>The best solution would be not to mandate any standard. Let's leave it to Adam Smith's invisible hand.
Using Adam's idea of an invisible hand as an argument in any single case flawed.
First of all, it is (just) a model ("All models are wrong. Some models are useful." - George Box), and he's observation was for the total effect of all individuals. He did not (as you make it seem) proclaim that it was the case for all individual cases. In fact, the benefit for a single individual is in many cases a disadvantage for the society. See
The Tragedy of the Commons
or
here
for details.
Competition between companies can be hard; being best is very difficult. So most companies try avoid competing
on being best and instead go for alternative strategies like hindrance of competitors (using patents or
exclusive distribution agreements[1] for instance) or by trying to make the consumers less likely to switch
products (vendor lock-in is very popular[2], some also try to appeal to a loyalty feeling (any product marketed as
"original", "American" (in USA), etc)). Influencing/lobbying/bribing politicians is also very lucrative.
In this case Qualcom trying force their products into Iraq through the politician route, because, as others have pointed out, the "best" product for Iraq would be GSM.
[1]
I really hate Coca Cola for their exclusive distribution agreement with McDonalds.
"You shall only sell Coca Cola products" implicit
means "You shall not sell products competing with Coca Cola" and that
is wrong. I have absolutely no problems with Coca Cola making an agreement "You shall sell Coca Cola products" with
McDonalds. By all means, Coca Cola is then improving their distribution channels and thus making their products "better".
Great. But the "you shall not sell" part I have a problem with. Why should companies be allowed to misuse their enormous power to deny customers to decide if they want to buy a Pepsi in addition to a cheeseburger, ignoring that "the customer is always right"?
In my opinion, exclusive distribution agreements should be illegal with (at least) the same punishment as for
illegal price agreements. I mean, with illegal price agreements you as a customer at least can buy the
product (although to a too high price); with exclusive distribution agreements you cannot even buy it.
[2]
To misquote a slogan used by Ericsson: "It's all about vendor lock-in. The rest is technology." - Me
PS
Speaking of models and Adam Smith, you all have seen the curves with supply and demand, but have you reflected over
under what conditions they are supposed to work (again, this is just a model)? Well the model is based on the assumption of
a perfectly free marked, with an unlimited number of suppliers and demanders. What is happening today with globalization?
The current trend with fewer and bigger companies are creating a less free market.
We use clearcase at work and I love it. Especially the wonderful VFS
integration. Every version of a file is available through adding "@@"
and branch and version. Want to compare version 3 and 5 of the some_branch of an
element? Just run "diff -u myfile.c@@/main/some_branch/3
myfile.c@@/main/some_branch/5".
To sum up, clearcase is very good but very expensive. I have been
searching for a version control system for my private use, and I have not
found anything where branching, merging and labeling is as easy as in clearcase
(if possible at all!).
Granted I have used clearcase for years now and know it quite well. But
many of the other version control system at best provides shadows of what
I want and expect a version control system to do.
The last system i looked into was
monotone
and as far as I can see it only supports merging from the head (LATEST in clearcase). When it cannot merge from an non-head element it is useless for me.
What I really, really, really want to do is the following:
Put the Linux kernel source into version control. The main, "official"
version from Linus I would put on a branch named "linus". Then I would
subbranch this with other branches, for instance "fedora" for the kernel
provided from Fedora,
"planetccrma" for the kernel provided by Planet CCRMA,
and probably some other branches for things like
swsusp.
When checking in a new official kernel I want to attach a label, say
"LINUX_2_6_9". I then want to be able to use this label as a reference
when merging. The swsusp project is fully up to date with regards to
kernel versions, but say that the last patch from then only was for
kernel version 2.6.5. I then want to be able to subbranch the swsusp
branch with "myswsusp" and try to merge from LINUX_2_6_9. Of course
the version control system should find out which version
is the common parent, remember if any merges has been done
previously and assist as much as possible in a 3-way merge.
If any of you readers have a suggestion for a free system capable of
such a scenario, please make yourself heard.
I know I have looked into Arch a very long time ago, I guess I will
look into it again now.
One project not mentioned in the report is skolelinux (school linux).
This is fair enough since there is no offical
policy of having to use it, but the project is partially financed by the Norwegian education department, Utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet.
Newspeak: The official language of Oceania. The idea behind Newspeak is to develop a language in which it is technically impossible to disagree with the Party because there are no words for unorthodox ideas. Every year the vocabulary of Newspeak becomes smaller and smaller and the language is more simplified.
Come on. No major distributions except Slackware ships with a plain vanilla kernel.
"All" distributions patch their kernel (based on a stable relase) more or less heavily, sometimes resulting in problems, see for example here
or here.
So with development continuing longer on the 2.6 branch it might help decreasing the diversety of the different vendor kernels. At least it is worth trying.
As someone already has pointed out, there is no surprise in Microsoft doing this.
The important part here is that they are not open about it.
Go read Animal Farm by George Orwell. There you will see how bad things go when agendas are hidden.
Openness is the fundamental safety
mechanism in democracy. This is the failure of most of the former communist countries. Not because of communism per se, but because of the lack of openness in the leadership.
Animal Farm is indeed a very strong criticism of and a satirical allegory of the russian revolution and Stalin's Russia.
Go read 1984 as well. The term "language" (especially connected
to "propaganda") will have a new meaning after words.
A friend of mine is involved in a project where they are using Microsoft.Net to add an entry in the default popup menu on a webpage. This of course only works on windows and in IE.
I would love to be able to present for him a solution that works for mozilla as well. Is it possible to add an entry, say "Print 5 Copies" to the default popup menu below "Save Page As", and have that run some javascript (or something else) using any of the mentioned RDF/XBL/XUL?
The thing is, I just read the news and was currently hearing it on radio when I see this new slashdot article about the case comming up with no posts attached yet. This gives me a little
"maybe I can get the first post" kick and I just post the first and best english version of the news that I find. I did not notice that this also was linked in the article.
From the article:... says Nolan. "They want to see how far they can go, and almost anything I give them is going to limit what somebody else can do."
This is exactly what is wrong with the (current) patent system. It is supposed to promote innovation but instead it is
used as a tool to put sticks in the wheels of the competitors.
As I saw in a signature: Happy New Year, it is
1984:
Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.
Note that this kind of madness is not possible if you have decent laws protecting the customers. In Norway we have a separate law called forbrukerkjopsloven ("customer purchase law"), which more or less corresponds to anything you buy in a shop.
This law explicit states that "Det kan ikke avtales eller gjores gjeldende vilkar som er ugunstigere for forbrukeren enn det som folger av loven her.", translated "It can not be agreed upon terms that represent a lesser benefit to the customer than what follows from this law".
The only "problem" with this law as I see it is that it only declares such terms void. In my opinion it should also be illegal for the seller to try to make the customer believe certain terms are valid if the seller knows or should have known that this law voids the terms.
At least they have the rationale behind patenting right:
Justification
The object of any law relating to patenting is not to ensure that patent-holders enjoy an advantage: the advantage granted to the patent-holder is only a means of encouraging the inventive process for the benefit of the society as whole. The advantages granted to the patent-holder must not work against this ultimate objective of the patent principle.
Too bad that they fail to realise that for the vast majority og patents today the
benefit of the society as whole is close to zero while the benefit for the
patent holder is an opportunety to create obstacles for competitors (som much for "free" competition).
Examining chapter titles can be quite fun actually. For instance in the table of contents to the book Pair Programming Illuminated you find the following gem:
``My Partner Is a Total Loser'' and Other Excess Ego Problems
I have the last few years started to store things in directories with
the year number. Depending on how much I store in there I possibly add
further time range categories.
For things that change/add very often I have one directory for each
month. For instance things that I download I currently save first in
/download/2003/09_sep
(possibly moving to somewhere else later).
In other cases where dividing into 12 months would be too detailed I divide into each quarter of the year, or for low frequent things I just put everything directly in the year directory.
For mail I have one physical file (personal folder file in outlook)
for each year. I started with year as top level and then creating sub
folders for different classifications of mail, but I realised that
even a year is too long time to contain the same definition of classifications.
I.e. "bug reports" today is not necessarily the same as you meant with
"bug reports" one year ago. And even if you mean the exact same thing,
the bug reports will possibly be for a different product or at least a different version.
So now I use year as top level and then Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4 as midlevel and then classify things further. This I am
very satisfied with because I now only have about a dosen different subfolders that I use regularly
- for the things that I currently are working with, nothing more, nothing less.
Then each new quarter I start with blank sheets and recreate the subfolders I used to have only as needed. It gives me an initiative to rethink if the subfolder names are sensible and if they should be possibly splitted up or merged with other folders.
A bonus benefit for doing things this way is that cleaning up old stuff becomes really easy.
I do not know any references to the above example, but things like that was pretty standard behaviour for colony powers. I have read that England at one point, in order to protect its own textile industry, made it forbidden to bury people before the priest had examined and approved that the clothes the dead body was dressed in was produced in England. Spain and Portugal did everything they could to make sure that no industry was created in their colonies in south america.
>Please place all american-bashing statments under this comment. Thank You.
Unfortunately this is not funny.
AC seems to fail to recognise that any criticism comes from the fact that the proposal in question is just freaking insanely, not because it is made in USA[1].
There is nothing wrong with defending your country, but uncritically doing so at any prize is.
[1]
Of course insinuations that there are very strong connections between proposals being freaking insanely and coming from USA would rightfully classify as "american-bashing statements", however I doubt that AC had only this in mind.
I really like CUPS and it is quite nice on the "system" side.
What is missing with regards to printing in unix is something better that the standard (unfortunately), ultra primitive printer options dialog box given to the user, i.e. a prompt asking for your favourite lpr command.
When I select File->Print in an application in X I should be presented with a dialog box with access to all the selected printer's specific options (for instance print on both sides, etc).
As long as this is not the case printing in unix sucks, although with CUPS it sucks less:)
Slashdot Mirror
We have bought the book "Pair Programming Illuminated", ISBN 0-201-74576-3, which talks about the practical things related to pair programming.
I have not read it yet, but I noticed that one of the chapters has the following title: My Partner Is a Total Loser and Other Excess Ego Problems :)
Using Adam's idea of an invisible hand as an argument in any single case flawed. First of all, it is (just) a model ("All models are wrong. Some models are useful." - George Box), and he's observation was for the total effect of all individuals. He did not (as you make it seem) proclaim that it was the case for all individual cases. In fact, the benefit for a single individual is in many cases a disadvantage for the society. See The Tragedy of the Commons or here for details.
Competition between companies can be hard; being best is very difficult. So most companies try avoid competing on being best and instead go for alternative strategies like hindrance of competitors (using patents or exclusive distribution agreements[1] for instance) or by trying to make the consumers less likely to switch products (vendor lock-in is very popular[2], some also try to appeal to a loyalty feeling (any product marketed as "original", "American" (in USA), etc)). Influencing/lobbying/bribing politicians is also very lucrative.
In this case Qualcom trying force their products into Iraq through the politician route, because, as others have pointed out, the "best" product for Iraq would be GSM.
[1]
I really hate Coca Cola for their exclusive distribution agreement with McDonalds. "You shall only sell Coca Cola products" implicit means "You shall not sell products competing with Coca Cola" and that is wrong. I have absolutely no problems with Coca Cola making an agreement "You shall sell Coca Cola products" with McDonalds. By all means, Coca Cola is then improving their distribution channels and thus making their products "better". Great. But the "you shall not sell" part I have a problem with. Why should companies be allowed to misuse their enormous power to deny customers to decide if they want to buy a Pepsi in addition to a cheeseburger, ignoring that "the customer is always right"?
In my opinion, exclusive distribution agreements should be illegal with (at least) the same punishment as for illegal price agreements. I mean, with illegal price agreements you as a customer at least can buy the product (although to a too high price); with exclusive distribution agreements you cannot even buy it.
[2]
To misquote a slogan used by Ericsson: "It's all about vendor lock-in. The rest is technology." - Me
PS
Speaking of models and Adam Smith, you all have seen the curves with supply and demand, but have you reflected over under what conditions they are supposed to work (again, this is just a model)? Well the model is based on the assumption of a perfectly free marked, with an unlimited number of suppliers and demanders. What is happening today with globalization? The current trend with fewer and bigger companies are creating a less free market.
To sum up, clearcase is very good but very expensive. I have been searching for a version control system for my private use, and I have not found anything where branching, merging and labeling is as easy as in clearcase (if possible at all!).
Granted I have used clearcase for years now and know it quite well. But many of the other version control system at best provides shadows of what I want and expect a version control system to do. The last system i looked into was monotone and as far as I can see it only supports merging from the head (LATEST in clearcase). When it cannot merge from an non-head element it is useless for me.
What I really, really, really want to do is the following:
Put the Linux kernel source into version control. The main, "official" version from Linus I would put on a branch named "linus". Then I would subbranch this with other branches, for instance "fedora" for the kernel provided from Fedora, "planetccrma" for the kernel provided by Planet CCRMA, and probably some other branches for things like swsusp.
When checking in a new official kernel I want to attach a label, say "LINUX_2_6_9". I then want to be able to use this label as a reference when merging. The swsusp project is fully up to date with regards to kernel versions, but say that the last patch from then only was for kernel version 2.6.5. I then want to be able to subbranch the swsusp branch with "myswsusp" and try to merge from LINUX_2_6_9. Of course the version control system should find out which version is the common parent, remember if any merges has been done previously and assist as much as possible in a 3-way merge.
If any of you readers have a suggestion for a free system capable of such a scenario, please make yourself heard. I know I have looked into Arch a very long time ago, I guess I will look into it again now.
This is fair enough since there is no offical policy of having to use it, but the project is partially financed by the Norwegian education department, Utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet.
Here is a link to the full appendix about newspeak, often not present in various online versions of the book.
Please read that appendix; it will be one of the most important appendix you will ever read.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." -- Pablo Picasso
So with development continuing longer on the 2.6 branch it might help decreasing the diversety of the different vendor kernels. At least it is worth trying.
Books (and newspapers) are also except VAT.
The important part here is that they are not open about it. Go read Animal Farm by George Orwell. There you will see how bad things go when agendas are hidden.
Openness is the fundamental safety mechanism in democracy. This is the failure of most of the former communist countries. Not because of communism per se, but because of the lack of openness in the leadership. Animal Farm is indeed a very strong criticism of and a satirical allegory of the russian revolution and Stalin's Russia.
Go read 1984 as well. The term "language" (especially connected to "propaganda") will have a new meaning after words.
I would love to be able to present for him a solution that works for mozilla as well. Is it possible to add an entry, say "Print 5 Copies" to the default popup menu below "Save Page As", and have that run some javascript (or something else) using any of the mentioned RDF/XBL/XUL?
How outrageous! The USA has of course never tried to influence how business is done outside it's borders.
The thing is, I just read the news and was currently hearing it on radio when I see this new slashdot article about the case comming up with no posts attached yet. This gives me a little "maybe I can get the first post" kick and I just post the first and best english version of the news that I find. I did not notice that this also was linked in the article.
Probably a lame excuse though...
Aftenposten has an english article here .
This is exactly what is wrong with the (current) patent system. It is supposed to promote innovation but instead it is used as a tool to put sticks in the wheels of the competitors.
Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.
This law explicit states that "Det kan ikke avtales eller gjores gjeldende vilkar som er ugunstigere for forbrukeren enn det som folger av loven her.", translated "It can not be agreed upon terms that represent a lesser benefit to the customer than what follows from this law".
The only "problem" with this law as I see it is that it only declares such terms void. In my opinion it should also be illegal for the seller to try to make the customer believe certain terms are valid if the seller knows or should have known that this law voids the terms.
Justification
The object of any law relating to patenting is not to ensure that patent-holders enjoy an advantage: the advantage granted to the patent-holder is only a means of encouraging the inventive process for the benefit of the society as whole. The advantages granted to the patent-holder must not work against this ultimate objective of the patent principle.
Too bad that they fail to realise that for the vast majority og patents today the benefit of the society as whole is close to zero while the benefit for the patent holder is an opportunety to create obstacles for competitors (som much for "free" competition).
``My Partner Is a Total Loser'' and Other Excess Ego Problems
For things that change/add very often I have one directory for each month. For instance things that I download I currently save first in /download/2003/09_sep
(possibly moving to somewhere else later).
In other cases where dividing into 12 months would be too detailed I divide into each quarter of the year, or for low frequent things I just put everything directly in the year directory.
For mail I have one physical file (personal folder file in outlook) for each year. I started with year as top level and then creating sub folders for different classifications of mail, but I realised that even a year is too long time to contain the same definition of classifications. I.e. "bug reports" today is not necessarily the same as you meant with "bug reports" one year ago. And even if you mean the exact same thing, the bug reports will possibly be for a different product or at least a different version.
So now I use year as top level and then Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4 as midlevel and then classify things further. This I am very satisfied with because I now only have about a dosen different subfolders that I use regularly - for the things that I currently are working with, nothing more, nothing less. Then each new quarter I start with blank sheets and recreate the subfolders I used to have only as needed. It gives me an initiative to rethink if the subfolder names are sensible and if they should be possibly splitted up or merged with other folders.
A bonus benefit for doing things this way is that cleaning up old stuff becomes really easy.
This protest was already discussed earlyer this week here, so perhaps it should not come as such a big surprise.
I do not know any references to the above example, but things like that was pretty standard behaviour for colony powers. I have read that England at one point, in order to protect its own textile industry, made it forbidden to bury people before the priest had examined and approved that the clothes the dead body was dressed in was produced in England. Spain and Portugal did everything they could to make sure that no industry was created in their colonies in south america.
Unfortunately this is not funny. AC seems to fail to recognise that any criticism comes from the fact that the proposal in question is just freaking insanely, not because it is made in USA[1].
There is nothing wrong with defending your country, but uncritically doing so at any prize is.
[1]
Of course insinuations that there are very strong connections between proposals being freaking insanely and coming from USA would rightfully classify as "american-bashing statements", however I doubt that AC had only this in mind.
Yes. This is one thing Microsoft has done correctly from the start with their commdlg.dll/comdlg32.dll library.
What is missing with regards to printing in unix is something better that the standard (unfortunately), ultra primitive printer options dialog box given to the user, i.e. a prompt asking for your favourite lpr command.
When I select File->Print in an application in X I should be presented with a dialog box with access to all the selected printer's specific options (for instance print on both sides, etc). As long as this is not the case printing in unix sucks, although with CUPS it sucks less :)