give us what we want, and give it to us cheap. To hell with the people who have to work to produce the lifestyle we get to take advantage of.
*sigh*
The music industry isn't really upset that you're copying copyrighted material. They're upset that you're no longer a consumer. They want you to consume their services, and if they re-work their existing services in a manner so the production costs are cheaper than current costs, but still charge you the same and still screw over the recording artists, then they see it as a major win.
Maybe I'll get lucky and someone will reply and tell me why UMG isn't as bad as the others.
JBuilder.
If we could use whatever we wanted, I'd stick with TextPad at this rate. My machine originally had 256 MB of RAM and the damn thing spent more time swapping than a Three Card Monte dealer. Doubling the RAM has made it at least usable, but it's still a little flakey. It swaps at weird times, uses way too much RAM, and can't seem to figure out when to pop-up autocompletion boxes at all.
Please tell me you have a better IDE to suggest. I won't get to use it at work, but if I have to do Java programming for a class project, I'll certainly look into it.
I notice the original post mentions several things that could influence the development time of a software project. I will address a few of these below:
1) Object Oriented Programming :)
This is one of the bigger Silver Bullets to be unleased upon the programming world. I don't think it entirely lived up to the hype. Most OOP is just for local project design, and heaven help you if you have to reuse code somewhere else. It isn't just a case of bad design. Problems like software design are actually ambiguous. The design process is not algorithmic; rather, it's heuristic. You use "templates" and "patterns" to represent your ideas. Trying to shoehorn real-world complexities into these cookie-cutter styles is difficult at best. Trying to further take those styles and integrate them with each other in a very large scale product is a hair-tearing nightmare. I think Tablizer would agree with me on this...
2) Reusable components ;)
The most visible place reusable components come into play is GUI programming. It's very, VERY simple to use a visual-based system (like Visual Basic, C++ Builder, Delphi, etc.) to create a GUI simply by dragging the desired components onto the blank form window. If anything has been sped up significantly in the past several years, it has been the GUI development.
Components are, of course, used in a variety of other places, particularly in run-time libraries of various programming languages. However, learning to use these components effectively takes more time and dedication than one might suspect as the syntax tends to be rather cryptic looking.
3) Java
Don't get me started. I am currently employed as a Java developer. I don't really like it a lot. The file scoping rules bug me. (Similarly, I don't like Python because of the way it enforces indentation.) Also, the Java IDE sucks. Whoever thought the entire GUI needed to actually be written in Java needs to be taken out and beaten with a stick. A large stick.
4) The Internet (and OSS) ;)
One thing I noticed that you hadn't mentioned is the Internet. I have never been exposed to so many programming concepts and new languages. There is an astounding variety of tools, and thanks to Open Source and researchers at various universities, you can try your hand at as many of them as you have disk space for. The 'Net can be a wonderful place, after all.
My advice to any new programmer would be to get online and start reading. Download and try out new languages, especially ones in different paradigms, like functional programming. The tools you need (such as compilers, editors, databases, GUI component libraries, etc.) are ALL there, free for the taking. The only real "silver bullet" is to make yourself the best programmer you can be.
Actually, SimVirus might be a more interesting game. You have a world of inhabitants, and you try to evolve viruses that will manage to infect them.
Since this is a Sim type game, you want the host to have time to adapt to the virus, but not get over it so quickly that it can't spread. Having a virus that swiftly kills all the hosts would end the game pretty quickly.
Cross-species jumping, modes of transmission, type of organs infected, and of course your virus could always accidentally borrow RNA from some other virus already in the host, so you have to watch out for that. Fun fun fun!!
And what about those new careers? Did you see the picture? What's the second guy on the left supposed to be? Dark Lord of the Sith, or something?
Hmm... I actually remember those. I probably never used one, though, since my character's alignments were never evil enough. ;)
By the way, Tera has 150 levels, and lots of interesting options for high level characters (like resurrecting and retaining 80% of lost exp after death, summoning your corpse so you don't risk dying trying to recover it, faster healing, etc.)
They also recently added a javascript interpreter so builders can write scripts in their areas. This is just beginning to be taken advantage of, and should add some interesting elements to MUDding. More intelligent monsters, custom spells and abilities, dynamic zones... Its like GURPS, but in a MUD.
I think the difference is in the suspension of disbelief. Now, MUDs and LARP may seem worlds apart, and of course in many ways they are, but MUDs allow you to pretend more thoroughly in the ways that are important.
;)
On a MUD, if I'm playing a character with the ability to eavesdrop on other conversations unobserved, I can do exactly that. All I have to do is become invisible and hide in a room. No one (other than someone higher level than me) would have any idea I was there unless I decided to make my presence known.
In a LARP, everyone has to just pretend you're not there. There isn't the element of "plausible deniability" that the MUD-style environment brings you.
Now, while MUD combat isn't very life-like, I find it more appealing than the LARP version of paper-rock-scissors. Personally, I'd like game combat to be modeled on real combat. This can't be accurately handled in either game style, but MUDs at least give you some imaginative feedback. "The smell of searing flesh assaults your nostrils as you engulf the Evil Knight in a surge of hellfire," is more satisfying than "One-two-three! Paper!"
Anyway, LARPing definitely wasn't for me. I'm not really social enough for that kind of interaction. I want my gaming interaction to be as socially artificial, but as physically real, as possible.
I never understood the obsession with "The Sims". I tried it out, but ultimately I just can't play a game populated with characters that are actually LESS motivated than I am.
The damn people won't get out of bed when the alarm goes off, and there's no way to get to work other than car pool. If the Sim has to be at work at 8, so you have the alarm set for 6, they'll STILL miss their ride because it apparently takes 3 hours to get showered and dressed in the morning.
I can only imagine what it would be like if they had pets in the game. A bunch of dead neglected dogs, cats, birds, hamsters, etc.
FWIW, I won't be into gaming until games become Matrix-like. Current games miss out in three major areas:
1) The experience isn't 1st person enough. FPS games are one thing, but the networked versions only allow interaction in an extremely narrow set of circumstances (like CounterStrike, with all the pre-defined missions, etc.) Multiplayer worlds use a 3rd person perspective, which obviously doesn't lend itself to a "realistic" seeming game.
2) The group interaction in games feels fake. It works better (for me) in FPS games simply because having that first-person perspective draws you into the game a little more. Still, there is a lot to be desired.
3) Current games simply aren't realistic enough. I want to feel like I'm actually inhabiting a fantasy world. Let's use Vampire, for instance. Not the computer game this time. LARP (Live-Action Role Playing for those of you who don't follow this junk). Now, exactly how much can you get into this game when a person using their "vampric" hearing sense is standing right next to you while you're supposed to ignore them? And certain actions are executed against other vampires on the basis of a rock-paper-scissors match!? Come ON! If I'm going to play a game, I want to feel like I really have those abilities, whether I'm playing something like Vampire, or Diablo, or CounterStrike. Simulating it with graphics doesn't help matters a bit.
Perhaps this is still why I like mudding. There are other people to talk to, and, while the game is only text, it has a first person perspective and a flexibility that no other kind of game can truly match. (ObPlug: If you think you'd be interested in the mud diversion [or used to be, but haven't mudded in ages], try it out! Just telnet to tera.teralink.com 4000.)
So was having the website linked directly from a Slashdot article their way of stress testing their software?
;)
Apparently, its load handling just isn't up to the task yet.
I have a partition with Windows on my computer so I can (someday) finish playing "Vampire: The Redeption". Occasionally, I use it because the CD burner is easier to use under Windows, or if someone sends me an MS Office document, since OpenOffice is still too buggy for general use, and KWord doesn't convert well.
;)
Other than that, my computer is always booted to Gentoo. Even my wife's computer runs Gentoo. Our internal server runs RedHat, but may end up with some BSD variant.
As soon as CD writing software gets more reliable under linux, and OpenOffice gets more stable, I probably won't have a need for the partition. Well, until I finish that damn gamn, anyway.
"Foghorn"? So it really is vaporware!
For lots more, check out the Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature.
Well, we know exactly what the first entry link at NineNine's and autopr0n's sites will be.
My point exactly. Nothing. Just like there was nothing to stop them from enlisting military planes to assist the police in looking for the D.C. snipers. (Oh, the military was just there to provide "taxi service"? uh huh... So how much longer until the military obtains civilian police powers for purposes of "homeland security"?)
Anyway, there is nothing at all to prevent the government from eventually coming in and tying tax data, marketing data, and "security" data all into one cohesive system. The databases are already in place, and so is the technological infrastructure.
The company I worked for has a system that allows their clients to take their customer databases, match them against the "master" database, then obtain a special "link" (basically, a primary key) into the master database that could be stored in their own system. From then on, client companies no longer have to keep updated marketing information on their customers; they can just cross-reference their "link" to the master database and have an instant (literally, within milliseconds) view of a customer's entire profile.
By the way, a client company may not purchase all of the available fields. They will probably only purchase a relevant subset of fields to make sure their money is being spent as efficiently as possible. On the other hand, the "links" are not unique from one company to the next, so if two companies both using this technology were to merge, their customer marketing information databases would be instantly combined.
The government could easily index security information databases against this master database, store the "link", and that would be all there is to it. Instant Big Brother.
If you aren't scared yet, you should be.
I don't know if they provide reviews, but you can certainly tell them if there are mistakes. This company actually has every reason to want to keep "tracked consumers" happy. If they have a bunch of inaccurate data, or a lot of people who aren't supposed to receive marketing promotions start complaining, then the company's data will be perceived as useless, and they'll have a harder time selling it.
That, and not allowing you to do so is (currently) against the law.
However, I don't know how the process for verifying your data works. You can probably just call their main number, tell them there's a mistake, and they'll put you through to the "Department of Consumer Privacy" (read that with a 1984-ish doublespeak connotation).
Heh... actually, I left out the really scary part. The company also has a database for "skip tracing". If you get a loan and skip town without paying, they can follow you.
So, they actually have two databases, one for skip tracing, and one for marketing. The databases are not, under any circumstances, to be used for cross-purposes. The company can not use skip trace data to market to people, nor can they use the marketing data to do skip traces.
At least, that's how it works under current law. In the current political climate, I wouldn't be surprised to see the law modified to allow the databases to be merged.
As soon as digital money becomes secure (from the government's standpoint of monitoring, not from our standpoint of privacy), we're screwed. Why bother keeping cash around (which costs money to make), when eletronic money is, by comparison, practically free.
But anyway, another advance in currency could help the government out, even if they don't opt to do away with cash. Enter plastic currency. Much harder to forge, and could easily be printed with magnetic ink that contained the ID number of the bill, so any time it was withdrawn from a bank or used at a federally registered place of business, it could be scanned and processed.
Millions upon millions of digital transactions are processed every day. There's no reason to think that doing the same for cash transactions would be a particularly overwhelming task, especially if the system were properly distributed.
Also, some people think that giving trackable cash to another person will throw the system out of whack because now the money wouldn't correspond to the original receiver. The government is perfectly aware that the average number of hands any single bill goes through before being spent at a tracking point is pretty small. If you loan someone ten bucks, chances are they'll spend it, not give it to someone else. So the government not only knows who you are and where you shop, but to whom you loan money. Now if something suspicious goes on, they can track your network of acquaintances, too. This is a BONUS for them, not a complication.
I used to work at a company that was involved in customer data mining. During orientation, they have someone come out whose job it is to convince all the new employees that the company is not evil and is providing a valuable service.
See, everyone in the room is freaked out when they learn the company has over 300 pieces of data (including things like name, SSN, birth date, address, marital status, kids, cars, salary, credit history, home value, pets, etc.) on over 150 million people in the United States. I watched a room full of people all look at each other with a slight amount of fear and uncertainty in their eyes. Then out came the propaganda machine to try to set us at ease.
Now, current law prohibits this company from using marketing data in any kind of legal procedings, but that could easily change. The company uses extremely complex algorithms to consolidate data from different sources (which source for birthdate should we believe? how about home value?) into a single record. Client companies (such as stores, banks, etc.) can then take their own customer databases and match them up with the huge store of information that my former employer could provide.
The government could easily have major companies (like banks, car dealers, mortgage companies, grocery stores, gas stations, utility companies, etc.) tie their customer databases to the "master" database my ex-company provided. Tracking the daily activities of almost any given individual from that point would be depressingly simple.
Just thought I should warn you.
By the way, last I heard when I was still working there, that company is the only consumer data tracking company allowed to combine disparate data sources into a single "view" of an individual. Normally datamining companies are legally barred from doing this. If they get a data element from a particular source, then they must sell ALL the data elements from that source together. The place I worked at began the process before the law took effect, so the company was grandfathered in, so they can take income from one place, name and SSN from another, address from yet another, etc.
Be afraid.
"Hydra" would be the name for a browser that not only made it impossible to disable pop-ups, but opened them on its own.
;)
Every time you closed a window, two more would open before you could blink.
And...
Each [of linux and Windows] is nonetheless still solid enough to be a good, steady platform for the next step in software.
This does not indicate a future in which operating systems are really irrelevant. In fact, it would appear to be the opposite. Now, the operating system may appear to be invisible to the end user, but that isn't the same thing. People like Alan Cooper have been pushing for this kind of computing interface for ages.
The underlying operating system must be transparent, and rock-solid, fast, correct, and efficient.
Again, from the article:
nearly universal platform - and for the software future, "universal" is nonnegotiable.
Why does the OS have to be universal? The operating system may become invisible, but a properly written interface will be portable. No one will have to know how to use the "operating system" that powers their hardware, but they may figure out that some are more reliable at running their Interface Of The Future (TM) than others.
Errr... Just for the record, Andrea Arcangeli is a guy.
Last week, I was driving out to get some donuts and I saw a dog running in the middle of the road towards the car. This isn't terribly unusual where I live, and I thought I recognized the dog, but it started looking less familiar as I got closer. At first, I thought it was a chihuahua (very common in these parts), but when I got close enough, I realized it was a puppy.
I stopped the car, grabbed it, and went on for the donuts. The pup was on the verge of starving to death. It had no fat on it whatsoever, and its belly was completely distended from worms. He would have only probably lived another three or four days under those conditions.
My wife and I took him in and got him all fixed up (food, water, shelter, shots, flea bath, dewormer, antibiotics, neutering, and lots of love and attention). He was obviously neglected, and for a few days he wasn't sure how to handle getting attention from humans.
The original owners, whoever they may be, are not getting this dog back. It could be the drug dealers who raise vicious dogs, or just an idiot who thought the dog was fat (from the worms), so should be put on a diet (not fed at all). I don't care.
In the former case, I hope the community pulls together to put an end to this activity. In the latter, the idiot should probably stick with an Aibo because that's about all s/he is smart enough to deal with. (And that's only if the Aibo is entirely capable of self-operation from the moment you open the box.)
Just your luck, you probably got modded down. :)
Tor,
Are you the same Tor/Tosc who used to play Mozart mud?
What color is the sky on your planet? Animal rights organizations (such as PETA) are very strongly opposed to the way livestock animals are treated.