"However, $20,000 OSes with $50,000 word processors is simply not going to fly."..you just pulled that out of thin air, you have no actual idea what it might cost, do you? I have an OS and a "word processor" that costs zero and is inherently by past historical track record significantly more secure than OS and word processors that costs hundreds of dollars now.
You want a metric, the rest of all industry has one, it is very, very simple, you sell something and it is bogus and causes physical or financial harm because it is not "suitable for purpose", your customer then has a tort action available to them. If you as joe browser shipper ship a browser and OS, then some guy's bank insists on that browser and they or it gets pwned and you as the customer lose, they should be liable for it, plus damages and costs. Get a few cases like that out there, you'd see a lot better code..less releases..but better code. The demand for code is out there, it is huge, someone would be able to do a much better job, much better than now with legalized snakeoil, the best you can get is half baked more or less works and has constant security issues-the entire main point of this entire article, how security has gotten complex and is now beyond the ken of most people and even most businesses, and it's because the applications and OS they start with are A) constantly buggy and probably not even realistically into full beta mode, but are shipped as "finals", and B) most should never be connected to the internet anyway, because they are simply unable to exist there and remain secure. And there's things on the net and in common usage that although they are capable of doing nifty-cool things are clearly not suitable to use from a security angle, such as javascript. That's one of the simplest and most effective ways to make sure you never get pwned, just turn javascript off.
This is an involved subject, but in essence you want to defend no warranties, I say that it is a normal modern industry and needs warranties like every single other industry out there. They have managed to struggle by and eventually came up with engineering practices that make products "good enough", and have been able to deal with the odd random whoops! It worked out, they claimed it wouldn't but it did. I can't give you *exact* details of how this would work with software, I am not a coder, this is not my business (I am in farming, food production, we have metric shitloads of rules and regs and standards we have to adhere to), but just looking at everything else out there...it's possible. Heck, the hardware that software uses has warranties even. The smarter guys would figure it out inside their own specialties of typing and coding and profit from it, the dumber ones would go out of business-as they should.
I have some hardware thoughts on making more secure machines if you want to go into it, basically-just talking about generic home users-I don't think most people really need a full open PC as we have it now, they would be much better served with a locked down next generation powerful/fast internet appliance (or multimedia server) that respawned a clean OS and apps image and ran from RAM, so that every time it was turned on and off it would be clean and bug free. It could originally load from a locked optical disk that can't be written to. Like you see some places when they do "kiosk mode", but even better than that. In fact, that is going to be my next home built machine, it will be designed to run like that, because the market only is offering general and completely insecure machines that are now so complex even near -experts have to be constantly tweaking and guarding them and "patching". They had some really bad examples of internet appliances in the past, they all sucked, but with todays hardware I think you could build a pretty fast and secure one. Basically, most people don't run an OS and such like, they don't even know the differences between the OS and the browser, etc, all they know is "mash this for the internet". They run a han
OK, I see what you are saying and sort of agree, but I think in their particular case, they deserve it. It's not just Tibet only, it is a plethora of reasons (for a lot of people including me, in the categories of social/political/economic). I think collectively they are a threat to the world right now and think it was insane to enrich them like the great western sellouts have done. I wouldn't do business with the [godwin reference] dudes, and I think they are about the same.
As to "hate speech" I don't believe in it and think it is a serious threat to free speech in general, the slippery slope deal.
Here's an example, in ye olden days I was against apartheid in South Africa. Today, I am against apartheid in Israel/Palestinian controlled areas, but according to a lot of people and now pretty soon the US government (I forget the actual house bill number right now..), that can be classed as "anti semitic hate speech" if you criticize their policies, and if you advocate the Palestinians fighting back against generations long oppression, they can accuse you of "terrorism". In other words, one guy's "hate speech" is another guy's "fight for freedom" speech.
I think the founders were justified in pamphleteering about and using armed force against the redcoats and the hessian mercenaries-today, if that situation was unfolding- that would be "hate speech" and "inciting for terrorism" or some such. So...as a general rule, I tend to dismiss all such claims and think the entire concept of "hate speech" is too much of a variable to have it encoded into law, although nothing is stopping any particular sides in this or that dispute from noting and gathering intelligence on the opposition. but to make just words and voice a crime? Nope, rather not see that, too much potential for abuse from officialdom, they can and will eventually use it to eliminate local political opposition, the historical track record is clear(also see recent action in zimbabwe).
I've already seen references from leading neocon talkers who label any opposition to the great white dope's weird policies as "treason" and that "the camps" should be used. We already have the precedent where the armed enforcers make opposition political demonstrators go stand inside a cage and they call that cage the "official free speech zone". Dang half way to full fascism near as I can see, worse than it ever was before in my recollection, and I've been a political activist since the early 60s, early civil rights and environmental/conservation and anti scam blood profits war stuff. And even THEN, given my admitted proclivities as a strict Constitutionalist and past paleocon, a "traditional", I wouldn't restrict the Klan, nor pro war activists, nor pro-massive pollution for profit capitalists, nor pro full communists, nor...you get the picture. Because they have a born-with right to speak their piece in as clear and simple and unambiguous language and manner as they want, fullstop.
...I thought about that myself with our cattle. If such a thing happened as the cheap cloned steaks, and made this business just silly, I would get them all neutered and let them live out their lives in the pasture (where they are right now standing belly deep in lush spring grass), unless the government kept bumping up the land taxes too much, right now that's all they do, help pay taxes and I keep a side when I need one.
The medical profession and insurance and pharma industries needed the slap downs because in the old days they were killing people or maiming them and got away with it. And even despite more scrutiny they are still trying to dodge safety issues, such as using barely knowledgeable academics as a "name brand lead author" on papers (headline article in recent JAMA). Nope, that liability was needed, they brought it on themselves because they refused to self regulate. If they had done it from day one they never would have needed the lawyers sicced on them, but they tried to hide behind white coats and pomposity for decades and finally got called on it when the accumulated evidence of serious malpractice and malfeasance just got overwhelming.
All the other industries have warranties and you can still buy their stuff, so I reject the FUD. I am no longer either believing the typical knee jerk indignant reaction expected, the scare tactics thrown out by the software industry "Your stuff will cost too much, we can't do it, wahhh!" nor do I think it is completely impossible. Yes, it will take one of those "paradigm shifts" in thinking and doing, and that is because it is needed. You know, I read it all the time here, devs in this or that thread complaining marketing forces-the suits- telling them to ship code that they *know* isn't finished and is still buggy. I would think the dev community would welcome forced minimum standards and minimum warranties like "suitable for purpose" like being exposed to the internet, etc., to help with fighting off marketing weasels and the slimeball tactics that permeate the industry and to actually be able to say they are "engineers" and have it mean something good.
Until THEY are under the gun of losing it in the wallet, like their customers are daily from using their no-warranty products that make security job 9768 all the time, their excuses will just keep pushing out perpetual beta-crippleware. They make buzillions of dollars, time to man-up a little and accept some responsibility for the alleged "software engineering" that goes on and is used to justify tremendous profits and salaries. Everyone else has to, why should they get a completely free skate? Just "because"? Sorry, maybe 40 years ago, but not today, this is now a mature industry, they need to collectively be treated like adults in the normal business realm then, not "special needs" children.
Now, either that or just give up on trying to hustle this buggy and insecure forever crap for serious folding green and demanding "patent" protection and etc. Both ways is just a completely clearcut consumer ripoff, no other industry out there gets to skate on things by posting some ridiculous EULA. Give it away free, clearly label it as beta, fine, start charging serious money for it, different story, it needs a normal warranty.
The vast bulk of ongoing security issues is because of a single glaring market/government oversight-software is not being required to have a normal consumer warranty. Is it a product like other products-as patents suggest-or is it a work of creative art, like copyright suggests?
I contend that society needs to make a clear distinction between the two and force the industry through legislative action (because voluntary is clearly not working) to choose one or the other, but not both.
If they want to continue to sell products, and to have patent protection, then consumers need protection from them as well in the form of warranties, same as in every other industry that pushes products. Security problems would then start to get REALLY addressed, from the ground up, not patched on like keeping an old bald tire going.
All the other industries out there got dragged kicking and screaming away from ye olden days "caveat emptor" snakeoil products era, before warranties, they claimed it "couldn't be done", that "the cost to the consumer would be to high!", that they just couldn't make products that could be covered by warranties..yet, they have, even with their faults, manufacturing settled down and is still profitable enough, even with forced warranties.
It is well past time software was as well.
This is not a new "delicate flower" industry that continues to need subsidy in the form of hand holding and a "get out of jail free card" for their products, it is now a decades old well established and robust and innovative industry that can finally have their training wheels taken away and stand behind their products and be forced to code so well that normal warranties can be offered. This would stop the massive release of perpetual betaware that has never ending security and functionality issues, and separate the truly thoughtful and "engineering first" efforts- from the good companies that would succeed- from the "marketing first frosted with gibberish and chanting billionaires going neener neener nothing is our fault, check the EULA, hahahaha, sucker!" offerings- from the bad companies- that we consumers get to "enjoy" now and are succeeding to the tune of tens of billions in the bank from their snakeoil wells they pump from.
"There is a big difference between saying "you are bad" and saying "you are doing something bad"."
I'm not seeing it. If you are doing something bad, that makes you "bad", because it certainly doesn't make you "good" or "neutral". Now you can argue that it is a collective generalzation at this point, but it is sort of hard to distinguish when talking about nations and their general policy, it is commonly used in conversation and people recognize that there are individual differences. The US allegedly "elected" GWB the lesser, even though individually a lot of people did not vote for him, collectively he is still the prez of all the US people, for whatever that is worth, and people elsewhere might think the US does "bad" and they conversationally link the two-even though individuals inside the us might totally disagree with this or that, their disagreement aggregate is not enough to alter what the official government of all the people does. It is enough where there is some collective "bad" there then. China as a nation occupies Tibet, a very large percentage there thinks that is totally cool, the official government does else they wouldn't do it. In their minds it is not bad and any criticism is an affront, but to a lot of people elsewhere it constitutes a collective "bad" policy making them overall "bad" because they are doing it.
Quite legal here (Georgia), you can rent cops out "off duty" and they are allowed to still wear their uniform and their badge and pack heat. It's common, and last I knew some years ago now they got $15 an hour, probably higher now. You can see them directing traffic so that big private parking lots like at shops and factories can get out into traffic, at fast food joints at lunch hour, concerts and other private venues, etc. One of the funnier things I saw was two different cops trying to work two different fast food joints that were next to each other, they were having a hard time as both of them were trying to block the main traffic to let "their" customers in and out, and it conflicted constantly and the poor drivers didn't know which frantically waving and whistling cop to "obey". Stop! No, go!, No stop! Pretty dang funny really.
Not hard at all to test for that, use the on/off button on your monitor. Go to your site, turn your screen off. Now try to use your site (without sight).
Now, I am not blind, but I am on dialup (no broadband availability where I live, one mile and change too far for dsl, zero cable), and I sure would like there to be some sort of HTML attribute that would automagically take me to the "print this page" version of most websites rather than waiting for some JS and Flash infested monstrosity pulling ads from who knows how many other slow servers to finally finish loading just so I can hunt for the "print this page" version. Some web pages now take actual multiple minutes to get to the point I can find the print this page. I wonder if there is a google hack there someplace to do that? hmmm.. Although I would like the browser and website to cooperate to do that. Accessibility isn't only about the blind, in the great flyover nation, there are millions of people who will never be served by broadband because it isn't the law that they are, 100 year old thin copper and 99 year old switches are all they will get. Oh well, I still like the tradeoffs of being rural, I wouldn't switch to urban just for broadband...but I still spend money and go to commercial websites. If they suck, are too slow and bloated to use on dialup, no loot from me, fullstop.
Slashdot degrades nicely though, full bloat and the new design with JS turned on is almost unbearable and unusable for me on dialup (I mean, you can't hardly even scroll normally, it "jumps", best way I can describe it, it fast jumps up and down with normal scrolling-only place I have ever seen such an effect), but the old low res version still works fine and I get all the same relevant content at 5 times (or more) the speed. The Nasa site isn't too bad either for giving you options, once you've broken through the front page barrier that is-that still needs some work.
There's still a good paid market out there for a linux desktop OS, redhat just *chooses* to not pursue it. They sell windows and osx just fine, and the primary market is for OEM installs. Now for hundreds of dollars per copy, nope, that is gouging, but for less than the competition, running on OEM equipment where everything works out of the box, they could make some money. Ubuntu has taken the lead there just because they sought it after RH abandoned the market. That's fine, but for them to say there's no desktop market or money there is just stupid. A lot of people (me included) used to buy their boxed sets, but they kept pushing it as a server, then abandoned it entirely(and that money), annoying a lot of folks in the process, and it just isn't that hard using all the apps and tools out there to make a clean distinction in the distro between customizable server for that market and more locked down and tweaked consumer desktop-for that market. And no, joe consumer is not going to pay 300 dollars for a "workstation" OS, but say around 30 bucks would probably fly hidden in with the new hardware cost from the computer vendor. If it is on some other hardware, tough nooogies, they don't have to support it, that's easy enough. Of course, two or more releases a year like Fedora wouldn't work, but something that lasted around the same amount of time people wait before hardware upgrades, like 2-3 years, would be perfectly acceptable.
There's no foot replacement for good hands (the reverse is true as well). Mountain goats are fantastic climbers, but monkeys and men are better. Two legs/feet and two hands is a better fit for extreme maneuverability in climbing and traversing rough terrain. I've done a lot of climbing and having hands is just nifty... The only reason it isn't used yet mechanically is that no one has built a good enough model. That opposable thumb idea caught on a long time ago because it "just works". And being able to travel on two points on less rough ground frees up the other two points to "do stuff" like tote things, swing a weapon, whatever.
For a windcharger system? That's absurd...just out to lunch, 5 years is more like it, got to be something screwy going on here.../me checks specs on Acme wind turbines....
OK, spotted the problem right here down in the "included with package" list -> "100ft Acme MONSTER turbine cable"
...has little bearing on the here and now and what they have become and what they are trying to protect. They've shattered what they stood for to placate the behemoth. Screw em, I don't care what they did. We can come up with another standards body and I know I'll keep ranking them over this issue and over including locked down patents as a "standard", that needs to change as well, that's disgusting. I just don't care how things used to be, this debacle is a serious and profound game changer, and unless they do a fast 180 and dump ooxml and publicly apologize and run some serious non joke and credible investigations on who influenced whom and how...they can go to hell as far as I am concerned.
Sorry, I am hardcore over this and microsoft's just insistence of turning to crap everything they touch. They should have been broken up, their stock made worthless, and the physical plant and assets sold at auction years ago over all the BS they have pushed. They've gotten off way too light for all their crimes. "Too big to fail" like those rip off thieving investment banks in the news who are getting bailed out by inflating the dollar to worthlessness.. nuts! I think companies like that aren't too big to fail, they are too big to be allowed to exist, yank their corporate charters, dang vampire corporations that can't be killed no matter what they do, it is hideous.
Every single solitary stinking time they get another chance to be righteous dudes they crap all over people. It's hardcoded into their corporate DNA or something. Now they have ISO looking like another one of their vomit puddles. You can defend them or the ISO process all you want, I'll condemn them. Like I said and I'll repeat, they make diebold blackbox hacked voting look like fair and honest elections. They make the MAFIAA look like benevolent honest businessmen. Just take a gander across the web at all the techboards, maybe 1% think this deal with them and ooxml is OK, the rest of the people are dissin them roundly because they deserve it, and now they are trying to justify their actions, just making things worse.
...but getting rid of software patents involves dealing with various nasty corrupt governments and changing laws, which is hard to do. Ignoring corrupt ISO means..just ignoring them, easy to do.
...that ISO has a history of being mostly stupid then -> "MPEG is a standard and yet is extremely heavily encumbered with patents."..they should never approve any standard that has patents like that in it. Just because. Unless the patents are then put into the public domain free and clear and unencumbered. Anything else is just kowtowing to some corporation/cartel and their attempts at vendor lockin as a "standard".
I say it is time to just abandon ISO, no longer useful. OOXML is just so glaringly and obviously lame that it stands out now, and they fully deserve all the criticism they are getting. They make US "blackbox voting" look scrupulously fair and honest.
Those smallish ones are fine, but not paying what they are asking when you can get a full size normal budget laptop for the same scratch $400-500. $100-200 tops right now would be my budget.
Anyway, that's my price point for getting a toy-ish low featured laptop, although they are featured-enough, solid state drive is fine, lowerpowered CPU is fine, just not be skimpy with the RAM, at least a gig or two.. The original OLPC hundred buck idea would be nice then.
So, you richer guys, get crackin and buy a zillion of them for what they are asking now, so the price can drop some more..heh.
The more money MS blows on purchasing Yahoo!, the less they have to go do mischief elsewhere.... So that is sort of good news.
And if the Yahoo! stockholders can't learn from history what MS does to companies they "embrace"..oh well...tough beans, and more good news, because our economy as a whole is suffering from short term profits "investors" mindsets..so.. if they approve it and wind up taking a bath eventually..who cares really? And if *MS* stockholders think blowing billions on this is a good idea, rather than, you know, actually producing good code and paying good devs... well ditto for them as well, again, who cares?
...would have been NO auction, and the FCC just opening it up "for the people" to start building out a universal wireless mesh network. All these auctions are just going to make already rich and powerful corporations richer, and keeping the people tied to their "services". They already got to own all the other spectrum, and all the publicly subsidized copper they strung up over the last century and change, let them do something constructive with that.
.....there's two ways to get a broccoli, you can buy one at the store, or get a packet of seeds and make a lot of copies for cheap. Go ahead, share some with friends! I'm in ag, that's where my money comes from,yet I encourage everyone to grow as much of their own food as possible. Because that is just a good idea, cheap good food for everyone is the goal. That's the best this side of another industry that's been around a long time can offer, bioreplicator technology. Go buy your meats directly from the farmer, save bunches. Go to produce stands and farmers markets, save a lot. *Food is the original replicator technology*, buy a heifer, you can "replicate" a lot of beef that way. There are ways to keep it cheap(er) and affordable. (and I am against food patents and seed DRM..that's lame, use open pollinated/heirloom "open source" seeds).
The digital bits for expensive industries-music,movies,software- are out to lunch, just charge very small fees, make it quick, easy, and legal, don't annoy the customers at all, skip the DRM and all that other nonsense, and make some money on HUGE volume sales. Even 99 cents a track is pretty steep, it should be like a dime maybe. And stuff on a cheap plastic disk? Coupla bucks, tops...make it impulse item cheap, sell zillions of copies that way. They are stuck in a pricing model from decades ago when making copies was expensive..it ain't that way now, not even close, drop prices severely or deal with "piracy" as your customer base routes around digital prohibition because it is stoopid to put up with it and constitutes irrational price gouging. Example of how far out to lunch they are, you can get the HARDWARE to replay the music now at the low end CHEAPER than a single plastic disk with some music on it. Tell me that isn't an indictment of price gouging by the music industry, and skewed expectations. They just refuse to drop prices as technology proves they can, that's all, just tired old avarice.
...may I take your order please? "Two singles and an order of fries, a large one" "OK, that will be blah blah, pull ahead".
You get there, open the sack, two burgers and a french fry box with one french fry in it....steamed, you yell at them "where's my fries?" "sorry sir, in the fine print and terms of using mcdonalds service, we reserve the right to throttle your french fry intake at our discretion"
Same deal, no one would put up with that, but the big ISPs get away with it. Screw em. Make them clearly state what the terms are in the main large print advertising, not buried in the fine print. None of this "up to" speed, no "you get an internet connection" when they block ports and disallow servers and throttle the speeds on their whims, that isn't a connection, that is a partial connection and lying about speeds and bandwith. Right now they should be forced to clearly state in their ads "port 80 only, only some protocols and these are them, and your maximum speed might be such and such, but realistically you will be averaging 1/10th such and such", etc. First step, get the consumers educated into what crap they are actually buying,by forcing the ISPs to come clean legally and clearly, then we might see some changes.
I live in the south now, but all my younger years up in "everything is rusted tight and rotten and frozen, and nasty crap falls in your eyes, and...) land. Two sets of tools, keep one inside and heated, swap out as they get frozen, build tents around vehicles and run out infra red bulb clamp lights, laying down in frozen slush, etc. nuts.....
Anyway, thanks for the reply, I guessed as much there would be an interesting story behind it! I'm still just a generic multi function tool user, here on de farm, but appreciate all the fine and not so fine code that devs put out. Me brane doesn't exactly work that way to do it myself (nor any huge interest truth be told, inside is for relaxing, outside is for work and make money, hard coded in my DNA I guess..), but I throughly enjoy using computers, great communications tool. I like writing, that's about it for being a keyboard commando.
I understand the fixation on the job you are offering and what the qualifications are of the applicant for, of course that is the primary criteria, I was just wondering in what era did (potentially) multi year gaps in employment history become cool to have on resumes? You mean employers as a general rule of thumb now don't give a crap (long time since I had to submit one...)? If that is the accepted practice and style now, no biggee, I'll just mosey on down the line with me onions on me belt....
With that said, I think everyone needs at least two completely different professional skill sets, and a big split between white collar and blue collar is just dandy. For a number of practical reasons...
The applicant is being honest and not leaving gaps in years for work experience..most likely. As to the other qualifications, why yes, seems you'd need to be a programmer of some sort to apply for a programmer job..unless the job clearly stated full training available, along those lines.
Besides, in Athens you probably get a lot of "worked offensive line for duh dawgs" on the resumes as well....you might do better advertising around atlanta/ga tech area than athens though....probably a scosh higher odds/probabilities of programming/IT experience..
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"However, $20,000 OSes with $50,000 word processors is simply not going to fly."..you just pulled that out of thin air, you have no actual idea what it might cost, do you? I have an OS and a "word processor" that costs zero and is inherently by past historical track record significantly more secure than OS and word processors that costs hundreds of dollars now.
You want a metric, the rest of all industry has one, it is very, very simple, you sell something and it is bogus and causes physical or financial harm because it is not "suitable for purpose", your customer then has a tort action available to them. If you as joe browser shipper ship a browser and OS, then some guy's bank insists on that browser and they or it gets pwned and you as the customer lose, they should be liable for it, plus damages and costs. Get a few cases like that out there, you'd see a lot better code..less releases..but better code. The demand for code is out there, it is huge, someone would be able to do a much better job, much better than now with legalized snakeoil, the best you can get is half baked more or less works and has constant security issues-the entire main point of this entire article, how security has gotten complex and is now beyond the ken of most people and even most businesses, and it's because the applications and OS they start with are A) constantly buggy and probably not even realistically into full beta mode, but are shipped as "finals", and B) most should never be connected to the internet anyway, because they are simply unable to exist there and remain secure. And there's things on the net and in common usage that although they are capable of doing nifty-cool things are clearly not suitable to use from a security angle, such as javascript. That's one of the simplest and most effective ways to make sure you never get pwned, just turn javascript off.
This is an involved subject, but in essence you want to defend no warranties, I say that it is a normal modern industry and needs warranties like every single other industry out there. They have managed to struggle by and eventually came up with engineering practices that make products "good enough", and have been able to deal with the odd random whoops! It worked out, they claimed it wouldn't but it did. I can't give you *exact* details of how this would work with software, I am not a coder, this is not my business (I am in farming, food production, we have metric shitloads of rules and regs and standards we have to adhere to), but just looking at everything else out there...it's possible. Heck, the hardware that software uses has warranties even. The smarter guys would figure it out inside their own specialties of typing and coding and profit from it, the dumber ones would go out of business-as they should.
I have some hardware thoughts on making more secure machines if you want to go into it, basically-just talking about generic home users-I don't think most people really need a full open PC as we have it now, they would be much better served with a locked down next generation powerful/fast internet appliance (or multimedia server) that respawned a clean OS and apps image and ran from RAM, so that every time it was turned on and off it would be clean and bug free. It could originally load from a locked optical disk that can't be written to. Like you see some places when they do "kiosk mode", but even better than that. In fact, that is going to be my next home built machine, it will be designed to run like that, because the market only is offering general and completely insecure machines that are now so complex even near -experts have to be constantly tweaking and guarding them and "patching". They had some really bad examples of internet appliances in the past, they all sucked, but with todays hardware I think you could build a pretty fast and secure one. Basically, most people don't run an OS and such like, they don't even know the differences between the OS and the browser, etc, all they know is "mash this for the internet". They run a han
OK, I see what you are saying and sort of agree, but I think in their particular case, they deserve it. It's not just Tibet only, it is a plethora of reasons (for a lot of people including me, in the categories of social/political/economic). I think collectively they are a threat to the world right now and think it was insane to enrich them like the great western sellouts have done. I wouldn't do business with the [godwin reference] dudes, and I think they are about the same.
As to "hate speech" I don't believe in it and think it is a serious threat to free speech in general, the slippery slope deal.
Here's an example, in ye olden days I was against apartheid in South Africa. Today, I am against apartheid in Israel/Palestinian controlled areas, but according to a lot of people and now pretty soon the US government (I forget the actual house bill number right now..), that can be classed as "anti semitic hate speech" if you criticize their policies, and if you advocate the Palestinians fighting back against generations long oppression, they can accuse you of "terrorism". In other words, one guy's "hate speech" is another guy's "fight for freedom" speech.
I think the founders were justified in pamphleteering about and using armed force against the redcoats and the hessian mercenaries-today, if that situation was unfolding- that would be "hate speech" and "inciting for terrorism" or some such. So...as a general rule, I tend to dismiss all such claims and think the entire concept of "hate speech" is too much of a variable to have it encoded into law, although nothing is stopping any particular sides in this or that dispute from noting and gathering intelligence on the opposition. but to make just words and voice a crime? Nope, rather not see that, too much potential for abuse from officialdom, they can and will eventually use it to eliminate local political opposition, the historical track record is clear(also see recent action in zimbabwe).
I've already seen references from leading neocon talkers who label any opposition to the great white dope's weird policies as "treason" and that "the camps" should be used. We already have the precedent where the armed enforcers make opposition political demonstrators go stand inside a cage and they call that cage the "official free speech zone". Dang half way to full fascism near as I can see, worse than it ever was before in my recollection, and I've been a political activist since the early 60s, early civil rights and environmental/conservation and anti scam blood profits war stuff. And even THEN, given my admitted proclivities as a strict Constitutionalist and past paleocon, a "traditional", I wouldn't restrict the Klan, nor pro war activists, nor pro-massive pollution for profit capitalists, nor pro full communists, nor...you get the picture. Because they have a born-with right to speak their piece in as clear and simple and unambiguous language and manner as they want, fullstop.
...I thought about that myself with our cattle. If such a thing happened as the cheap cloned steaks, and made this business just silly, I would get them all neutered and let them live out their lives in the pasture (where they are right now standing belly deep in lush spring grass), unless the government kept bumping up the land taxes too much, right now that's all they do, help pay taxes and I keep a side when I need one.
The medical profession and insurance and pharma industries needed the slap downs because in the old days they were killing people or maiming them and got away with it. And even despite more scrutiny they are still trying to dodge safety issues, such as using barely knowledgeable academics as a "name brand lead author" on papers (headline article in recent JAMA). Nope, that liability was needed, they brought it on themselves because they refused to self regulate. If they had done it from day one they never would have needed the lawyers sicced on them, but they tried to hide behind white coats and pomposity for decades and finally got called on it when the accumulated evidence of serious malpractice and malfeasance just got overwhelming.
All the other industries have warranties and you can still buy their stuff, so I reject the FUD. I am no longer either believing the typical knee jerk indignant reaction expected, the scare tactics thrown out by the software industry "Your stuff will cost too much, we can't do it, wahhh!" nor do I think it is completely impossible. Yes, it will take one of those "paradigm shifts" in thinking and doing, and that is because it is needed. You know, I read it all the time here, devs in this or that thread complaining marketing forces-the suits- telling them to ship code that they *know* isn't finished and is still buggy. I would think the dev community would welcome forced minimum standards and minimum warranties like "suitable for purpose" like being exposed to the internet, etc., to help with fighting off marketing weasels and the slimeball tactics that permeate the industry and to actually be able to say they are "engineers" and have it mean something good.
Until THEY are under the gun of losing it in the wallet, like their customers are daily from using their no-warranty products that make security job 9768 all the time, their excuses will just keep pushing out perpetual beta-crippleware. They make buzillions of dollars, time to man-up a little and accept some responsibility for the alleged "software engineering" that goes on and is used to justify tremendous profits and salaries. Everyone else has to, why should they get a completely free skate? Just "because"? Sorry, maybe 40 years ago, but not today, this is now a mature industry, they need to collectively be treated like adults in the normal business realm then, not "special needs" children.
Now, either that or just give up on trying to hustle this buggy and insecure forever crap for serious folding green and demanding "patent" protection and etc. Both ways is just a completely clearcut consumer ripoff, no other industry out there gets to skate on things by posting some ridiculous EULA. Give it away free, clearly label it as beta, fine, start charging serious money for it, different story, it needs a normal warranty.
The vast bulk of ongoing security issues is because of a single glaring market/government oversight-software is not being required to have a normal consumer warranty. Is it a product like other products-as patents suggest-or is it a work of creative art, like copyright suggests?
I contend that society needs to make a clear distinction between the two and force the industry through legislative action (because voluntary is clearly not working) to choose one or the other, but not both.
If they want to continue to sell products, and to have patent protection, then consumers need protection from them as well in the form of warranties, same as in every other industry that pushes products. Security problems would then start to get REALLY addressed, from the ground up, not patched on like keeping an old bald tire going.
All the other industries out there got dragged kicking and screaming away from ye olden days "caveat emptor" snakeoil products era, before warranties, they claimed it "couldn't be done", that "the cost to the consumer would be to high!", that they just couldn't make products that could be covered by warranties..yet, they have, even with their faults, manufacturing settled down and is still profitable enough, even with forced warranties.
It is well past time software was as well.
This is not a new "delicate flower" industry that continues to need subsidy in the form of hand holding and a "get out of jail free card" for their products, it is now a decades old well established and robust and innovative industry that can finally have their training wheels taken away and stand behind their products and be forced to code so well that normal warranties can be offered. This would stop the massive release of perpetual betaware that has never ending security and functionality issues, and separate the truly thoughtful and "engineering first" efforts- from the good companies that would succeed- from the "marketing first frosted with gibberish and chanting billionaires going neener neener nothing is our fault, check the EULA, hahahaha, sucker!" offerings- from the bad companies- that we consumers get to "enjoy" now and are succeeding to the tune of tens of billions in the bank from their snakeoil wells they pump from.
"There is a big difference between saying "you are bad" and saying "you are doing something bad"."
I'm not seeing it. If you are doing something bad, that makes you "bad", because it certainly doesn't make you "good" or "neutral". Now you can argue that it is a collective generalzation at this point, but it is sort of hard to distinguish when talking about nations and their general policy, it is commonly used in conversation and people recognize that there are individual differences. The US allegedly "elected" GWB the lesser, even though individually a lot of people did not vote for him, collectively he is still the prez of all the US people, for whatever that is worth, and people elsewhere might think the US does "bad" and they conversationally link the two-even though individuals inside the us might totally disagree with this or that, their disagreement aggregate is not enough to alter what the official government of all the people does. It is enough where there is some collective "bad" there then. China as a nation occupies Tibet, a very large percentage there thinks that is totally cool, the official government does else they wouldn't do it. In their minds it is not bad and any criticism is an affront, but to a lot of people elsewhere it constitutes a collective "bad" policy making them overall "bad" because they are doing it.
Quite legal here (Georgia), you can rent cops out "off duty" and they are allowed to still wear their uniform and their badge and pack heat. It's common, and last I knew some years ago now they got $15 an hour, probably higher now. You can see them directing traffic so that big private parking lots like at shops and factories can get out into traffic, at fast food joints at lunch hour, concerts and other private venues, etc. One of the funnier things I saw was two different cops trying to work two different fast food joints that were next to each other, they were having a hard time as both of them were trying to block the main traffic to let "their" customers in and out, and it conflicted constantly and the poor drivers didn't know which frantically waving and whistling cop to "obey". Stop! No, go!, No stop! Pretty dang funny really.
Not hard at all to test for that, use the on/off button on your monitor. Go to your site, turn your screen off. Now try to use your site (without sight).
Now, I am not blind, but I am on dialup (no broadband availability where I live, one mile and change too far for dsl, zero cable), and I sure would like there to be some sort of HTML attribute that would automagically take me to the "print this page" version of most websites rather than waiting for some JS and Flash infested monstrosity pulling ads from who knows how many other slow servers to finally finish loading just so I can hunt for the "print this page" version. Some web pages now take actual multiple minutes to get to the point I can find the print this page. I wonder if there is a google hack there someplace to do that? hmmm.. Although I would like the browser and website to cooperate to do that. Accessibility isn't only about the blind, in the great flyover nation, there are millions of people who will never be served by broadband because it isn't the law that they are, 100 year old thin copper and 99 year old switches are all they will get. Oh well, I still like the tradeoffs of being rural, I wouldn't switch to urban just for broadband...but I still spend money and go to commercial websites. If they suck, are too slow and bloated to use on dialup, no loot from me, fullstop.
Slashdot degrades nicely though, full bloat and the new design with JS turned on is almost unbearable and unusable for me on dialup (I mean, you can't hardly even scroll normally, it "jumps", best way I can describe it, it fast jumps up and down with normal scrolling-only place I have ever seen such an effect), but the old low res version still works fine and I get all the same relevant content at 5 times (or more) the speed. The Nasa site isn't too bad either for giving you options, once you've broken through the front page barrier that is-that still needs some work.
There's still a good paid market out there for a linux desktop OS, redhat just *chooses* to not pursue it. They sell windows and osx just fine, and the primary market is for OEM installs. Now for hundreds of dollars per copy, nope, that is gouging, but for less than the competition, running on OEM equipment where everything works out of the box, they could make some money. Ubuntu has taken the lead there just because they sought it after RH abandoned the market. That's fine, but for them to say there's no desktop market or money there is just stupid. A lot of people (me included) used to buy their boxed sets, but they kept pushing it as a server, then abandoned it entirely(and that money), annoying a lot of folks in the process, and it just isn't that hard using all the apps and tools out there to make a clean distinction in the distro between customizable server for that market and more locked down and tweaked consumer desktop-for that market. And no, joe consumer is not going to pay 300 dollars for a "workstation" OS, but say around 30 bucks would probably fly hidden in with the new hardware cost from the computer vendor. If it is on some other hardware, tough nooogies, they don't have to support it, that's easy enough. Of course, two or more releases a year like Fedora wouldn't work, but something that lasted around the same amount of time people wait before hardware upgrades, like 2-3 years, would be perfectly acceptable.
There's no foot replacement for good hands (the reverse is true as well). Mountain goats are fantastic climbers, but monkeys and men are better. Two legs/feet and two hands is a better fit for extreme maneuverability in climbing and traversing rough terrain. I've done a lot of climbing and having hands is just nifty... The only reason it isn't used yet mechanically is that no one has built a good enough model. That opposable thumb idea caught on a long time ago because it "just works". And being able to travel on two points on less rough ground frees up the other two points to "do stuff" like tote things, swing a weapon, whatever.
For a windcharger system? That's absurd...just out to lunch, 5 years is more like it, got to be something screwy going on here... /me checks specs on Acme wind turbines....
OK, spotted the problem right here down in the "included with package" list -> "100ft Acme MONSTER turbine cable"
...has little bearing on the here and now and what they have become and what they are trying to protect. They've shattered what they stood for to placate the behemoth. Screw em, I don't care what they did. We can come up with another standards body and I know I'll keep ranking them over this issue and over including locked down patents as a "standard", that needs to change as well, that's disgusting. I just don't care how things used to be, this debacle is a serious and profound game changer, and unless they do a fast 180 and dump ooxml and publicly apologize and run some serious non joke and credible investigations on who influenced whom and how...they can go to hell as far as I am concerned.
Sorry, I am hardcore over this and microsoft's just insistence of turning to crap everything they touch. They should have been broken up, their stock made worthless, and the physical plant and assets sold at auction years ago over all the BS they have pushed. They've gotten off way too light for all their crimes. "Too big to fail" like those rip off thieving investment banks in the news who are getting bailed out by inflating the dollar to worthlessness.. nuts! I think companies like that aren't too big to fail, they are too big to be allowed to exist, yank their corporate charters, dang vampire corporations that can't be killed no matter what they do, it is hideous.
Every single solitary stinking time they get another chance to be righteous dudes they crap all over people. It's hardcoded into their corporate DNA or something. Now they have ISO looking like another one of their vomit puddles. You can defend them or the ISO process all you want, I'll condemn them. Like I said and I'll repeat, they make diebold blackbox hacked voting look like fair and honest elections. They make the MAFIAA look like benevolent honest businessmen. Just take a gander across the web at all the techboards, maybe 1% think this deal with them and ooxml is OK, the rest of the people are dissin them roundly because they deserve it, and now they are trying to justify their actions, just making things worse.
...but getting rid of software patents involves dealing with various nasty corrupt governments and changing laws, which is hard to do. Ignoring corrupt ISO means..just ignoring them, easy to do.
...that ISO has a history of being mostly stupid then -> "MPEG is a standard and yet is extremely heavily encumbered with patents."..they should never approve any standard that has patents like that in it. Just because. Unless the patents are then put into the public domain free and clear and unencumbered. Anything else is just kowtowing to some corporation/cartel and their attempts at vendor lockin as a "standard".
I say it is time to just abandon ISO, no longer useful. OOXML is just so glaringly and obviously lame that it stands out now, and they fully deserve all the criticism they are getting. They make US "blackbox voting" look scrupulously fair and honest.
Those smallish ones are fine, but not paying what they are asking when you can get a full size normal budget laptop for the same scratch $400-500. $100-200 tops right now would be my budget.
Anyway, that's my price point for getting a toy-ish low featured laptop, although they are featured-enough, solid state drive is fine, lowerpowered CPU is fine, just not be skimpy with the RAM, at least a gig or two.. The original OLPC hundred buck idea would be nice then.
So, you richer guys, get crackin and buy a zillion of them for what they are asking now, so the price can drop some more..heh.
The more money MS blows on purchasing Yahoo!, the less they have to go do mischief elsewhere.... So that is sort of good news.
And if the Yahoo! stockholders can't learn from history what MS does to companies they "embrace"..oh well...tough beans, and more good news, because our economy as a whole is suffering from short term profits "investors" mindsets..so.. if they approve it and wind up taking a bath eventually..who cares really? And if *MS* stockholders think blowing billions on this is a good idea, rather than, you know, actually producing good code and paying good devs... well ditto for them as well, again, who cares?
...would have been NO auction, and the FCC just opening it up "for the people" to start building out a universal wireless mesh network. All these auctions are just going to make already rich and powerful corporations richer, and keeping the people tied to their "services". They already got to own all the other spectrum, and all the publicly subsidized copper they strung up over the last century and change, let them do something constructive with that.
.....there's two ways to get a broccoli, you can buy one at the store, or get a packet of seeds and make a lot of copies for cheap. Go ahead, share some with friends! I'm in ag, that's where my money comes from,yet I encourage everyone to grow as much of their own food as possible. Because that is just a good idea, cheap good food for everyone is the goal. That's the best this side of another industry that's been around a long time can offer, bioreplicator technology. Go buy your meats directly from the farmer, save bunches. Go to produce stands and farmers markets, save a lot. *Food is the original replicator technology*, buy a heifer, you can "replicate" a lot of beef that way. There are ways to keep it cheap(er) and affordable. (and I am against food patents and seed DRM..that's lame, use open pollinated/heirloom "open source" seeds).
The digital bits for expensive industries-music,movies,software- are out to lunch, just charge very small fees, make it quick, easy, and legal, don't annoy the customers at all, skip the DRM and all that other nonsense, and make some money on HUGE volume sales. Even 99 cents a track is pretty steep, it should be like a dime maybe. And stuff on a cheap plastic disk? Coupla bucks, tops...make it impulse item cheap, sell zillions of copies that way. They are stuck in a pricing model from decades ago when making copies was expensive..it ain't that way now, not even close, drop prices severely or deal with "piracy" as your customer base routes around digital prohibition because it is stoopid to put up with it and constitutes irrational price gouging. Example of how far out to lunch they are, you can get the HARDWARE to replay the music now at the low end CHEAPER than a single plastic disk with some music on it. Tell me that isn't an indictment of price gouging by the music industry, and skewed expectations. They just refuse to drop prices as technology proves they can, that's all, just tired old avarice.
...may I take your order please? "Two singles and an order of fries, a large one" "OK, that will be blah blah, pull ahead".
You get there, open the sack, two burgers and a french fry box with one french fry in it....steamed, you yell at them "where's my fries?" "sorry sir, in the fine print and terms of using mcdonalds service, we reserve the right to throttle your french fry intake at our discretion"
Same deal, no one would put up with that, but the big ISPs get away with it. Screw em. Make them clearly state what the terms are in the main large print advertising, not buried in the fine print. None of this "up to" speed, no "you get an internet connection" when they block ports and disallow servers and throttle the speeds on their whims, that isn't a connection, that is a partial connection and lying about speeds and bandwith. Right now they should be forced to clearly state in their ads "port 80 only, only some protocols and these are them, and your maximum speed might be such and such, but realistically you will be averaging 1/10th such and such", etc. First step, get the consumers educated into what crap they are actually buying,by forcing the ISPs to come clean legally and clearly, then we might see some changes.
I live in the south now, but all my younger years up in "everything is rusted tight and rotten and frozen, and nasty crap falls in your eyes, and...) land. Two sets of tools, keep one inside and heated, swap out as they get frozen, build tents around vehicles and run out infra red bulb clamp lights, laying down in frozen slush, etc. nuts.....
Anyway, thanks for the reply, I guessed as much there would be an interesting story behind it! I'm still just a generic multi function tool user, here on de farm, but appreciate all the fine and not so fine code that devs put out. Me brane doesn't exactly work that way to do it myself (nor any huge interest truth be told, inside is for relaxing, outside is for work and make money, hard coded in my DNA I guess..), but I throughly enjoy using computers, great communications tool. I like writing, that's about it for being a keyboard commando.
I understand the fixation on the job you are offering and what the qualifications are of the applicant for, of course that is the primary criteria, I was just wondering in what era did (potentially) multi year gaps in employment history become cool to have on resumes? You mean employers as a general rule of thumb now don't give a crap (long time since I had to submit one...)? If that is the accepted practice and style now, no biggee, I'll just mosey on down the line with me onions on me belt....
...did you make the switch?
With that said, I think everyone needs at least two completely different professional skill sets, and a big split between white collar and blue collar is just dandy. For a number of practical reasons...
The applicant is being honest and not leaving gaps in years for work experience..most likely. As to the other qualifications, why yes, seems you'd need to be a programmer of some sort to apply for a programmer job..unless the job clearly stated full training available, along those lines.
Besides, in Athens you probably get a lot of "worked offensive line for duh dawgs" on the resumes as well....you might do better advertising around atlanta/ga tech area than athens though....probably a scosh higher odds/probabilities of programming/IT experience..
A good truck mechanic can make 50 grand to a hundred grand a year......
You might want to pick a less worthy job for comparison....also, hard to *outsource* a truck mechanic job, yes?
...the new "only moderately evil" bit used with the new ISO corporate "reality compression open mega-profits" standard.....