Since when? Almost every species leaves its weak behind to die.
The function of a human based society is to collectively do better. We also have this concept called morality, and its current (collective) incarnation stipulates that life (particularly human life) is precious.
That means that as a society we have a duty to protect those who are less well able to protect themselves.
Never forget, those who enjoy the best the world has to offer, do it on the backs of the many who do not - it is just as easy to label these rich people as leeches as it is the homeless or out of work. So one might just as reasonably ask - why should we allow the rich to be rich? as we might ask why should we help the poor and homeless?
When folk say "desktop" in this context, they mean the consumer market. They do NOT mean that their Linux distro will not ship with a GUI. They DO mean they are interested in serving the business market, but that Linux is not ready for the consumer market. They are right too - as a very experienced computer user and software engineer, even I dread the driver headaches of new hardware purchases - that primarily is what makes Linux not ready for the desktop. Businesses however, generally do not kit out their PCs with a bunch of whacky bleeding edge and/or extra cheapo and/or marginal useage hardware that typically has Linux driver issues.
Your business decision, if safe before, is no less safe now.
It is implicit in the mere fact of having phone service that you are willing to be called.
I guess this is where you and I differ. My purchasing a communications service in no way implies that I am willing to allow everyone to contact me via that service. This is a common argument of telemarketers and their ilk, but really there is no basis for that assumption.
When I buy a car, it does not imply I am prepared to give rides for anyone who asks, or demands it. Nor does it imply that the onus is upon me to refuse such service and that should I neglect to that I have implicitly agreed to provide such a service.
In fact, rarely if ever, will you come across other situations where something that you have paid for may be utilized at the convenience of others without your explicit consent. Why would phone service be any different?
These imginary one way contracts that I supposedly agree to with third parties I have never met simply by purchasing something is a totally bogus concept.
The fact is, that like their whole approach to their sales pitch, this useage of others property is a gross exploitation of etiquette i.e. they take advantage of the fact the folk observe etiquette out of politeness while displaying none themselves. You want folk to reach you - they use that to excuse their intrusion; you do not wish to be rude uneccessarily by cutting people off in mid-sentence - so they continue on no matter what you say; you ask them not to call again - and they may comply, but even if they do, they are many, you are few.
Personally, despite being a very polite guy who finds it hard to be otherwise, I decided about ten years ago that the only way to get the guys to go away was to be so friggin rude to them from the get go that they would cross your name off their list. It worked. But then I moved to the USA and the horrible nightmare is back.
My barber does not claim loss of earnings if I cut my own hair. Clearly you are confusing a service (where you pay money for services rendered rather than goods) and goods for sale.
I am not saying that it is a good thing to steal software. My only contention, which you have agreed with, is that copying of software does not equate to copies made times retail sales price in lost revenue.
Er. The same tactic used to remove Netscape from the market place could be used against Google. If anything it would be easier - simply place a web search text box in the tool bar which points to MSN search. Already internet search shows up in the file browser, how long before it makes it to the desktop should MS decide that market should be theirs?
Trespassers do not have to cost you money to be trespassers. You pay for the land, you have the right to refuse others the use of it.
THAT is what the guy meant by them not having the right to use something he paid for. He does pay for telephone service, and it is not relevent whether his costs increase as a result of unwanted calls.
No, for software patents you simply need a jury system filled only with software engineers. To get patented the last step will be to face the SE jury and explain your invention. This is all video taped.
Afterwards the video is examined and each smile, concealed smile, stifled giggle, laugh, and outright guffaw is counted on a sliding scale. The results of those who score shall be published on slashdot in a special section. High scoring patents will be required to fill the "funny" slot at the end of tv news programs, and the truly outragous ones will require the inventing companies CEO to apologize in a 1 hour tv special in which s/he will be required to show what they have done to ensure that they never present false inventions to the patent office again.
I think that about covers it.
QED
1) Japs are not a racial grouping 2) Jap is quite clearly an abbreviation of Japanese 3) Japan is a country, so at best Jap is nationalist (in US speak, patriotism), though that is also dubious 4) So is Brit an abbreviation of British, and I _am_ a Brit 5) You are a PC fundamentalist (who hasn't worked out that political correctness is an oxymoron) 6) Down with PC fundamentalists 7) Lets nuke the f*ckers 8)... 9) profit!
When calculating losses from piracy, software companies use the ammount they would sell the item for.
The trap here is that they are calculating this as if they actually lost something tangible, like a car. If cars are stolen, money is lost because the cars cost something to build. With software an exact copy was made, no resources of the software company was used.
It is a sleight of hand to calculate the cost of piracy based on what the software would sell at retail because a) no money was ever lost by the original company, and b) it is pretty much guaranteed that at least a percentage (and probably a large one) of the software would never be sold because some people would consider the software to be expensive to justify the purchase.
In developing countries, the percentage of people who pirate who would otherwise buy if the choice to pirate was not available is likely to approach zero. I rather suspect that this is the case in western countries too.
If you think IBM is serious about open source and Linux now, just watch them move if MS dissappeared. On balance, the natural successor for windows would be Linux - then finally we would all have a dominant OS that was not controlled by a single business entity and could not be made such.
Many companies that don't even pay lip service to Linux now would be in like flin with dollars and support. All hardware would naturally start including linux drivers by default and linux would become what is hard to achieve right now without that support (that windows currently enjoys) - an easy to use, easy to install OS.
When the source to the OS is open and known, I would expect there to be a flurry of development and innovation far surpassing anything we have seen occur in Windows.
MS going away would not be the end of the world, and it could well be a glorious beginning.
Do you have even the foggiest idea of how product development occurs?
I do, if you are talking about software product development. I have many patents applied for on behalf of my employer.
Do you realize that companies aren't willing to do years of R&D work if their competitors can all steal the result as soon as they go to market?
Do you realise that companies are not willing to do that anyway, but oh, they will apply for any patents that result from the 4-6 month product dev cycle.
The real problem of course is that software patents that are being granted are for trivial, mostly obvious things because the assessors at the patent office do not understand what they are looking at. The patent applications are generally overly verbose to ensure that the assessor cannot possibly read and understand it in the time allowed even when they do have a clue.
An even bigger problem is that we have a very young industry which evolves very fast, and any significant patent can be used as a road block to the entire industry, and/or extract a tax for its use. That is not good for society. All this despite the fact that what gets done now, would get done anyway - it is not like these patents come out of blue sky research, as far as the companies themselves are concerned, they are free since they naturally occur during normal software development. In other industries they generally do actually fund research - whereas most software companies do not seem to even understand what research is or why they would need it. After all, they are getting these patents anyway right?
Look at the "one click" patent, does anyone seriously consider that this took more than 3 seconds to concieve and 10 minutes to impliment?
What is worth noting here is that if the fundamental computing and networking technologies upon which we build today were originally patented, then we would be at about 1950.
See ya down at the soda store.
Isn't traffic caused by the volume of vehicles on the road?
Partly. This part: grid lock.
Years back I remember when the M25 was built, it is a circular motorway (freeway) that surrounds London and was intended to ease London congestion, London commute times and through traffic hold ups.
It became the nastiest traffic jam in the world. The guys who built it could not understand why, it was a circle after all - nothing there to hold up traffic, so they commissioned some studies. Turned out that one guy doing something which causes others to break just a little heavy would cause each successive car to break a little heavier until what you got was 15 miles or more of stopped traffic full of impatient people, exactly the right conditions in fact for the next jam to be created...
I am not sure what server side applications you have been involved with but in my experience server side applications have LONG process lives. They are expected to be up 24 * 7, for as long as possible.
Just as an example lets say Apache.
Which just happens to not be written in Java...
Server processes that do require to be up and running 24/7 are written in C (maybe C++) by people who know why. Servers written in Java for the 24/7 operation are written by people who read why in a magazine.
Sorry, but I still cannot stifle a smile when Java and server are mentioned in the same sentence. I know there are many true-believers, but really, even if it does look good on paper, just wait til that garbage collector kicks in and I'll have yer 24/7 right here.
IANAL, IANAA
Beyond the issues you mention, one that you should not forget, lest you been pulled into a very dark hole, is taxes. This mostly applies to having a job in one country and living in another, but there may actually be tax relief for working at home.
Avoid traps: being taxable in both places - make sure the countries have a tax treaty, or that the country where your employer is only taxes residents, not "workers." - e.g. US and UK have a tax treaty
Seek tax havens: being a citizen of the UK is a pretty good deal, if you are not ordinarily domiciled in the UK, and don't stuff bank accounts there with cash, you are not taxed by the UK. This means you could move to a place with low/no income tax and smile every time you get a paycheck. Even if you DO live in the UK, if your income never crosses the shore in the same tax year in which it is earnt, it is not classed as income and is not taxable - see avoid traps.
Europe has an attitude similar to yours. Its the reason why their economies aren't as flexible as ours is and why their rates of unemployment are higher.
It is perhaps the reason that the percentage of people living in poverty is lower too...
You see, taking certain facts into account and ignoring the "side-effects" is never going to get you a clear picture. Sure, US companies can "fire" at will, but that does in no way benefit society as a whole. When you consider the whole point of economies, companies, and governments, the end goal is to benefit THE PEOPLE as a whole and to preserve their well being. In the US this really fails miserably because nobody can see passed the dollar, everything can be justified if someone is making money at the end of the day. This is at the root of all US political thinking as far as I can tell.
And just to clear something up here, in Europe lay-offs happen too, and for the same reasons, it is just that since there are laws protecting employees, it is not easy to use layoffs to screw employees (like immediately hiring a bunch of cheaper folk to do the same job.)
My completely uneducated and unresearched estimates are that France's rate of unemployment is 10% to 15% higher than the official stated level of 10%.
Only if you count people who are in work and getting paid for it as you have done. Simply because they work less hours, does not mean they are out of work. Clearly you believe that working 70 hours a week is sutainable. It is not. It is exploitation. It is results in lots of inefficient tired workers, and is a primary reason that trade unions started. You might also take into account they get PAID LESS
Oh, and BTW, don't forget the vacation package that makes the US 2 week package look like exploitation. To understand why 4,6 and even 8 weeks vacation per year doesn't lose you money you really have to start thinking about why vacation exists at all.
In essence, the US has what it proudly calls a "work ethic." But what I actually see is an employer perpetuated moral standpoint that to work hard and long to the detriment of other areas of your life is to be saintly. There is enormous pressure within the US to "work hard," and in practice that translates mainly into "working dumb."
So after your 10 years of 70 hour weeks working for the man, you can proudly proclaim "I got laid off, not because I didn't work hard, not because I took too much vacation, not because the company couldn't make it any other way, but because someone, somewhere, wanted more money to spend on the executive conference-cum-ski-fest."
Mr Cracker, young as he is, remebers reading about some ancient l33wt hacker tricks. His hacker buddies stand back in awe as he...
Changes the password without typing anything 20 times.
If he is for real, he probably means he has applied for patents. FYI the USPTO have both an issues and an application database and trust me when I say, it takes years to even have applications turn up in the DB - I have some patents that were applied for 3+ years ago that still have not made it (and no, I am not patent protagonist, but my employer is). Additionally, when they DO show up in that DB, they show the date on which they got entered NOT the application date, which is the one that counts.
No, the road to serious riches, and the one I am sitting on until there are enough infringers that a license fee small enough to make everybody pay to shut me up is:
"Method to claim patent infringing actions on obvious methods and devices for fun and profit"
And just to make sure nobody gets by I got this one:
"Method to claim patent infringing actions on fundamental laws of the universe for fun and profit"
Dude, I'm getting a Dell.
Slashdot Mirror
SuSe comes with CDs and a DVD - the DVD contains everything on the CDs, very handy.
That means that as a society we have a duty to protect those who are less well able to protect themselves.
Never forget, those who enjoy the best the world has to offer, do it on the backs of the many who do not - it is just as easy to label these rich people as leeches as it is the homeless or out of work. So one might just as reasonably ask - why should we allow the rich to be rich? as we might ask why should we help the poor and homeless?
When folk say "desktop" in this context, they mean the consumer market. They do NOT mean that their Linux distro will not ship with a GUI. They DO mean they are interested in serving the business market, but that Linux is not ready for the consumer market. They are right too - as a very experienced computer user and software engineer, even I dread the driver headaches of new hardware purchases - that primarily is what makes Linux not ready for the desktop. Businesses however, generally do not kit out their PCs with a bunch of whacky bleeding edge and/or extra cheapo and/or marginal useage hardware that typically has Linux driver issues.
Your business decision, if safe before, is no less safe now.
I guess this is where you and I differ. My purchasing a communications service in no way implies that I am willing to allow everyone to contact me via that service. This is a common argument of telemarketers and their ilk, but really there is no basis for that assumption.
When I buy a car, it does not imply I am prepared to give rides for anyone who asks, or demands it. Nor does it imply that the onus is upon me to refuse such service and that should I neglect to that I have implicitly agreed to provide such a service.
In fact, rarely if ever, will you come across other situations where something that you have paid for may be utilized at the convenience of others without your explicit consent. Why would phone service be any different?
These imginary one way contracts that I supposedly agree to with third parties I have never met simply by purchasing something is a totally bogus concept.
The fact is, that like their whole approach to their sales pitch, this useage of others property is a gross exploitation of etiquette i.e. they take advantage of the fact the folk observe etiquette out of politeness while displaying none themselves. You want folk to reach you - they use that to excuse their intrusion; you do not wish to be rude uneccessarily by cutting people off in mid-sentence - so they continue on no matter what you say; you ask them not to call again - and they may comply, but even if they do, they are many, you are few.
Personally, despite being a very polite guy who finds it hard to be otherwise, I decided about ten years ago that the only way to get the guys to go away was to be so friggin rude to them from the get go that they would cross your name off their list. It worked. But then I moved to the USA and the horrible nightmare is back.
My barber does not claim loss of earnings if I cut my own hair. Clearly you are confusing a service (where you pay money for services rendered rather than goods) and goods for sale. I am not saying that it is a good thing to steal software. My only contention, which you have agreed with, is that copying of software does not equate to copies made times retail sales price in lost revenue.
Er. The same tactic used to remove Netscape from the market place could be used against Google. If anything it would be easier - simply place a web search text box in the tool bar which points to MSN search. Already internet search shows up in the file browser, how long before it makes it to the desktop should MS decide that market should be theirs?
Trespassers do not have to cost you money to be trespassers. You pay for the land, you have the right to refuse others the use of it.
THAT is what the guy meant by them not having the right to use something he paid for. He does pay for telephone service, and it is not relevent whether his costs increase as a result of unwanted calls.
No, for software patents you simply need a jury system filled only with software engineers. To get patented the last step will be to face the SE jury and explain your invention. This is all video taped.
Afterwards the video is examined and each smile, concealed smile, stifled giggle, laugh, and outright guffaw is counted on a sliding scale. The results of those who score shall be published on slashdot in a special section. High scoring patents will be required to fill the "funny" slot at the end of tv news programs, and the truly outragous ones will require the inventing companies CEO to apologize in a 1 hour tv special in which s/he will be required to show what they have done to ensure that they never present false inventions to the patent office again.
I think that about covers it.
QED
They are...
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html Both issued patents and published applications DBs.
Er,
...
1) Japs are not a racial grouping
2) Jap is quite clearly an abbreviation of Japanese
3) Japan is a country, so at best Jap is nationalist (in US speak, patriotism), though that is also dubious
4) So is Brit an abbreviation of British, and I _am_ a Brit
5) You are a PC fundamentalist (who hasn't worked out that political correctness is an oxymoron)
6) Down with PC fundamentalists
7) Lets nuke the f*ckers
8)
9) profit!
I think the point is this:
When calculating losses from piracy, software companies use the ammount they would sell the item for.
The trap here is that they are calculating this as if they actually lost something tangible, like a car. If cars are stolen, money is lost because the cars cost something to build. With software an exact copy was made, no resources of the software company was used.
It is a sleight of hand to calculate the cost of piracy based on what the software would sell at retail because a) no money was ever lost by the original company, and b) it is pretty much guaranteed that at least a percentage (and probably a large one) of the software would never be sold because some people would consider the software to be expensive to justify the purchase.
In developing countries, the percentage of people who pirate who would otherwise buy if the choice to pirate was not available is likely to approach zero. I rather suspect that this is the case in western countries too.
If you think IBM is serious about open source and Linux now, just watch them move if MS dissappeared. On balance, the natural successor for windows would be Linux - then finally we would all have a dominant OS that was not controlled by a single business entity and could not be made such. Many companies that don't even pay lip service to Linux now would be in like flin with dollars and support. All hardware would naturally start including linux drivers by default and linux would become what is hard to achieve right now without that support (that windows currently enjoys) - an easy to use, easy to install OS. When the source to the OS is open and known, I would expect there to be a flurry of development and innovation far surpassing anything we have seen occur in Windows. MS going away would not be the end of the world, and it could well be a glorious beginning.
I'm no metal geek so perhaps this is a dumb question: won't copper corrode too and maybe even make your drive green?
IANAL, IANAA Beyond the issues you mention, one that you should not forget, lest you been pulled into a very dark hole, is taxes. This mostly applies to having a job in one country and living in another, but there may actually be tax relief for working at home.
Avoid traps: being taxable in both places - make sure the countries have a tax treaty, or that the country where your employer is only taxes residents, not "workers." - e.g. US and UK have a tax treaty
Seek tax havens: being a citizen of the UK is a pretty good deal, if you are not ordinarily domiciled in the UK, and don't stuff bank accounts there with cash, you are not taxed by the UK. This means you could move to a place with low/no income tax and smile every time you get a paycheck. Even if you DO live in the UK, if your income never crosses the shore in the same tax year in which it is earnt, it is not classed as income and is not taxable - see avoid traps.
You see, taking certain facts into account and ignoring the "side-effects" is never going to get you a clear picture. Sure, US companies can "fire" at will, but that does in no way benefit society as a whole. When you consider the whole point of economies, companies, and governments, the end goal is to benefit THE PEOPLE as a whole and to preserve their well being. In the US this really fails miserably because nobody can see passed the dollar, everything can be justified if someone is making money at the end of the day. This is at the root of all US political thinking as far as I can tell.
And just to clear something up here, in Europe lay-offs happen too, and for the same reasons, it is just that since there are laws protecting employees, it is not easy to use layoffs to screw employees (like immediately hiring a bunch of cheaper folk to do the same job.)
Only if you count people who are in work and getting paid for it as you have done. Simply because they work less hours, does not mean they are out of work. Clearly you believe that working 70 hours a week is sutainable. It is not. It is exploitation. It is results in lots of inefficient tired workers, and is a primary reason that trade unions started. You might also take into account they get PAID LESS
Oh, and BTW, don't forget the vacation package that makes the US 2 week package look like exploitation. To understand why 4,6 and even 8 weeks vacation per year doesn't lose you money you really have to start thinking about why vacation exists at all.
In essence, the US has what it proudly calls a "work ethic." But what I actually see is an employer perpetuated moral standpoint that to work hard and long to the detriment of other areas of your life is to be saintly. There is enormous pressure within the US to "work hard," and in practice that translates mainly into "working dumb."
So after your 10 years of 70 hour weeks working for the man, you can proudly proclaim "I got laid off, not because I didn't work hard, not because I took too much vacation, not because the company couldn't make it any other way, but because someone, somewhere, wanted more money to spend on the executive conference-cum-ski-fest."
Mr Cracker, young as he is, remebers reading about some ancient l33wt hacker tricks. His hacker buddies stand back in awe as he... Changes the password without typing anything 20 times.
If he is for real, he probably means he has applied for patents. FYI the USPTO have both an issues and an application database and trust me when I say, it takes years to even have applications turn up in the DB - I have some patents that were applied for 3+ years ago that still have not made it (and no, I am not patent protagonist, but my employer is). Additionally, when they DO show up in that DB, they show the date on which they got entered NOT the application date, which is the one that counts.
No, the road to serious riches, and the one I am sitting on until there are enough infringers that a license fee small enough to make everybody pay to shut me up is: "Method to claim patent infringing actions on obvious methods and devices for fun and profit" And just to make sure nobody gets by I got this one: "Method to claim patent infringing actions on fundamental laws of the universe for fun and profit" Dude, I'm getting a Dell.
Yea, Germany had laws to protect minorities too. Hitler was _voted_ in.
That, of course, is called fraud.