What about in 10 years time, or 100 years time then the W3C spec have changed, or your HTML files on the census of people in NY for the year 2007 don't display correctly anymore.
That is very true. It is unlikely a web document written today will render well, even in as little as 10 years.
However, if in a 100% open well defined (no fuzziness) specification, there will be relatively lossless converters that can be run over the data to convert it with minimal effort.
If in a spec like MOOXML, there is sufficiently enough ambiguity and latitude for undocumented proprietary use to make simple mass bulk conversions impossible. Someone else in this thread said it right, you would be better of in the long term using.TXT (US ascii) formats than MOOXML. Are not all platforms and browser able to read the original RFC-0001? You can try with the next link,
RFC0001 from 1969 and still readable unaltered.
Now I am not proposing to use TXT, but any "standard" for long term data archival better be a whole lot better defined than MOOXML. MOOXML lacks the precision required of it's definition and will simple be a farcical exercise in futility to preserve documents if adopted.
My only point is that their are folks doing this and it tends to be the guys with large storage needs, moderate budgets, and a great deal of freedom from corporate standards and vendor influence.
Stay with them, these are good environments. BTW, I am not anti-standards, but at the end of the day they need to make sense. That is, not a standard for pure political posturing.
While there is probably a lot that can be improved in the engineering of human bodies, I find it slightly disheartening that after thousands of years of learning we are still unable to create a single complex living cell without help from nature. When we do, it will be the greatest feat of engineering ever, and I will party like hell.
Don't party too soon. What if they created a human with near the strength per pound of that of an ant by splicing in some ant's DNA. Then give her eyes from a bug with good vision. Then raise the IQ, 500 - 600 aught to be enough. Will of course look like Natasha Henstridge. Finally, make the human female pheromones irresistibly strong for the male species.
Next thing you know we males will have a lot in common with the male Praying Mantis. Not all uses of this tech are good.
As far as I can see this is a way of bridging fibre channels over Ethernet. This does not necessarily mean that you will get fibre-like speed (throughput or latency). I am sure that this will have some use, but it does not mean that high performance data-centres will just be able to use Ethernet instead of fibre.
To me, fibre channel SAN solutions are oversold. It raises the cost per GB/TB much higher than if you just put all the drives in a system right off that it needs. Direct attached storage (no switches - any kind) is still faster than going through 1-5 switches to get to it. That is, with fibre channel on a large scale you already have these latencies and they will also exist on Ethernet. But Ethernet is cheaper and noting special to learn.
I have only seen one use for fibre channel solutions that made sense. You have a very large DB (64 big disks or more), you want to stay on line and do the split mirroring thing to get a consistent image for backup/fail over. But even then, with DB replication you could avoid this too.
And if a system only needs lots of storage, it should be able to justify it's own storage unit and directly attach it. Thus no switch layering and better performance. Easier and less expensive to manage and less to go wrong. Ever seen a fabric switch microcode go nuts? Not pretty. It could happen with a ethernet switch too but my best is the Ethernet switch is better tested and more people know how to support it.
But if a server needs 2TB of file storage, can be backed up live, why put it on a latency laden fibre channel? Why not just put 4 1TB disks in it, RAID 0+1 and call it a day?
I get a kick out of shops putting systems than only need a TB of storage on a mega SAN because "it is the way we do it". To me it makes more sense to http to a storage box, give it a permanent IP, allocate 20TB of disk and let it run over 10000BT or faster.
We grossly underestimate the complexities and the frailties of having an entire data centers storage on one giant SAN. If your looking to the future, look at the Google file system they wrote.
Google has a Ethernet based network redundant file system I wish they would toss to Linux as open source. Then if your corp had 8000 desktops running Linux, you could conservatively put 100GB on each for an extra 800TB of inexpensive disk. I just need to find such an insightful company that will hire me as that would be a cool project.
Besides, with a perfectly good, free, open source alternative (i.e. OpenOffice) why should anyone put their data at risk by using some web based application? I'd rather have the software local so I can do the work online or not.
I 100% agree. Putting my data onto Google computers does not sit well with me. Plus no mater how hard they try, when your linked to saving data on the network it will be slower than saving locally. Then there are security issues. And having learned the Microsoft lock-in, why give Google your data to lock you in? I much prefer Open Office.
But if Google and Eric Schmidt woke up, load Google Linux and Open Office with a meaningful privacy agreement. Then want my idle CPU/internet as a collective cluster, present it as a service to keep it maintained and with Internet TV via YouTube and the collective...I would sign up. But would keep the private data on Solaris or another independent Linux.
Who knows, if Google really wants to take a bite out of Microsoft, add something to Linux people want and http://installglinux.google.com/ might be a reality and cost MSFT dearly.
they could hammer Mico$oft real good.
It's a little hard to put the importance of the transistor into perspective. One way of looking at it is about 3 billion transistors are made worldwide - a second. Imagine how different the world would be if these transistors were still made manually with vacuum tubes (or not made at all.)
That must be discrete transistors, as a modern day AMD X2 has over 200m per unit. So 3 billion transistors would only be 15 AMD X2 processors.
Imagine a AMD X2 built out of tubes, 200+ million of them. The power bill....
The transistor was an unquestioned major break through in electronics.
And now everyone believes XP is the second coming or something. Just hurts your head sometimes...
Hey, but Microsoft is brilliant. People now pay for it twice! Once through the OEM for Vista, then again to get the XP SP2 media. Bet M$FT will have a good quarter bilking the consumer.
That might not be a bad idea. Microsoft is going to discontinue XP in January.
Brilliant cash stream move by Microsoft. Sell Vista to the OEMs, then when the customer thinks it is crap because it does not work with their toys, they buy XP. Brilliant. Profit!
I would bet if Microsoft stops selling XP, PC prices will plummet and those copies might become worth something. Might be a good time for me to pickup a cheap PC and Vista coaster. Maybe run Fedora, Ubuntu or Solaris on it.
Back in those days they picked a few with passion, practical knowledge and zeal for their jobs, isolated them in think tank labs devoid of suits and dead weight brass. They spent a lot more effort on small team management. If they needed something made, it was just made or farmed out to another small team of juniors. Very clear pecking orders and no juniors wagging the dog. They were focused on what mattered and the pride showed. Today it is just a herd of people most of which know squat about what they are doing but play good politics. Simply put, top heavy with too many incompetents.
It's funny but you just described pretty much all modern business/industry, not just aerospace engineering. Automobile, IT, you name it, are having the same problems. Too many incompetent people combined with too much incompetent management.
Quite true when you think about it, I am in I/T and it is so true there too. Didn't realize that when I wrote it.
Hear is another one for you. The B-2 flying wing bomber, after an independent redesign, almost exactly matches the original design and dimensions. Modern engineers scratch their in wonder as they find it incredible how much they got right on slide rulers; especially given how many years it took us to do what they did in half the time with slide rulers.
Back in those days they picked a few with passion, practical knowledge and zeal for their jobs, isolated them in think tank labs devoid of suits and dead weight brass. They spent a lot more effort on small team management. If they needed something made, it was just made or farmed out to another small team of juniors. Very clear pecking orders and no juniors wagging the dog. They were focused on what mattered and the pride showed. Today it is just a herd of people most of which know squat about what they are doing but play good politics. Simply put, top heavy with too many incompetents.
Then once he read it he realized it was as bad as everyone made it out to be he withdrew it before anyone else could read it to spare himself and the government the controversy.
Probably had more to do with the combination of corruption allegations and a minority government situation. The government does not want to rock the boat so to speak as many Canadians are not happy with Ottawa right now.
While the bill is withdrawn, it will come back some day. With a majority government it would have passed unnoticed as there wouldn't be a thing Canadians could do about it. That is, Canadians got a temporary reprieve and lets hope a minority government continues, it is the only one that works for Canadians, at least a little bit anyway.
Some of the people modding your comment insightful have (probably) fallen into Microsoft's version of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.
Not all of us have. Microsoft security model sucks. It is even too complex for MSCEs to understand. And how many used "Policies" in the NT and XP models? I mean really used them?
The model needs to be simplified. Linux is my answer. Ubuntu has it down nicely and so does Fedora.
A solution to the FreeAgent spin-down problem was published on Ubuntu forums back in July 2007:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=494673
It works for me very well. Importantly, it does not disable disk's power control. Instead, it auto restarts the disk whenever needed.
But I think in part the whole idea here is we shouldn't have to fix anything. But it is also a supreme strength of Linux, it will work around such games vendors play.
Because I really don't think Seagate didn't know this. There is enough Linux and Macs out there this was done with some deliberation. Heck, if Michelin only mad tires for Ford, and not GM, Chrysler and others the trade commissions would be on their tail with anti-competitive practices.
In the interim, I will blacklist the devices on my recommendation lists. Besides, I hear there are other problems with them too.
Once you've entered the middle class, you get shafted either way, and keep getting shafted until your net worth goes into the millions. What Canadians pay in taxes, Americans pay in fiddly supplemental fees and what not (example: I just wrote a $500 check to the PTA at my daughter's public school so that support staff can be paid, and books and whatnot can be bought. And no, I am not a particularly generous contributor to the school's fund).
That happens in Canada too. But the unions make sure the teachers get the fat salary. But if you want your child to have books and the other stuff, you will be writing cheques in Canada too. I too have lived on both sides.
So those Canadians who truly are conservatives, please vote for a party other than the so-called "Conservative" Party of Canada in future elections. They just aren't conservative in any way.
Our government is a plutocratic corrupt government. Need someone decent to vote for. Someone who will think of the people first and not CTRC, DRM taxes (CDs) and DMCA.
Canada is a wonderful country which is run by plutocrats rather like its counterpart to the South. The vast majority of the money and power is concentrated into a few hands. The social contract gives ordinary people a slightly better shake than their American counterparts get, but if you think it's a Utopian wonderland, you should really hang out there for a few years.
Your statement is right on the money. Mod parent up.
For our American readers, imagine you get one vote for all of the US federal government. You cannot vote independently for your Congress, Senate or Executive branch (President). The prime minister can even choose when to have the next election up to 5 years out! So when you vote for the leader, he in effect controls Congress and the Senate.
Oh, an no recall. After elected the PM can and often does what the hell they want without regard to their constituents or voters at large.
Given the nature of how parties fund themselves, it is plutocracy for sure. Needs to change but first we need to find a leader who is insightful and not so corruptible.
I do disagree about the "slightly better" shake. The hidden price Canadians pay for this is quite high.
When some MP from maritime wanted a better deal for his area than was being offered (and the provincial gov't there wanted it as well), Harper threw him out of the party. Then under pressure, did the exact deal that MP wanted. When asked if the MP that was thrown out would be allowed to rejoin the party, Harper essentially said that he will *never* be part of his party ever again.
You could put any prime ministers name in above and it would still be materially correct. While Canada has a senate, it populated by inactive patronage geriatrics appointed by (and buy) the Prime Minister thus is just a high priced rubber stamp.
That is, in Canada we elect term dictators. No recall either. So MPs have to vote the party line dictated by the PM or they are so screwed. Senate reform has been talked about for years, but no one in Ottawa wants this democracy in Canada, they enjoy the plutocratic nature of our government body.
Your suggestion is not well thought-out, unless your purpose is really to say "non-competes are okay as long as we make sure that no sane company would ever ask anyone to sign one".
Having been under a few, and had to fight one, and won with prejudice I can can say most non-competes are rope around your neck documents. Often they want you to sign after accepting the job or change rules 3 years into employment. Puts people in the situation of having to comply or be on the outs. Fortunately where I live, an employer can try to do this but a judge wouldn't even hear of it as if not signed with or before the offer, unless in the employees favor - it legally has no value.
Employers want the right to fire, I have no problem with this. Really, I am for employer and employee rights. Both sides. But when an employee is restricted in practicing his skills for another employer, then the former has to pay his bench time or forget about it. That is, no one can stand in front of a persons right to practice their legal profession unless they are going to put their money where their mouth is.
Yoda would use the force. Maybe instill do what you say you will and force it into the system. No exaggerated promises, caveats or missed deadlines. Perhaps be honest with the customer and not be so much on the dark side.
Not just an IBM issue, goes for 90% of the service providing companies out there. The force only grows while the dark side is not present in greater numbers than the purist side.
Why would we outsource open source software? Is there really that little interest in FOSS in the US, EU, etc.?
My guess is this has nothing to do with generosity towards open sources at all. It probably has more to do with issues like OpenDS where owners of the project more or less got strong armed/fired. Sounds like developers are not happy at Sun and perhaps this is a subtle message to those developers at Sun.
A large still falling tech company I used to work for in 1995 brought in "cheap" Indian programmers to squelch the need for raises. Man, they could talk your head off, they had all the verbiage down with that accent. But it soon became apparent that while they could talk the talk, none could walk the walk. Management liked their games but it ultimately backfired. As most of us started looking at why are we working for you and you pay like crap? While we enjoyed the work, most of us started looking. Most of us that left got sizable raises (30-100%) and left. Most others that stayed got layed off. They moved the development to India where from what former cohorts tell me, the project outright failed. Shows too in their stock value.
It was so bad that one Indian that had actually been with us for quite some time, and could walk the walk and not just talk stated when he resigned, "I can go to India, make 1/3 the salary I make here, but I will live like a king and have my own servants. And with my experience, be upper level management in no time." I heard just before I left, he wasn't kidding.
Until this business starts losing the Dilbert managers and paying for quality producers, they will flounder like fish on the carpet.
BTW, I never looked back since leaving this floundering tech company.
Somebody please tell congress that they don't have jurisdiction on other planets.
Fortunately they do not. First someone has to land there, put a flag on it and then assume residency. Otherwise it is uncharted and uninhabited up for grabs. Congress has no jurisdiction there.
The real truth however is that they are afraid of what they already know or might find. Maybe they found something with the rover they don't want us to know? Less people who visit, any new discoveries would be easier to hold back from the public.
Or perhaps much more simple, more money for war, killing, corruption and controlling people.
Forget the middle east, we are not solving a damn think being there. Lets get back to science and exploration.
I would put my finger on Gouverment security. Public services are low funded operation that don't have all the right ressources at the right place. And most of the time, I would say that the staffing have their hand tide because of management policies. Nough said!
Did you not mean out of control, over funded and incompetently managed including kickbacks?
With government, it is all about priorities and political will. Resources, the Canadian government has plenty, but why run a tight ship when every department head runs his own out of control I/T show. "Hey, need a fat contract...give me a call..., competency, no issue".
Not so much a security flaw is it is incompetence. How could the developers miss this? Oh, here's the sweet part. They said the flaw was repaired on Friday. And from the article...
And absolutely nothing in the management process to stop it.
Code reviewed, probably not.
Code designed, not likely,
Security risk assessment, obviously not.
Formal security model reviewed? Not likely.
Project management? Incompetent.
Software design process, absent.
Specifications document? Probably not.
Pen testing, obviously not.
Run time monitoring, absent.
A poster child why department managers should stay out of technologies they know nothing about on how to run properly. But most Canadians already know our SIN numbers are in essence public, have been for some time.
Slashdot Mirror
What about in 10 years time, or 100 years time then the W3C spec have changed, or your HTML files on the census of people in NY for the year 2007 don't display correctly anymore.
That is very true. It is unlikely a web document written today will render well, even in as little as 10 years.
However, if in a 100% open well defined (no fuzziness) specification, there will be relatively lossless converters that can be run over the data to convert it with minimal effort.
If in a spec like MOOXML, there is sufficiently enough ambiguity and latitude for undocumented proprietary use to make simple mass bulk conversions impossible. Someone else in this thread said it right, you would be better of in the long term using .TXT (US ascii) formats than MOOXML. Are not all platforms and browser able to read the original RFC-0001? You can try with the next link,
RFC0001 from 1969 and still readable unaltered.
Now I am not proposing to use TXT, but any "standard" for long term data archival better be a whole lot better defined than MOOXML. MOOXML lacks the precision required of it's definition and will simple be a farcical exercise in futility to preserve documents if adopted.
My only point is that their are folks doing this and it tends to be the guys with large storage needs, moderate budgets, and a great deal of freedom from corporate standards and vendor influence.
Stay with them, these are good environments. BTW, I am not anti-standards, but at the end of the day they need to make sense. That is, not a standard for pure political posturing.
While there is probably a lot that can be improved in the engineering of human bodies, I find it slightly disheartening that after thousands of years of learning we are still unable to create a single complex living cell without help from nature. When we do, it will be the greatest feat of engineering ever, and I will party like hell.
Don't party too soon. What if they created a human with near the strength per pound of that of an ant by splicing in some ant's DNA. Then give her eyes from a bug with good vision. Then raise the IQ, 500 - 600 aught to be enough. Will of course look like Natasha Henstridge. Finally, make the human female pheromones irresistibly strong for the male species.
Next thing you know we males will have a lot in common with the male Praying Mantis. Not all uses of this tech are good.
As far as I can see this is a way of bridging fibre channels over Ethernet. This does not necessarily mean that you will get fibre-like speed (throughput or latency). I am sure that this will have some use, but it does not mean that high performance data-centres will just be able to use Ethernet instead of fibre.
To me, fibre channel SAN solutions are oversold. It raises the cost per GB/TB much higher than if you just put all the drives in a system right off that it needs. Direct attached storage (no switches - any kind) is still faster than going through 1-5 switches to get to it. That is, with fibre channel on a large scale you already have these latencies and they will also exist on Ethernet. But Ethernet is cheaper and noting special to learn.
I have only seen one use for fibre channel solutions that made sense. You have a very large DB (64 big disks or more), you want to stay on line and do the split mirroring thing to get a consistent image for backup/fail over. But even then, with DB replication you could avoid this too.
And if a system only needs lots of storage, it should be able to justify it's own storage unit and directly attach it. Thus no switch layering and better performance. Easier and less expensive to manage and less to go wrong. Ever seen a fabric switch microcode go nuts? Not pretty. It could happen with a ethernet switch too but my best is the Ethernet switch is better tested and more people know how to support it.
But if a server needs 2TB of file storage, can be backed up live, why put it on a latency laden fibre channel? Why not just put 4 1TB disks in it, RAID 0+1 and call it a day?
I get a kick out of shops putting systems than only need a TB of storage on a mega SAN because "it is the way we do it". To me it makes more sense to http to a storage box, give it a permanent IP, allocate 20TB of disk and let it run over 10000BT or faster.
We grossly underestimate the complexities and the frailties of having an entire data centers storage on one giant SAN. If your looking to the future, look at the Google file system they wrote.
Google has a Ethernet based network redundant file system I wish they would toss to Linux as open source. Then if your corp had 8000 desktops running Linux, you could conservatively put 100GB on each for an extra 800TB of inexpensive disk. I just need to find such an insightful company that will hire me as that would be a cool project.
Besides, with a perfectly good, free, open source alternative (i.e. OpenOffice) why should anyone put their data at risk by using some web based application? I'd rather have the software local so I can do the work online or not.
I 100% agree. Putting my data onto Google computers does not sit well with me. Plus no mater how hard they try, when your linked to saving data on the network it will be slower than saving locally. Then there are security issues. And having learned the Microsoft lock-in, why give Google your data to lock you in? I much prefer Open Office.
But if Google and Eric Schmidt woke up, load Google Linux and Open Office with a meaningful privacy agreement. Then want my idle CPU/internet as a collective cluster, present it as a service to keep it maintained and with Internet TV via YouTube and the collective...I would sign up. But would keep the private data on Solaris or another independent Linux.
Who knows, if Google really wants to take a bite out of Microsoft, add something to Linux people want and http://installglinux.google.com/ might be a reality and cost MSFT dearly. they could hammer Mico$oft real good.
It's a little hard to put the importance of the transistor into perspective. One way of looking at it is about 3 billion transistors are made worldwide - a second. Imagine how different the world would be if these transistors were still made manually with vacuum tubes (or not made at all.)
That must be discrete transistors, as a modern day AMD X2 has over 200m per unit. So 3 billion transistors would only be 15 AMD X2 processors.
Imagine a AMD X2 built out of tubes, 200+ million of them. The power bill....
The transistor was an unquestioned major break through in electronics.
And now everyone believes XP is the second coming or something. Just hurts your head sometimes...
Hey, but Microsoft is brilliant. People now pay for it twice! Once through the OEM for Vista, then again to get the XP SP2 media. Bet M$FT will have a good quarter bilking the consumer.
This new Windows XP should make a great gift!
That might not be a bad idea. Microsoft is going to discontinue XP in January.
Brilliant cash stream move by Microsoft. Sell Vista to the OEMs, then when the customer thinks it is crap because it does not work with their toys, they buy XP. Brilliant. Profit!
I would bet if Microsoft stops selling XP, PC prices will plummet and those copies might become worth something. Might be a good time for me to pickup a cheap PC and Vista coaster. Maybe run Fedora, Ubuntu or Solaris on it.
Quite true when you think about it, I am in I/T and it is so true there too. Didn't realize that when I wrote it.
Hear is another one for you. The B-2 flying wing bomber, after an independent redesign, almost exactly matches the original design and dimensions. Modern engineers scratch their in wonder as they find it incredible how much they got right on slide rulers; especially given how many years it took us to do what they did in half the time with slide rulers.
Back in those days they picked a few with passion, practical knowledge and zeal for their jobs, isolated them in think tank labs devoid of suits and dead weight brass. They spent a lot more effort on small team management. If they needed something made, it was just made or farmed out to another small team of juniors. Very clear pecking orders and no juniors wagging the dog. They were focused on what mattered and the pride showed. Today it is just a herd of people most of which know squat about what they are doing but play good politics. Simply put, top heavy with too many incompetents.
Then once he read it he realized it was as bad as everyone made it out to be he withdrew it before anyone else could read it to spare himself and the government the controversy.
Probably had more to do with the combination of corruption allegations and a minority government situation. The government does not want to rock the boat so to speak as many Canadians are not happy with Ottawa right now.
While the bill is withdrawn, it will come back some day. With a majority government it would have passed unnoticed as there wouldn't be a thing Canadians could do about it. That is, Canadians got a temporary reprieve and lets hope a minority government continues, it is the only one that works for Canadians, at least a little bit anyway.
Some of the people modding your comment insightful have (probably) fallen into Microsoft's version of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.
Not all of us have. Microsoft security model sucks. It is even too complex for MSCEs to understand. And how many used "Policies" in the NT and XP models? I mean really used them?
The model needs to be simplified. Linux is my answer. Ubuntu has it down nicely and so does Fedora.
A solution to the FreeAgent spin-down problem was published on Ubuntu forums back in July 2007: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=494673 It works for me very well. Importantly, it does not disable disk's power control. Instead, it auto restarts the disk whenever needed.
But I think in part the whole idea here is we shouldn't have to fix anything. But it is also a supreme strength of Linux, it will work around such games vendors play.
Because I really don't think Seagate didn't know this. There is enough Linux and Macs out there this was done with some deliberation. Heck, if Michelin only mad tires for Ford, and not GM, Chrysler and others the trade commissions would be on their tail with anti-competitive practices.
In the interim, I will blacklist the devices on my recommendation lists. Besides, I hear there are other problems with them too.
Once you've entered the middle class, you get shafted either way, and keep getting shafted until your net worth goes into the millions. What Canadians pay in taxes, Americans pay in fiddly supplemental fees and what not (example: I just wrote a $500 check to the PTA at my daughter's public school so that support staff can be paid, and books and whatnot can be bought. And no, I am not a particularly generous contributor to the school's fund).
That happens in Canada too. But the unions make sure the teachers get the fat salary. But if you want your child to have books and the other stuff, you will be writing cheques in Canada too. I too have lived on both sides.
So those Canadians who truly are conservatives, please vote for a party other than the so-called "Conservative" Party of Canada in future elections. They just aren't conservative in any way.
I for one have no intentions of voting for the Corrupt Party of Canada. http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/281331 and rememebr Harper (current PM) and Mulroney are the best of friends.
Her is a Canadian voters dilemma, Liberals are not different, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsorship_scandal
Our government is a plutocratic corrupt government. Need someone decent to vote for. Someone who will think of the people first and not CTRC, DRM taxes (CDs) and DMCA.
Canada is a wonderful country which is run by plutocrats rather like its counterpart to the South. The vast majority of the money and power is concentrated into a few hands. The social contract gives ordinary people a slightly better shake than their American counterparts get, but if you think it's a Utopian wonderland, you should really hang out there for a few years.
Your statement is right on the money. Mod parent up.
For our American readers, imagine you get one vote for all of the US federal government. You cannot vote independently for your Congress, Senate or Executive branch (President). The prime minister can even choose when to have the next election up to 5 years out! So when you vote for the leader, he in effect controls Congress and the Senate.
Oh, an no recall. After elected the PM can and often does what the hell they want without regard to their constituents or voters at large.
Given the nature of how parties fund themselves, it is plutocracy for sure. Needs to change but first we need to find a leader who is insightful and not so corruptible.
I do disagree about the "slightly better" shake. The hidden price Canadians pay for this is quite high.
When some MP from maritime wanted a better deal for his area than was being offered (and the provincial gov't there wanted it as well), Harper threw him out of the party. Then under pressure, did the exact deal that MP wanted. When asked if the MP that was thrown out would be allowed to rejoin the party, Harper essentially said that he will *never* be part of his party ever again.
You could put any prime ministers name in above and it would still be materially correct. While Canada has a senate, it populated by inactive patronage geriatrics appointed by (and buy) the Prime Minister thus is just a high priced rubber stamp.
That is, in Canada we elect term dictators. No recall either. So MPs have to vote the party line dictated by the PM or they are so screwed. Senate reform has been talked about for years, but no one in Ottawa wants this democracy in Canada, they enjoy the plutocratic nature of our government body.
Your suggestion is not well thought-out, unless your purpose is really to say "non-competes are okay as long as we make sure that no sane company would ever ask anyone to sign one".
Having been under a few, and had to fight one, and won with prejudice I can can say most non-competes are rope around your neck documents. Often they want you to sign after accepting the job or change rules 3 years into employment. Puts people in the situation of having to comply or be on the outs. Fortunately where I live, an employer can try to do this but a judge wouldn't even hear of it as if not signed with or before the offer, unless in the employees favor - it legally has no value.
Employers want the right to fire, I have no problem with this. Really, I am for employer and employee rights. Both sides. But when an employee is restricted in practicing his skills for another employer, then the former has to pay his bench time or forget about it. That is, no one can stand in front of a persons right to practice their legal profession unless they are going to put their money where their mouth is.
I really don't have a problem with extened non-competes with in some limits.
But then the company also has to pay your wages in full during the non-compete period and a generous severance beyond that period.
That is, you allegiance or commitment to any non-compete ends when the pay cheque ends.
Good idea but who is going to be around to plant them?
Yoda would use the force. Maybe instill do what you say you will and force it into the system. No exaggerated promises, caveats or missed deadlines. Perhaps be honest with the customer and not be so much on the dark side.
Not just an IBM issue, goes for 90% of the service providing companies out there. The force only grows while the dark side is not present in greater numbers than the purist side.
Why would we outsource open source software? Is there really that little interest in FOSS in the US, EU, etc.?
My guess is this has nothing to do with generosity towards open sources at all. It probably has more to do with issues like OpenDS where owners of the project more or less got strong armed/fired. Sounds like developers are not happy at Sun and perhaps this is a subtle message to those developers at Sun.
A large still falling tech company I used to work for in 1995 brought in "cheap" Indian programmers to squelch the need for raises. Man, they could talk your head off, they had all the verbiage down with that accent. But it soon became apparent that while they could talk the talk, none could walk the walk. Management liked their games but it ultimately backfired. As most of us started looking at why are we working for you and you pay like crap? While we enjoyed the work, most of us started looking. Most of us that left got sizable raises (30-100%) and left. Most others that stayed got layed off. They moved the development to India where from what former cohorts tell me, the project outright failed. Shows too in their stock value.
It was so bad that one Indian that had actually been with us for quite some time, and could walk the walk and not just talk stated when he resigned, "I can go to India, make 1/3 the salary I make here, but I will live like a king and have my own servants. And with my experience, be upper level management in no time." I heard just before I left, he wasn't kidding.
Until this business starts losing the Dilbert managers and paying for quality producers, they will flounder like fish on the carpet.
BTW, I never looked back since leaving this floundering tech company.
Somebody please tell congress that they don't have jurisdiction on other planets.
Fortunately they do not. First someone has to land there, put a flag on it and then assume residency. Otherwise it is uncharted and uninhabited up for grabs. Congress has no jurisdiction there.
The real truth however is that they are afraid of what they already know or might find. Maybe they found something with the rover they don't want us to know? Less people who visit, any new discoveries would be easier to hold back from the public.
Or perhaps much more simple, more money for war, killing, corruption and controlling people.
Forget the middle east, we are not solving a damn think being there. Lets get back to science and exploration.
I would put my finger on Gouverment security. Public services are low funded operation that don't have all the right ressources at the right place. And most of the time, I would say that the staffing have their hand tide because of management policies. Nough said!
Did you not mean out of control, over funded and incompetently managed including kickbacks?
With government, it is all about priorities and political will. Resources, the Canadian government has plenty, but why run a tight ship when every department head runs his own out of control I/T show. "Hey, need a fat contract...give me a call..., competency, no issue".
Not so much a security flaw is it is incompetence. How could the developers miss this? Oh, here's the sweet part. They said the flaw was repaired on Friday. And from the article...
And absolutely nothing in the management process to stop it.
Code reviewed, probably not.
Code designed, not likely,
Security risk assessment, obviously not.
Formal security model reviewed? Not likely.
Project management? Incompetent.
Software design process, absent.
Specifications document? Probably not.
Pen testing, obviously not.
Run time monitoring, absent.
A poster child why department managers should stay out of technologies they know nothing about on how to run properly. But most Canadians already know our SIN numbers are in essence public, have been for some time.