I make web applications for a living, and to duplicate what these guys can do with Word is far from trivial. Why? Because using a tool like Word gets them functionality for free that is a lot of work to code.
Well, you must not be very good at it then. I make web applications for a living too, and I could do this stuff in my sleep.
rich text - a word processor has a ton of features for rich text, including bold, italics, and lists like this one
This is not an advertising piece, it's a technical form. There is no need for any of this crap. Police documents and reports should not be formatted willy-nilly, they should be standardized and easily machine readable. Giving these capacities to police departments is simply a bad idea.
images - a picture's worth a thousand words
Are you seriously trying to tell me that you can't put images into a web application?
change history - knowing who did what is hugely helpful, and a lot of work to code
If you're using forms and a database, this is beyond trivial. I throw it into every web app I build because it takes so little effort that it's worth it just in case.
document transfer - if somebody needs to share a document, give control to somebody else, save a copy for reference, or just show it to somebody, that's easy with a document: you can email it, put it on a floppy, CD, or USB key, or put in on a network drive
Yes, you're right. The internet really isn't a very good infrastructure for document transfer. I can't believe you actually put this on your little list.
printing - any word processor gives you great control over printed output; web sites need to render everything to PDFs for that and making a web interface for controlling all that would be a bitch
Or, of course, you could use a combination of a modern browser, X(HT)ML, XSL and CSS. The 90's are over, get with the times.
widely understood - people learn how to use Word in high school now, not for whatever custom interface you build in a browser
I know, it's very challenging to use an application that is custom tailored to your problem domain, especially when you use it on a daily basis to earn your living. And we all know that only PHDs get training in using browsers and web forms.
richer UI - web apps are making some progress, but GUI apps can still have a much better user experience
If you were talking about a fat client application, you might have a point. But you're defending Word. It might be a rich UI if you're a copy editor for a magazine, but if you're a cop knocking off some reports, it's a barebones UI where you need to do all the labourous formatting yourself and full of extraneous crap that is irrelevant to what you're using it for.
And as I pointed out in another post, modifying the web app requires a real programmer, whereas any secretary can futz with forms in MS Word or change the mail merge.
Well, if you're the sort of hack whose work I'm always fixing, that's true. If, on the other hand, you've actually put in an administrative interface and used suitable abstractions, they should be able to update the thing in every fashion they are likely to need with hand-holding included.
I love web apps, but using your psychic powers to say that people you've never seen doing work you don't know about can get along fine with a trivial web app is just asinine.
My father is currently a police officer, and I'm a professional internet application developer. I didn't need to use my psychic powers for this one. Besides, using them tires me out, so I try to save them for extracting useful information from upper-management types, as that is where they are most needed.
Thank you for your little arguments. They were mildly entertaining. Do you have any more?
Well, I work IT in a law enforcement agency, and so I can speak to that. The parent is right, you don't know what the Hell you're talking about.
Police use Word to fill in reports, forms, etc. that could definitely not be formatted using Wordpad. They also have to save that form data, which could not be done with a web form or Acrobat Reader.
This would be trivial to do with a web based application.
They also use Word to interact with Excel and Access databases. When you're sending out a notification letter to 180 victims in a given county, you better believe it's a helluva lot easier to use Word's mail merge than typing each name individually in Wordpad.
This would not only be trivial to do with a web application, it would be better suited as a web application.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Trust me, the police not only use Word, but a whole bunch of other software as well. And you should be glad they do.
Trust me, I'm a carpenter, and you definatly need wood, hammer and nails to fix this problem.
should sensitive and/or personally identifiable information be available online if the indivdual doesnt want it to be? should i be able to 'opt out of' or perferably 'opt into' google's (etc.) indexes?
No. You should not be able to keep me in ignorance of publicly available information because it happens to relate to you. You do not have that right. If you want something to be a secret, don't tell anyone. That's pretty cut and dried.
That guy from google is a fucking idiot. Public information is public information, he deals in public information and makes a ton of fucking money doing it, and the information that he finds so objectionable was retrieved using the service that his company supplies.
The fact that he shows no qualms in using the power of his newfound corporation for his own personal agenda just makes his already untrustworthy company that much less so.
His company makes no secret of the fact that they're going FAR beyond the 'invasion of privacy' that CNET supposedly committed against him, and unlike the reporter, they're actually collecting this information so they can use it to manipulate us.
Quite frankly, I think someone needs to give that man a swift shot in the head.
Clearwater foods has a multilingual, multicurrency website that interacts with the warehouse and various shipping companies via XML which was built in.NET, I know because I built it.
Why did I use.NET? Because they decided it was a good buzzword. Because it was good? Um... no..NET web apps are quick and easy to create. So are Frontpage web apps. Nuff said.
I think should give them access to a computer as early as you can. I started programming at the age of six, and getting a computer that young really shaped my whole life. If not for having it, I might never have gone into computer programming and been such a success.
My four year old daughter has been interested in playing with my computer since she was two, and I'm building her her own desktop computer now before she starts school. I'll get her a laptop just as soon as the durability, responsibility and financial capability curves intersect.:P
Here's a question: When I got my VIC-20 so many years ago, there were tons of resources to lead you by the hand in writing simple games on it, in lots of cases with source code for you to type in and hack at. The C-64 was even better for this. Anyone got any suggestions for something similar for the modern PC? I think sourceforge might be a little intimidating, but I'd like to have her thinking about how she can program the computer to write software for herself rather than just using existing apps all the time or surfing the web.
Region coding isn't for enforcing resale rules. It is for fighting piracy. Because if it WAS for enforcing reselling rules, that would be price fixing, and it would be illegal.
And this lawsuit is more of the same illegal shit. Sony have no right to prevent Lik-Sang from reselling these. This trademark law argument is so weak. They're not selling knock offs, they're selling legally aquired PSPs with the manufacturing trademark on them.
What I don't understand is why so many dimbulbs on Slashdot stand up to defend the rights of corporations to engage in illegal price fixing.
It will force game/application developers to write windows-only apps instead of cross-platform."
Ummmm... maybe. Then again, care to guess the percentage of a game that's concerned with talking directly to OpenGL or DirectX, as opposed to managing textures, maps, movement, collision-detection, AI, physics, and various other sundry code?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the majority of OpenGL/DirectX type games license a game engine like Quake/Doom, Unreal or Half Life? If you're writing a game engine to license out, supporting as many different platforms as you can gives you a competitive advantage.
Besides, can you really see John Carmack abandoning OpenGL? If he continues with his policy of open sourcing older code, that will mean an open source Doom III engine just waiting to be used and abused.:D
The only difference between an emulator and a virtual machine is that an emulator emulates a real machine and a virtual machine emulates an imaginary one.
The reason the government doesn't want abortion is simple. Our society is past the point of sustainability. As in, already passed. If there were no overpopulated foreign nations to cherry pick for population, societies in North America would inevitably collapse regardless of anything that is done now.
While it may not be solely attributable to the failure of the previous generation to breed, that is sufficient cause regardless of any other factors. Within the next 10-20 years, barring a dramatic shift in immigration levels, over 50% of the population of North America will be either retired or under the age of 18. If you need confirmation, I would suggest discussing it with an insurance agent... they've known for years that this was coming.
The fact of the matter is, this whole "women and men working, fucking for fun, heaping social distain on those who breed, killing their babies and partying like the world is on fire" social experiment will be demonstrated to be an abject failure within the next hundred years. None of which is to imply that I think we need to keep women barefoot and fat-bellied with no rights... but the way we're living now simply isn't going to last.
Oh, and since there doesn't appear to actually be any conversation going on here about the actual TOPIC of the article for me to address my comments to, I'm gonna throw them in here:
My perspective on freedom of information and privacy:
1) Ideal: I have no privacy, and neither does anyone else. I have access to all information about anything and everything and use it to make better decisions, and so does everyone else. People are less likely to be prejudiced against me when they find out about my little eccentricities, because they know damned well that everyone has them.
2) Less than Ideal: I have complete privacy and so does everyone else. No one has any access to information about me that I do not choose to allow them to have. People are highly likely to be prejudiced against me for my eccentricities, as I am highly likely to be prejudiced against them for theirs, but I have the control to protect myself from these consequences because they won't find out unless I allow them to.
3) Worst Case: I have the illusion of privacy and so does everyone else. I do not generally have access to information about other people, and they generally don't have access to information about me, but we still don't have any control over our privacy, because a select few shadowy figures we know nothing about have overwhelming access to information about us all, and have an overwhelming power over us because of it. Because of our collective ignorance, we all judge each other harshly, and because we are human, we all have secrets that would have people pulling out the pitchforks should we be exposed. Therefore, we all live in fear and disconnect ourselves from our fellow man as best we can to minimize our exposure to this risk.
I don't value my privacy at all, quite frankly. If there was a referendum tomorrow asking the question "Would you support legal changes that removed privacy protection and mandated absolute public transparency at all levels including personal, commercial and governmental" I would indeed support it. But that doesn't mean I'm interested in further cementing entrenched power structures by giving them a spotlight into my life while we the teeming masses continue to stumble around in the dark.
Except for the vast bulk of legitimate users it doesn't, because so few of them upgrade their computers at all, let alone enough to trigger any reactivation sequence.
Are you kidding? Legitimate users are the only ones it interferes with. Pirates just use Corporate Edition and don't deal with all that bullshit.
Hell, I know lots of people who own XP because it came with their computer, and they still wipe it and throw a copy of corporate on there because the product activation/windows update bullshit screws up their system from time to time.
The good Kryptonite locks use regular keys and are not the crap circular-key locks you're referring to. Not too many places still carry those locks after all the publicity, but you still see them on a lot of coin-op washers and driers.
You smoke because they told you to, and you listened-- probably because they said you would look cool. Smoking is the ultimate in corporate loyalty.
Dunno what world you come from, but I started because I was young and drunk and they were there and gave me a cool buzz. Unless maybe the corporate masters had undercover agents at the party.
I do. I've written a lot of "plumbing" code and I reuse it for client after client. I stipulate that I retain the right to reuse it and any improvements that are made to it during my job for future work before I sign on, while giving them free right to use it endlessly as they see fit. Then I give it to them for free and just charge for my time. And I teach anyone in their IT department how to use it if they're interested.
End result? They love me, they love my work, the IT department loves me and picks my brain, and they hire me to do way more interesting and powerful things than they otherwise would have. Do I get more money out of them? Short term, no, I'm giving it away. I'm passing up the opportunity to milk them for every dime. But because of this approach, my name is gold with every client I've done work for, I get good references and more work, my portfolio is way more advanced than it otherwise would be, my skills advance faster because I'm challenging myself more, and I become more employable and earn more with each subsequent job I take.
Oh, and my work life is more interesting than it otherwise would be. Dunno about you, but that's worth a lot to me. Given the choice between doing a job in 6 boring months as I reinvent the wheels because they wouldn't pay upfront for the code I wrote long ago or just giving them the code for nothing, doing it in 2 months, earning a bigger hourly rate during those two months than most, learning new skills during all of those 2 months and giving them more than they asked for with the gained time then moving on to another job, I know which I'd choose. I suppose if I found it hard to find new work I might want to milk them for every dime, but I've never had that problem... why do you think that is?
Give them what costs you nothing (existing code) for nothing. Charge more for what costs you (your time). Always be working. They win, you win, everyone wins.
Oh, and as an aside, you're also generating more real wealth in this fashion rather than wasting time. So you're enriching the world and making it a better place. At least, that's my perspective.
In all seriousness, I don't know why folks who wrte computer software for a living like free software. You don't expect free rent, food, clothing, etc. Why should software be free?
When software is a piece of intellectual property, most of the profit of the writing of it goes to the owner.
When software is a bunch of open source code that people share, all of the profit goes to the person hired to write it.
When software is a piece of intellectual property, no one shares it with anyone else, so you end up writing the same damned thing over and over and over again because it's usually cheaper to hire someone to write it yet again than it is to pay for it because you end up paying a ton of people to shuffle paper and line some executive pockets in the process.
When software is a bunch of open source code, you can fasttrack through all the boring shit that's been done a million times by reusing another implementation and stick to the actual interesting creative work.
You can tell what sort of a person you're dealing with by their opinion on the subject. If they think open source is the devil, they're either a useless paper shuffling con-artist, or they have aspirations to become one. If they think it's a good idea, they're a creative person who appreciates process improvements that allow them to be more creative and less of a drone.
You know what, fuck free software. What I'd really like to see is Free Milk. For years and years we've been paying farmers to make less milk so the bottom won't fall out of the market while buying up surplus and selling it to foreign countries for next to nothing so the market here won't be saturated. If milk is so amazingly efficient to produce, and it's so easy to make more than everyone can drink, and we're spending all this tax money anyways, why can't we just subsidise them outright and give it away? If we weren't paying farmers not to make milk in order to put ourselves in a position where we have to pay other people to create less efficient foodstuffs to take milks place so we don't starve, all those people that are wasting their time making all that other stuff could stay home, drink milk and create art and music. Then we wouldn't need to have intellectual property anymore to motivate people who are overly busy for no good reason to create. They'd just do it because it's fun and they've got some free time for a change.
I wonder if they'll tap my phone because I posted this? I have a few red shirts... perhaps I should throw them out, just to be safe.
There are a number of people who think commerce is the major problem with the Internet these days. The Internet is based on Trust. Commerce is about screwing your neighbour so you can be the king of the hill. They go together like shit and cornflakes.
I am a recent graduate of our nation's public secondary educational system.
I can say for a fact that they are not hindering scientific education, in fact it's quite the opposite.
How many other countries educational systems have you participated in?
How much do you know about them?
What makes them different from the US style?
What gives you any qualifications to comment on them?
How is your statement any different from that of a hillbilly who's never left his farm stating that his Mom makes the best pie in the world even though he's never eaten anything baked by anyone else in his life?
Finally, how good can your education have been if you came out the other side of it without enough critical thinking skills to be able to realize that you don't know what you're talking about?
I don't think the problem is that the US is going to finally fall. I mean, that's probably for the best for all involved, including the Americans (long term). Once they stop being able to coast along on the backs of everyone else like they've been doing for the last hundred years or so, they'll have to restructure their society and act like adults instead of spoiled children.
The real problem is, how are we going to deal with that painful transition period where the US economy is in the shitter, the Fundies are running the show, and they have all the worlds nukes and a zealots belief in their "manifest destiny"?
They're not a part of the free market. They're a regional telecommunications monopoly. And we've never had a free market in telecommunications. Ever. Government run monopoly to privatised monopoly to multiple regional monopolies. Nothing in telecommunicaions has risen out of the free market. Finally, they're providing internet access to paying customers on contract. They don't have fuck all right to censor the experience without having an existing agreement with their customers that permits them to do so.
But then, you know all this already... you're just flamebaiting. Why don't you fuckoffdot.
Slashdot Mirror
I make web applications for a living, and to duplicate what these guys can do with Word is far from trivial. Why? Because using a tool like Word gets them functionality for free that is a lot of work to code.
Well, you must not be very good at it then. I make web applications for a living too, and I could do this stuff in my sleep.
rich text - a word processor has a ton of features for rich text, including bold, italics, and lists like this one
This is not an advertising piece, it's a technical form. There is no need for any of this crap. Police documents and reports should not be formatted willy-nilly, they should be standardized and easily machine readable. Giving these capacities to police departments is simply a bad idea.
images - a picture's worth a thousand words
Are you seriously trying to tell me that you can't put images into a web application?
change history - knowing who did what is hugely helpful, and a lot of work to code
If you're using forms and a database, this is beyond trivial. I throw it into every web app I build because it takes so little effort that it's worth it just in case.
document transfer - if somebody needs to share a document, give control to somebody else, save a copy for reference, or just show it to somebody, that's easy with a document: you can email it, put it on a floppy, CD, or USB key, or put in on a network drive
Yes, you're right. The internet really isn't a very good infrastructure for document transfer. I can't believe you actually put this on your little list.
printing - any word processor gives you great control over printed output; web sites need to render everything to PDFs for that and making a web interface for controlling all that would be a bitch
Or, of course, you could use a combination of a modern browser, X(HT)ML, XSL and CSS. The 90's are over, get with the times.
widely understood - people learn how to use Word in high school now, not for whatever custom interface you build in a browser
I know, it's very challenging to use an application that is custom tailored to your problem domain, especially when you use it on a daily basis to earn your living. And we all know that only PHDs get training in using browsers and web forms.
richer UI - web apps are making some progress, but GUI apps can still have a much better user experience
If you were talking about a fat client application, you might have a point. But you're defending Word. It might be a rich UI if you're a copy editor for a magazine, but if you're a cop knocking off some reports, it's a barebones UI where you need to do all the labourous formatting yourself and full of extraneous crap that is irrelevant to what you're using it for.
And as I pointed out in another post, modifying the web app requires a real programmer, whereas any secretary can futz with forms in MS Word or change the mail merge.
Well, if you're the sort of hack whose work I'm always fixing, that's true. If, on the other hand, you've actually put in an administrative interface and used suitable abstractions, they should be able to update the thing in every fashion they are likely to need with hand-holding included.
I love web apps, but using your psychic powers to say that people you've never seen doing work you don't know about can get along fine with a trivial web app is just asinine.
My father is currently a police officer, and I'm a professional internet application developer. I didn't need to use my psychic powers for this one. Besides, using them tires me out, so I try to save them for extracting useful information from upper-management types, as that is where they are most needed.
Thank you for your little arguments. They were mildly entertaining. Do you have any more?
Well, I work IT in a law enforcement agency, and so I can speak to that. The parent is right, you don't know what the Hell you're talking about.
Police use Word to fill in reports, forms, etc. that could definitely not be formatted using Wordpad. They also have to save that form data, which could not be done with a web form or Acrobat Reader.
This would be trivial to do with a web based application.
They also use Word to interact with Excel and Access databases. When you're sending out a notification letter to 180 victims in a given county, you better believe it's a helluva lot easier to use Word's mail merge than typing each name individually in Wordpad.
This would not only be trivial to do with a web application, it would be better suited as a web application.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Trust me, the police not only use Word, but a whole bunch of other software as well. And you should be glad they do.
Trust me, I'm a carpenter, and you definatly need wood, hammer and nails to fix this problem.
should sensitive and/or personally identifiable information be available online if the indivdual doesnt want it to be? should i be able to 'opt out of' or perferably 'opt into' google's (etc.) indexes?
No. You should not be able to keep me in ignorance of publicly available information because it happens to relate to you. You do not have that right. If you want something to be a secret, don't tell anyone. That's pretty cut and dried.
That guy from google is a fucking idiot. Public information is public information, he deals in public information and makes a ton of fucking money doing it, and the information that he finds so objectionable was retrieved using the service that his company supplies.
The fact that he shows no qualms in using the power of his newfound corporation for his own personal agenda just makes his already untrustworthy company that much less so.
His company makes no secret of the fact that they're going FAR beyond the 'invasion of privacy' that CNET supposedly committed against him, and unlike the reporter, they're actually collecting this information so they can use it to manipulate us.
Quite frankly, I think someone needs to give that man a swift shot in the head.
Clearwater foods has a multilingual, multicurrency website that interacts with the warehouse and various shipping companies via XML which was built in .NET, I know because I built it.
Why did I use .NET? Because they decided it was a good buzzword. Because it was good? Um... no. .NET web apps are quick and easy to create. So are Frontpage web apps. Nuff said.
I think should give them access to a computer as early as you can. I started programming at the age of six, and getting a computer that young really shaped my whole life. If not for having it, I might never have gone into computer programming and been such a success.
:P
My four year old daughter has been interested in playing with my computer since she was two, and I'm building her her own desktop computer now before she starts school. I'll get her a laptop just as soon as the durability, responsibility and financial capability curves intersect.
Here's a question: When I got my VIC-20 so many years ago, there were tons of resources to lead you by the hand in writing simple games on it, in lots of cases with source code for you to type in and hack at. The C-64 was even better for this. Anyone got any suggestions for something similar for the modern PC? I think sourceforge might be a little intimidating, but I'd like to have her thinking about how she can program the computer to write software for herself rather than just using existing apps all the time or surfing the web.
That was sarcasm tags, btw
It doesn't. That's how they sold it past the regulators when by rights it ought to land them in jail. I just forgot my tags.
Region coding isn't for enforcing resale rules. It is for fighting piracy. Because if it WAS for enforcing reselling rules, that would be price fixing, and it would be illegal.
And this lawsuit is more of the same illegal shit. Sony have no right to prevent Lik-Sang from reselling these. This trademark law argument is so weak. They're not selling knock offs, they're selling legally aquired PSPs with the manufacturing trademark on them.
What I don't understand is why so many dimbulbs on Slashdot stand up to defend the rights of corporations to engage in illegal price fixing.
It will force game/application developers to write windows-only apps instead of cross-platform."
:D
Ummmm... maybe. Then again, care to guess the percentage of a game that's concerned with talking directly to OpenGL or DirectX, as opposed to managing textures, maps, movement, collision-detection, AI, physics, and various other sundry code?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the majority of OpenGL/DirectX type games license a game engine like Quake/Doom, Unreal or Half Life? If you're writing a game engine to license out, supporting as many different platforms as you can gives you a competitive advantage.
Besides, can you really see John Carmack abandoning OpenGL? If he continues with his policy of open sourcing older code, that will mean an open source Doom III engine just waiting to be used and abused.
The only difference between an emulator and a virtual machine is that an emulator emulates a real machine and a virtual machine emulates an imaginary one.
The reason the government doesn't want abortion is simple. Our society is past the point of sustainability. As in, already passed. If there were no overpopulated foreign nations to cherry pick for population, societies in North America would inevitably collapse regardless of anything that is done now.
While it may not be solely attributable to the failure of the previous generation to breed, that is sufficient cause regardless of any other factors. Within the next 10-20 years, barring a dramatic shift in immigration levels, over 50% of the population of North America will be either retired or under the age of 18. If you need confirmation, I would suggest discussing it with an insurance agent... they've known for years that this was coming.
The fact of the matter is, this whole "women and men working, fucking for fun, heaping social distain on those who breed, killing their babies and partying like the world is on fire" social experiment will be demonstrated to be an abject failure within the next hundred years. None of which is to imply that I think we need to keep women barefoot and fat-bellied with no rights... but the way we're living now simply isn't going to last.
Oh, and since there doesn't appear to actually be any conversation going on here about the actual TOPIC of the article for me to address my comments to, I'm gonna throw them in here:
My perspective on freedom of information and privacy:
1) Ideal: I have no privacy, and neither does anyone else. I have access to all information about anything and everything and use it to make better decisions, and so does everyone else. People are less likely to be prejudiced against me when they find out about my little eccentricities, because they know damned well that everyone has them.
2) Less than Ideal: I have complete privacy and so does everyone else. No one has any access to information about me that I do not choose to allow them to have. People are highly likely to be prejudiced against me for my eccentricities, as I am highly likely to be prejudiced against them for theirs, but I have the control to protect myself from these consequences because they won't find out unless I allow them to.
3) Worst Case: I have the illusion of privacy and so does everyone else. I do not generally have access to information about other people, and they generally don't have access to information about me, but we still don't have any control over our privacy, because a select few shadowy figures we know nothing about have overwhelming access to information about us all, and have an overwhelming power over us because of it. Because of our collective ignorance, we all judge each other harshly, and because we are human, we all have secrets that would have people pulling out the pitchforks should we be exposed. Therefore, we all live in fear and disconnect ourselves from our fellow man as best we can to minimize our exposure to this risk.
I don't value my privacy at all, quite frankly. If there was a referendum tomorrow asking the question "Would you support legal changes that removed privacy protection and mandated absolute public transparency at all levels including personal, commercial and governmental" I would indeed support it. But that doesn't mean I'm interested in further cementing entrenched power structures by giving them a spotlight into my life while we the teeming masses continue to stumble around in the dark.
Except for the vast bulk of legitimate users it doesn't, because so few of them upgrade their computers at all, let alone enough to trigger any reactivation sequence.
Are you kidding? Legitimate users are the only ones it interferes with. Pirates just use Corporate Edition and don't deal with all that bullshit.
Hell, I know lots of people who own XP because it came with their computer, and they still wipe it and throw a copy of corporate on there because the product activation/windows update bullshit screws up their system from time to time.
No self-respecting developer would compile a Mac app that would run only with the help of an emulator.
This just in... Java developers have no self respect.
The good Kryptonite locks use regular keys and are not the crap circular-key locks you're referring to. Not too many places still carry those locks after all the publicity, but you still see them on a lot of coin-op washers and driers.
And yeah, the pen trick works on them.
Well, you started it by occupying it.
:D
The natives in Canada say that sometimes too... but look what happened in the end.
You smoke because they told you to, and you listened-- probably because they said you would look cool. Smoking is the ultimate in corporate loyalty.
Dunno what world you come from, but I started because I was young and drunk and they were there and gave me a cool buzz. Unless maybe the corporate masters had undercover agents at the party.
Thanks for the propaganda.
I do. I've written a lot of "plumbing" code and I reuse it for client after client. I stipulate that I retain the right to reuse it and any improvements that are made to it during my job for future work before I sign on, while giving them free right to use it endlessly as they see fit. Then I give it to them for free and just charge for my time. And I teach anyone in their IT department how to use it if they're interested.
End result? They love me, they love my work, the IT department loves me and picks my brain, and they hire me to do way more interesting and powerful things than they otherwise would have. Do I get more money out of them? Short term, no, I'm giving it away. I'm passing up the opportunity to milk them for every dime. But because of this approach, my name is gold with every client I've done work for, I get good references and more work, my portfolio is way more advanced than it otherwise would be, my skills advance faster because I'm challenging myself more, and I become more employable and earn more with each subsequent job I take.
Oh, and my work life is more interesting than it otherwise would be. Dunno about you, but that's worth a lot to me. Given the choice between doing a job in 6 boring months as I reinvent the wheels because they wouldn't pay upfront for the code I wrote long ago or just giving them the code for nothing, doing it in 2 months, earning a bigger hourly rate during those two months than most, learning new skills during all of those 2 months and giving them more than they asked for with the gained time then moving on to another job, I know which I'd choose. I suppose if I found it hard to find new work I might want to milk them for every dime, but I've never had that problem... why do you think that is?
Give them what costs you nothing (existing code) for nothing. Charge more for what costs you (your time). Always be working. They win, you win, everyone wins.
Oh, and as an aside, you're also generating more real wealth in this fashion rather than wasting time. So you're enriching the world and making it a better place. At least, that's my perspective.
In all seriousness, I don't know why folks who wrte computer software for a living like free software. You don't expect free rent, food, clothing, etc. Why should software be free?
When software is a piece of intellectual property, most of the profit of the writing of it goes to the owner.
When software is a bunch of open source code that people share, all of the profit goes to the person hired to write it.
When software is a piece of intellectual property, no one shares it with anyone else, so you end up writing the same damned thing over and over and over again because it's usually cheaper to hire someone to write it yet again than it is to pay for it because you end up paying a ton of people to shuffle paper and line some executive pockets in the process.
When software is a bunch of open source code, you can fasttrack through all the boring shit that's been done a million times by reusing another implementation and stick to the actual interesting creative work.
You can tell what sort of a person you're dealing with by their opinion on the subject. If they think open source is the devil, they're either a useless paper shuffling con-artist, or they have aspirations to become one. If they think it's a good idea, they're a creative person who appreciates process improvements that allow them to be more creative and less of a drone.
You know what, fuck free software. What I'd really like to see is Free Milk. For years and years we've been paying farmers to make less milk so the bottom won't fall out of the market while buying up surplus and selling it to foreign countries for next to nothing so the market here won't be saturated. If milk is so amazingly efficient to produce, and it's so easy to make more than everyone can drink, and we're spending all this tax money anyways, why can't we just subsidise them outright and give it away? If we weren't paying farmers not to make milk in order to put ourselves in a position where we have to pay other people to create less efficient foodstuffs to take milks place so we don't starve, all those people that are wasting their time making all that other stuff could stay home, drink milk and create art and music. Then we wouldn't need to have intellectual property anymore to motivate people who are overly busy for no good reason to create. They'd just do it because it's fun and they've got some free time for a change.
I wonder if they'll tap my phone because I posted this? I have a few red shirts... perhaps I should throw them out, just to be safe.
You don't expect free rent and free food do you?
There are a number of people who think commerce is the major problem with the Internet these days. The Internet is based on Trust. Commerce is about screwing your neighbour so you can be the king of the hill. They go together like shit and cornflakes.
I am a recent graduate of our nation's public secondary educational system.
I can say for a fact that they are not hindering scientific education, in fact it's quite the opposite.
How many other countries educational systems have you participated in?
How much do you know about them?
What makes them different from the US style?
What gives you any qualifications to comment on them?
How is your statement any different from that of a hillbilly who's never left his farm stating that his Mom makes the best pie in the world even though he's never eaten anything baked by anyone else in his life?
Finally, how good can your education have been if you came out the other side of it without enough critical thinking skills to be able to realize that you don't know what you're talking about?
I don't think the problem is that the US is going to finally fall. I mean, that's probably for the best for all involved, including the Americans (long term). Once they stop being able to coast along on the backs of everyone else like they've been doing for the last hundred years or so, they'll have to restructure their society and act like adults instead of spoiled children.
The real problem is, how are we going to deal with that painful transition period where the US economy is in the shitter, the Fundies are running the show, and they have all the worlds nukes and a zealots belief in their "manifest destiny"?
Now THAT scares the shit out of me.
Did you know, in Canada, we don't have ANY sports scholarships at universities? Consider that for a moment.
Um... yes we do.
They're not a part of the free market. They're a regional telecommunications monopoly. And we've never had a free market in telecommunications. Ever. Government run monopoly to privatised monopoly to multiple regional monopolies. Nothing in telecommunicaions has risen out of the free market. Finally, they're providing internet access to paying customers on contract. They don't have fuck all right to censor the experience without having an existing agreement with their customers that permits them to do so.
But then, you know all this already... you're just flamebaiting. Why don't you fuckoffdot.
News for Nerds
Wow, you ain't fuckin kidding, are ya?