Tougher exception for all Digital Media
on
DMCA Exemption Time
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· Score: 2, Interesting
> There's already an exception for computer software which is no longer supported. > I think we need an exception for computer software that requires a potentially expensive phone call to activate. > Needs a better argument than EA are idiots though. Having to call and explain why you've > installed 3 times already doesn't sound such an onerous task until you have to actually do it.
Make it a bit broader. In any case where the manufacturer/activator fails to provide reasonable access to activation. Then we can start to define reasonable terms:
- local or toll-free activation number - phones answered promptly at all hours - activation phones properly staffed with people trained to resolve activation issues, not just read a script - open reasonable hours; if the software is US only, minimum of say, 8 AM EST to 10 PM PST M-Sat. If worldwide, 24/7/365. - permanent unlock option available if the support must be discontinued - burden on manufacturer to unlock permanently if they fail to resolve recurring issues for a customer in a reasonably period of time. - legally defined minimum definitions of reasonable time. Some already exist for other regulated industries; these might be used as a guideline.
And this should be extended to all "Digital Media."
> I'm facing a difficult dilemma and looking for opinions. I've been contributing heavily to an > open source project, making considerable changes to code organization and quality, but the work is > unfinished at the moment. Now, a company is approaching me to continue my changes. They want > to keep the improvements to themselves, which is possible since the project is published under the > BSD license.
This confuses me a little. If you are already contributing the changes back to the project, how can you keep them to yourself? If you were only -intending- to contribute back the changes, then it makes more sense.
> That's fair, as they have all the rights to the work they pay for in full. However, they also want > me to sign a non-competition clause, which would bar me from ever working on and publishing results > for the original open source project itself, even if done separately, in my free time.
Forever is a long time, and probably illegal in a non-compete. The one -possible- exception I can think of is if they offer you part ownership of the company. IANAL, but you probably ought to talk to one.
> How would you approach such a decision?
"No, thanks." Note that I do write proprietary, closed source software. I -don't- sign lifetime non-competes or NDAs, and I don't "make a closed version of this previously open code."
> On one side, they'd provide resources to work on an interesting project.
Just get a realistic valuation on those resources before deciding. It's amazing how fast a pig can disappear from a poke.
> On the other, it would make me an outcast in the project's community. Moreover, they would take > ownership of not just what they paid for, but also my changes leading up to this moment, and > I wouldn't be able to continue on my original codebase in an open source manner if I sign > their contract.
Sounds like you feel they are trying to cheat you and the open source community. Sounds like you have already figured out what you think the -right- thing to do is. Sounds like you want someone to convince you that wrong is right, to give you an excuse to do the wrong thing and make a profit.
> The study identified ideas for in-car information systems to help compensate for the > reduction in reaction time that affects many older drivers.
There are many more problems than reaction time.
Inability to see or hear as well is a problem, as is a problem of making fast decisions.
Many of the cases highlighted in recent years of older drivers driving into crowds or markets or shops were not caused by slow reactions, but by being unable to -decide- what to do to avoid the accident, do to impaired mental activity (brake? swerve? honk? crash!)
> Specific recommendations included a head-up display on the windshield that displays road sign > information based on GPS position so the driver doesn't have to keep watching the road side for > information
REALLY bad idea. GPS data is far too flawed even when dealing with relatively static information about the actual EXISTENCE of roads (versus planned future roads).
Add in the need to keep track of speed limits, warnings of 4-way stops, and changing road conditions (high water/bridge out, parade route, school in session, one-way restricted hours, look out for deer, etc.) and I see a MAJOR fiasco on the horizon if someone tries this.
> and a system to provide the driver with audible feedback on their current speed so the driver > doesn't have to look at the dashboard so often.
That -might- be of value; however even there I would proceed cautiously. Paying too much attention to your own speed and not enought to the speed of the other traffic is symptomatic of some driving problems among the elderly. Driving at five or ten miles under the speed limit when all other traffic is running at five or ten over, slowing excessively when merging with high-speed traffic, etc.
> What I do want is a bunch of senior people telling the company management exactly how long > my shift should be, exactly when it starts and ends, exactly how much overtime I get for which > extra days and hours.
Congratulations; it's good that you know what you want. That's not what I want, though.
I want: a -few- senior people who will -listen- and tell the company management how long my shift should be, the core hours I'm willing to work, and exactly what limits on overtime I am willing to work.
I don't want more pay so much as fewer hours; I don't want extra days, I want fewer days and a more predictable schedule.
> here, in the Hudson Valley we have carpenters schools, steamfitters schools, I don't know how > many union schools we have, beautiful campuses where the union membership goes to get their > training updated regularly. Paid training in skills they will then get to use.
Congratulations; here in Cleveland, we have employers offering free training to employees without unions setting up the schools...and the employees are refusing to go, preferring to work the same old way, for as few years as their job remains...because the union fights hard for their right to remain ignorant.
> You know what the Teamsters still have that IT workers at Enron didn't? Guess. I'll make it easy > for you. The answer is a secure retirement.
Well, some Teamsters, 50 plus do. The under 50 Teamsters are getting laid off with no pay 6 months of every year, and the retirement benefits aren't very secure at that rate.
> Here's a list of people doing well in unions... > Cops
Laid off all over the place.
> Teachers
Laid off all over the place.
> Truck Drivers
You're kidding, right? Laid off, fired, outsourced...most are stuck as "independents" and suffering from the gas prices now.
> Actors
Actually, not protected by unions so much as by forming independent production companies and forcing an end to the old studio system.
> Here's one more thing an IT union would be able to do. It could help define best practices.
Best practices are already defined. I'd rather you talked about the unions -enforcing- instead of defining best practices.
The biggest objection I have to the attempts to recruit IT workers into unions is that the unions and organizers are dictating, not listening. I've heard from dozens of union reps that "we aren't interested in your concerns over flexible hours, limits on overtime, quality of life and working conditions. We're interested in overtime pay and preventing moving to more efficient and powerfuls tools, when we can keep supporting drudge workers willing to come in and babysit the systems at 3am. You'll come crawling when things get bad enough."
Until and unless the unions want to address my concerns, I'm not interested.
> Imagine you know jack about technology (like, let's say, the average CEO). Then you have to turn > to someone to tell you whether something or someone is capable of accomplishing some task. So > what do you do? You start looking for standards, check what those standards describe, find out if > it applies to you and look for tools that work according to that standard.
Maybe. That may well be descriptive of a normal process for a manufacturing CEO. In other areas, services, middlemen, product rentals, etc., I've noticed the CEO is unconcerned about the standards, and more about the "normal practices" regardless of whether they are certified or standard.
> Compatibility is a huge issue in today's economy. You have to be able to send your > documents to your partners and expect them to be able to use them. Standardized formats play a big > role in this game.
Agreed; but in document and data transmission formats, I've also seen a huge willingness to ignore "standards", in favor or "practices". In such cases, what ISO certifies is less important than "what does our customer use", even if the customer uses WordPerfect 5.0.
> Does this present a problem in terms of one of the models of open source? One of the things often > discussed on/. is the question of profiting from working in open source.
> If companies are simply going to go to someone else, that then suggests that investment in open > source software could go down...
It's a legitimate concern; but looking at it from the standpoint of someone who has worked in corporate environments using closed source software, with support contracts, another possibility presents itself.
The possibility that many of the corporate supported distros overvalue the support they are providing. Maybe they offer support; but in the effort to reduce costs, they are still trying to provide "just enough" support.
Closed source is no different. Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, Lotus...I've worked in companies that have had support contracts with all of them. For the extra money, you still get first line "would you like fries with that" support, followed by:
-really long, painful, and time consuming- delays getting to speak to a competent tech, followed by:
-really, really long- delays waiting for an "I don't know" response, followed by:
-even longer- delays getting it escalated to an engineer or developer....
All to answer a question I can get an answer to myself in 20 minutes of reading the source code.
The real lesson, I believe, is that distro vendors wanting to sell open source need to -really- support the products for the money they charge. They can't just sell the package and punt the support; support has to become the business focus.
It -can- be done; I've gotten that level of support from closed -and- open source vendors. But -never- the big corporate ones. Only the smaller, hungry ones.
They lesson might be: "you can make money as a lean agile support provider for a custom distro; but not as a fat-cat BS-enterprisey vendor, selling BS levels of support."
> the biggest issues are simply that US banks are > technically backward compared to Europe, and > that you have no Data Protection Act.
Both accurate points, but there are other big differences. In the US, many banks aren't; they are Savings and Loan associations or Credit Unions, and regulated differently, and Federally chartered banks are regulated differently than state chartered.
> until the madness of the last ten years our > banking system was very trustworthy and we were > prepared to believe in direct debit systems - > which on the whole work very well. Meanwhile > in the US banks were still settling interbank > transfers with bits of paper, and this is still > an issue today
And while the move to direct debit in Europe was inspired by cost, efficiency, and customer service concerns, much of the reason for expansion in the direct debit systems of the US was mandated in response to 9/11, when banking transfers were hobbled by no Fedex flights carrying those little bits of paper you mentioned.
> The answer to direct debits is to make the > system as robust as European systems - which > make the person asking for the money extremely > liable if they make a mistake. But this is > unlikely to happen, because US law favours > corporations over individuals
Not entirely, although I agree with your conclusion. Another reason is that the process will involve many legal challenges, since this is yet another area where the Federal legislature will be fighting the state legislatures, with the Judicial system fighting both, and itself.
I think the fight would look a little like Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year competition.
If the IT employees are all costs to the company, such as support, it seems high.
However, some or most of the IT employees, especially the consultants, could be direct dependencies of profit making operations.
Maybe not in the sense of sales and manufacturing of software or electronics; but what about sales of services enabled by this IT staff? Maybe directly attached to external applications that generate a lot of business?
> In the ongoing battle with the MPAA and RIAA, there seems to be an ongoing argument about who is > to blame.
Questions of blame are is boring, but there are a few points I wanted to address.
> When my car was broken into, I was told by the responding police officer that I might have > prevented it by keeping my seats and visible areas clear of junk that would entice criminals.
True, but not relevant to the issue of blame. Unlike the $20 bill example, in which -no- precautions were taken, in this case you merely failed to use some possible protections over and above a base amount (locking the doors and closing the windows).
The first case involves negligence, the second would probably not be considered negligent.
> According to Applian.com's Legal FAQ, the RIAA will not come after you if you make a recording > for your own personal use.
Not quite true. The RIAA probably can't WIN such a case, and probably wouldn't TRY, but they CAN AND HAVE persecuted the innocent, and will until they are completely stopped.
And win, lose or draw, it's not something you'd want to go through. The DMCA makes a crime of circumvention; it includes no out clauses for personal use.
If you want to use something to bypass the protections, whether Applian's or other, go ahead. Just don't expect that a debate on blame is going to protect you in court. Keep your head down and cover your tracks.
The fourth amendment doesn't address privacy; it addresses freedom -from- violations of property and person by the -government-.
There's a bit of overlap, but rather than defining or even suggesting a universal right, this is a targeted restriction on the government, and based mostly on property rights, which was a big concern for the founders.
The point is that a privacy right would apply to any entities which would interfere with the exercise of that right, not just the government.
In most states, any privacy rights are based on property rights.
>> What COBOL really needs is a hip new framework to make it "cool", just like Ruby!
>> I propose COBOL on Rails. Any takers?
A 'Hip Replacement For Aging COBOL'.
The ads can be something like:
"You're an active senior. With your new hair, new heart valve, and new hip replacement, you're ready for -new- challenges. Give your old COBOL code a hip replacement too!"
Although rails might be a bit dangerous with a new hip. With that ad, perhaps, "COBOL on a walker' (zimmer frame for the brits) might be better.
Even even worse policy: the passwords are long, random strings of complex characters, auto-generated -for- the users monthly.
This has all the disadvantages of the example, plus eliminating any possibility that the conscientious, intelligent employee can create one that meets the requirements and can still be remembered.
On a related note, NO DAMN BS process names. No reporting RunDLL32 as the process, no reporting SVCHOST, no BS with service names for antivirus and utilities with two-letter names and no descriptions.
MS can report an intelligent description of their own processes and services, and give us tools to let us lock down and prevent anything installing:
- explorer shell extensions - system tray icons - services and startup programs - or changing or extending file associations
And while I'm at it, a way to easily disable treating ZIP files as folders.
And make Windows explorer do what Nautilus does; show the damned file extension but don't select it automatically when you rename the file, so the extension stays unchanged unless you specifically select it!
> But what would you suggest that should be done with this information?
Remove obscure rendering instructions from the standard. Have the vendor saving the document decide to set 'autoSpaceRule="ExplicitRule"' and 'lineBreak="ExplicitRule"'.
If "autoSpaceLikeWord95" and "useWord97LineBreakRules" rendering requires making paragraph level or even word level changes to autospacing and line breaks, then apply the attributes to the affeceted paragraphs. In other words, instead of 'useWord97LineBreakRules="true"', you'd have:
Which is exactly what vendors with native formats OTHER THAN WORD will do when saving their document formats. Make MS play by the same rule. Using autoSpaceLikeWord95 and useWord97LineBreakRules just lets Microsoft cheap out on document conversion, allowing their Word processor to provide faster translation to and from their own native document format.
Baldrick, you wouldn't know a cunning plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing "Cunning plans are here again".
> Alternatively, pick another troupe or favorite comedy show: Fry and Laurie, > Mr. Bean, Fawlty Towers or Red Dwarf. Or my favorite, which brings back in > the snake species AND British comedy into circular pun, Blackadder.
> While talking about puns, snakes and coming full circle, I suggest Ouroboros.
Our Rob Or Ros? Not only couldn't they pick a name for the poor little fella, they can't spell, either! Leaving him in a cardboard box under a pool table!
> Forget about wikis and all technical solutions you can think of, for now. > First, you need to explain everyone what they get by documenting everything.
Maybe not.
One technical tool that can help with this is a video camera.
We had to document some -extremely- detailed business processes on one project a while ago. One project manager came up with the idea of videotaping the discussion sessions, and those videos were very useful forms of knowledge transfer.
Have Joe, the guy who does this, explain it to Jane, while actually walking her through the process, and video it. Encourage Joe to explain things as he does them, and encourage Jane to fill in the blanks by asking questions. Then have a third person watch the video, and add his questions, for a final video walkthrough.
Then you can document the process from the videos, and archive them for future reference.
This also helps if Joe is being obstructionist, because he's captured on video for his manager to see.
Delegate your multitasking to the fast idiot. Write scripts to automate everything you can, and schedule them to run them in the background while you concentrate on one thing at a time.
Every now and them one of my coworkers razzes me about not graduating from the command line, but when they want something -done-, they call me.
> Why is it somehow better to have to go down to a local library > and search through books for an answer, than a quick google search?
> I'm doing my PhD, and pretty much everything that I need for my > research is a google search away. In particular google scholar rocks.
"Doing your PhD" is still school, which is an artificially protected environment for the student in some ways. In school, the problems you are asked to solve in your classes are almost always problems someone else has solved, and you can -research- the solution.
In the larger scope of the working world, many people find themselves tasked with solving real problems, that -no one has ever solved before-. You find yourself dealing with frustrating unknowns that cannot be dealt with using search engines in 10 minutes, or -ever-. The solutions are not there to find.
Many of us in the working world deal with people who -can't- do anything other than "look it up on Google". Junior programmers, especially, who can't solve a problem unless they can swipe a code snippet from the web. Some of these eventually learn to poke randomly at the code till they find something that "sorta works".
But they lack the patience and the mental disciplines needed to sit down and really work out a problem. And this isn't just in the computer tech fields. It's at all levels of business, management, and science.
I've spoken to nurses and doctors who say the same things about some younger medical professionals; many of them lack the mential disciplines to diagnose problems. They're reduced to trying to look things up on Google and Wikipedia, and eventually give drugs randomly to trusting human patients.
> I'd rather spend my time actually reading the info than trying to find it.
Fine; but what do you do when the information -needs- to be found; not by searching musty stacks of books, but by dissection of the problem and analysis of the elements that compose it?
Additionally, you may be able to just view the documents without office. This might be useful in some cases; PowerPoint presentations, for instance, and some people make documentation available as Word documents, for some reason. Especially if they are in that minority of docs that OpenOffice doesn't render quite right.
Visio ships as a part of Office, at least in some developer packages; that may be why Windows Update's inability to validate Visio is preventing Office updates.
Just a thought. I'd be interested to see if there are failures because of other unactivated products.
On of the comments on the existing site contains this additional information:
> I'm a little reluctant to add to the wasteland that is this post > and these comments, but here goes.
>...The deal was this: Derek was not a programmer; he was a musician. > He learned some PHP and cobbled together the old CDBaby site by himself. > It was good.
> Then, he heard about Rails, and became infatuated with it. He proceeded > to attempt a rolling rewrite of CDBaby's frontend and backend both > (the backend is large, because of inter-label and digital distribution > stuff) in Rails.
> At this time, Derek had no experience with the following things: > > * any language other than PHP > * systems integration and interoperability > * Rails > * object-orientation > * the MVC pattern > * managing a development team
Concluding with:
> No framework saves you from your own inexperience.
>...Now, when they directed the police to search there, I'm going to say that the > police, relying on the sworn statements of store employees, had probable cause > to conduct a search, even though they found nothing.
Assming they swore that the person stole something, I believe you are correct, although in that case it might also be necessary for the police officer to arrest and mirandize the person, in order to make the search legal.
However, I see nothing in the description stating that they swore or had reason to believe that he stole anything, other than his failure to show his receipt. Given that, unless there are facts of that nature left out of the description of the incident, it sounds like an illegal attempt to detain the Mr. Righi by the store's management, and an illegal search by the police officer.
>...I think both the police and the store owners might be liable on a false > imprisonment charge... but damages would be comparatively low, because > our plaintiff hasn't really suffered anything other than the indignity of > having people falsely accuse him of stealing
Maybe. The store owners are a much more likely target for this.
> But that's still a problem. Microsoft's implementation becomes the de facto standard > and all others must (attempt to) conform to the behavior of that implementation or > be judged defective.
It's worse than that. Since MS defines a number of aspects of the specification solely in terms of compliance with MS application software, the MS implementation is not only the -defacto- standard, but the very explicit standard. Not only can no one conform to a sufficient level to be judged compliant in the marketplace, for all contractual specifications, -nothing- but MS software can -ever- be 100% compliant.
This means on big, contract driven projects, such as many government projects, MS and vendors using MS tools are effectively the only possible competitors, unless the contracts and specifications specifically waive vendor compliance with those parts of the spec.
And I strongly doubt anyone would ever write a contract like that.
It's not just computer science, the schools aren't training people to -think-.
I just spoke to a friend of mine, a trucker, about this. A majority of office workers and people in support jobs have exactly one reaction to minor obstacles: stop dead and wait for teacher to come around and lead them through how to solve the problem.
Office workers he deals with think he's some kind of super-genius because he can walk into their office and work an unfamiliar fax machine. One gal asked, "How did you DO that?" He answered, "There's a LCD screen on the front that tells you exactly what to do; you READ it."
He's helped his grandson move from being a D average math student to an A+ average in one year by teaching him how to solve math problems in general, rather than how to solve THIS specific type of problem.
Slashdot Mirror
> There's already an exception for computer software which is no longer supported.
> I think we need an exception for computer software that requires a potentially expensive phone call to activate.
> Needs a better argument than EA are idiots though. Having to call and explain why you've
> installed 3 times already doesn't sound such an onerous task until you have to actually do it.
Make it a bit broader. In any case where the manufacturer/activator fails to provide reasonable access to activation. Then we can start to define reasonable terms:
- local or toll-free activation number
- phones answered promptly at all hours
- activation phones properly staffed with people trained to resolve activation issues, not just read a script
- open reasonable hours; if the software is US only, minimum of say, 8 AM EST to 10 PM PST M-Sat. If worldwide, 24/7/365.
- permanent unlock option available if the support must be discontinued
- burden on manufacturer to unlock permanently if they fail to resolve recurring issues for a customer in a reasonably period of time.
- legally defined minimum definitions of reasonable time. Some already exist for other regulated industries; these might be used as a guideline.
And this should be extended to all "Digital Media."
> I'm facing a difficult dilemma and looking for opinions. I've been contributing heavily to an
> open source project, making considerable changes to code organization and quality, but the work is
> unfinished at the moment. Now, a company is approaching me to continue my changes. They want
> to keep the improvements to themselves, which is possible since the project is published under the
> BSD license.
This confuses me a little. If you are already contributing the changes back to the project, how can you keep them to yourself? If you were only -intending- to contribute back the changes, then it makes more sense.
> That's fair, as they have all the rights to the work they pay for in full. However, they also want
> me to sign a non-competition clause, which would bar me from ever working on and publishing results
> for the original open source project itself, even if done separately, in my free time.
Forever is a long time, and probably illegal in a non-compete. The one -possible- exception I can think of is if they offer you part ownership of the company. IANAL, but you probably ought to talk to one.
> How would you approach such a decision?
"No, thanks." Note that I do write proprietary, closed source software. I -don't- sign lifetime non-competes or NDAs, and I don't "make a closed version of this previously open code."
> On one side, they'd provide resources to work on an interesting project.
Just get a realistic valuation on those resources before deciding. It's amazing how fast a pig can disappear from a poke.
> On the other, it would make me an outcast in the project's community. Moreover, they would take
> ownership of not just what they paid for, but also my changes leading up to this moment, and
> I wouldn't be able to continue on my original codebase in an open source manner if I sign
> their contract.
Sounds like you feel they are trying to cheat you and the open source community. Sounds like you have already figured out what you think the -right- thing to do is. Sounds like you want someone to convince you that wrong is right, to give you an excuse to do the wrong thing and make a profit.
What do -you- think?
> The study identified ideas for in-car information systems to help compensate for the
> reduction in reaction time that affects many older drivers.
There are many more problems than reaction time.
Inability to see or hear as well is a problem, as is a problem of making fast decisions.
Many of the cases highlighted in recent years of older drivers driving into crowds or markets or shops were not caused by slow reactions, but by being unable to -decide- what to do to avoid the accident, do to impaired mental activity (brake? swerve? honk? crash!)
> Specific recommendations included a head-up display on the windshield that displays road sign
> information based on GPS position so the driver doesn't have to keep watching the road side for
> information
REALLY bad idea. GPS data is far too flawed even when dealing with relatively static information about the actual EXISTENCE of roads (versus planned future roads).
Add in the need to keep track of speed limits, warnings of 4-way stops, and changing road conditions (high water/bridge out, parade route, school in session, one-way restricted hours, look out for deer, etc.) and I see a MAJOR fiasco on the horizon if someone tries this.
> and a system to provide the driver with audible feedback on their current speed so the driver
> doesn't have to look at the dashboard so often.
That -might- be of value; however even there I would proceed cautiously. Paying too much attention to your own speed and not enought to the speed of the other traffic is symptomatic of some driving problems among the elderly. Driving at five or ten miles under the speed limit when all other traffic is running at five or ten over, slowing excessively when merging with high-speed traffic, etc.
> What I do want is a bunch of senior people telling the company management exactly how long
> my shift should be, exactly when it starts and ends, exactly how much overtime I get for which
> extra days and hours.
Congratulations; it's good that you know what you want. That's not what I want, though.
I want: a -few- senior people who will -listen- and tell the company management how long my shift should be, the core hours I'm willing to work, and exactly what limits on overtime I am willing to work.
I don't want more pay so much as fewer hours; I don't want extra days, I want fewer days and a more predictable schedule.
> here, in the Hudson Valley we have carpenters schools, steamfitters schools, I don't know how
> many union schools we have, beautiful campuses where the union membership goes to get their
> training updated regularly. Paid training in skills they will then get to use.
Congratulations; here in Cleveland, we have employers offering free training to employees without unions setting up the schools...and the employees are refusing to go, preferring to work the same old way, for as few years as their job remains...because the union fights hard for their right to remain ignorant.
> You know what the Teamsters still have that IT workers at Enron didn't? Guess. I'll make it easy
> for you. The answer is a secure retirement.
Well, some Teamsters, 50 plus do. The under 50 Teamsters are getting laid off with no pay 6 months of every year, and the retirement benefits aren't very secure at that rate.
> Here's a list of people doing well in unions...
> Cops
Laid off all over the place.
> Teachers
Laid off all over the place.
> Truck Drivers
You're kidding, right? Laid off, fired, outsourced...most are stuck as "independents" and suffering from the gas prices now.
> Actors
Actually, not protected by unions so much as by forming independent production companies and forcing an end to the old studio system.
> Here's one more thing an IT union would be able to do. It could help define best practices.
Best practices are already defined. I'd rather you talked about the unions -enforcing- instead of defining best practices.
The biggest objection I have to the attempts to recruit IT workers into unions is that the unions and organizers are dictating, not listening. I've heard from dozens of union reps that "we aren't interested in your concerns over flexible hours, limits on overtime, quality of life and working conditions. We're interested in overtime pay and preventing moving to more efficient and powerfuls tools, when we can keep supporting drudge workers willing to come in and babysit the systems at 3am. You'll come crawling when things get bad enough."
Until and unless the unions want to address my concerns, I'm not interested.
Just my 2 cents.
> Imagine you know jack about technology (like, let's say, the average CEO). Then you have to turn
> to someone to tell you whether something or someone is capable of accomplishing some task. So
> what do you do? You start looking for standards, check what those standards describe, find out if
> it applies to you and look for tools that work according to that standard.
Maybe. That may well be descriptive of a normal process for a manufacturing CEO. In other areas, services, middlemen, product rentals, etc., I've noticed the CEO is unconcerned about the standards, and more about the "normal practices" regardless of whether they are certified or standard.
> Compatibility is a huge issue in today's economy. You have to be able to send your
> documents to your partners and expect them to be able to use them. Standardized formats play a big
> role in this game.
Agreed; but in document and data transmission formats, I've also seen a huge willingness to ignore "standards", in favor or "practices". In such cases, what ISO certifies is less important than "what does our customer use", even if the customer uses WordPerfect 5.0.
> Does this present a problem in terms of one of the models of open source? One of the things often /. is the question of profiting from working in open source.
> discussed on
> If companies are simply going to go to someone else, that then suggests that investment in open
> source software could go down...
It's a legitimate concern; but looking at it from the standpoint of someone who has worked in corporate environments using closed source software, with support contracts, another possibility presents itself.
The possibility that many of the corporate supported distros overvalue the support they are providing. Maybe they offer support; but in the effort to reduce costs, they are still trying to provide "just enough" support.
Closed source is no different. Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, Lotus...I've worked in companies that have had support contracts with all of them. For the extra money, you still get first line "would you like fries with that" support, followed by:
-really long, painful, and time consuming- delays getting to speak to a competent tech, followed by:
-really, really long- delays waiting for an "I don't know" response, followed by:
-even longer- delays getting it escalated to an engineer or developer....
All to answer a question I can get an answer to myself in 20 minutes of reading the source code.
The real lesson, I believe, is that distro vendors wanting to sell open source need to -really- support the products for the money they charge. They can't just sell the package and punt the support; support has to become the business focus.
It -can- be done; I've gotten that level of support from closed -and- open source vendors. But -never- the big corporate ones. Only the smaller, hungry ones.
They lesson might be: "you can make money as a lean agile support provider for a custom distro; but not as a fat-cat BS-enterprisey vendor, selling BS levels of support."
> the biggest issues are simply that US banks are
> technically backward compared to Europe, and
> that you have no Data Protection Act.
Both accurate points, but there are other big differences. In the US, many banks aren't; they are Savings and Loan associations or Credit Unions, and regulated differently, and Federally chartered banks are regulated differently than state chartered.
> until the madness of the last ten years our
> banking system was very trustworthy and we were
> prepared to believe in direct debit systems -
> which on the whole work very well. Meanwhile
> in the US banks were still settling interbank
> transfers with bits of paper, and this is still
> an issue today
And while the move to direct debit in Europe was inspired by cost, efficiency, and customer service concerns, much of the reason for expansion in the direct debit systems of the US was mandated in response to 9/11, when banking transfers were hobbled by no Fedex flights carrying those little bits of paper you mentioned.
> The answer to direct debits is to make the
> system as robust as European systems - which
> make the person asking for the money extremely
> liable if they make a mistake. But this is
> unlikely to happen, because US law favours
> corporations over individuals
Not entirely, although I agree with your conclusion. Another reason is that the process will involve many legal challenges, since this is yet another area where the Federal legislature will be fighting the state legislatures, with the Judicial system fighting both, and itself.
I think the fight would look a little like Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year competition.
If the IT employees are all costs to the company, such as support, it seems high.
However, some or most of the IT employees, especially the consultants, could be direct dependencies of profit making operations.
Maybe not in the sense of sales and manufacturing of software or electronics; but what about sales of services enabled by this IT staff? Maybe directly attached to external applications that generate a lot of business?
IANAL.
> In the ongoing battle with the MPAA and RIAA, there seems to be an ongoing argument about who is
> to blame.
Questions of blame are is boring, but there are a few points I wanted to address.
> When my car was broken into, I was told by the responding police officer that I might have
> prevented it by keeping my seats and visible areas clear of junk that would entice criminals.
True, but not relevant to the issue of blame. Unlike the $20 bill example, in which -no- precautions were taken, in this case you merely failed to use some possible protections over and above a base amount (locking the doors and closing the windows).
The first case involves negligence, the second would probably not be considered negligent.
> According to Applian.com's Legal FAQ, the RIAA will not come after you if you make a recording
> for your own personal use.
Not quite true. The RIAA probably can't WIN such a case, and probably wouldn't TRY, but they CAN AND HAVE persecuted the innocent, and will until they are completely stopped.
And win, lose or draw, it's not something you'd want to go through. The DMCA makes a crime of circumvention; it includes no out clauses for personal use.
If you want to use something to bypass the protections, whether Applian's or other, go ahead. Just don't expect that a debate on blame is going to protect you in court. Keep your head down and cover your tracks.
NOTE: IANAL; I just play one on the internet ;>
The fourth amendment doesn't address privacy; it addresses freedom -from- violations of property and person by the -government-.
There's a bit of overlap, but rather than defining or even suggesting a universal right, this is a targeted restriction on the government, and based mostly on property rights, which was a big concern for the founders.
The point is that a privacy right would apply to any entities which would interfere with the exercise of that right, not just the government.
In most states, any privacy rights are based on property rights.
>> What COBOL really needs is a hip new framework to make it "cool", just like Ruby!
>> I propose COBOL on Rails. Any takers?
A 'Hip Replacement For Aging COBOL'.
The ads can be something like:
"You're an active senior. With your new hair, new heart valve, and new hip replacement, you're ready for -new- challenges. Give your old COBOL code a hip replacement too!"
Although rails might be a bit dangerous with a new hip. With that ad, perhaps, "COBOL on a walker' (zimmer frame for the brits) might be better.
Even even worse policy: the passwords are long, random strings of complex characters, auto-generated -for- the users monthly.
This has all the disadvantages of the example, plus eliminating any possibility that the conscientious, intelligent employee can create one that meets the requirements and can still be remembered.
On a related note, NO DAMN BS process names. No reporting RunDLL32 as the process, no reporting SVCHOST, no BS with service names for antivirus and utilities with two-letter names and no descriptions.
MS can report an intelligent description of their own processes and services, and give us tools to let us lock down and prevent anything installing:
- explorer shell extensions
- system tray icons
- services and startup programs
- or changing or extending file associations
And while I'm at it, a way to easily disable treating ZIP files as folders.
And make Windows explorer do what Nautilus does; show the damned file extension but don't select it automatically when you rename the file, so the extension stays unchanged unless you specifically select it!
Love the idea of "snitch mode".
> But what would you suggest that should be done with this information?
... ... endParagraph
... endParagraph
Remove obscure rendering instructions from the standard. Have the vendor saving the document decide to set 'autoSpaceRule="ExplicitRule"' and 'lineBreak="ExplicitRule"'.
If "autoSpaceLikeWord95" and "useWord97LineBreakRules" rendering requires making paragraph level or even word level changes to autospacing and line breaks, then apply the attributes to the affeceted paragraphs. In other words, instead of 'useWord97LineBreakRules="true"', you'd have:
beginDocument lineBreak="BeforeParagraph"
beginParagraph lineBreak="AfterParagraph"
beginParagraph lineBreak="BeforeParagraph"
endDocument
Which is exactly what vendors with native formats OTHER THAN WORD will do when saving their document formats. Make MS play by the same rule. Using autoSpaceLikeWord95 and useWord97LineBreakRules just lets Microsoft cheap out on document conversion, allowing their Word processor to provide faster translation to and from their own native document format.
Baldrick, you wouldn't know a cunning plan if it painted itself
purple and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing
"Cunning plans are here again".
> Alternatively, pick another troupe or favorite comedy show: Fry and Laurie,
> Mr. Bean, Fawlty Towers or Red Dwarf. Or my favorite, which brings back in
> the snake species AND British comedy into circular pun, Blackadder.
> While talking about puns, snakes and coming full circle, I suggest Ouroboros.
Our Rob Or Ros? Not only couldn't they pick a name for the poor little fella,
they can't spell, either! Leaving him in a cardboard box under a pool table!
Tch!
> Forget about wikis and all technical solutions you can think of, for now.
> First, you need to explain everyone what they get by documenting everything.
Maybe not.
One technical tool that can help with this is a video camera.
We had to document some -extremely- detailed business processes on one project a while ago. One project manager came up with the idea of videotaping the discussion sessions, and those videos were very useful forms of knowledge transfer.
Have Joe, the guy who does this, explain it to Jane, while actually walking her through the process, and video it. Encourage Joe to explain things as he does them, and encourage Jane to fill in the blanks by asking questions. Then have a third person watch the video, and add his questions, for a final video walkthrough.
Then you can document the process from the videos, and archive them for future reference.
This also helps if Joe is being obstructionist, because he's captured on video for his manager to see.
Delegate your multitasking to the fast idiot. Write scripts to automate everything you can, and schedule them to run them in the background while you concentrate on one thing at a time.
Every now and them one of my coworkers razzes me about not graduating from the command line, but when they want something -done-, they call me.
> Why is it somehow better to have to go down to a local library
> and search through books for an answer, than a quick google search?
> I'm doing my PhD, and pretty much everything that I need for my
> research is a google search away. In particular google scholar rocks.
"Doing your PhD" is still school, which is an artificially protected environment for the student in some ways. In school, the problems you are asked to solve in your classes are almost always problems someone else has solved, and you can -research- the solution.
In the larger scope of the working world, many people find themselves tasked with solving real problems, that -no one has ever solved before-. You find yourself dealing with frustrating unknowns that cannot be dealt with using search engines in 10 minutes, or -ever-. The solutions are not there to find.
Many of us in the working world deal with people who -can't- do anything other than "look it up on Google". Junior programmers, especially, who can't solve a problem unless they can swipe a code snippet from the web. Some of these eventually learn to poke randomly at the code till they find something that "sorta works".
But they lack the patience and the mental disciplines needed to sit down and really work out a problem. And this isn't just in the computer tech fields. It's at all levels of business, management, and science.
I've spoken to nurses and doctors who say the same things about some younger medical professionals; many of them lack the mential disciplines to diagnose problems. They're reduced to trying to look things up on Google and Wikipedia, and eventually give drugs randomly to trusting human patients.
> I'd rather spend my time actually reading the info than trying to find it.
Fine; but what do you do when the information -needs- to be found; not by searching musty stacks of books, but by dissection of the problem and analysis of the elements that compose it?
Additionally, you may be able to just view the documents without office. This might be useful in some cases; PowerPoint presentations, for instance, and some people make documentation available as Word documents, for some reason. Especially if they are in that minority of docs that OpenOffice doesn't render quite right.
Visio ships as a part of Office, at least in some developer packages; that may be why Windows Update's inability to validate Visio is preventing Office updates.
Just a thought. I'd be interested to see if there are failures because of other unactivated products.
On of the comments on the existing site contains this additional information:
...The deal was this: Derek was not a programmer; he was a musician.
> I'm a little reluctant to add to the wasteland that is this post
> and these comments, but here goes.
>
> He learned some PHP and cobbled together the old CDBaby site by himself.
> It was good.
> Then, he heard about Rails, and became infatuated with it. He proceeded
> to attempt a rolling rewrite of CDBaby's frontend and backend both
> (the backend is large, because of inter-label and digital distribution
> stuff) in Rails.
> At this time, Derek had no experience with the following things:
>
> * any language other than PHP
> * systems integration and interoperability
> * Rails
> * object-orientation
> * the MVC pattern
> * managing a development team
Concluding with:
> No framework saves you from your own inexperience.
>...Now, when they directed the police to search there, I'm going to say that the
> police, relying on the sworn statements of store employees, had probable cause
> to conduct a search, even though they found nothing.
Assming they swore that the person stole something, I believe you are correct,
although in that case it might also be necessary for the police officer to
arrest and mirandize the person, in order to make the search legal.
However, I see nothing in the description stating that they swore or had
reason to believe that he stole anything, other than his failure to show
his receipt. Given that, unless there are facts of that nature left out
of the description of the incident, it sounds like an illegal attempt to
detain the Mr. Righi by the store's management, and an illegal search by
the police officer.
>...I think both the police and the store owners might be liable on a false
> imprisonment charge... but damages would be comparatively low, because
> our plaintiff hasn't really suffered anything other than the indignity of
> having people falsely accuse him of stealing
Maybe. The store owners are a much more likely target for this.
IANAL.
> But that's still a problem. Microsoft's implementation becomes the de facto standard
> and all others must (attempt to) conform to the behavior of that implementation or
> be judged defective.
It's worse than that. Since MS defines a number of aspects of the specification solely
in terms of compliance with MS application software, the MS implementation is not only
the -defacto- standard, but the very explicit standard. Not only can no one conform
to a sufficient level to be judged compliant in the marketplace, for all contractual
specifications, -nothing- but MS software can -ever- be 100% compliant.
This means on big, contract driven projects, such as many government projects, MS
and vendors using MS tools are effectively the only possible competitors, unless
the contracts and specifications specifically waive vendor compliance with those
parts of the spec.
And I strongly doubt anyone would ever write a contract like that.
It's not just computer science, the schools aren't training people to -think-.
I just spoke to a friend of mine, a trucker, about this. A majority of office workers and people in support jobs have exactly one reaction to minor obstacles: stop dead and wait for teacher to come around and lead them through how to solve the problem.
Office workers he deals with think he's some kind of super-genius because he can walk into their office and work an unfamiliar fax machine. One gal asked, "How did you DO that?" He answered, "There's a LCD screen on the front that tells you exactly what to do; you READ it."
He's helped his grandson move from being a D average math student to an A+ average in one year by teaching him how to solve math problems in general, rather than how to solve THIS specific type of problem.