A lot of managers at the top level are there because they have a big mouth and not because they have competence. Not all though - and changes in process is a very scary thing for those that lacks competence because it means that they either have to work for their salary or look for a new job.
You sooner or later will see the difference between managers, and you shall watch out for those that changes job at a breakneck pace and show up with a "new cool gadget" every other week paid by the company while you as an employee has to stick with a three year old phone that works on odd days and with a battery life of an hour.
When you look at analyzing defects - you can find coding defects pretty easily but you can't find design defects where the designer has misunderstood the goal of the product.
One example of a pretty annoying design mistake is when you run Microsoft software where you can chose to send a document as an attachment from Powerpoint, Excel or Word. However it will at the same time block all access to other windows in Outlook preventing you to get the list of names that you know were present in another message. Not a crashing bug but pretty annoying and stupid from a user perspective.
I did land a few years ago at Frankfurt from Boston, step off the plane, step on to the shuttle train and arrive at the entrance, no passport check. That was after 2001.
Maybe someone did make a mistake maybe not, I didn't really care, just noticed it.
And everyone is asked stupid questions by the border agents and are handed the feeling of being a potential criminal.
OK, a few of the border agents are realizing that the questions are stupid and insane, and just follow protocol in a more relaxed way while others act's like they have a broomstick up their a$$.
Germany is still Germany, everything has to be in order.
And the Soviet border agents did have as a hobby to stamp one of the last pages in the passports to mess with people that they knew were also going to countries with a strict order rule. At that time it caused some people to have two passports, one for traveling to the eastern European countries, one for the rest of the world.
Logging in to the bank account is a challenge for those of us that have banks with a decent security level where a token is required. If I'm going to Canada for 14 days I may have left the security token at home since my plans don't include the need for it.
Is there any food that's permitted to be brought into Australia? Winegums? Pickled Herring? The airline don't like you to bring sour herring in the luggage, so that should never appear, but dumping it in the amnesty bin may prove "interesting" and cause a gas leak alarm.
Entering from the US has the last decade ranged from no check whatsoever to some cursory glance at the passport.
In any case they may still have done a review of you but kept a low profile about it. Entry to the US makes you feel like you are a suspect of bank robbery or something.
The reason is that what one company thinks is patentable and has taken a lot of time to work out is for someone else made on the fly as part of a bigger project or without even considering it to be especially advanced.
Patenting software is not only slowing down innovation due to all lawsuits but it's also stupid since it's like patenting rainfall of a certain type. The rainfall will happen again and again at different locations for different reasons.
The threshold for obtaining a patent is way too low today - that's the problem. Especially in the US where the majority of the patents handed out should have been buried before the first page of it was read by the USPTO.
You can't withdraw the app, but you can publish all the source code for the app and let the patent troll bite into everyone that's building the app from that.
And you can also make sure that the app is provided and hosted on a server in a different country where software patents aren't valid or at least a lot harder to prove valid. That way the patent troll will at least have a harder time to achieve the goal.
Brings up another question - if I who don't live in the US publish an app that's downloadable from a server where I live and that app infringes an US patent - what can a patent troll do about it? The patent trolls goes for low hanging fruit, if they need to navigate wider then they have problems.
The alternative would be to actually put some money and energy into trying to eradicate these diseases through a massive vaccination effort. It would be a small cost compared to the impact they can have. And hopefully some of those diseases can go the same way as smallpox.
I agree - selling a certificate is probably a good way to solve funding.
And sites like Zazzle offers items that you can put your design on as well. It's worth to note that Zazzle is available in many countries, so it may be worth checking your options there so your design may be available worldwide.
Many open source projects and organizations aren't a business, and it can be challenging for nerds to keep track of tax rules for various organization types. Depending on where you have your base the rules may differ, and there may even be rules that exempt you from filing the taxes at all.
Maybe it's time to look around for another home for some non-profit organizations where the political climate is better.
It is worth to recognize that the licensing provided by Apache is different from the licensing provided by GPL, and that both have their merits and disadvantages.
As long as the organizations of Apache and GNU are aware that their existence depends on the license models they have both will continue to exist along with fully commercial licenses. There are of course a myriad of sub variants of licenses too of all of them.
When it comes to lawsuits - the only winners there are the lawyers. Everyone else will lose. Usually a lawsuit is like a traffic accident on a bridge - it slows the traffic for a while, but the traffic will catch up or find new paths and a few lawyers will get some lined pockets.
From the overall perspective it is important to realize that without the Open Source community the exchange of knowledge would be a lot lower and development in the commercial sphere would stagnate. Don't waste effort in trying to protect old stuff, put effort into going forward.
Unfortunately Microsoft has misunderstood the users and instead of keeping with a decent UI that is familiar they have jumped around all over the place with experimental design. Starting with Vista it's now hard to see the borders of windows which often results in the wrong window being selected whenever a resize is needed. The Metro UI is almost causing sysadmins to want to commit suicide - at least until the command prompt can be found.
And Microsoft has been collecting usage statistics from users to see what they shall do when developing new interfaces, however any security conscious user is turning off that feature - which means that they only get statistics from the stupid users and not from all users. But they did fail to understand that they got the majority of their statistics from the stupid users and we did end up with the most stupid user interface since Windows 1.0 - which is Metro.
It depends all on weighing the risk of incriminating information against the value of scaring future potential leakers to not leak. If Snowden, Assange and some other leakers are killed in strikes then it means that other leakers may fear to release information that's incriminating.
In which case the quote "Don't underestimate the power of the dark side." will become true and we will know how bad the situation really is.
The gamble is the expectation that the authorities are afraid to do something because they are afraid of the contents in the files. But if they don't fear the contents and are willing to accept a shitstorm just to get at the leakers then this publication is useless. It's the question of accepting one punch in the face just to be able to make a kill and scare all other potential leakers to silence.
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A lot of managers at the top level are there because they have a big mouth and not because they have competence. Not all though - and changes in process is a very scary thing for those that lacks competence because it means that they either have to work for their salary or look for a new job.
You sooner or later will see the difference between managers, and you shall watch out for those that changes job at a breakneck pace and show up with a "new cool gadget" every other week paid by the company while you as an employee has to stick with a three year old phone that works on odd days and with a battery life of an hour.
It probably will, that's the scary thing.
When you look at analyzing defects - you can find coding defects pretty easily but you can't find design defects where the designer has misunderstood the goal of the product.
One example of a pretty annoying design mistake is when you run Microsoft software where you can chose to send a document as an attachment from Powerpoint, Excel or Word. However it will at the same time block all access to other windows in Outlook preventing you to get the list of names that you know were present in another message. Not a crashing bug but pretty annoying and stupid from a user perspective.
I did land a few years ago at Frankfurt from Boston, step off the plane, step on to the shuttle train and arrive at the entrance, no passport check. That was after 2001.
Maybe someone did make a mistake maybe not, I didn't really care, just noticed it.
And everyone is asked stupid questions by the border agents and are handed the feeling of being a potential criminal.
OK, a few of the border agents are realizing that the questions are stupid and insane, and just follow protocol in a more relaxed way while others act's like they have a broomstick up their a$$.
Germany is still Germany, everything has to be in order.
And the Soviet border agents did have as a hobby to stamp one of the last pages in the passports to mess with people that they knew were also going to countries with a strict order rule. At that time it caused some people to have two passports, one for traveling to the eastern European countries, one for the rest of the world.
Logging in to the bank account is a challenge for those of us that have banks with a decent security level where a token is required. If I'm going to Canada for 14 days I may have left the security token at home since my plans don't include the need for it.
Is there any food that's permitted to be brought into Australia? Winegums? Pickled Herring? The airline don't like you to bring sour herring in the luggage, so that should never appear, but dumping it in the amnesty bin may prove "interesting" and cause a gas leak alarm.
Entering from the US has the last decade ranged from no check whatsoever to some cursory glance at the passport.
In any case they may still have done a review of you but kept a low profile about it. Entry to the US makes you feel like you are a suspect of bank robbery or something.
Short answer: NO!
The reason is that what one company thinks is patentable and has taken a lot of time to work out is for someone else made on the fly as part of a bigger project or without even considering it to be especially advanced.
Patenting software is not only slowing down innovation due to all lawsuits but it's also stupid since it's like patenting rainfall of a certain type. The rainfall will happen again and again at different locations for different reasons.
The threshold for obtaining a patent is way too low today - that's the problem. Especially in the US where the majority of the patents handed out should have been buried before the first page of it was read by the USPTO.
You can't withdraw the app, but you can publish all the source code for the app and let the patent troll bite into everyone that's building the app from that.
And you can also make sure that the app is provided and hosted on a server in a different country where software patents aren't valid or at least a lot harder to prove valid. That way the patent troll will at least have a harder time to achieve the goal.
Brings up another question - if I who don't live in the US publish an app that's downloadable from a server where I live and that app infringes an US patent - what can a patent troll do about it? The patent trolls goes for low hanging fruit, if they need to navigate wider then they have problems.
Or at least to provide NSA with the algorithms and keys for Skype. If you have that then you don't need to add a backdoor.
It's time for something else now.
No - there wouldn't be anything to send to the landfill since it will blow up itself and the user at the same time preventing any lawsuits.
No, but I would ask if this is the fifth element!
The alternative would be to actually put some money and energy into trying to eradicate these diseases through a massive vaccination effort. It would be a small cost compared to the impact they can have. And hopefully some of those diseases can go the same way as smallpox.
There are always people that lacks the ability to broaden their views.
Microsoft right now seems to go the way of a woman with a life crisis - facelifts, perfume and cosmetics in large volume to try to hide its age.
I agree - selling a certificate is probably a good way to solve funding.
And sites like Zazzle offers items that you can put your design on as well. It's worth to note that Zazzle is available in many countries, so it may be worth checking your options there so your design may be available worldwide.
Many open source projects and organizations aren't a business, and it can be challenging for nerds to keep track of tax rules for various organization types. Depending on where you have your base the rules may differ, and there may even be rules that exempt you from filing the taxes at all.
Maybe it's time to look around for another home for some non-profit organizations where the political climate is better.
It is worth to recognize that the licensing provided by Apache is different from the licensing provided by GPL, and that both have their merits and disadvantages.
As long as the organizations of Apache and GNU are aware that their existence depends on the license models they have both will continue to exist along with fully commercial licenses. There are of course a myriad of sub variants of licenses too of all of them.
When it comes to lawsuits - the only winners there are the lawyers. Everyone else will lose. Usually a lawsuit is like a traffic accident on a bridge - it slows the traffic for a while, but the traffic will catch up or find new paths and a few lawyers will get some lined pockets.
From the overall perspective it is important to realize that without the Open Source community the exchange of knowledge would be a lot lower and development in the commercial sphere would stagnate. Don't waste effort in trying to protect old stuff, put effort into going forward.
Unfortunately Microsoft has misunderstood the users and instead of keeping with a decent UI that is familiar they have jumped around all over the place with experimental design. Starting with Vista it's now hard to see the borders of windows which often results in the wrong window being selected whenever a resize is needed. The Metro UI is almost causing sysadmins to want to commit suicide - at least until the command prompt can be found.
And Microsoft has been collecting usage statistics from users to see what they shall do when developing new interfaces, however any security conscious user is turning off that feature - which means that they only get statistics from the stupid users and not from all users. But they did fail to understand that they got the majority of their statistics from the stupid users and we did end up with the most stupid user interface since Windows 1.0 - which is Metro.
Judge Dredd - you are welcome.
Just because there is a law today doesn't mean that there is one tomorrow - or maybe the Patriot Act can override any law anyway already.
Seems to me that in order to succeed the NSA has to disband itself.
It depends all on weighing the risk of incriminating information against the value of scaring future potential leakers to not leak. If Snowden, Assange and some other leakers are killed in strikes then it means that other leakers may fear to release information that's incriminating.
In which case the quote "Don't underestimate the power of the dark side." will become true and we will know how bad the situation really is.
It's also a gamble.
The gamble is the expectation that the authorities are afraid to do something because they are afraid of the contents in the files. But if they don't fear the contents and are willing to accept a shitstorm just to get at the leakers then this publication is useless. It's the question of accepting one punch in the face just to be able to make a kill and scare all other potential leakers to silence.
Set up your own Certificate Authority.
A bit tricky, but not impossible. OpenSSL is what you need.