if it ever gets that bad, I got TWO aces in the hole. Still got a mac classic here, and a Knoppix disk. If THAT don't work, I got a bad attitude and a 12 bore.
If for example you are developing scientific/engineering/ professional audio/visual creation industry apps,etc, or games, ya, your end users are probably always getting newer faster machines. But the hardware side of the industry is a real severe slowdown on new machines, adoption peaked a few years ago from what I have read (and noticed in meatworld). What I am saying is, for developers and their buddies and their peers at work, high end machines are the norm, that's what they are used to and have *forgotten* that they are the exception, not the rule. For 90% of the rest of the world, upgrading hardware every 6 months to a year doesn't happen, and the trend for people at home and a ton of businesses is to hang on to hardware for a longer time now,years longer in a lot of cases, upgrades are being postponed a lot.
In the US, last I looked, media family income is around 45 grand or a scosh more. That's FAMILY income, in a lot of cases that's 2 paychecks combined. People who are making a lot more than that with one paycheck tend to forget they aren't the norm either,and usually they hang out with other people closer to their economic level, and their consumer purchasing choices tend to be vastly different from the rest of the people. A side note, but that is also something the music/video industry forgets, wonders why people aren't as fast to snap up expensive CDs as they used to. Same with a lot of other industries, you can't look at it with blinders, people having a harder tiome now paying necessary bills, and that goes up and down and sideways throughout all industries, and why we have interest rates so low, because people have maxed out credit already, why bankruptices at all time highs, mortgage defaults all time highs, etc. To developers ( I mean the sales aspect of it software obviously), who are quite specialised into a niche way of thinking and doing business, maybe they are not noticing these things, might be a reason why it's getting harder to sell stuff. Maybe, but I bet it's part of it. it's all connected, chaos theory and whatnot.
Mindshare is both an immediate and long term process. Longer -term thinking will get you more loyal customers *for a longer time* for your apps as people are happy to use ones that still run well on what hardware they have. They'll remember that your product, written for THEM and their hardware worked well. Cost is BOTH, if a new program actually requires an additional one thousand dollars or more in new hardware just to run, you might actually LOSE mindshare as people think about it and go "no thanks", even if the program itself is just totally spiffy.
Just wondering, but I wonder what a median set of hardware specs is now for the millions and millions of machines out there still being used. CPU in the medium pentium II class, and 64 megs RAM? That would be my guess. Isn't win98 still the dominant OS that shows up in most website logs? That would be a clue as to what machines for specs are the bulk of this "the market" thing, VERY broadly speaking taking my original point into consideration on types of apps.
Joe User here, who lurks on devel to try the knowledge osmosis absorption technique..
Speaking as an antique box driver,bleeding edge of 5-6 year old technology when I'm lucky, I REALLY appreciate apps that can run well* on older machines. To ME, always thinking of the end users of the code is vital in development. I wish it was the complete industry standard, even if it meant some more days work before release.
*define "well" OK, to me = lowest ram usage,(most machines shipped in the past buncha years never shipped with all the ram slots filled, and they STAY that way) lowest CPU usage (how come older machines did a lot of the same stuff you want to do now, but now you need CPUs orders of magnitude faster to do it? Huh?), stability (no leaks/conflicts), security (no idea what this thoroughly e-vile "buffer" is, but that thing always seem to be overflowing whenever you hear of the latest security exploit. Wazzup with that? Someone needs to invent the dang buffer valve and turn that thing off once your sink is filled with enough buffer whatsis stuff so it don't overflow. I am assuming that is what all these emergency "patches" do whenever there's a new exploit. Uh, patch em in advance please)
... do any of thes PDAs have a feature to "flip a page" rather than scroll up and down only? Like mash the arrow key to the right or something, and the whole "page" whooshes over like a real page in a book?
troll?? All I wanted to know is if they had heard a generic over-all reason for all the (new and unexpected)interest, and what perhaps it might have been. It's an "ask these guys" question, that was my question. From what I remember when I read that before, they were expecting a few hundred, got like 6 thousand or something, so obviously there was some big reason for that happening. I threw out just a few obvious things, but it don't have to be one of them, but that is sort of what I was looking for, like "we wanted to install linux because of xxx"whatever it was. Could be anything, I sure wasn't there to hear it. Anywho.... someone read me wa-y-y-y wrong I guess...
Sec. 2304. - Federal minimum standards for warranties
(a) Remedies under written warranty; duration of implied warranty; exclusion or limitation on consequential damages for breach of written or implied warranty; election of refund or replacement
In order for a warrantor warranting a consumer product by means of a written warranty to meet the Federal minimum standards for warranty -
(1)
such warrantor must as a minimum remedy such consumer product within a reasonable time and without charge, in the case of a defect, malfunction, or failure to conform with such written warranty;
(2)
notwithstanding section 2308(b) of this title, such warrantor may not impose any limitation on the duration of any implied warranty on the product;
(3)
such warrantor may not exclude or limit consequential damages for breach of any written or implied warranty on such product, unless such exclusion or limitation conspicuously appears on the face of the warranty; and
(4)
if the product (or a component part thereof) contains a defect or malfunction after a reasonable number of attempts by the warrantor to remedy defects or malfunctions in such product, such warrantor must permit the consumer to elect either a refund for, or replacement without charge of, such product or part (as the case may be). The Commission may by rule specify for purposes of this paragraph, what constitutes a reasonable number of attempts to remedy particular kinds of defects or malfunctions under different circumstances. If the warrantor replaces a component part of a consumer product, such replacement shall include installing the part in the product without charge.
---and yada yada yada,paragraph b, sub section whosis, and etc, legalese out the wazoo. It's real long and complex. Nope, warranties are required, implied use, etc. Basically, whatever you read in the fine print in a software EULA that they want a free skate on, applies to most other meatworld things that are "for sale" new. If you sell a kids wagon, that thing better have wheels that roll, it got to haul some stuff, and it can't fall apart or spontaneous combust or whatever for such and such a time. Companies USE warranties sometimes as bragging points, but they are required to have them, almost without exception. We USED to have "caveat emptor" that was like a long time ago, long gone now. too many scams when on with it, "snakeoil" was the norm, not the rule. Hmm, reinforces my stance on software warranties, and why we need them, especially when they get "patents" on them and sell them. My favorite "this software may not work for anything, not suitable for yada yada'. Phooie, what ELSE you gonna do with the thing? You are gonna cram it in your machine and it should work like the shiny box or blinkenlights website says it does. What ELSE you gonna do with an OS on a disk but try to use it as a OS? What ELSE you gonna do with acme tax prep software, or amalgamated video vue-er? It's nuts, they get a free skate, times up, they need warranties for suitability of purpose and for defects. End of story. Same as any other product.
--I was just replying to the "90 days" warranty deal on firearms, because it's something I am familiar with, along with the industry in general. Usually on/. I am overwhelemed by tech expertise, it's nice to be able to chime in with something other than my normal politics rants, heh. Guns have by and large some of the best warranties and recall/repair policies out there. some are lifetime, some are transferrable to whomever happens to be owning them at the time. Just depends, but few consumer products can match them. Not ALL of them, but I'd say most of them all have pretty decent warranties. And YA, they need warranties, good ones, and they are built WELL, you got something goes from atmospheric pressure to 20 -50 thou lbs pressure in a few micro seconds, you want that thing built strong. There's obviously some crap makes out there, but after that, they are all pretty good for their design purposes, the make/model/style/purpose etc, following that. I've been shooting almost a half century now,well, I won't exaggerate, I been shooting 45 years, had ONE (1) firearms failure, had one get a broken bolt assembly, it still fired but jammed on the reload, so I checked it out, cracked. Now that's just ME, I do preventative maintenance and pick my models, but still, decent track record there.
... you still can't. I ran apples for years, but I'll be the first to admit they were hard to find unless you lived in a big city. Like, right now, I can go to the nearest towen, there are at least 6 places i can think of that sell computers, not a one of them carries apple products. And by staying expensive, they kept quality, but never expanded beyond the niche markets they developed, and basically used owner loyalty to maintain that market. They WERE very expensive, and when we had the explosion of the clones, and most of them had DOS on them, well, buh bye neck and neck race, hello dominance of MS and commodity hardware. Back in 85 I was helping these guys build peecees then install them in LANS, they were making serious coin with them, too, geez, what were they then, 286s? I can't remembver, but they were going for over 3 grand and I think apples were 4 easy. Not too many folks wanted to pony up the scratch for them, all the early buyers were mostly businesses and schools and government.
But, my other point, they just never SOLD them too hard,it's like they play acted at it or something, a few real creative decent TV ads, a few lame attempts at some stores, etc, still pretty dismal. I got my last one mail order, only way I could get one without huge driving and time involved. And I can't answer why they didn't (and still don't) try better, luxury cars sell well, inside a market that has yugos to whatevers. I mean, really, every time there'sa new windows virus they could run TV spots showing "they don't have that problem", or they could have the past buncha years. anything but what they were doing. They built good stuff, no idea on how to sell it until just lately it seems.
... I hear you but have no easy answer for it. Never coded much except bogus little html and whatnot, few apple scripts, that's it.
Eventually this EULA stuff is gonna go, SOMEONE is gonna challenge this thing, probably some business that gets hosed for millions of dollars and the CEO just goes ballistic over it. I'm amazed it ain't happened yet actually. people are just going to demand it eventually, if this web hacking nonsense goes on, and we'll wind up with all sorts of big brother 'web security" nonsense if the software manufacturers don't do it themselves first.
About the only dodge I can think of,for paid software, that is both ethical and would be legal, is for paid for software to only be released to "beta testers" and you hire them for a buck or something to "test" your software, and beta testers can be anyone. Sorta like those private bring your own bottle key clubs in dry counties that have no public bars..
With free/open source, I always assume I am a beta tester, been my default position since I switched from mac classic. I paid for mac classic, and so fewissues with it I never even thought of complaining, it just mostly always worked and I was quite happy with it, all of apples stuff anyway, the hardware and the software, and I never had zip for security problems, musta lucked out or something, but no getting owned especially, never got a worm or virus anything, with nothing more special than default install and make sure appletalk and sharing was turned off unless I needed it. Hmm, system 6 on up there. That was about it, certainly never even looked for a firewall. And I keep my old PB 1400 right handy here, always waiting for the mother of all windows wurms to snag out 7/8ths of the web. Don't know if I could still get back online, but know I won't be a problem if I do to anyone. I'm still not sure enough of myself with linux though, I'll put it between MS and apple on security. Linux is way too complex to take anything for granted with it, not much different than windows in that respect, IMO. But I pay 4.89$ for an OS and a ton 0 apps on disks plus some cheap shipping to get it too, not 100 clams for an OS and a few apps. Big ole hairy difference there in my mind, and I KNOW the folks working on all that stuff are like "here, check this out, help out if you can, this is for everyone, share it, help fix it, and etc".
cool beans, I dig the philosophy, sorta like the old timey neighborhood barn raisings. I don't got a problem with something like that if occassionaly it gets borked..
Third party stuff on classic was sometimes flaky, netscape browser always gave me fits, but I preferred the way they rendered pages the best, and that was free (eventually, I remember when it wasn't), so I thought of it as beta ware, and certainly sent in every talk back crash bug report that popped up.
Hey, be the first on your block to offer a warranty for your for-sale code! Just word it carefully, that's all. Announce it on slasherdotted. SOMEONE has to do it, first guy gets some very cool cred methinks.
In the install fest, which was the primary reason for all the new interest? Was it (some examples), because linux is viewed as just better quality than the alternatives, or is it that it truly is "free" to use and develop without making copies of "the other guys", or is it just "trendy" like people like to try out new stuff, and etc? Whatever the reason, I was interested in the MAIN reason for all the interest. Thanks.
--have lifetime warranties, I can think of some readily, that I own actually, say craftsman wrenches and other hand tools,some kitchen knives we have here, etc. I was more meaning over-all mechanical or electrical do-dads, the entire product, not just a chunk of the product. Very rare if impossible to find anything where the entire product will have a lifetime warranty that has multiple moving parts and is subject to a lot of abuse and stress outside the firearms industry. The frames and forks on bikes I can see that, even with frame flex, but not all the other stuff, not the crank assembly or free wheel or brake assemblies,or chains, wheels, etc ie, the "whole" bike. Although I admit there might be some examples out there, the bulk of products sold now have limited and specific warranties, but at least they have SOMETHING, softwares have zee-ro, no matter how much they cost. Well, yes, you can get "we might fix it if it breaks" contracts,this is true, but those are not default built in warranties like we think of them with other products. I will also admit there might be specific, small niche, custom built softwares that I am not aware of that have a warranty automatically sold with them, but the bulk don't, they have those get out of any responsibility EULA "voluntary contracts", all the software I ever used/saw had them anyway. That's the stuff I am talking about.
cars originally shipped with normal glass windows and windshields. When it was found that they were just too wimpy,defective, flawed, unsuitable, etc., for the purpose intended, they INDEED were forced to develop shatterproof glass and it's mandatory now to have such glass, by law. It comes uber hardened by default. Yes, it can still be broken, but not near as easy as just normal household glass, it is x-times better made and has the laws and warranties that reflect that. I guess it's a matter of degree. If a default install of a car window was such that anyone could just use their hands and push it in and reach inside, it wouldn't be allowed, it just wouldn't, yet OSes and other profitable softwares are allowed about that ease of penetration and unsuitability to be shipped and profited from.
I know what you are trying to say, but car glass is a bad analogy there, it actually proves the opposite point, "windows" needs to be effective and suitable, not defective and unsuitable. And car windows cannot be sold with a EULA that states you are accepting the fact that despite it's clear and obviously designed to look out of, that the manufacturer insists you accept the fact that they can become opaque, or are not necessarily designed for looking out or keeping you reasonable safe inside your vehicle. That wouldn't happen, and it falls into "reasonable expectations", which has a history of legal precedent behind it.
Software = obvious total free ride that no other giant industry gets, obvious as all get out. Sweet deal for them, sucks for everyone else.
... are a LOT more responsible about their products as a rule then almost any industry, perhaps airplanes might be the closest, they always recall and repair or replace defective products, and go to some lengths to get the word out to the owners, and it goes beyond 90 days, and beyond the original owner on any defects. I know because I worked in a firearms warranty repair center before and been an enthusiast since I was about as tall as a.22 rifle. It's years and years in some cases with warranties. Many now come with a default "forever" warranty. In fact, they have some of the best warranties and repair/recall efforts in any industry. We would be *lucky* if all products had as good a warranty. Like name a major manufactured mechanical product that comes with a lifetime warranty now. Washing machine? Automobile? Bicycle? Hard drives? Radio? Anything? There might be but I can't think of any off the top of my head, but firearms are treated that way in a lot of cases now, and even in other cases where the warranties expire, recalls are still done if a defect is found.
The big problem is software got a compoletely 100% "free ride" in the beginning, it was allowed to be sold with zero warranties, I guess to get the business off the ground or something. Or maybe... I dunno, can't think of a good reason really. They just slap got away with something no other industry has as far as I know. You can't sell a 1 cent stick of gum without it having actual and implied warranty to it.
This deal was way back when it first really took off (I really need to research this now,it's gonna bug me why they got such a sweet deal), now it's been decades. DECADES. Untold hundreds of billions of dollars in pure profits. Huge numbers of wealthy people and businesses involved with it. It's "mature" now. Time to insist on "profitable" software to have warranties, and hold the manufacturers liable for obvious defects. They have "Get out of any Responsibility" EULAs, but still "enjoy" full ME ME ME IT'S ALL MINE MY PRECIOUSSSS protection "under law" for "Intellectual Property" and make tons of cash, well, that is teh obvious suck now and ayone can see that.
It's one or the other, if the software makers want to treat electronic digits as some sort of extremely valuable commodity product, with PATENTS on it even, which they sell at a very, very good profit, they need some sort of a minimum consumer warranty applied to them, or strip them of their profitability, one or the other. Enough's ENOUGH on the free ride they get. The software industry is "mature" enough to treat those business people as normal adults, same as anyone else in any other industry.
We NEED a class action suit in general against free ride EULAs across the board for for-profit software, and it needs to go to the supreme court and be won.
I am surprised as all get out with all the other litigation that goes on in our society that a set of profitable businesses who have gotten hosed over and over and over again by these obvious defects haven't challenged those EULAs as being absurd and illegal in the first place. Name another industry that would dare to put out such a "contract" for consumers and have it accepted. It's quite absurd, they'd be laughed at, but "software" is now the biggest example of legal "conware" there is.
And YEP, I could care less if it meant that "releases" slowed to a crawl, wouldn't bother me one bit or byte. Consumers want quality, few if any defects, they just been faked out that crapware is "good enough" and the industry as a whole has all colluded to profit off of crap and conware. It's just plain stupid, and ethically wrong. We can see now that software is so "embedded" in our society that you can't really say now that "no one is effected" when defects show up. it can get downright dangerous, and it certainly costs consumers tons of cash to keep fix and repaired stuff that shouldn't be shipped broken in the first place. We need less patches, and more "it don't need to be patched" software
... reading too much into what I am saying. I am not a communist, and have perhaps a 2% socialist bent, and that is "voluntary" in nature, I tithe, and I use free software and contribute the occasional bug report (don't code so that's it), I copewrate with friends building projects, donate myself to this or that, but not really in favor of mandated wealth redistrivution. I AM in favor of evening the playing field inside a semi regulated capitalist system, and I AM in favor of stripping corporations of legal personhood and putting back named human beings as accountable for their actions..
Have you ever been in a union? I have, twice, it's not all about money directly, politics is 1/2 the unions interest, and always has been. Just getting a decent workday instead of 12 to 16 hours a day sweatshops was one of the first thing unions did. They lobby and strike over and negotiate for a variety of things not directly related to the digits on their paychecks, although, yes, that is primary with them. Worker safety for instance. Fair trade and not scam "free" trade like we have now would be a good one for any union.. And there's no law saying they can't negotiate or strike over *anything* they think of that's a collective interest of their's. No place anywhere is there any rule or law that mandates what an organization like a union can negotiate for, or strike over if they so choose. Literally, a strike is just not showing up for work, and that's it. Other nations have held entire nation wide strikes, with huge numbers of the citizens involved, not over money usually but some law of the government they have they want to influence. Happens a lot, still happens occassionaly, just more in other nations than in the US, here, we are money lovers to the extreme. I think it's OK to have money, to use money, I use money obviously, worked my whole life since 9 yearsold, etc, but... I'm just not personally a *lover* of money or treat it with a cult like fanatcism, never have my entire life. Ho humm, tangent there...
They could strike over something that their company has no control over, but the government does, that's sort of what I was suggesting. Take the outsourcing issue, any one single company getting that stopped wouldn't be as good as having an national immediate halt to it for a breather, to let the nation come to grips with it and to determine first where the new *real* jobs are coming from before they get shipped overseas. that and perhaps institute quid pro quo tariffs, and also import duties on imported code. They want to treat it like a product, so be it, slap normal tariffs on it, help reduce the bogus "income" taxes. That's another one, we could use such a strike to demand an end to the million law monstrosity IRS and income taxes and go to something different, national sales tax and tariffs, for instance. Who knows, but when you have numbers, will and are in the position to make it stick, you WOULD get some results. That's a dandy issue a nationwide IT union could strike over, and the decent part is, there's no immediate replacement for them,heck, there slap AIN'T replacements for them, can't be done, not quickly anyway, and simply not showing up for work one day would effectively shut down most of the nations business, government, utilities, you name it, because if it was a nationwide union with a significant percentage of IT workers in it,PLUS sympathy strikes from other unions and just joe citizens, that's exactly what would happen, and joe government would have zero choice in the matter. Make it a week, that'll work better. Government still sucks, big corporations throw a fit, too bad, make it two weeks. It's possible. It's doable.
Some stuff would stay up, but so much of it wouldn't or be running at such diminished capacity as to make it almost a moot point, it would be *shut down*.
BUT, IT workers by and large have been *completely* brainwashed over the years that they are "above the blue collar riff raff" and should never "be in a union" because that's for...wel
...if it gets close enough to the moon that gravitational forces (handy term that) to accidently split in half? I read in the piece it's odd shaped and like a dumbbell shape of sorts. Suppose it's very thin and wimpy through the spindle, and maybe cracked from previous impacts? Again, according to the article it is thought it has sustained a lot of previous damage. Or even just another odd but still whopper big piece busts off of it, along those lines.
Just wondering how much that would throw off their calculations. Has anyone done any "what if?" style calculations based on it's shape now and losing some of those pieces you can see in the pics? Near as I can see they are going on a default assumption it will stay the size and shape and mass it is now, despite it's vigorus tumbling and etc. And according to what I read, it really hasn't gotten close to any other large gravitational attraction for a long time, not as close as it will get this fall anyway.
... that Betty and everyone else locked into a cube day after day after day needs something to feel like a human being, and not just a de humanized cog in a heartless machine that starts off by hiring them as a "human resource" instead of a "person"nel. Employees aren't even classed as "people"now, they are just "stock" like stuff on the shelf in the warehouse, or no more important than the copier.
Modern businesses are bad about abusing employees, they want trained rats, not human beings. For some people, a cute screen saver might be to that person a tremendous morale booster, trivial as it may seem to someone else. Modern corporate life and life in consumerville and taxhell USA is bad enough when things are going smoothly, take away peoples human-ness,their individuality, turn them into--I dunno, hive creatures, termites, to force them into some mold beyond reason, is not only cruel, it's insane from a business standpoint as well, you won't have happy camper employees, ever.
A compromise might be better, something along like, personalization of your desktop is acceptable, provided the installed piece of eyecandy crap or whatever is reviewed for being spyware or malware first. Yes, more work for the techs, so what, that's their job, keep the computers happy so that the happy computers make the humans sitting in front of them happy, working, so that your company can keep making happy profits. Seems reasonable to me.
Give you an example. I used to work for a guy didn't allow playing the radio. Umm, I work outside all my life mostly,blue collar, not white collar jobs, but the principle is the same. The radio didn't interfere with squat, but it "wasn't allowed". Me being able to hear my news and talk shows and a few tunes now and then keeps me happy and productive. Not having it annoys me right off the bat, I started dreading going to work because it meant a lot to me and it was such a BS rule, finally I quit, and I can guarantee I wasn't as productive as I could be, and starting each day off with animosity towards the boss is just not a good idea.
Just a few thoughts. I fully understand how vital secure computers are,and surely there's a way to keep all the people who use them at the shop at least partly satisifed that "their" machine they get to use is somehow really "theirs" for the time they sit in front of it every day. NOT doing that would be- like- insisting that the company trucks have their seats bolted down in one general position, so that no one could adjust them to "fit" better. Sure, you could still drive the truck, but really....
....sells linux peecees of various flavors for cheap *online*. Walmart brick and mortar stores sell only mid range and up priced peecess, exclusively with XP on them, and all the software is for windows. Most of the low-end regular everyday prices I have seen there are like 500 or so rounded off with sales tax, etc., then they go up from there. I've seen some examples of cheaper ones on the floor, scratch and dents, etc, but not the linux boxes ever.
disclaimer, last I knew/heard about it and saw at various walmarts when my gfriend insists I go into one. If it was up to me I'd boycott them forever.
... track record of actually incarcerating very rich crooks. They do *some* but not many, not compared to the millions of poor people who go to jail everyday for cases of much less severe outright THIEVERY. Joe Loser robs a 7-11, gets 10 years and a fine, joe BIGCO steals billions, gets joke fine, no one there misses sleeping in their comfy beds in their mansions. SAY WHUT? And the government has an ever worse record for doing what they should have always done, REVOKE INCORPORATION CHARTERS. Incorporation is granted BOTH for the companys to "make money" and also to serve the public interest, that was the original idea. Same as patents were not JUST to make money, they were allowed for the purpose of furthering the arts and sciences, not RESTRICTING the arts and sciences.
In my state, three felonies, buh bye,(might be 2 actually) automatic LIFE in prison. By my count, gates has been convicted of three now, his recent personal "gosh, I musta fergot, aw shucks" stock trading, and the fed anti trust suit, and in the EU similar, him being head schmoo over to redmond. I think other states have similar, 2 or 3 times, adios, have fun in jail. But, if you are REALLYBIGCO, it don't matter, because something you can't put in jail the legalised 'person' called a corporation, can't be locked up.
It's not time to bust up microsoft,that's way long past as far as I am concerned, it's time to get rid of the federal law (santa clara versus union pacific railroad)allowing *legal* "personhood" to a piece of paper with a stamp on it called a corporation, and put it back to NAMED human beings are always responsibile for their decisions. All incorporation does is give these goons a free skate and a legal shield to HIDE behind for crimes and to hide behind for taxes and to hide behind for campaign briberies, something joe sixpack never has. WHY is this considered "fair" and legal anyway?
It's disgusting. Not just MS, several bigcos out there are deserving of being dissolved, their stockholders left with useless paper and digits, then MAYBE it might sink in to companies and "investors" to not invest in being crooks.
man, this stuff gets me steamed....... and software patents? puh leeze, that was a big mistake a long time ago.... if they want to make it closed source to "make money" give them at most a 5 year copyright when they can keep it secret, then it opens up to the public. This forever and a day noise is too much too with copyrights.
who actually LIKES windows, and just wants to nudge everyone who doesn't use it properly to just learn something once and for all and keep their machines reliable. As in, sometimes ya got to smack a mule in the head with a clue by four to get them to react. I mean, if you think about it, the virus/worm writers are gradually putting themselves out of business, even microsoft eventually will ship way more secure systems with a default install.
Frankly, I am liking the "live" versions of OSes more and more, the whole concept makes a lot of sense,besides being basically unhackable-you can't write to a burned cd or dvd- just write your permanent stuff to cheap removable media. Maybe in the future we will (I mean, joe home user/surfer) just have machines with no permanent harddrives, just banks of lotsa ram, live OSes, and various cheap storage media that is removable, hot swappable, etc. and use an offsite storage server for backups of what you really want to keep.
I imagine for not very much $ an entry level box today,for instance, just an inexpensive mid range power CPU,lose the HDDs, ship it with like 2-4 gigs of RAM, and just have firewire and usb ports, etc. Then people can do what they want to do with a live CD and like flash drives, cd/rw disks or whatever. Want to surf, slap in the surfin and chat and gimme some tunes cd. Want to be joe office and bean counter for the family finances or shopping, slap that one in,want play some games, slap them in, and etc.
--if I had just bought a *brand new* expensive laptop (well, to me anything brand new is expensive, heh) and the buttons on the desktop didn't work I'd be seriously annoyed. I know if I was SELLING them I just wouldn't do it, would keep tweaking until they did. "The internet" is sorta the most important default application stuff that should "just work" when you get any new machine for most people and uses. And what's the issue with WiFi anyway, the companies who make these things are jerks when it comes to drivers for linux? If so seems like a nifty way for some unemployed geeks to collaborate on a product out there, a wireless card that runs on all OSes of note, built from scratch from the ground up. Proly take some VC to build it, but a real product has merit when shopping for money.
IS there a good battery life, runs all linux and runs it well, direct from the factory laptop out there now? I don't follow that too closely to know. I do recall reading here a few times about the transmeta chips, wonder if a laptop built around them would be better as a true mobile device. That and bring back dual hot swappable batteries built-in.
--OK, it's the webmasters fault. I'll see if moz 1.7 when I get it makes it look any better, but I'll probably shoot the guy over there an email too, ask him to preview his pages better with different browsers and be more consistent with his code. I've seen just some rank stuff lately is all, that was the one I could remember the addy to. Several news sites I've seen lately don't display well either, I just look at so many I forget which ones are rank. I might try getting the page again, then open it in composer and strip out some of the stuff and reload it that way, too.
It's "crap" because it's never been done in this generation to any great degree. Granted, a very few limited attempts, that's all the past 20 years really, and none of them very successful.
In past generations it WAS done,massively, that's the difference, I remember it, and it wasn't about MONEY all the time. Remember civil rights? I do, I remember full well when people of color couldn't do this or that, helped out with that, too. They had a "union" of sorts and DID get massive changes, because they organized and did it. They shut things down, boycotted, did whatever it took, and it wasn't just one token day then "oh well, we tried" and go back to work, it was ongoing, intense effort. My point on the draft past, we DID get rid of it, and without all the great communication tools you have now.
A union or organization can "go on strike" for matters beyond just pay/money if they want to, why not? really, why not? Plenty of examples in the past. They COULD do that. Sure, it's wild, I'll agree,it's rad, but it's quite possible, and the time to think about it is NOT *after* the fact of needing to think about it. BEFORE is a much slicker idea, IMO.
Money, job security of note, no offshoring without some sort of replacement jobs, fair trade not free scam trade-all of that, AND also the other is possible. Yes, we need all of everyone to keep it all running,yes, yes, yes, but just THINK what I.T. *really* controls. It is unique beyond any other past profession, if you count all the techs and admins and engineers and scientists and whatnot who make up IT, not just coders.
Or, if you are speaking for (most of) the younger folks who might be facing this,and also facing the prospect of "no jobs" when they enter the workforce because of what is going on now,or watching jobs get less and less valuable to the point that you are worth nothing basically to the uberprofitgoons, are you saying that in your opinion the mass consensus with them is "ho humm, big deal"? If so, then sure, I'm wrong then, totally, go for it alone, go have fun playing mercenary or worker IT drone training your replacement or no job or minimum rage with maximum expenses, or working for the government in homeland insecurity, if that's your gig. Or if you got any sort of plan besides the status quo of "almost nothing" like it is now, I haven't heard it yet.
I don't know anything except what I have seen over the years and how "they" will use you up and spit out the carcass every opportunity they can, so if going it alone by yourself makes more sense, or if only thinking about money makes more sense, that's your right to feel like that and be that way. I do what I can to help folks learn from history, and that's about it. If people today really only care about video games, MP3's, X-treeme sports,movies, whatever, then..well... good luck to you. I tend to think that's NOT the case, I'm just not seeing anything real effective yet, heck, you have *lost* basically on just the trivial matter of copying music,so I have no idea what will happen with anything really important.
you have an absolutist opinion that's just as extreme as anything you rail against. the government passes laws about EVERYTHING all the time. Pick a subject, there's laws and regulations.
There's NOTHING stopping mandatory DRM schemes of various types in hardware within politics. And who knows what they might think proper. How about no way any more anonymous surfing? they could mandate that if they wanted to, with your normal serious fines and jail ties associated with it to "stop child molestation and to catch crooks and terrorists and hackers" and whatnot. make you have a signed cookie thing follow you, connected to a real name. there's any number of schemes they could come up with. I had this same conversation just a few years ago with people when I told them that pretty soon tracking chips would become mandatory in all goods traded, they told me it would never happen, tinfoil hat. Well? Sure looks like it'll all be here soon, doesn't it? Isn't RFID now the hottest thing since burgers in a bag with industry now, and with government? See? Stuff happens.
This is the US, enough "campaign contributions" above board exchanges hands, and the usual hookers and whatnot behind the scenes, you get "laws passed". the one rule on that is, "no rules"on what they can pass. Then your entire market becomes your "choice" of this hardware which conforms to the new standards or that hardware which conforms, or used. In fact, you ALREADY have hardware which must conform, the US regulates the heck out ofhardware now, has certain standards for manufactured goods of all types, espeically electronics. Look at refrigeration, heck, look at the it now takes two flushes to work johns they mandated to "save water". You can NOT buy a new john made like the older ones now, stroke of the pen, law of the land deal. Like, where's my "free market choice" to buy one? It don't exist except used now, at least inside the borders, and if ya get caught selling or smuggling, yep, fines, jail time, whatever they think is cool.. Just like they passed mandatory auto emissions, which morphed from what used to be an automobile about anyone with a box of tools could work on now takes a trained specialist in a particular car maker, subset a particular system and there is NO choice there to get just a clean simple new car without all the crap on it, even if it ran clean with a nice tuneup, like they used to do anyway. The problem with cars and smog is using petroleum based fuels, they are dirty, but I don't see a choice for me at the pumps if I want to run a new simple car designed to run on something that runs clean out of the box, like ethanol for instance. No cars sold new without every piece of crap computerised system they can think of now on them. No "free market choice" there except used, and even then you with your older used hardware ride you still got to follow a lot of "laws" that weren't even in existence when your older machine was built. If they did it with cars, why not with computers, or TVs, or digital recorders? Nothing stopping them, and they are always aware that attrition will get rid of the old hardware eventually, and it don't take too long.
The siamese twins Government and BigBrandBusiness does this all the time, and believe me, big giant business doesn't allow laws to be passed they aren't in favor of, even if they cry big sobbing crocodile tears over them in public. If the bigboys want uber nasty DRM in everything, it'll happen, and you'll be stuck with used or smuggled in questionable quality hardware, or really learn to solder some teeny tiny stuff, and that's about it. And government won't care about the.000001% of the people who will be modding hardware, except for the occassional feel good TV news spot "bust" they will make on "dangerous computer hardware hacker terrorists who put e-vile circumvention chips in their machines so they can steal million$$$$ and hack the net and...." crap. THAT'S what will happen if the fatcats want it to happen.
I am not saying it WILL happen, just that it easily COULD happen, they do it everyday to something. What are we at now inside the US, 5 MILLION laws, maybe more? Think they are gonna just STOP making new ones???
Slashdot Mirror
if it ever gets that bad, I got TWO aces in the hole. Still got a mac classic here, and a Knoppix disk. If THAT don't work, I got a bad attitude and a 12 bore.
If for example you are developing scientific/engineering/ professional audio/visual creation industry apps,etc, or games, ya, your end users are probably always getting newer faster machines. But the hardware side of the industry is a real severe slowdown on new machines, adoption peaked a few years ago from what I have read (and noticed in meatworld). What I am saying is, for developers and their buddies and their peers at work, high end machines are the norm, that's what they are used to and have *forgotten* that they are the exception, not the rule. For 90% of the rest of the world, upgrading hardware every 6 months to a year doesn't happen, and the trend for people at home and a ton of businesses is to hang on to hardware for a longer time now,years longer in a lot of cases, upgrades are being postponed a lot.
In the US, last I looked, media family income is around 45 grand or a scosh more. That's FAMILY income, in a lot of cases that's 2 paychecks combined. People who are making a lot more than that with one paycheck tend to forget they aren't the norm either,and usually they hang out with other people closer to their economic level, and their consumer purchasing choices tend to be vastly different from the rest of the people. A side note, but that is also something the music/video industry forgets, wonders why people aren't as fast to snap up expensive CDs as they used to. Same with a lot of other industries, you can't look at it with blinders, people having a harder tiome now paying necessary bills, and that goes up and down and sideways throughout all industries, and why we have interest rates so low, because people have maxed out credit already, why bankruptices at all time highs, mortgage defaults all time highs, etc. To developers ( I mean the sales aspect of it software obviously), who are quite specialised into a niche way of thinking and doing business, maybe they are not noticing these things, might be a reason why it's getting harder to sell stuff. Maybe, but I bet it's part of it. it's all connected, chaos theory and whatnot.
Mindshare is both an immediate and long term process. Longer -term thinking will get you more loyal customers *for a longer time* for your apps as people are happy to use ones that still run well on what hardware they have. They'll remember that your product, written for THEM and their hardware worked well. Cost is BOTH, if a new program actually requires an additional one thousand dollars or more in new hardware just to run, you might actually LOSE mindshare as people think about it and go "no thanks", even if the program itself is just totally spiffy.
Just wondering, but I wonder what a median set of hardware specs is now for the millions and millions of machines out there still being used. CPU in the medium pentium II class, and 64 megs RAM? That would be my guess. Isn't win98 still the dominant OS that shows up in most website logs? That would be a clue as to what machines for specs are the bulk of this "the market" thing, VERY broadly speaking taking my original point into consideration on types of apps.
Joe User here, who lurks on devel to try the knowledge osmosis absorption technique..
Speaking as an antique box driver,bleeding edge of 5-6 year old technology when I'm lucky, I REALLY appreciate apps that can run well* on older machines. To ME, always thinking of the end users of the code is vital in development. I wish it was the complete industry standard, even if it meant some more days work before release.
*define "well" OK, to me = lowest ram usage,(most machines shipped in the past buncha years never shipped with all the ram slots filled, and they STAY that way) lowest CPU usage (how come older machines did a lot of the same stuff you want to do now, but now you need CPUs orders of magnitude faster to do it? Huh?), stability (no leaks/conflicts), security (no idea what this thoroughly e-vile "buffer" is, but that thing always seem to be overflowing whenever you hear of the latest security exploit. Wazzup with that? Someone needs to invent the dang buffer valve and turn that thing off once your sink is filled with enough buffer whatsis stuff so it don't overflow. I am assuming that is what all these emergency "patches" do whenever there's a new exploit. Uh, patch em in advance please)
signed Joe User
... sort of an offshoot of sealand? An independent space station - nation?
that could work......hmmmm
... do any of thes PDAs have a feature to "flip a page" rather than scroll up and down only? Like mash the arrow key to the right or something, and the whole "page" whooshes over like a real page in a book?
troll?? All I wanted to know is if they had heard a generic over-all reason for all the (new and unexpected)interest, and what perhaps it might have been. It's an "ask these guys" question, that was my question. From what I remember when I read that before, they were expecting a few hundred, got like 6 thousand or something, so obviously there was some big reason for that happening. I threw out just a few obvious things, but it don't have to be one of them, but that is sort of what I was looking for, like "we wanted to install linux because of xxx"whatever it was. Could be anything, I sure wasn't there to hear it. Anywho.... someone read me wa-y-y-y wrong I guess...
...on the "best" over to your shops then, of the three?
.... tons of laws out there. Here's the first google hit on Consumer warranty codes.
:
Under that, we have
Sec. 2304. - Federal minimum standards for warranties
(a) Remedies under written warranty; duration of implied warranty; exclusion or limitation on consequential damages for breach of written or implied warranty; election of refund or replacement
In order for a warrantor warranting a consumer product by means of a written warranty to meet the Federal minimum standards for warranty -
(1)
such warrantor must as a minimum remedy such consumer product within a reasonable time and without charge, in the case of a defect, malfunction, or failure to conform with such written warranty;
(2)
notwithstanding section 2308(b) of this title, such warrantor may not impose any limitation on the duration of any implied warranty on the product;
(3)
such warrantor may not exclude or limit consequential damages for breach of any written or implied warranty on such product, unless such exclusion or limitation conspicuously appears on the face of the warranty; and
(4)
if the product (or a component part thereof) contains a defect or malfunction after a reasonable number of attempts by the warrantor to remedy defects or malfunctions in such product, such warrantor must permit the consumer to elect either a refund for, or replacement without charge of, such product or part (as the case may be). The Commission may by rule specify for purposes of this paragraph, what constitutes a reasonable number of attempts to remedy particular kinds of defects or malfunctions under different circumstances. If the warrantor replaces a component part of a consumer product, such replacement shall include installing the part in the product without charge.
---and yada yada yada,paragraph b, sub section whosis, and etc, legalese out the wazoo. It's real long and complex. Nope, warranties are required, implied use, etc. Basically, whatever you read in the fine print in a software EULA that they want a free skate on, applies to most other meatworld things that are "for sale" new. If you sell a kids wagon, that thing better have wheels that roll, it got to haul some stuff, and it can't fall apart or spontaneous combust or whatever for such and such a time. Companies USE warranties sometimes as bragging points, but they are required to have them, almost without exception. We USED to have "caveat emptor" that was like a long time ago, long gone now. too many scams when on with it, "snakeoil" was the norm, not the rule. Hmm, reinforces my stance on software warranties, and why we need them, especially when they get "patents" on them and sell them. My favorite "this software may not work for anything, not suitable for yada yada'. Phooie, what ELSE you gonna do with the thing? You are gonna cram it in your machine and it should work like the shiny box or blinkenlights website says it does. What ELSE you gonna do with an OS on a disk but try to use it as a OS? What ELSE you gonna do with acme tax prep software, or amalgamated video vue-er? It's nuts, they get a free skate, times up, they need warranties for suitability of purpose and for defects. End of story. Same as any other product.
--I was just replying to the "90 days" warranty deal on firearms, because it's something I am familiar with, along with the industry in general. Usually on /. I am overwhelemed by tech expertise, it's nice to be able to chime in with something other than my normal politics rants, heh. Guns have by and large some of the best warranties and recall/repair policies out there. some are lifetime, some are transferrable to whomever happens to be owning them at the time. Just depends, but few consumer products can match them. Not ALL of them, but I'd say most of them all have pretty decent warranties. And YA, they need warranties, good ones, and they are built WELL, you got something goes from atmospheric pressure to 20 -50 thou lbs pressure in a few micro seconds, you want that thing built strong. There's obviously some crap makes out there, but after that, they are all pretty good for their design purposes, the make/model/style/purpose etc, following that. I've been shooting almost a half century now,well, I won't exaggerate, I been shooting 45 years, had ONE (1) firearms failure, had one get a broken bolt assembly, it still fired but jammed on the reload, so I checked it out, cracked. Now that's just ME, I do preventative maintenance and pick my models, but still, decent track record there.
... you still can't. I ran apples for years, but I'll be the first to admit they were hard to find unless you lived in a big city. Like, right now, I can go to the nearest towen, there are at least 6 places i can think of that sell computers, not a one of them carries apple products. And by staying expensive, they kept quality, but never expanded beyond the niche markets they developed, and basically used owner loyalty to maintain that market. They WERE very expensive, and when we had the explosion of the clones, and most of them had DOS on them, well, buh bye neck and neck race, hello dominance of MS and commodity hardware. Back in 85 I was helping these guys build peecees then install them in LANS, they were making serious coin with them, too, geez, what were they then, 286s? I can't remembver, but they were going for over 3 grand and I think apples were 4 easy. Not too many folks wanted to pony up the scratch for them, all the early buyers were mostly businesses and schools and government.
But, my other point, they just never SOLD them too hard,it's like they play acted at it or something, a few real creative decent TV ads, a few lame attempts at some stores, etc, still pretty dismal. I got my last one mail order, only way I could get one without huge driving and time involved. And I can't answer why they didn't (and still don't) try better, luxury cars sell well, inside a market that has yugos to whatevers. I mean, really, every time there'sa new windows virus they could run TV spots showing "they don't have that problem", or they could have the past buncha years. anything but what they were doing. They built good stuff, no idea on how to sell it until just lately it seems.
... I hear you but have no easy answer for it. Never coded much except bogus little html and whatnot, few apple scripts, that's it.
Eventually this EULA stuff is gonna go, SOMEONE is gonna challenge this thing, probably some business that gets hosed for millions of dollars and the CEO just goes ballistic over it. I'm amazed it ain't happened yet actually. people are just going to demand it eventually, if this web hacking nonsense goes on, and we'll wind up with all sorts of big brother 'web security" nonsense if the software manufacturers don't do it themselves first.
About the only dodge I can think of,for paid software, that is both ethical and would be legal, is for paid for software to only be released to "beta testers" and you hire them for a buck or something to "test" your software, and beta testers can be anyone. Sorta like those private bring your own bottle key clubs in dry counties that have no public bars..
With free/open source, I always assume I am a beta tester, been my default position since I switched from mac classic. I paid for mac classic, and so fewissues with it I never even thought of complaining, it just mostly always worked and I was quite happy with it, all of apples stuff anyway, the hardware and the software, and I never had zip for security problems, musta lucked out or something, but no getting owned especially, never got a worm or virus anything, with nothing more special than default install and make sure appletalk and sharing was turned off unless I needed it. Hmm, system 6 on up there. That was about it, certainly never even looked for a firewall. And I keep my old PB 1400 right handy here, always waiting for the mother of all windows wurms to snag out 7/8ths of the web. Don't know if I could still get back online, but know I won't be a problem if I do to anyone. I'm still not sure enough of myself with linux though, I'll put it between MS and apple on security. Linux is way too complex to take anything for granted with it, not much different than windows in that respect, IMO. But I pay 4.89$ for an OS and a ton 0 apps on disks plus some cheap shipping to get it too, not 100 clams for an OS and a few apps. Big ole hairy difference there in my mind, and I KNOW the folks working on all that stuff are like "here, check this out, help out if you can, this is for everyone, share it, help fix it, and etc".
cool beans, I dig the philosophy, sorta like the old timey neighborhood barn raisings. I don't got a problem with something like that if occassionaly it gets borked..
Third party stuff on classic was sometimes flaky, netscape browser always gave me fits, but I preferred the way they rendered pages the best, and that was free (eventually, I remember when it wasn't), so I thought of it as beta ware, and certainly sent in every talk back crash bug report that popped up.
Hey, be the first on your block to offer a warranty for your for-sale code! Just word it carefully, that's all. Announce it on slasherdotted. SOMEONE has to do it, first guy gets some very cool cred methinks.
In the install fest, which was the primary reason for all the new interest? Was it (some examples), because linux is viewed as just better quality than the alternatives, or is it that it truly is "free" to use and develop without making copies of "the other guys", or is it just "trendy" like people like to try out new stuff, and etc? Whatever the reason, I was interested in the MAIN reason for all the interest. Thanks.
--have lifetime warranties, I can think of some readily, that I own actually, say craftsman wrenches and other hand tools,some kitchen knives we have here, etc. I was more meaning over-all mechanical or electrical do-dads, the entire product, not just a chunk of the product. Very rare if impossible to find anything where the entire product will have a lifetime warranty that has multiple moving parts and is subject to a lot of abuse and stress outside the firearms industry. The frames and forks on bikes I can see that, even with frame flex, but not all the other stuff, not the crank assembly or free wheel or brake assemblies,or chains, wheels, etc ie, the "whole" bike. Although I admit there might be some examples out there, the bulk of products sold now have limited and specific warranties, but at least they have SOMETHING, softwares have zee-ro, no matter how much they cost. Well, yes, you can get "we might fix it if it breaks" contracts,this is true, but those are not default built in warranties like we think of them with other products. I will also admit there might be specific, small niche, custom built softwares that I am not aware of that have a warranty automatically sold with them, but the bulk don't, they have those get out of any responsibility EULA "voluntary contracts", all the software I ever used/saw had them anyway. That's the stuff I am talking about.
cars originally shipped with normal glass windows and windshields. When it was found that they were just too wimpy,defective, flawed, unsuitable, etc., for the purpose intended, they INDEED were forced to develop shatterproof glass and it's mandatory now to have such glass, by law. It comes uber hardened by default. Yes, it can still be broken, but not near as easy as just normal household glass, it is x-times better made and has the laws and warranties that reflect that. I guess it's a matter of degree. If a default install of a car window was such that anyone could just use their hands and push it in and reach inside, it wouldn't be allowed, it just wouldn't, yet OSes and other profitable softwares are allowed about that ease of penetration and unsuitability to be shipped and profited from.
I know what you are trying to say, but car glass is a bad analogy there, it actually proves the opposite point, "windows" needs to be effective and suitable, not defective and unsuitable. And car windows cannot be sold with a EULA that states you are accepting the fact that despite it's clear and obviously designed to look out of, that the manufacturer insists you accept the fact that they can become opaque, or are not necessarily designed for looking out or keeping you reasonable safe inside your vehicle. That wouldn't happen, and it falls into "reasonable expectations", which has a history of legal precedent behind it.
Software = obvious total free ride that no other giant industry gets, obvious as all get out. Sweet deal for them, sucks for everyone else.
... are a LOT more responsible about their products as a rule then almost any industry, perhaps airplanes might be the closest, they always recall and repair or replace defective products, and go to some lengths to get the word out to the owners, and it goes beyond 90 days, and beyond the original owner on any defects. I know because I worked in a firearms warranty repair center before and been an enthusiast since I was about as tall as a .22 rifle. It's years and years in some cases with warranties. Many now come with a default "forever" warranty. In fact, they have some of the best warranties and repair/recall efforts in any industry. We would be *lucky* if all products had as good a warranty. Like name a major manufactured mechanical product that comes with a lifetime warranty now. Washing machine? Automobile? Bicycle? Hard drives? Radio? Anything? There might be but I can't think of any off the top of my head, but firearms are treated that way in a lot of cases now, and even in other cases where the warranties expire, recalls are still done if a defect is found.
The big problem is software got a compoletely 100% "free ride" in the beginning, it was allowed to be sold with zero warranties, I guess to get the business off the ground or something. Or maybe... I dunno, can't think of a good reason really. They just slap got away with something no other industry has as far as I know. You can't sell a 1 cent stick of gum without it having actual and implied warranty to it.
This deal was way back when it first really took off (I really need to research this now,it's gonna bug me why they got such a sweet deal), now it's been decades. DECADES. Untold hundreds of billions of dollars in pure profits. Huge numbers of wealthy people and businesses involved with it. It's "mature" now. Time to insist on "profitable" software to have warranties, and hold the manufacturers liable for obvious defects. They have "Get out of any Responsibility" EULAs, but still "enjoy" full ME ME ME IT'S ALL MINE MY PRECIOUSSSS protection "under law" for "Intellectual Property" and make tons of cash, well, that is teh obvious suck now and ayone can see that.
It's one or the other, if the software makers want to treat electronic digits as some sort of extremely valuable commodity product, with PATENTS on it even, which they sell at a very, very good profit, they need some sort of a minimum consumer warranty applied to them, or strip them of their profitability, one or the other. Enough's ENOUGH on the free ride they get. The software industry is "mature" enough to treat those business people as normal adults, same as anyone else in any other industry.
We NEED a class action suit in general against free ride EULAs across the board for for-profit software, and it needs to go to the supreme court and be won.
I am surprised as all get out with all the other litigation that goes on in our society that a set of profitable businesses who have gotten hosed over and over and over again by these obvious defects haven't challenged those EULAs as being absurd and illegal in the first place. Name another industry that would dare to put out such a "contract" for consumers and have it accepted. It's quite absurd, they'd be laughed at, but "software" is now the biggest example of legal "conware" there is.
And YEP, I could care less if it meant that "releases" slowed to a crawl, wouldn't bother me one bit or byte. Consumers want quality, few if any defects, they just been faked out that crapware is "good enough" and the industry as a whole has all colluded to profit off of crap and conware. It's just plain stupid, and ethically wrong. We can see now that software is so "embedded" in our society that you can't really say now that "no one is effected" when defects show up. it can get downright dangerous, and it certainly costs consumers tons of cash to keep fix and repaired stuff that shouldn't be shipped broken in the first place. We need less patches, and more "it don't need to be patched" software
... reading too much into what I am saying. I am not a communist, and have perhaps a 2% socialist bent, and that is "voluntary" in nature, I tithe, and I use free software and contribute the occasional bug report (don't code so that's it), I copewrate with friends building projects, donate myself to this or that, but not really in favor of mandated wealth redistrivution. I AM in favor of evening the playing field inside a semi regulated capitalist system, and I AM in favor of stripping corporations of legal personhood and putting back named human beings as accountable for their actions..
...wel
Have you ever been in a union? I have, twice, it's not all about money directly, politics is 1/2 the unions interest, and always has been. Just getting a decent workday instead of 12 to 16 hours a day sweatshops was one of the first thing unions did. They lobby and strike over and negotiate for a variety of things not directly related to the digits on their paychecks, although, yes, that is primary with them. Worker safety for instance. Fair trade and not scam "free" trade like we have now would be a good one for any union.. And there's no law saying they can't negotiate or strike over *anything* they think of that's a collective interest of their's. No place anywhere is there any rule or law that mandates what an organization like a union can negotiate for, or strike over if they so choose. Literally, a strike is just not showing up for work, and that's it. Other nations have held entire nation wide strikes, with huge numbers of the citizens involved, not over money usually but some law of the government they have they want to influence. Happens a lot, still happens occassionaly, just more in other nations than in the US, here, we are money lovers to the extreme. I think it's OK to have money, to use money, I use money obviously, worked my whole life since 9 yearsold, etc, but... I'm just not personally a *lover* of money or treat it with a cult like fanatcism, never have my entire life. Ho humm, tangent there...
They could strike over something that their company has no control over, but the government does, that's sort of what I was suggesting. Take the outsourcing issue, any one single company getting that stopped wouldn't be as good as having an national immediate halt to it for a breather, to let the nation come to grips with it and to determine first where the new *real* jobs are coming from before they get shipped overseas. that and perhaps institute quid pro quo tariffs, and also import duties on imported code. They want to treat it like a product, so be it, slap normal tariffs on it, help reduce the bogus "income" taxes. That's another one, we could use such a strike to demand an end to the million law monstrosity IRS and income taxes and go to something different, national sales tax and tariffs, for instance. Who knows, but when you have numbers, will and are in the position to make it stick, you WOULD get some results. That's a dandy issue a nationwide IT union could strike over, and the decent part is, there's no immediate replacement for them,heck, there slap AIN'T replacements for them, can't be done, not quickly anyway, and simply not showing up for work one day would effectively shut down most of the nations business, government, utilities, you name it, because if it was a nationwide union with a significant percentage of IT workers in it,PLUS sympathy strikes from other unions and just joe citizens, that's exactly what would happen, and joe government would have zero choice in the matter. Make it a week, that'll work better. Government still sucks, big corporations throw a fit, too bad, make it two weeks. It's possible. It's doable.
Some stuff would stay up, but so much of it wouldn't or be running at such diminished capacity as to make it almost a moot point, it would be *shut down*.
BUT, IT workers by and large have been *completely* brainwashed over the years that they are "above the blue collar riff raff" and should never "be in a union" because that's for
...if it gets close enough to the moon that gravitational forces (handy term that) to accidently split in half? I read in the piece it's odd shaped and like a dumbbell shape of sorts. Suppose it's very thin and wimpy through the spindle, and maybe cracked from previous impacts? Again, according to the article it is thought it has sustained a lot of previous damage. Or even just another odd but still whopper big piece busts off of it, along those lines.
Just wondering how much that would throw off their calculations. Has anyone done any "what if?" style calculations based on it's shape now and losing some of those pieces you can see in the pics? Near as I can see they are going on a default assumption it will stay the size and shape and mass it is now, despite it's vigorus tumbling and etc. And according to what I read, it really hasn't gotten close to any other large gravitational attraction for a long time, not as close as it will get this fall anyway.
Just a-wondering is all....
... that Betty and everyone else locked into a cube day after day after day needs something to feel like a human being, and not just a de humanized cog in a heartless machine that starts off by hiring them as a "human resource" instead of a "person"nel. Employees aren't even classed as "people"now, they are just "stock" like stuff on the shelf in the warehouse, or no more important than the copier.
Modern businesses are bad about abusing employees, they want trained rats, not human beings. For some people, a cute screen saver might be to that person a tremendous morale booster, trivial as it may seem to someone else. Modern corporate life and life in consumerville and taxhell USA is bad enough when things are going smoothly, take away peoples human-ness,their individuality, turn them into--I dunno, hive creatures, termites, to force them into some mold beyond reason, is not only cruel, it's insane from a business standpoint as well, you won't have happy camper employees, ever.
A compromise might be better, something along like, personalization of your desktop is acceptable, provided the installed piece of eyecandy crap or whatever is reviewed for being spyware or malware first. Yes, more work for the techs, so what, that's their job, keep the computers happy so that the happy computers make the humans sitting in front of them happy, working, so that your company can keep making happy profits. Seems reasonable to me.
Give you an example. I used to work for a guy didn't allow playing the radio. Umm, I work outside all my life mostly,blue collar, not white collar jobs, but the principle is the same. The radio didn't interfere with squat, but it "wasn't allowed". Me being able to hear my news and talk shows and a few tunes now and then keeps me happy and productive. Not having it annoys me right off the bat, I started dreading going to work because it meant a lot to me and it was such a BS rule, finally I quit, and I can guarantee I wasn't as productive as I could be, and starting each day off with animosity towards the boss is just not a good idea.
Just a few thoughts. I fully understand how vital secure computers are,and surely there's a way to keep all the people who use them at the shop at least partly satisifed that "their" machine they get to use is somehow really "theirs" for the time they sit in front of it every day. NOT doing that would be- like- insisting that the company trucks have their seats bolted down in one general position, so that no one could adjust them to "fit" better. Sure, you could still drive the truck, but really....
....sells linux peecees of various flavors for cheap *online*. Walmart brick and mortar stores sell only mid range and up priced peecess, exclusively with XP on them, and all the software is for windows. Most of the low-end regular everyday prices I have seen there are like 500 or so rounded off with sales tax, etc., then they go up from there. I've seen some examples of cheaper ones on the floor, scratch and dents, etc, but not the linux boxes ever.
disclaimer, last I knew/heard about it and saw at various walmarts when my gfriend insists I go into one. If it was up to me I'd boycott them forever.
In my state, three felonies, buh bye,(might be 2 actually) automatic LIFE in prison. By my count, gates has been convicted of three now, his recent personal "gosh, I musta fergot, aw shucks" stock trading, and the fed anti trust suit, and in the EU similar, him being head schmoo over to redmond. I think other states have similar, 2 or 3 times, adios, have fun in jail. But, if you are REALLYBIGCO, it don't matter, because something you can't put in jail the legalised 'person' called a corporation, can't be locked up.
It's not time to bust up microsoft,that's way long past as far as I am concerned, it's time to get rid of the federal law (santa clara versus union pacific railroad)allowing *legal* "personhood" to a piece of paper with a stamp on it called a corporation, and put it back to NAMED human beings are always responsibile for their decisions. All incorporation does is give these goons a free skate and a legal shield to HIDE behind for crimes and to hide behind for taxes and to hide behind for campaign briberies, something joe sixpack never has. WHY is this considered "fair" and legal anyway?
It's disgusting. Not just MS, several bigcos out there are deserving of being dissolved, their stockholders left with useless paper and digits, then MAYBE it might sink in to companies and "investors" to not invest in being crooks.
man, this stuff gets me steamed....... and software patents? puh leeze, that was a big mistake a long time ago.... if they want to make it closed source to "make money" give them at most a 5 year copyright when they can keep it secret, then it opens up to the public. This forever and a day noise is too much too with copyrights.
who actually LIKES windows, and just wants to nudge everyone who doesn't use it properly to just learn something once and for all and keep their machines reliable. As in, sometimes ya got to smack a mule in the head with a clue by four to get them to react. I mean, if you think about it, the virus/worm writers are gradually putting themselves out of business, even microsoft eventually will ship way more secure systems with a default install.
Frankly, I am liking the "live" versions of OSes more and more, the whole concept makes a lot of sense,besides being basically unhackable-you can't write to a burned cd or dvd- just write your permanent stuff to cheap removable media. Maybe in the future we will (I mean, joe home user/surfer) just have machines with no permanent harddrives, just banks of lotsa ram, live OSes, and various cheap storage media that is removable, hot swappable, etc. and use an offsite storage server for backups of what you really want to keep.
I imagine for not very much $ an entry level box today,for instance, just an inexpensive mid range power CPU,lose the HDDs, ship it with like 2-4 gigs of RAM, and just have firewire and usb ports, etc. Then people can do what they want to do with a live CD and like flash drives, cd/rw disks or whatever. Want to surf, slap in the surfin and chat and gimme some tunes cd. Want to be joe office and bean counter for the family finances or shopping, slap that one in,want play some games, slap them in, and etc.
--if I had just bought a *brand new* expensive laptop (well, to me anything brand new is expensive, heh) and the buttons on the desktop didn't work I'd be seriously annoyed. I know if I was SELLING them I just wouldn't do it, would keep tweaking until they did. "The internet" is sorta the most important default application stuff that should "just work" when you get any new machine for most people and uses. And what's the issue with WiFi anyway, the companies who make these things are jerks when it comes to drivers for linux? If so seems like a nifty way for some unemployed geeks to collaborate on a product out there, a wireless card that runs on all OSes of note, built from scratch from the ground up. Proly take some VC to build it, but a real product has merit when shopping for money.
IS there a good battery life, runs all linux and runs it well, direct from the factory laptop out there now? I don't follow that too closely to know. I do recall reading here a few times about the transmeta chips, wonder if a laptop built around them would be better as a true mobile device. That and bring back dual hot swappable batteries built-in.
--OK, it's the webmasters fault. I'll see if moz 1.7 when I get it makes it look any better, but I'll probably shoot the guy over there an email too, ask him to preview his pages better with different browsers and be more consistent with his code. I've seen just some rank stuff lately is all, that was the one I could remember the addy to. Several news sites I've seen lately don't display well either, I just look at so many I forget which ones are rank. I might try getting the page again, then open it in composer and strip out some of the stuff and reload it that way, too.
It's "crap" because it's never been done in this generation to any great degree. Granted, a very few limited attempts, that's all the past 20 years really, and none of them very successful.
..well... good luck to you. I tend to think that's NOT the case, I'm just not seeing anything real effective yet, heck, you have *lost* basically on just the trivial matter of copying music,so I have no idea what will happen with anything really important.
In past generations it WAS done,massively, that's the difference, I remember it, and it wasn't about MONEY all the time. Remember civil rights? I do, I remember full well when people of color couldn't do this or that, helped out with that, too. They had a "union" of sorts and DID get massive changes, because they organized and did it. They shut things down, boycotted, did whatever it took, and it wasn't just one token day then "oh well, we tried" and go back to work, it was ongoing, intense effort. My point on the draft past, we DID get rid of it, and without all the great communication tools you have now.
A union or organization can "go on strike" for matters beyond just pay/money if they want to, why not? really, why not? Plenty of examples in the past. They COULD do that. Sure, it's wild, I'll agree,it's rad, but it's quite possible, and the time to think about it is NOT *after* the fact of needing to think about it. BEFORE is a much slicker idea, IMO.
Money, job security of note, no offshoring without some sort of replacement jobs, fair trade not free scam trade-all of that, AND also the other is possible. Yes, we need all of everyone to keep it all running,yes, yes, yes, but just THINK what I.T. *really* controls. It is unique beyond any other past profession, if you count all the techs and admins and engineers and scientists and whatnot who make up IT, not just coders.
Or, if you are speaking for (most of) the younger folks who might be facing this,and also facing the prospect of "no jobs" when they enter the workforce because of what is going on now,or watching jobs get less and less valuable to the point that you are worth nothing basically to the uberprofitgoons, are you saying that in your opinion the mass consensus with them is "ho humm, big deal"? If so, then sure, I'm wrong then, totally, go for it alone, go have fun playing mercenary or worker IT drone training your replacement or no job or minimum rage with maximum expenses, or working for the government in homeland insecurity, if that's your gig. Or if you got any sort of plan besides the status quo of "almost nothing" like it is now, I haven't heard it yet.
I don't know anything except what I have seen over the years and how "they" will use you up and spit out the carcass every opportunity they can, so if going it alone by yourself makes more sense, or if only thinking about money makes more sense, that's your right to feel like that and be that way. I do what I can to help folks learn from history, and that's about it. If people today really only care about video games, MP3's, X-treeme sports,movies, whatever, then
you have an absolutist opinion that's just as extreme as anything you rail against. the government passes laws about EVERYTHING all the time. Pick a subject, there's laws and regulations.
.000001% of the people who will be modding hardware, except for the occassional feel good TV news spot "bust" they will make on "dangerous computer hardware hacker terrorists who put e-vile circumvention chips in their machines so they can steal million$$$$ and hack the net and...." crap. THAT'S what will happen if the fatcats want it to happen.
There's NOTHING stopping mandatory DRM schemes of various types in hardware within politics. And who knows what they might think proper. How about no way any more anonymous surfing? they could mandate that if they wanted to, with your normal serious fines and jail ties associated with it to "stop child molestation and to catch crooks and terrorists and hackers" and whatnot. make you have a signed cookie thing follow you, connected to a real name. there's any number of schemes they could come up with. I had this same conversation just a few years ago with people when I told them that pretty soon tracking chips would become mandatory in all goods traded, they told me it would never happen, tinfoil hat. Well? Sure looks like it'll all be here soon, doesn't it? Isn't RFID now the hottest thing since burgers in a bag with industry now, and with government? See? Stuff happens.
This is the US, enough "campaign contributions" above board exchanges hands, and the usual hookers and whatnot behind the scenes, you get "laws passed". the one rule on that is, "no rules"on what they can pass. Then your entire market becomes your "choice" of this hardware which conforms to the new standards or that hardware which conforms, or used. In fact, you ALREADY have hardware which must conform, the US regulates the heck out ofhardware now, has certain standards for manufactured goods of all types, espeically electronics. Look at refrigeration, heck, look at the it now takes two flushes to work johns they mandated to "save water". You can NOT buy a new john made like the older ones now, stroke of the pen, law of the land deal. Like, where's my "free market choice" to buy one? It don't exist except used now, at least inside the borders, and if ya get caught selling or smuggling, yep, fines, jail time, whatever they think is cool.. Just like they passed mandatory auto emissions, which morphed from what used to be an automobile about anyone with a box of tools could work on now takes a trained specialist in a particular car maker, subset a particular system and there is NO choice there to get just a clean simple new car without all the crap on it, even if it ran clean with a nice tuneup, like they used to do anyway. The problem with cars and smog is using petroleum based fuels, they are dirty, but I don't see a choice for me at the pumps if I want to run a new simple car designed to run on something that runs clean out of the box, like ethanol for instance. No cars sold new without every piece of crap computerised system they can think of now on them. No "free market choice" there except used, and even then you with your older used hardware ride you still got to follow a lot of "laws" that weren't even in existence when your older machine was built. If they did it with cars, why not with computers, or TVs, or digital recorders? Nothing stopping them, and they are always aware that attrition will get rid of the old hardware eventually, and it don't take too long.
The siamese twins Government and BigBrandBusiness does this all the time, and believe me, big giant business doesn't allow laws to be passed they aren't in favor of, even if they cry big sobbing crocodile tears over them in public. If the bigboys want uber nasty DRM in everything, it'll happen, and you'll be stuck with used or smuggled in questionable quality hardware, or really learn to solder some teeny tiny stuff, and that's about it. And government won't care about the
I am not saying it WILL happen, just that it easily COULD happen, they do it everyday to something. What are we at now inside the US, 5 MILLION laws, maybe more? Think they are gonna just STOP making new ones???