Isn't hijacking every and any unclaimed URL for company profit while providing no public service in an organisation whose very objective is a public service reason enough?
If it costs $200 to buy a documented office suite, and 1mn people do it, the cost to the economy as a whole is $200mn. Now if it costs $10mn to document and support an open source alternative, the economy as a whole has saved $190mn which it could spend on other services.
You're right the people with a computer gain, but others can gain too. Now that $10mn raised through taxes has freed up $190mn for people to spend. Even if they save half their disposable income that's still $95mn 'new' disposable income in the country. This can go on to benefit those without computers.
Now this $95mn spending isn't 'new' as the old office suite that used to be bought because the company that made this suite employed people and gave shareholders (i.e. pension and saving plans) income, their income has been cut $190mn (see paradox of thrift). So in theory how useful is this, well jumping several steps from arithmetic to growth theory, efficient use of capital (buying something cheaper on a sustainable basis) frees up money for new spending/investment and should lead to economic growth (which means higher wages, standards of living, etc).
Economic growth hasn't been especially beneficial for the average worker over the past couple of decades, (using the US as an example as the numbers are easily available and well discussed) in 1980 corporate profits made up around 7% of GDP, in 2004 they were 14% - corporates grew the amount of 'profit' they made from the economy while households didn't make much progress, some sectors of society declined. So economic growth cannot be argued as a wholly good thing - it depends on who it accrues to and whether the observer perceives that as a 'good' thing.
Personally I welcome some funding of open source, it does cost some tax money, but it introduces a notion of competition to corporates which can well be seen as monopolistic in some/many industries - i.e. without governement support of competition things wouldn't progress. There are other ways for governments to encourage support too.
THere are other arguments regarding taxation and perception of volume of tax.
Yes it is all circular arguments: that is economics, if you ever think about what happens to a dollar it goes in a circle many many times. An yes IAAE (I Am An Economist).
Not only is the technology overcomplicated, but the life of the clock is only 4 days for most non-MIT mortals:
From TFS "when you press the snooze bar, runs off into a corner, a different hiding place every day". Now my bedroom has only four corners, this may be fine for MIT folks with their new buildings, but what use is it for me! I'll have to move bedroom every fifth day!
As a side note, it would be interesting if the clock could move in 3 dimensions... in 2 dimensions our random paths are always bound to meet, but in 3D it could provide me with an infinite amount of frustration!
While an editor he does represent the BBC's public opinion in these matters.
Plus note the BBC will offer most of its content for download for UK residents (those who fund it) from 2006 onwards. For a television network to offer downloads of its perviously run content (who has downloaded Enterprise or Buffy torrents because they missed the show despite such behaviour being illegal?) this is a serious step forward!
"Sure all life would die off and everything would freeze."
Not if you live in France or Japan, two countries with reasonable nuclear energy production. Plants could still be grown, lights would still work and it'd be like a really long night time.
I don't want the UN deciding what is and isn't spam...at least the first amendment is valid in the US, an international body may decide that "hate speech" is illegal and therefore decide to censor certain websites like countries do now. I would prefer as little world government interference with the internet as possible.
While I'd like some objective arguments about moving against ICANN you arguments hold up almost as well as a bag of moist sewage.
1st ammendment: Well, its an ammendment, not a supernatural right set in stone, more of an afterthought/clarification. Does it ensure free speech (fire theater argument etc) hell no! It ensures you can say what you want after expecting someone can sueue you (if its personal) or if its against a corporation or the government you're up for a prison sentence if you cannot pay the legal fees to support your supposed freedom of speech.
Perhaps some DMCA legislation could lead up to further ammendments of this ammendment. There is a whole load of "freedom of speech" illegal in the USA which is legal in other countries. Choosing which is 'correct' is hard indeed there is no common standard. Would the US would gain if it was given laxer freedoms? - probably. At the moment it has some of _the_ tightest copyright/DMCA-type and free speech restriction legislation in the world. The UN tends to go for the legislation weakest in enforcability rather than the strongest, hence its ineffectiveness at times of hard-judgement but also hence its acceptance amongst almost all world nations (prefer a despot you know or one you don't?).
But then again media networks and money-grubbing corporates would be quick to sponsor and advertise scorn on the idea lest profits be taken away from them and consumers spared anti-competitive businesses. So people are anti-UN. Makes sense really.
Mod points are allocated to the commen denominator, the 'most average' user. Average people lack the creativity, flair or intelligence to take witty comments in their true meaning.
Absolutely. Relying on wireless communication for troops just needs the enemy to use a little bit of interference to obselete the system. Relying on HUD identification depends on a lack of simple EMG weapons.
I'd agree. I'm just a user so I get to sit and laugh (or groan) at what goes on. Its frustrating knowing a just a little yet watching the incompetance.
But we have an in-house culture. Quick, highly trained, effective people don't fit in to admin. There was one who once (infamously) tried to make a difference and was fired for "poor interpersonal skills", note that all IT staff had poor skills with him rather than the other way around. The reduncancy package was generous and NDA tight so no complaints. Senior managers oversee the broken situation and aren't willing to criticise themselves and those who are above them. Perhaps thats a top-down philosophy, the promotion routes are into those 'cool' areas like organisational security, rather than seeing admin as a valuable thing. Its sad.
Traditionally users in our company have little detailed IT knowledge. I have a little and it gauls me. Am I going to make a fuss about it? No. I have nothing to gain, right now, other than bad relationships; perhaps there's something to do if I move into managerial responsibilities, sure I could throw up a shitstorm any day, but that's going to be a full time job and I don't have the time so the BOHFs (well they give a bad name to that title) have to be persisted, for now. They're on a short tether.
We're in a team of 10, there is another team of 30 and we share 5 IT admins. A breakdown of our team of 10's problems over the past week, please multiply 4 times to get a guage of problems experienced. One of the IT admins is supervisor of the other 4 and mainly does upward and downward reporting. Add a senior manager and their secretary of which about 20% of their team falls under these 5 admins.
This is not to justify the situation, just a list of problems and what was done to solve them.
Monday:
AM. Came into work, our email client was not working. There was some problem with the server, apparantly. Takes an admin to 'unblock' the email server, takes 2 hours. Takes a further 2 hours to retrieve emails accumulated over the weekend (probably about 2000 for the 10 of us - mostly news bulletins). Later arises the email server ran out of disk space.
PM. Aside accumulated emails spilling into the afternoon, no problems.
Tuesday:
AM. Someone complains they've not received the laptop they've been promised for several weeks. IT say someone is 'building' it, but 'specifications are non-standard' and its taking a while in order to integrate with core systems. From a user perspective around 0 to 400 hours have been spent 'building' this computer.
PM. Someone has a problem with ODBC drivers in an application they're using. Turns out the drivers client application drivers were out of date for the server application (shouldn't have been), takes 5+ hours to find a solution.
Wednesday.
AM. Nothing.
PM. Nothing.
Thursday (enjoy this)
AM. Someone's computer reset overnight (they've not logged out for months). They remember their password but not their username(!). No one knows it. Guesses fail. Takes several hours of one admin trying and failing. Supervisor admin get involved, unrelated central IT get involved, senior IT manager get involved, still fail. After several hours of several people working on the problem someone thinks to check the server logs. Problem resolved.
PM. User complains of persistent popups on IE on various websites. IT admin recommends installing Google Toolbar (!). Popups persist. Admin spends several hours analysing situation. Admin is clueless why these happen. Admin installs anti-spyware programs, no fix. Admin checks security on the workstation, notices it has not received patches pre-SP1(!). To this day that computer has not been patched.
Firday.
AM: Network folders seem slow (30+ secs to browse a folder with few files). Admins are baffled. Network engineers (additional to admin team) are equally baffled. No idea why the problem came about. Fiddle with router settings, problem reduced but to this day (again) unsolved.
PM: Trouble recieving attachments in emails, takes several hours to partically resolve.
This is out local IT admin. The organisation has a workforce of ~1800 in head office (very small other offices) and shares central IT roles. Split these between.
Network systems. Around 10 full time staff on networking hardware, policies, etc.
Security systems. Around 20 people ranging from reading peoples' emails to trialing quantum cryptography (yes).
Project management. Around 20 from central projects, such as document management systems, to analysis of project requirements in local areas (this excludes specific development or project management of local area IT projects).
IT management and admin. Probably 15 from senior management to secretaries making sure IT staff do their jo, fill in their timesheets and provide paper trails.
Plus we have ad-hoc application development, sometimes carried out by users and sometimes by IT staff. Plus migration issues around major new systems. If anything 1:30 is an underestimate.
While I am not a mortgage broker, how about I offer you a load of $80 for your new home with $80k repayable over 20 years at a fixed rate of 4.5% p.a.? I'm sure I could rustle that deal up with my compliance department.
We're typically 1:30 for local areas which is basically admin of the LAN, user applications, etc. Add to that central security, networking, hardware support, and we're down to 1:15.
Including in-house bespoke application support (specialist programmers emplyed under an IT remit, rather than technically able and active users) and you're down to 1:6 in some areas. On the other hand we have specialist terminals (with high maintainence requirements as well as user training etc) which are more like 1:90.
Indeed, but we should also discount future revenue streams, etc. In 3 years the computation power of the machine will become obseleted meaning it would take a lot longer to work on a problem than a competitor machine, and would have to reduce the price of its service significantly. Usually high-power computers are written down in company accounts to zero value over 2-5 years.
Perhaps we should risk-weight the investment too... this is all getting technical and I fear we may incriminate ourselves on planning to set up a money-earning hacking system, which is probably illegal under some DMCA or 'terrorism' law.
Of course with widespread GRID computing around the corner we'd pay for things in computational units which makes it all a lot simpler.
Slashdot Mirror
The irony of your post is too much to handle.
You seem to be listening to too much Alanis Morissette.
Isn't hijacking every and any unclaimed URL for company profit while providing no public service in an organisation whose very objective is a public service reason enough?
cute photo
Maybe, maybe not.
If it costs $200 to buy a documented office suite, and 1mn people do it, the cost to the economy as a whole is $200mn. Now if it costs $10mn to document and support an open source alternative, the economy as a whole has saved $190mn which it could spend on other services.
You're right the people with a computer gain, but others can gain too. Now that $10mn raised through taxes has freed up $190mn for people to spend. Even if they save half their disposable income that's still $95mn 'new' disposable income in the country. This can go on to benefit those without computers.
Now this $95mn spending isn't 'new' as the old office suite that used to be bought because the company that made this suite employed people and gave shareholders (i.e. pension and saving plans) income, their income has been cut $190mn (see paradox of thrift). So in theory how useful is this, well jumping several steps from arithmetic to growth theory, efficient use of capital (buying something cheaper on a sustainable basis) frees up money for new spending/investment and should lead to economic growth (which means higher wages, standards of living, etc).
Economic growth hasn't been especially beneficial for the average worker over the past couple of decades, (using the US as an example as the numbers are easily available and well discussed) in 1980 corporate profits made up around 7% of GDP, in 2004 they were 14% - corporates grew the amount of 'profit' they made from the economy while households didn't make much progress, some sectors of society declined. So economic growth cannot be argued as a wholly good thing - it depends on who it accrues to and whether the observer perceives that as a 'good' thing.
Personally I welcome some funding of open source, it does cost some tax money, but it introduces a notion of competition to corporates which can well be seen as monopolistic in some/many industries - i.e. without governement support of competition things wouldn't progress. There are other ways for governments to encourage support too.
THere are other arguments regarding taxation and perception of volume of tax.
Yes it is all circular arguments: that is economics, if you ever think about what happens to a dollar it goes in a circle many many times. An yes IAAE (I Am An Economist).
Exactly.
Not only is the technology overcomplicated, but the life of the clock is only 4 days for most non-MIT mortals:
From TFS "when you press the snooze bar, runs off into a corner, a different hiding place every day". Now my bedroom has only four corners, this may be fine for MIT folks with their new buildings, but what use is it for me! I'll have to move bedroom every fifth day!
As a side note, it would be interesting if the clock could move in 3 dimensions... in 2 dimensions our random paths are always bound to meet, but in 3D it could provide me with an infinite amount of frustration!
While an editor he does represent the BBC's public opinion in these matters.
Plus note the BBC will offer most of its content for download for UK residents (those who fund it) from 2006 onwards. For a television network to offer downloads of its perviously run content (who has downloaded Enterprise or Buffy torrents because they missed the show despite such behaviour being illegal?) this is a serious step forward!
I would not be surprised at all if soon, very soon, you will see digital quality flicks on bit torrent downloadables even before they hit the cinemas.
But we'll have to find those torrent sites. Few left and when new ones become more public knowledge they get shut down!
hello
Grammar nazi is one thing, grammar nazi who gets it wrong another.
's is added as a possessive in most cases, but one of the exceptions is "it", where "its" is all that is sufficient.
Errr... what you state exactly reinforces what you were replying to yet you phrased it as a contradiction.
Did you take 'say nothing new' 101?
"Sure all life would die off and everything would freeze."
Not if you live in France or Japan, two countries with reasonable nuclear energy production. Plants could still be grown, lights would still work and it'd be like a really long night time.
are you suggesting she's a ipod?
There is.
I don't want the UN deciding what is and isn't spam...at least the first amendment is valid in the US, an international body may decide that "hate speech" is illegal and therefore decide to censor certain websites like countries do now. I would prefer as little world government interference with the internet as possible.
While I'd like some objective arguments about moving against ICANN you arguments hold up almost as well as a bag of moist sewage.
1st ammendment: Well, its an ammendment, not a supernatural right set in stone, more of an afterthought/clarification. Does it ensure free speech (fire theater argument etc) hell no! It ensures you can say what you want after expecting someone can sueue you (if its personal) or if its against a corporation or the government you're up for a prison sentence if you cannot pay the legal fees to support your supposed freedom of speech. Perhaps some DMCA legislation could lead up to further ammendments of this ammendment. There is a whole load of "freedom of speech" illegal in the USA which is legal in other countries. Choosing which is 'correct' is hard indeed there is no common standard. Would the US would gain if it was given laxer freedoms? - probably. At the moment it has some of _the_ tightest copyright/DMCA-type and free speech restriction legislation in the world. The UN tends to go for the legislation weakest in enforcability rather than the strongest, hence its ineffectiveness at times of hard-judgement but also hence its acceptance amongst almost all world nations (prefer a despot you know or one you don't?).
But then again media networks and money-grubbing corporates would be quick to sponsor and advertise scorn on the idea lest profits be taken away from them and consumers spared anti-competitive businesses. So people are anti-UN. Makes sense really.
Mod points are allocated to the commen denominator, the 'most average' user. Average people lack the creativity, flair or intelligence to take witty comments in their true meaning.
And what about DeCSS. I RTFA carefully and cannot comprehend why these principals also apply to that.
Absolutely. Relying on wireless communication for troops just needs the enemy to use a little bit of interference to obselete the system. Relying on HUD identification depends on a lack of simple EMG weapons.
Hello. I notice you're attempting to assymilate or eliminate deverse species into your race. It seems like youj're writing a letter...
Cheers.
I'd agree. I'm just a user so I get to sit and laugh (or groan) at what goes on. Its frustrating knowing a just a little yet watching the incompetance.
Absolutely.
But we have an in-house culture. Quick, highly trained, effective people don't fit in to admin. There was one who once (infamously) tried to make a difference and was fired for "poor interpersonal skills", note that all IT staff had poor skills with him rather than the other way around. The reduncancy package was generous and NDA tight so no complaints. Senior managers oversee the broken situation and aren't willing to criticise themselves and those who are above them. Perhaps thats a top-down philosophy, the promotion routes are into those 'cool' areas like organisational security, rather than seeing admin as a valuable thing. Its sad.
Traditionally users in our company have little detailed IT knowledge. I have a little and it gauls me. Am I going to make a fuss about it? No. I have nothing to gain, right now, other than bad relationships; perhaps there's something to do if I move into managerial responsibilities, sure I could throw up a shitstorm any day, but that's going to be a full time job and I don't have the time so the BOHFs (well they give a bad name to that title) have to be persisted, for now. They're on a short tether.
We're in a team of 10, there is another team of 30 and we share 5 IT admins. A breakdown of our team of 10's problems over the past week, please multiply 4 times to get a guage of problems experienced. One of the IT admins is supervisor of the other 4 and mainly does upward and downward reporting. Add a senior manager and their secretary of which about 20% of their team falls under these 5 admins.
This is not to justify the situation, just a list of problems and what was done to solve them.
Monday:
AM. Came into work, our email client was not working. There was some problem with the server, apparantly. Takes an admin to 'unblock' the email server, takes 2 hours. Takes a further 2 hours to retrieve emails accumulated over the weekend (probably about 2000 for the 10 of us - mostly news bulletins). Later arises the email server ran out of disk space.
PM. Aside accumulated emails spilling into the afternoon, no problems.
Tuesday:
AM. Someone complains they've not received the laptop they've been promised for several weeks. IT say someone is 'building' it, but 'specifications are non-standard' and its taking a while in order to integrate with core systems. From a user perspective around 0 to 400 hours have been spent 'building' this computer.
PM. Someone has a problem with ODBC drivers in an application they're using. Turns out the drivers client application drivers were out of date for the server application (shouldn't have been), takes 5+ hours to find a solution.
Wednesday. AM. Nothing.
PM. Nothing.
Thursday (enjoy this)
AM. Someone's computer reset overnight (they've not logged out for months). They remember their password but not their username(!). No one knows it. Guesses fail. Takes several hours of one admin trying and failing. Supervisor admin get involved, unrelated central IT get involved, senior IT manager get involved, still fail. After several hours of several people working on the problem someone thinks to check the server logs. Problem resolved.
PM. User complains of persistent popups on IE on various websites. IT admin recommends installing Google Toolbar (!). Popups persist. Admin spends several hours analysing situation. Admin is clueless why these happen. Admin installs anti-spyware programs, no fix. Admin checks security on the workstation, notices it has not received patches pre-SP1(!). To this day that computer has not been patched.
Firday.
AM: Network folders seem slow (30+ secs to browse a folder with few files). Admins are baffled. Network engineers (additional to admin team) are equally baffled. No idea why the problem came about. Fiddle with router settings, problem reduced but to this day (again) unsolved.
PM: Trouble recieving attachments in emails, takes several hours to partically resolve.
This is out local IT admin. The organisation has a workforce of ~1800 in head office (very small other offices) and shares central IT roles. Split these between.
Network systems. Around 10 full time staff on networking hardware, policies, etc.
Security systems. Around 20 people ranging from reading peoples' emails to trialing quantum cryptography (yes).
Project management. Around 20 from central projects, such as document management systems, to analysis of project requirements in local areas (this excludes specific development or project management of local area IT projects).
IT management and admin. Probably 15 from senior management to secretaries making sure IT staff do their jo, fill in their timesheets and provide paper trails.
Plus we have ad-hoc application development, sometimes carried out by users and sometimes by IT staff. Plus migration issues around major new systems. If anything 1:30 is an underestimate.
While I am not a mortgage broker, how about I offer you a load of $80 for your new home with $80k repayable over 20 years at a fixed rate of 4.5% p.a.? I'm sure I could rustle that deal up with my compliance department.
We're typically 1:30 for local areas which is basically admin of the LAN, user applications, etc. Add to that central security, networking, hardware support, and we're down to 1:15.
Including in-house bespoke application support (specialist programmers emplyed under an IT remit, rather than technically able and active users) and you're down to 1:6 in some areas. On the other hand we have specialist terminals (with high maintainence requirements as well as user training etc) which are more like 1:90.
Inefficiency abounds in some companies.
Indeed, but we should also discount future revenue streams, etc. In 3 years the computation power of the machine will become obseleted meaning it would take a lot longer to work on a problem than a competitor machine, and would have to reduce the price of its service significantly. Usually high-power computers are written down in company accounts to zero value over 2-5 years.
Perhaps we should risk-weight the investment too... this is all getting technical and I fear we may incriminate ourselves on planning to set up a money-earning hacking system, which is probably illegal under some DMCA or 'terrorism' law.
Of course with widespread GRID computing around the corner we'd pay for things in computational units which makes it all a lot simpler.
Apologies, $80k per problem.