The fact of the matter is that, within a pretty broad spectrum of reason, what technology you use is not the deciding factor of how successful and maintainable your app is going to be. The day someone does come out with a miracle technology that REALLY improves a project's chances of success, we'll all know about it pretty darn quick because everybody will flock to it overnight - and i mean actual people, not magazine articles or Oreilly books.
You're right! Visual Basic and Access are all any developer should ever need!
MySQL is popular because it is known and because every $20 a month web hosting service supports it. Period. It's not any easier than other databases... the fact that MySQL supports a limited subset of SQL and only allows you to use the basics doesn't mean that more powerful databases don't also let you use the basics.
At least they finally added support for subqueries. That was always the nail in their coffin as far as I was concerned.
My school went out of business right after I graduated with my rinky-dink 9 month diploma. Didn't stop me from using this technique and developing for huge companies like HP Asia, Mazda Australia and Telstra.
Insurance doesn't have much in common with socialism... socialism is about ensuring that all members of society get the basics that they need. Insurance is about identifying those that are more likely to need help and ensuring that they don't get any, while charging those that are unlikely to need help as much as they possibly can for the promise that they will.
Here in Nova Scotia, Canada, we had a problem with car insurance. The companies providing insurance were charging so much money that a great many people simply couldn't drive, young people couldn't drive, people who had had an accident couldn't drive (regardless of fault... see no-fault insurance, another rip off scam).
We dealt with it here by putting a law into effect stating that you're not allowed to use any demographic information, payment history, or accidents where you were not at fault. Basically, we all get group coverage. Not a bad answer.
I would say, as I have before, that the best way for a society to fight the gouging of multinational corps in the current environment is socialism. But not socialism where the government provides the services, one where they negotiate deals with companies and pay for it out of tax dollars.
One of the foundations that make capitalism workable is negotiation, but you can't negotiate as an individual with the huge behemoths of corporations that exist now. Have a city/state/province/country do your negotiation for you, and everyone gets cheaper prices. It doesn't have the inherent lack of motivation to be efficient that communism does, because those providing the services are still driven by profit, but it tempers the monopolistic price gouging by giving the negotiators massive buying power. This also allows the society to specify the quality of service that they require and prevent the situation where quality service simply doesn't exist because it's deemed too expensive.
As long as you have a transparent process to prevent corruption, you're looking at a winning ticket.
Do you really want your government running any kind of telecom infrastructure? I mean, I am all for "services for the people" and all that jazz but on the other side, I am also for smaller government.
WiFi *could* be used as just one more reason to take more of my hard earned money. This bill assures that won't happen.
I have never seen a candidate without a degree of some kind. Dunno if HR is just tossing out resumes without degrees, or people without degrees just don't bother applying.
If you've interviewed many candidates and haven't seen one without a degree, there's about a snowballs chance in hell that they're not tossing out resumes without degrees. Particularly at a Fortune 100 company.
The bigger the company, the more likely they are to chuck out resumes from ppl that don't have degrees.
The best way to get around this idiotic mentality? Start a business and do contract work. Never met a business with a degree before, and with good experience under your belt, you can be doing important work for huge companies making ridiculous amounts more money that some cubicle bound slave with a degree punching a timeclock.
Guerilla warfare is like agile forces using the enemys tools against them and attacking their infrastructure.... kind of like using enemy planes to attack the enemies key economic centers, political centers, and command centers.
Personally, I find it really annoying when the news describes the events of Sept 11 2001 as terrorism. I mean, they weren't blowing up shopping malls and amusement parks for kicks. War is terrible, be you an American in the WTC or an Iraqi in Iraq.
If the tanks ever came rolling across Canadas southern border blowing things up, I'd probably be doing the same damn thing. As it is, I'm just glad our politicians have kept us out of it for the most part, cause it's not our fight.
Those attacked call them terrorists, those attacking call themselves freedom fighters, I just call them guerillia warriors and leave the morality of their cause for the historians.
And Sun doesn't get it completely. I applaud them for everything they have done, but if 'realists' look at whats going on, it seems to me that SUN is in bed with MS and will attempt to push Linux into obscurity if not out-right kill it if it can.
And the Linux community isn't trying to do the same to BSD?
I for one am glad that they don't open the possibility of a fork for Java. It would be a stupid move. Just look at all the bullshit that went down with Microsoft, their attempts to do so, and the resultant chilling effect that had on Java on the desktop.
If I was an American (god forbid) and Sun WAS to open source Java after spending all that time in court with Microsoft regarding their aforementioned forking, I'd say the appropriate thing to do would be to chase them down with pitchforks and torches for wasting so much taxpayer money.
The amount of crap this guy has to put up with is more than anyone's fair share! He does a great job of being the benevolant dictator in a difficult product.
I don't get it... I thought Asterix was all about overthrowing dictators
what is needed is to put down the spears and drums and to engage in thoughtful debate so that reasonable legislation will result. give up the NO PATENT position and try to reach the compromise that is inevitable and that best serves everyone's interests.
Or perhaps they are trying to get the BIG companies to realise that this is going to cost them a fortune in the long run... companies whose bread and butter is NOT software, like parmacutical companies, automotive companies, large retail chains, oil and gas, etc. Infotech companies are small fry compared to other industries, and THESE are the ones that must be convinced. If the oil industry were to determine that this bullshit would hurt their bottom line, they could squash all the infotech companies combined like a bug.
It doesn't really matter how the law serves the software industry, be it microsoft or redhat. What matters is how it serves everyone else that makes use of that software. Patents aren't about helping anyone make money, they're about motivating ppl to reveal trade secrets and giving everyone better stuff. If the system bounds things so badly that there's no collective economic gain in having these secrets revealed in the patent framework, we're better off having ppl hide their code if they so choose, and leaving us the ability to recreate from scratch.
Personally, I think patents WERE good in their time, when there were fewer ppl doing work and much less communication and cooperation. We've now reached a point where there are so many educated ppl on the planet, communicating and cooperating like mad, that revealing these secrets is less important because we have the manpower to recreate them if we have to. We're not trying to get the alchemists to reveal their secrets to the unwashed peasants anymore...
Even if it is true true that socalist enconomies are more efficent when dealing with monopolistic corporations (and I would dispute that), the fact that their muiltinational has nothing to do with the effectiveness of socialism vs. capitalism. In a free market, a U.S. company can price gouge you just as easily as one from China. But of course that's a good thing, because it also means that the Chineese company can undercut the U.S. company if it's prices start to get out of line.
Or were you just using the term 'multinational' as a cheap way to appeal to the hard-core lefties in the audience?
Either way, history has already shown the inherient flaw in socialism: Whenever economic decision making is centralized in the name of "efficiency" the decisions that are made eventually wind up benefiting those in power the most. Find out who's getting the contract to wire the city and I'm sure you'll find it holds true in this case. Power corrupts...be that power economic or military the result is the same.
To answer your first point, the ones that get the buying power are the ones that participate in the economy. Obviously those that are not living in SF are not going to benifit.
And to answer to your second point, the significance of the fact that the corps are multinational is that no individual governments decision regarding which service provider to go with will result in the others going out of business. If you were to restrict bidding to local businesses in this instance, the moment the first contract went out, there would really only be one supplier remaining and therefore there would no longer be multiple businesses competing for the renewal. Then the whole city ends up at the mercy of the suppliers wishes, not really an ideal result if you live there.
I'd say that the approach I suggested allows the efficiencies that a local monopoly brings via reduction in redundancy, the efficiencies that capitalism brings via the profit motive, and massive volume pricing to everyone in the the city.
Oh, and corruption exists in every political and economic system in the world. The solution isn't a different system, it's a population that insists on transparent processes. Based on recent history, I wouldn't suggest anyone that lives in America should be casting disparaging remarks about the corruption of other ppls economic systems if they wish to be taken seriously:P
Ah socialism, take from the upper middle class and give to the lower middle class
When you're dealing with multinational corps for services, socialism lets you get maximum buying power and save money.
I'd say the ideal approach would be to have the city own the infrastructure and contract out the services, then make infrastructure maintenance and improvements a condition of the next round of contracts. That would ensure that the city maintains the ability to easily change companies and prevent them from ever being held over a barrel by their supplier.
Everyone multitasks nowadays anyway... most everyone has a firewall, a virus scanner and an instant messanger system and/or email program running on their desktop at all times, no? Laptop users usually have several applets running on top of these as well.
Beyond those basics, most ppl I know that use a computer have a great deal more running in the background.
The idea that "Joe Average" doesn't multitask might have been true at one point, but it isn't anymore.
For example, a public foundation dedicated to holding patents in the public interest. Anyone with an idea could submit it to them; they would then obtain a patent on it, and license it freely to the public, with the exception of companies who use their patent portfolios offensively.
That wouldn't work, because you can be forced to license your patents out at a reasonable price in court. I can't see a court allowing you to kill a successful rich commercial field of endeavour with your patents in such a way... they'd require them to take it money for use.
Really, if I as company X spend some time customizing an application to by business, what harm does it do to release the code? None, other than it may save someone else time and money in the long run.
It does you harm if you don't release your changes, because you're forking and cutting yourself off from the ongoing pool of development when you do. Better to see your changes included in the next version than have to port or rewrite them.
... IBM could write a formal legal license for open source software to use patented methods in perpetuity, mitigating the risk that IBM (or anyone who asserted a right to that specific patent) would bring suit against users, developers, and distributors.
This seems to be the best outcome, but only time will tell if open-source-friendly companies will lay down legal weapons in this way.
It would appear to me that the fewer the number of players there are in the "essential and unavoidable patents" pool, the greater the risk that a company or group of companies could unite and "take over" linux development, at least to the point of having veto power over projects, distributors, etc without there being other powerful players involved to interfere via their own patent portfolios
If only "Microsoft and friends" (for example) could bring the show crashing down in the patent arena, Linux would be a valuable prize. If IBM remains involved, isn't "and friends" and can bring the show crashing down too, Linux would remain a threat to be feared and not a prize to be taken.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact of the matter is that, within a pretty broad spectrum of reason, what technology you use is not the deciding factor of how successful and maintainable your app is going to be. The day someone does come out with a miracle technology that REALLY improves a project's chances of success, we'll all know about it pretty darn quick because everybody will flock to it overnight - and i mean actual people, not magazine articles or Oreilly books.
You're right! Visual Basic and Access are all any developer should ever need!
MySQL is popular because it is known and because every $20 a month web hosting service supports it. Period. It's not any easier than other databases... the fact that MySQL supports a limited subset of SQL and only allows you to use the basics doesn't mean that more powerful databases don't also let you use the basics.
At least they finally added support for subqueries. That was always the nail in their coffin as far as I was concerned.
My school went out of business right after I graduated with my rinky-dink 9 month diploma. Didn't stop me from using this technique and developing for huge companies like HP Asia, Mazda Australia and Telstra.
I suspect that you might, perhaps, be wrong.
Insurance doesn't have much in common with socialism... socialism is about ensuring that all members of society get the basics that they need. Insurance is about identifying those that are more likely to need help and ensuring that they don't get any, while charging those that are unlikely to need help as much as they possibly can for the promise that they will.
Here in Nova Scotia, Canada, we had a problem with car insurance. The companies providing insurance were charging so much money that a great many people simply couldn't drive, young people couldn't drive, people who had had an accident couldn't drive (regardless of fault... see no-fault insurance, another rip off scam).
We dealt with it here by putting a law into effect stating that you're not allowed to use any demographic information, payment history, or accidents where you were not at fault. Basically, we all get group coverage. Not a bad answer.
I would say, as I have before, that the best way for a society to fight the gouging of multinational corps in the current environment is socialism. But not socialism where the government provides the services, one where they negotiate deals with companies and pay for it out of tax dollars.
One of the foundations that make capitalism workable is negotiation, but you can't negotiate as an individual with the huge behemoths of corporations that exist now. Have a city/state/province/country do your negotiation for you, and everyone gets cheaper prices. It doesn't have the inherent lack of motivation to be efficient that communism does, because those providing the services are still driven by profit, but it tempers the monopolistic price gouging by giving the negotiators massive buying power. This also allows the society to specify the quality of service that they require and prevent the situation where quality service simply doesn't exist because it's deemed too expensive.
As long as you have a transparent process to prevent corruption, you're looking at a winning ticket.
Do you really want your government running any kind of telecom infrastructure? I mean, I am all for "services for the people" and all that jazz but on the other side, I am also for smaller government.
WiFi *could* be used as just one more reason to take more of my hard earned money. This bill assures that won't happen.
See my previous post for an intelligent solution to this problem.
I have never seen a candidate without a degree of some kind. Dunno if HR is just tossing out resumes without degrees, or people without degrees just don't bother applying.
If you've interviewed many candidates and haven't seen one without a degree, there's about a snowballs chance in hell that they're not tossing out resumes without degrees. Particularly at a Fortune 100 company.
The bigger the company, the more likely they are to chuck out resumes from ppl that don't have degrees.
The best way to get around this idiotic mentality? Start a business and do contract work. Never met a business with a degree before, and with good experience under your belt, you can be doing important work for huge companies making ridiculous amounts more money that some cubicle bound slave with a degree punching a timeclock.
Not so much for the extra money, but for the opportunity to get out of the cave and flirt my ass off.
The next evil empire will not be led by a bunch of tatooed skinheads.
Of course not. Dubya isn't a skinhead!
Guerilla warfare is like agile forces using the enemys tools against them and attacking their infrastructure.... kind of like using enemy planes to attack the enemies key economic centers, political centers, and command centers.
Personally, I find it really annoying when the news describes the events of Sept 11 2001 as terrorism. I mean, they weren't blowing up shopping malls and amusement parks for kicks. War is terrible, be you an American in the WTC or an Iraqi in Iraq.
If the tanks ever came rolling across Canadas southern border blowing things up, I'd probably be doing the same damn thing. As it is, I'm just glad our politicians have kept us out of it for the most part, cause it's not our fight.
Those attacked call them terrorists, those attacking call themselves freedom fighters, I just call them guerillia warriors and leave the morality of their cause for the historians.
And Sun doesn't get it completely. I applaud them for everything they have done, but if 'realists' look at whats going on, it seems to me that SUN is in bed with MS and will attempt to push Linux into obscurity if not out-right kill it if it can.
And the Linux community isn't trying to do the same to BSD?
Glass houses...
I want my monkey man!
Ok tweeter...
I for one am glad that they don't open the possibility of a fork for Java. It would be a stupid move. Just look at all the bullshit that went down with Microsoft, their attempts to do so, and the resultant chilling effect that had on Java on the desktop.
If I was an American (god forbid) and Sun WAS to open source Java after spending all that time in court with Microsoft regarding their aforementioned forking, I'd say the appropriate thing to do would be to chase them down with pitchforks and torches for wasting so much taxpayer money.
The amount of crap this guy has to put up with is more than anyone's fair share! He does a great job of being the benevolant dictator in a difficult product.
I don't get it... I thought Asterix was all about overthrowing dictators
Guess they didn't read my sig
torvalds et al, despite their god like status on slashdot, are simply no counterweight to the European companies supporting the directive:
Accenture, Agilent, Alcatel, Apple, Bang&Olufsen, Blaupunkt, Bull, Canon, Corning, Dell, EADS, Epson, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Grundig, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Infineon, Intel, JVC, Kenwood, Konica-Minolta, Lexmark, LG Electronics, Loewe Opta, Lucent, Marconi, Matsushita, Microsoft, Motorola, NEC, NEC-Mitsubishi, Nokia, Nortel, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sanyo, SAP, Sharp, Siemens, Sony, Texas Instruments, Thales, Thomson, Toshiba.
and the National Trade Associations:
Austria: FEEI; Belgium: AGORIA; Czech Republic: SPIS; Denmark: ITEK, ITB; Finland: SET; France: ALLIANCE TICS, SIMAVELEC; Germany: BITKOM, ZVEI; Greece: SEPE; Hungary: IVSZ; Italy: ANIE, ASSINFORM; Ireland: ICT Ireland; Latvia: LITTA; Lithuania: INFOBALT; Malta: ITTS; Netherlands: Nederland-ICT; Norway: ABELIA, IKT Norge; Poland: KIGEIT, PIIT; Slovakia: ITAS; Slovenia: GZS; Spain: AETIC; Sweden: IT Företagen; Switzerland: SWICO, SWISSMEM; United Kingdom: INTELLECT; Turkey: ECID, TESID
http://www.patents4innovation.org/
what is needed is to put down the spears and drums and to engage in thoughtful debate so that reasonable legislation will result. give up the NO PATENT position and try to reach the compromise that is inevitable and that best serves everyone's interests.
Or perhaps they are trying to get the BIG companies to realise that this is going to cost them a fortune in the long run... companies whose bread and butter is NOT software, like parmacutical companies, automotive companies, large retail chains, oil and gas, etc. Infotech companies are small fry compared to other industries, and THESE are the ones that must be convinced. If the oil industry were to determine that this bullshit would hurt their bottom line, they could squash all the infotech companies combined like a bug.
It doesn't really matter how the law serves the software industry, be it microsoft or redhat. What matters is how it serves everyone else that makes use of that software. Patents aren't about helping anyone make money, they're about motivating ppl to reveal trade secrets and giving everyone better stuff. If the system bounds things so badly that there's no collective economic gain in having these secrets revealed in the patent framework, we're better off having ppl hide their code if they so choose, and leaving us the ability to recreate from scratch.
Personally, I think patents WERE good in their time, when there were fewer ppl doing work and much less communication and cooperation. We've now reached a point where there are so many educated ppl on the planet, communicating and cooperating like mad, that revealing these secrets is less important because we have the manpower to recreate them if we have to. We're not trying to get the alchemists to reveal their secrets to the unwashed peasants anymore...
This will cost them a fortune! Don't those things cost hundreds of dollars a piece?
Lets who get maximum buying power?
:P
Even if it is true true that socalist enconomies are more efficent when dealing with monopolistic corporations (and I would dispute that), the fact that their muiltinational has nothing to do with the effectiveness of socialism vs. capitalism. In a free market, a U.S. company can price gouge you just as easily as one from China. But of course that's a good thing, because it also means that the Chineese company can undercut the U.S. company if it's prices start to get out of line.
Or were you just using the term 'multinational' as a cheap way to appeal to the hard-core lefties in the audience?
Either way, history has already shown the inherient flaw in socialism: Whenever economic decision making is centralized in the name of "efficiency" the decisions that are made eventually wind up benefiting those in power the most. Find out who's getting the contract to wire the city and I'm sure you'll find it holds true in this case. Power corrupts...be that power economic or military the result is the same.
To answer your first point, the ones that get the buying power are the ones that participate in the economy. Obviously those that are not living in SF are not going to benifit.
And to answer to your second point, the significance of the fact that the corps are multinational is that no individual governments decision regarding which service provider to go with will result in the others going out of business. If you were to restrict bidding to local businesses in this instance, the moment the first contract went out, there would really only be one supplier remaining and therefore there would no longer be multiple businesses competing for the renewal. Then the whole city ends up at the mercy of the suppliers wishes, not really an ideal result if you live there.
I'd say that the approach I suggested allows the efficiencies that a local monopoly brings via reduction in redundancy, the efficiencies that capitalism brings via the profit motive, and massive volume pricing to everyone in the the city.
Oh, and corruption exists in every political and economic system in the world. The solution isn't a different system, it's a population that insists on transparent processes. Based on recent history, I wouldn't suggest anyone that lives in America should be casting disparaging remarks about the corruption of other ppls economic systems if they wish to be taken seriously
Ah socialism, take from the upper middle class and give to the lower middle class
When you're dealing with multinational corps for services, socialism lets you get maximum buying power and save money.
I'd say the ideal approach would be to have the city own the infrastructure and contract out the services, then make infrastructure maintenance and improvements a condition of the next round of contracts. That would ensure that the city maintains the ability to easily change companies and prevent them from ever being held over a barrel by their supplier.
Everyone multitasks nowadays anyway... most everyone has a firewall, a virus scanner and an instant messanger system and/or email program running on their desktop at all times, no? Laptop users usually have several applets running on top of these as well.
Beyond those basics, most ppl I know that use a computer have a great deal more running in the background.
The idea that "Joe Average" doesn't multitask might have been true at one point, but it isn't anymore.
Evolution is about being *good enough*, not the best.
Agreed, and and to further narrow it down, it's being *good enough* at only 1 thing: reproduction.
Unfortunately, this doesn't usually have a lot to do with intelligence.
So you're saying all six billion of us can stop applying our intellects to our problems, go back to hunting and fucking, and we'll be all right?
Cool!
For example, a public foundation dedicated to holding patents in the public interest. Anyone with an idea could submit it to them; they would then obtain a patent on it, and license it freely to the public, with the exception of companies who use their patent portfolios offensively.
That wouldn't work, because you can be forced to license your patents out at a reasonable price in court. I can't see a court allowing you to kill a successful rich commercial field of endeavour with your patents in such a way... they'd require them to take it money for use.
Love to be proven wrong, mind...
Really, if I as company X spend some time customizing an application to by business, what harm does it do to release the code? None, other than it may save someone else time and money in the long run.
It does you harm if you don't release your changes, because you're forking and cutting yourself off from the ongoing pool of development when you do. Better to see your changes included in the next version than have to port or rewrite them.
Seriously, why can't these people work this out once and for all so that we don't have to buy DVD drives that support seven hundred formats?
What's wrong with drives that support seven hundred formats? We made it through the CD era just fine...
... IBM could write a formal legal license for open source software to use patented methods in perpetuity, mitigating the risk that IBM (or anyone who asserted a right to that specific patent) would bring suit against users, developers, and distributors.
This seems to be the best outcome, but only time will tell if open-source-friendly companies will lay down legal weapons in this way.
It would appear to me that the fewer the number of players there are in the "essential and unavoidable patents" pool, the greater the risk that a company or group of companies could unite and "take over" linux development, at least to the point of having veto power over projects, distributors, etc without there being other powerful players involved to interfere via their own patent portfolios
If only "Microsoft and friends" (for example) could bring the show crashing down in the patent arena, Linux would be a valuable prize. If IBM remains involved, isn't "and friends" and can bring the show crashing down too, Linux would remain a threat to be feared and not a prize to be taken.