If you think that the will to live makes no difference then you are making no sense. The self organizing nature of life has nothing to do with the belief and will to survive?
Slashdot is deteriorating by the day. The amount of shallow deriding remarks here is quickly approaching the internet status quo..
I didn't say that the will to live makes no difference. However the person I responded to said "Some of us believe life is worth living..." which is not the same thing. The original point of the post is that if the universe is random and we are here by pure chance, which is what Hawking puts forth, then whether we are here or not really does not matter in the big scheme of things. In other words, the universe will go on whether the human race continues to exist or not. And, thinking anything other than that, is an exercise in egotism.
With Smartphones used so much for photography now, it's sad that we don't have at least 1-2x optical zoom on most phones
Look at the size of the lens on even a low end digital camera that has optical zoom. There is a reason why digital cameras take better pictures than phones and it has nothing to do with how many megapixels there are. When gathering light, through a lens, size matters.
What do you think will be the next generation of killer features for smartphones?
Probably biofeedback sensors that can transmit as well as receive. That way, not only can your smart phone monitor your heart rate, it can send a pulse to stop it, too. That would definitely be a killer feature.
I hope the birth rate has not fallen to 2.1. Birth rate is live births per 1000 people per year, and last I checked was around 22 in the US. You are probably thinking of fertility rate ( live births per woman) or population growth rate (difference of birth rate and death rate).
Yes, you are correct, I was referring to the fertility rate.
I think that idiots and their "proper" ways to address environmental issues are one of the problems that we can solve by moving into space. There won't be any natural biospheres in most of space to interfere with human endeavors. And we can work out the environmental issues there without input from the people who think we should do that in only a particular way.
For example, we can continue to have century after century of bad ideas on how to deal with human population on Earth - things like divine providence, eugenics, dictatorship of the proletariat, urban planned development, arcologies, etc. In space settlements, you have to get most of that right or you die.
So what is better, a comfortable place where we can continue to goof around for many lifetimes to come (that is the true "heavy lid" of which you speak), or a tough environment that forces us to be better? To actually solve the problems that you apparently care about?
One would have to be pretty naive to think that social problems aptterns from this planet wouldn't follow people to the stars, unless you are thinking that you would be in command and everybody would just bow down and do things your way.
Learn how to steward our limited resources and control put population and industry? That's just a guess.
The birth rate for sustaining the population is 2.11 births per woman. It has fallen below that in the west by choice and below that in third world countries by famine and disease (those 2.11 births have to reach maturity). So, controlling population is not really an issue, we are already peaking in world population and will start to decline according to the researchers who study such things. Even in the US with the Social Security problem, the so called problem is temporary and auto corrects after the baby boomers expire.
Yes, world population is still growing, but the rate at which it is growing is decreasing significantly. One of the major causes to the population growth in the past century was not an increase in the birth rate, but a decrease in the mortality rate of infants and people living to an older age. Both of those, however can only impact the rate for a finite amount and then the same trend takes over. It is simply a mathmetics problem and at a birth rate of below 2.11, the population will contract.
As for resources, well fewer people will need fewer resources, but even today, the quantity of resources is not the issue, but instead it is the allocation of those resources. When you have 20% of the world's population consuming 80% of the world's resources, that is not sustainable. In the West, over and over you hear about an obesity crisis and yet in many third world countries, there is famine and starvation. It seems, that there is ample food to go around, it is just not where it is needed. The same can be said with potable water, medicines, energy and just about any basic but limited resouce a society needs.
The resource shortage is one of distribution of resources, not in actual scarcity.
Let's also sterilize the people who make idiotic, inhuman proposals on what to do about rising population. When they are gone we can have rational debate.
There is no need to do that. The average world population birth rate has fallen below 2.11. In the West, it is by choice, in the third world, it is by disease and starvation. Regardless, below 2.11, the rate is not high enough to sustain our civilization, whether on this planet or not. So, in a way, Hawking is right, just not for the reason he gives.
To continue at the way we intelligent monkeys are going, the 'earth' will soon give up.
Lets take a quick look at how quick this could happen:
In the UK there about 60,000,000 people. Lets suppose only half of that number eat eggs. Lets suppose that only half of that number have an egg (or a product that contains eggs) a day.
That is STILL 15,000,000 eggs a day that need to be produced in the UK alone ~ let alone the rest of the World.
Now consider other things in a similar vain: heat(power/fuel et al), water, rice, wheat, potatoes etc.
It soon gets pretty scary thinking what can happen if/(when) the infrastructure breaks down.
The only way to get on is to EXPAND into other places ~ but there isn't any left here on Earth now.
The problem you describe is not one of capacity, but one of distribution. There is more than enough food and resources to go around. However, when certain countries, who remain unamed, have a minority of the world's population, but consume the majority of the world's resources, then an imbalance is created. Those same countries are now worried about an obesity epidemic while half way around the planet there is famine and starvation.
In 1972, Pope Paul VI said "If you want peace, work for justice." The first step in that process would seem to be a just distribution of basic necessities for society like food and energy. Unfortunately, the haves tend not to want to share with the have nots.
The problem is not a matter of too many people or no where to expand. The problem is that too few people control and consume too many of the worlds limited resources. And that is what is simply unsustainable.
Now though? I think he's feeling old and frail and his fear of death shows in his statements.
Maybe he's regretting trying to disprove the existing of God and is concerned that if he was wrong on that account, it may not bode well. Lucky for him, he was born into a european culture that had it's pinnings on a judea-christian belief that you care for the sick and the weak instead of only the fittest survive. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been here to do all of the work he has done.
Of course, the strength of that culture is much less today than it was when Hawking was born and with the push in modern genetics to not even bring to term a fetus with a genetic abnormality like Hawking suffers from, if he were born a generation or two from now, the world would probably never have benefited from his intellect.
For the record, I am not making a statement as to the existence of a deity or not, nor religion, either. I am simply making an observation as a neutral observer (as neutral as one can be, being part of the culture one is observing).
Hawking is a proponent that everything that we know about the universe happened on its own, there is no higher power, no purpose, none of that. The fact that we are here discussing all of this is just because of randomness. As such, what difference does it make if the human race goes on or not? What are we preserving for future generations or even the rest of the universe? Our (the human race) contributions to the universe are no more important than that of an ameoba. We are here because of pure chance and whether we are here a 1000 years from now or not doesn't change anything. It is only our own eqotism that would lead to the conclusion that we must leave the planet because eventually we will become extinct here. Everyone reading this will eventually die, too. That is how the universe works.
Very true, what I'm saying however is that the "good" programmer will not degrade themselves by letting some perv watch them on a webcam all day. They'll just take an opportunity elsewhere.
I know that for enough money people will do just about anything, but in the context of this discussion I highly highly doubt that companies looking to monitor their employees through webcams are offering top dollar:P
People do pay top dollar to monitor others through webcams. It's just not usually paid to watch somebody sit there programming.
Nobody skilled would ever take such a job, so it's a by morons for morons type thing.
I don't know if I would agree with that, but I do think that you get what you pay for. A good programmer may cost more per hour (or minute in this case), but is more likely to turn out quality code in a shorter period of time. A less experience programmer, will cost less per hour but will take longer to complete the task, unless it is a very simple task to begin with. Then there is the issue of maintainability. It is more likely that a good programmer, although more costly per hour, will be able to write code that is easier to maintain than the inexperienced programmer.
So, in the end, you need to look at the total cost to produce the project, not the per hour or per minute cost. It all comes down to fast, reliable and inexpensive - pick any two.
Comparing development cycles to mortgage back securities is a bit dramatic, don't you think...All the bubble did was weed out the wannabes from those that were established.
That is how the mortgage bubble worked too. There were a large number of banks that were viable only because they could make so much money just passing mortgages through to other people. And once the bubble popped, they started going out of business in droves, just like the.com companies did. Take a look at the failed bank list. It's a very similar pattern to the list of dead tech companies left in the wake of the 2000 tech bubble. The big established companies managed to hang on (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, etc.) while little players were sunk in large quantities.
While they both required greed for the bubble to grow and eventually burst, that is about the only thing in common. The mortgage back securities were stoked by the federal government pressuring banks to make sub-prime loans to those who would otherwise not afford housing. Banks, on their part, ignored credit risks and loaned more than what the value of the properties were valued at figuring increasing prices would cover them -- and for the most part it did. What did the mortgage back securities in was the value of the properties dropped so the investment paper became worthless. Most banks didn't get burned by this, they held on to tier 1 and 2 CMOs. Large instituional investors faired pretty well, they had tier 2 and 3 CMOs. It was the average Joe who was sold a bill of goods in repackaged CMOs that were worthless.
The.com bubble, on the otherhand was pure speculation by investors to start with. Venture Capitalists new the risks, but they got out of the market before the bust. Pension funds new the risk, and they too got out pretty much in time. How did they get out? They convinced Joe Consumer to purchase the investments and Joe Consumer, who didn't know enough about investing was left holidng the bag.
The other difference, in development cycles, is that developers actually produce something a product. Mortgage bankers don't. Somebody else builds the house. The Mortgage banker just packages up the investment for somebody else to buy. The Mortgage banker takes their cut off the top and the buyer of the investment assumes all the risk.
As for the big players holding on while the little players sinking, that is not true. Most little banks faired fine. They were too small to effectively participate in the mortgage backed securities schemese. It was the mid-size to large banks that got hit and got hit hard. The difference is that the largest of the large banks, like the ones you mention, had enough reserves to get through it, but it still was devestating to them. The other banks needed a bailout.
Again, none of that is applicable to software development other than there was too much money pouring in and a bubble was created that later burst.
Comparing development cycles to mortgage back securities is a bit dramatic, don't you think. Even with the web developers who were in great demand before that bust, most of them were still in demand, what changed was new people entering the field couldn't get hired. But, if you already were doing great web development and had a could portfolio of your work, you were most likely still employable. All the bubble did was weed out the wannabes from those that were established.
If there is an app bubble, the same thing will happen. Those already established and with the skill set will be in demand while those just graduating will be asking if you want fries with your burger.
I mean, look at COBOL, that bubble burst in the 1960s and if you are a COBOL programmer today, you are still in demand. However, for most new people entering tech jobs, COBOL would not be something to spend a lot of time and energy learning because the existing positions are filled and the demand for new programmers is limited.
Just as real estate is all about location, location, location, tech jobs are all about timing, timing, timing. If you enter the market at the right time, when things are on an upswing, you will have enough seniority and skills to whether lean times.
That company doing app development had other employees to pay besides developers. Also overhead, workers comp, unemployment taxes, business personal property taxes, Obamacare, etc. etc. All of which means they have to bring in at least four times as much revenue per developer compared to someone doing it from home. The company structure, with business taxes and regulations, makes it a lot HARDER, not easier.
By that logic, it is a lot harder for Apple to make money than somebody developing an app in their basement and selling it for 99 cents. Businesses that are already established have various revenue streams, working from home developing cheap apps, means you don't. Businesses do have to pay various taxes, but so do you, working from home.
It is much easier for your local bank to higher a programmer to produce a banking app than it is for you to freelance and develop your own banking app. The only genre that isn't true is in games. Yes, if you can develop the next block buster game you could make a lot of money, assuming enough people buy it. Chances are, however, that isn't going to happen. The apps that make money are the apps that solve a problem for people, and usually it is related to a product or service the person uses. That means the already established companies have one up on the home developer.
It looks like this might finally be the year. With Windows 8 throwing a lot of users away with a bad interface and a marketplace lock-in, The timing is pretty good. A lot of people always claimed that games were the only reason they were still on Windows.
Games and Office. As good as the linux alternatives are to MS Office, they fall short on the business desktop.
It's not the physical file that is being resold; it's not even the particular arrangement of bits that the file contains that is being resold. What is being resold is the license to use the file and its contents.
And you were given the opportunity to read and sign the licensing agreement before purchasing the mp3? Shrink-wrap licenses didn't hold up in court because you didn't have the opportunity to read and agree to the license prior to opening the package. Seems like using the license argument on mp3s would fall under the same thing.
I guess what I was asking, from the ruling, is that with Java the API isn't protected so one is free to impliment their own back end. In addition, from the ruling, if there is only one way to impliment something, it isn't protected, either. One of the concerns with mono is that Microsoft could pull the rug out from under it, Like Oracle tried to do with Android. But based on the Oracle ruling, does this mean that mono is much better protected and safe to use?
The rejection states that "iPad" itself is also merely descriptive. If this holds up (and I doubt it will), Microsoft could make a "Microsoft iPad", and LG, Samsung, Asus, would also be able to make "iPad" devices of their own. This would be a disaster for Apple, but I seriously doubt it is going to happen.
Wouldn't this be similar to Bandaid brand bandages, then?
This just seems bizarre to me. I've never heard anyone refer to a tablet as a "pad", outside of Star Trek's PADDs, have you? That sounds like a bizarre ruling. Nor have I seen anyone attach i- to anything and not have it be a reference to Apple; there's e-commerce but not i-commerce, no one says "do you have an i-connection?", etc.
Am I missing something?
There are inodes, ibus, imdb for starters and of course, at least in the states, there is iHop. None of those have anything to do with Apple.
Your entire argument is based on that he was some type of Robin Hood freeing these documents from bondage and giving them to the people who had no other way to access them. That is false. This is not some type of wikileaks type setup.
What he did was abuse his access account to a univeristy resource that provided him free access to millions of documents for his use as a university student and downloaded those documents. Those documents were freely available to every other university student, professor, and research. They were also available to anybody who paid a subscription who was not affiliated with the univeristy and could not use their stie license. So this is not a case of them being kept from the public.
Some claim that he wanted to post all of these documents to the internet outside of JSTOR. Others argue he wanted them for his own reference. I don't know and it really doesn't matter, because the acceptable use agreement kept you from using a program or bot to download the articles. They were to be viewed individually, not harvested.
Whether the acceptable use agreement was right or wrong is not in question. It was legal and it had stated the punishment for violating it would be banishement from the system.
That did not happen. Instead, the DOJ was brought in as if they found public enemy number 1.
The only claim I ever made against him was that he committed a wrong in violating the acceptable use policy, no more or less. That is something that can be determined objectively and objectively it is true.
That does not mean he was guilty of a crime. On the otherhand, it also does not speak as to whether or not he was justified in why he violated the policy. Although, from all of the evidence given, it is unlikely to be the case.
It still leaves the question of why, when the policy even stated that violation would remove one's access, the entire weight of the federal government was brought down on him?
You can go on and continue to believe what you want. But, the position you are trying to take is not supported by the evidence of what happened. Nor does painting him as a modern day Robin Hood honor him. Robin Hood new what he was doing and the risks associated with it. This was just a college kid who got caught up in something very much bigger than himself and the system that was supposed to protect him from the type of abuse that was inflicted upon him failed miserably.
If he were Robin Hood, it would be a nice tale with a sad ending. However he's not. The government set out to make an example of a kid because of some yet to be discoverred unknown interest involved. As such, that should be a very real concern for people every where.
That is the real story, that is the real reason he is dead.
So, yes, he was wrong in what he did, but the people involved with this who should really be investigated and held accountable are off scott free.
They are running scared, though. Hence the push for anonymity. It's too late for Aaron, but his family can still sue to hold them accountable. Intentional infliction of emotional distress, perhaps? Plenty of opportunity to get some redress with a civil lawsuit. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway.
I'm not sure his family can sue the employees that were simply doing their job in reporting discrepencies in logs and the like. Nor would they be the targets of any of this as they were not the decision makers that made the choices that led to this escalating to a point where Aaron felt he had no other option than to take his own life.
More likely the reason they want the people involved to remain anonymous is that they could testify that standard procedures were not followed in this case or that they are privy to some inside information that the upper people don't want to get out.
It is a moot point, however, because if a suit is brought, depositions will be taken and they won't be anonymous anymore. It is just a technical legal point that they don't have to release the names now, but it will also force the filing against a suit which will have much bigger ramifications. Think of it like the police asking to search your house and you say no, you don't have a warrant. So, they go and get a warrant and come back. Basically, the school probably won this battle, but set themself up for a much bigger fight in doing so.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think that the will to live makes no difference then you are making no sense.
The self organizing nature of life has nothing to do with the belief and will to survive?
Slashdot is deteriorating by the day. The amount of shallow deriding remarks here is quickly approaching the internet status quo..
I didn't say that the will to live makes no difference. However the person I responded to said "Some of us believe life is worth living..." which is not the same thing. The original point of the post is that if the universe is random and we are here by pure chance, which is what Hawking puts forth, then whether we are here or not really does not matter in the big scheme of things. In other words, the universe will go on whether the human race continues to exist or not. And, thinking anything other than that, is an exercise in egotism.
With Smartphones used so much for photography now, it's sad that we don't have at least 1-2x optical zoom on most phones
Look at the size of the lens on even a low end digital camera that has optical zoom. There is a reason why digital cameras take better pictures than phones and it has nothing to do with how many megapixels there are. When gathering light, through a lens, size matters.
What do you think will be the next generation of killer features for smartphones?
Probably biofeedback sensors that can transmit as well as receive. That way, not only can your smart phone monitor your heart rate, it can send a pulse to stop it, too. That would definitely be a killer feature.
I hope the birth rate has not fallen to 2.1. Birth rate is live births per 1000 people per year, and last I checked was around 22 in the US. You are probably thinking of fertility rate ( live births per woman) or population growth rate (difference of birth rate and death rate).
Yes, you are correct, I was referring to the fertility rate.
Some of us believe life is worth living even though we aren't trying to impress a sky-daddy.
That believe is just as rational as those who believe in a deity. It is purely subjective in nature and makes no difference.
I think that idiots and their "proper" ways to address environmental issues are one of the problems that we can solve by moving into space. There won't be any natural biospheres in most of space to interfere with human endeavors. And we can work out the environmental issues there without input from the people who think we should do that in only a particular way.
For example, we can continue to have century after century of bad ideas on how to deal with human population on Earth - things like divine providence, eugenics, dictatorship of the proletariat, urban planned development, arcologies, etc. In space settlements, you have to get most of that right or you die.
So what is better, a comfortable place where we can continue to goof around for many lifetimes to come (that is the true "heavy lid" of which you speak), or a tough environment that forces us to be better? To actually solve the problems that you apparently care about?
One would have to be pretty naive to think that social problems aptterns from this planet wouldn't follow people to the stars, unless you are thinking that you would be in command and everybody would just bow down and do things your way.
>> So what should we do
Learn how to steward our limited resources and control put population and industry? That's just a guess.
The birth rate for sustaining the population is 2.11 births per woman. It has fallen below that in the west by choice and below that in third world countries by famine and disease (those 2.11 births have to reach maturity). So, controlling population is not really an issue, we are already peaking in world population and will start to decline according to the researchers who study such things. Even in the US with the Social Security problem, the so called problem is temporary and auto corrects after the baby boomers expire.
Yes, world population is still growing, but the rate at which it is growing is decreasing significantly. One of the major causes to the population growth in the past century was not an increase in the birth rate, but a decrease in the mortality rate of infants and people living to an older age. Both of those, however can only impact the rate for a finite amount and then the same trend takes over. It is simply a mathmetics problem and at a birth rate of below 2.11, the population will contract.
As for resources, well fewer people will need fewer resources, but even today, the quantity of resources is not the issue, but instead it is the allocation of those resources. When you have 20% of the world's population consuming 80% of the world's resources, that is not sustainable. In the West, over and over you hear about an obesity crisis and yet in many third world countries, there is famine and starvation. It seems, that there is ample food to go around, it is just not where it is needed. The same can be said with potable water, medicines, energy and just about any basic but limited resouce a society needs.
The resource shortage is one of distribution of resources, not in actual scarcity.
Let's also sterilize the people who make idiotic, inhuman proposals on what to do about rising population. When they are gone we can have rational debate.
There is no need to do that. The average world population birth rate has fallen below 2.11. In the West, it is by choice, in the third world, it is by disease and starvation. Regardless, below 2.11, the rate is not high enough to sustain our civilization, whether on this planet or not. So, in a way, Hawking is right, just not for the reason he gives.
Population.
To continue at the way we intelligent monkeys are going, the 'earth' will soon give up.
Lets take a quick look at how quick this could happen:
In the UK there about 60,000,000 people. Lets suppose only half of that number eat eggs. Lets suppose that only half of that number have an egg (or a product that contains eggs) a day.
That is STILL 15,000,000 eggs a day that need to be produced in the UK alone ~ let alone the rest of the World.
Now consider other things in a similar vain: heat(power/fuel et al), water, rice, wheat, potatoes etc.
It soon gets pretty scary thinking what can happen if/(when) the infrastructure breaks down.
The only way to get on is to EXPAND into other places ~ but there isn't any left here on Earth now.
The problem you describe is not one of capacity, but one of distribution. There is more than enough food and resources to go around. However, when certain countries, who remain unamed, have a minority of the world's population, but consume the majority of the world's resources, then an imbalance is created. Those same countries are now worried about an obesity epidemic while half way around the planet there is famine and starvation.
In 1972, Pope Paul VI said "If you want peace, work for justice." The first step in that process would seem to be a just distribution of basic necessities for society like food and energy. Unfortunately, the haves tend not to want to share with the have nots.
The problem is not a matter of too many people or no where to expand. The problem is that too few people control and consume too many of the worlds limited resources. And that is what is simply unsustainable.
Now though? I think he's feeling old and frail and his fear of death shows in his statements.
Maybe he's regretting trying to disprove the existing of God and is concerned that if he was wrong on that account, it may not bode well. Lucky for him, he was born into a european culture that had it's pinnings on a judea-christian belief that you care for the sick and the weak instead of only the fittest survive. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been here to do all of the work he has done.
Of course, the strength of that culture is much less today than it was when Hawking was born and with the push in modern genetics to not even bring to term a fetus with a genetic abnormality like Hawking suffers from, if he were born a generation or two from now, the world would probably never have benefited from his intellect.
For the record, I am not making a statement as to the existence of a deity or not, nor religion, either. I am simply making an observation as a neutral observer (as neutral as one can be, being part of the culture one is observing).
That is the question. Why?
Hawking is a proponent that everything that we know about the universe happened on its own, there is no higher power, no purpose, none of that. The fact that we are here discussing all of this is just because of randomness. As such, what difference does it make if the human race goes on or not? What are we preserving for future generations or even the rest of the universe? Our (the human race) contributions to the universe are no more important than that of an ameoba. We are here because of pure chance and whether we are here a 1000 years from now or not doesn't change anything. It is only our own eqotism that would lead to the conclusion that we must leave the planet because eventually we will become extinct here. Everyone reading this will eventually die, too. That is how the universe works.
Very true, what I'm saying however is that the "good" programmer will not degrade themselves by letting some perv watch them on a webcam all day. They'll just take an opportunity elsewhere.
I know that for enough money people will do just about anything, but in the context of this discussion I highly highly doubt that companies looking to monitor their employees through webcams are offering top dollar :P
People do pay top dollar to monitor others through webcams. It's just not usually paid to watch somebody sit there programming.
Here's the funny part and a bit of consolidation:
Nobody skilled would ever take such a job, so it's a by morons for morons type thing.
I don't know if I would agree with that, but I do think that you get what you pay for. A good programmer may cost more per hour (or minute in this case), but is more likely to turn out quality code in a shorter period of time. A less experience programmer, will cost less per hour but will take longer to complete the task, unless it is a very simple task to begin with. Then there is the issue of maintainability. It is more likely that a good programmer, although more costly per hour, will be able to write code that is easier to maintain than the inexperienced programmer.
So, in the end, you need to look at the total cost to produce the project, not the per hour or per minute cost. It all comes down to fast, reliable and inexpensive - pick any two.
Comparing development cycles to mortgage back securities is a bit dramatic, don't you think...All the bubble did was weed out the wannabes from those that were established.
That is how the mortgage bubble worked too. There were a large number of banks that were viable only because they could make so much money just passing mortgages through to other people. And once the bubble popped, they started going out of business in droves, just like the .com companies did. Take a look at the failed bank list. It's a very similar pattern to the list of dead tech companies left in the wake of the 2000 tech bubble. The big established companies managed to hang on (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, etc.) while little players were sunk in large quantities.
While they both required greed for the bubble to grow and eventually burst, that is about the only thing in common. The mortgage back securities were stoked by the federal government pressuring banks to make sub-prime loans to those who would otherwise not afford housing. Banks, on their part, ignored credit risks and loaned more than what the value of the properties were valued at figuring increasing prices would cover them -- and for the most part it did. What did the mortgage back securities in was the value of the properties dropped so the investment paper became worthless. Most banks didn't get burned by this, they held on to tier 1 and 2 CMOs. Large instituional investors faired pretty well, they had tier 2 and 3 CMOs. It was the average Joe who was sold a bill of goods in repackaged CMOs that were worthless.
The .com bubble, on the otherhand was pure speculation by investors to start with. Venture Capitalists new the risks, but they got out of the market before the bust. Pension funds new the risk, and they too got out pretty much in time. How did they get out? They convinced Joe Consumer to purchase the investments and Joe Consumer, who didn't know enough about investing was left holidng the bag.
The other difference, in development cycles, is that developers actually produce something a product. Mortgage bankers don't. Somebody else builds the house. The Mortgage banker just packages up the investment for somebody else to buy. The Mortgage banker takes their cut off the top and the buyer of the investment assumes all the risk.
As for the big players holding on while the little players sinking, that is not true. Most little banks faired fine. They were too small to effectively participate in the mortgage backed securities schemese. It was the mid-size to large banks that got hit and got hit hard. The difference is that the largest of the large banks, like the ones you mention, had enough reserves to get through it, but it still was devestating to them. The other banks needed a bailout.
Again, none of that is applicable to software development other than there was too much money pouring in and a bubble was created that later burst.
Comparing development cycles to mortgage back securities is a bit dramatic, don't you think. Even with the web developers who were in great demand before that bust, most of them were still in demand, what changed was new people entering the field couldn't get hired. But, if you already were doing great web development and had a could portfolio of your work, you were most likely still employable. All the bubble did was weed out the wannabes from those that were established.
If there is an app bubble, the same thing will happen. Those already established and with the skill set will be in demand while those just graduating will be asking if you want fries with your burger.
I mean, look at COBOL, that bubble burst in the 1960s and if you are a COBOL programmer today, you are still in demand. However, for most new people entering tech jobs, COBOL would not be something to spend a lot of time and energy learning because the existing positions are filled and the demand for new programmers is limited.
Just as real estate is all about location, location, location, tech jobs are all about timing, timing, timing. If you enter the market at the right time, when things are on an upswing, you will have enough seniority and skills to whether lean times.
That company doing app development had other employees to pay besides developers. Also overhead, workers comp, unemployment taxes, business personal property taxes, Obamacare, etc. etc. All of which means they have to bring in at least four times as much revenue per developer compared to someone doing it from home. The company structure, with business taxes and regulations, makes it a lot HARDER, not easier.
By that logic, it is a lot harder for Apple to make money than somebody developing an app in their basement and selling it for 99 cents. Businesses that are already established have various revenue streams, working from home developing cheap apps, means you don't. Businesses do have to pay various taxes, but so do you, working from home.
It is much easier for your local bank to higher a programmer to produce a banking app than it is for you to freelance and develop your own banking app. The only genre that isn't true is in games. Yes, if you can develop the next block buster game you could make a lot of money, assuming enough people buy it. Chances are, however, that isn't going to happen. The apps that make money are the apps that solve a problem for people, and usually it is related to a product or service the person uses. That means the already established companies have one up on the home developer.
It looks like this might finally be the year. With Windows 8 throwing a lot of users away with a bad interface and a marketplace lock-in, The timing is pretty good. A lot of people always claimed that games were the only reason they were still on Windows.
Games and Office. As good as the linux alternatives are to MS Office, they fall short on the business desktop.
It's not the physical file that is being resold; it's not even the particular arrangement of bits that the file contains that is being resold. What is being resold is the license to use the file and its contents.
And you were given the opportunity to read and sign the licensing agreement before purchasing the mp3? Shrink-wrap licenses didn't hold up in court because you didn't have the opportunity to read and agree to the license prior to opening the package. Seems like using the license argument on mp3s would fall under the same thing.
If I can't sell them, can I just give them away when I am done with them?
I guess what I was asking, from the ruling, is that with Java the API isn't protected so one is free to impliment their own back end. In addition, from the ruling, if there is only one way to impliment something, it isn't protected, either. One of the concerns with mono is that Microsoft could pull the rug out from under it, Like Oracle tried to do with Android. But based on the Oracle ruling, does this mean that mono is much better protected and safe to use?
The rejection states that "iPad" itself is also merely descriptive. If this holds up (and I doubt it will), Microsoft could make a "Microsoft iPad", and LG, Samsung, Asus, would also be able to make "iPad" devices of their own. This would be a disaster for Apple, but I seriously doubt it is going to happen.
Wouldn't this be similar to Bandaid brand bandages, then?
This just seems bizarre to me. I've never heard anyone refer to a tablet as a "pad", outside of Star Trek's PADDs, have you? That sounds like a bizarre ruling. Nor have I seen anyone attach i- to anything and not have it be a reference to Apple; there's e-commerce but not i-commerce, no one says "do you have an i-connection?", etc.
Am I missing something?
There are inodes, ibus, imdb for starters and of course, at least in the states, there is iHop. None of those have anything to do with Apple.
Does this mean that mono is protected from Microsoft's .net in the same way? Not trolling, just seriously asking.
Your entire argument is based on that he was some type of Robin Hood freeing these documents from bondage and giving them to the people who had no other way to access them. That is false. This is not some type of wikileaks type setup.
What he did was abuse his access account to a univeristy resource that provided him free access to millions of documents for his use as a university student and downloaded those documents. Those documents were freely available to every other university student, professor, and research. They were also available to anybody who paid a subscription who was not affiliated with the univeristy and could not use their stie license. So this is not a case of them being kept from the public.
Some claim that he wanted to post all of these documents to the internet outside of JSTOR. Others argue he wanted them for his own reference. I don't know and it really doesn't matter, because the acceptable use agreement kept you from using a program or bot to download the articles. They were to be viewed individually, not harvested.
Whether the acceptable use agreement was right or wrong is not in question. It was legal and it had stated the punishment for violating it would be banishement from the system.
That did not happen. Instead, the DOJ was brought in as if they found public enemy number 1.
The only claim I ever made against him was that he committed a wrong in violating the acceptable use policy, no more or less. That is something that can be determined objectively and objectively it is true.
That does not mean he was guilty of a crime. On the otherhand, it also does not speak as to whether or not he was justified in why he violated the policy. Although, from all of the evidence given, it is unlikely to be the case.
It still leaves the question of why, when the policy even stated that violation would remove one's access, the entire weight of the federal government was brought down on him?
You can go on and continue to believe what you want. But, the position you are trying to take is not supported by the evidence of what happened. Nor does painting him as a modern day Robin Hood honor him. Robin Hood new what he was doing and the risks associated with it. This was just a college kid who got caught up in something very much bigger than himself and the system that was supposed to protect him from the type of abuse that was inflicted upon him failed miserably.
If he were Robin Hood, it would be a nice tale with a sad ending. However he's not. The government set out to make an example of a kid because of some yet to be discoverred unknown interest involved. As such, that should be a very real concern for people every where.
That is the real story, that is the real reason he is dead.
So, yes, he was wrong in what he did, but the people involved with this who should really be investigated and held accountable are off scott free.
They are running scared, though. Hence the push for anonymity. It's too late for Aaron, but his family can still sue to hold them accountable. Intentional infliction of emotional distress, perhaps? Plenty of opportunity to get some redress with a civil lawsuit. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway.
I'm not sure his family can sue the employees that were simply doing their job in reporting discrepencies in logs and the like. Nor would they be the targets of any of this as they were not the decision makers that made the choices that led to this escalating to a point where Aaron felt he had no other option than to take his own life.
More likely the reason they want the people involved to remain anonymous is that they could testify that standard procedures were not followed in this case or that they are privy to some inside information that the upper people don't want to get out.
It is a moot point, however, because if a suit is brought, depositions will be taken and they won't be anonymous anymore. It is just a technical legal point that they don't have to release the names now, but it will also force the filing against a suit which will have much bigger ramifications. Think of it like the police asking to search your house and you say no, you don't have a warrant. So, they go and get a warrant and come back. Basically, the school probably won this battle, but set themself up for a much bigger fight in doing so.