I love you unlimited freedom clowns. Your type are part of the reason no-one has unlimited freedom. Freedoms (also known as rights) allways are attended by responsibilities, which is the part of the equation you folks allways seem to forget.
And every society has protections from free communication, the trivial example are libel and slander laws. Apparently you can't say anything you want. In Canada, you can be prosecuted for publishing material that, for example, denies that the holocaust ever occured, or material which otherwise promotes "hate crimes." In Britain there are laws that are Draconian by comparison to the US and Canada, both countries whose legal systems borrowed heavily from the British system, even to the point of citing precedent....
As for how causing one computer to send bits to another is a credible threat, you can't be that facile, can you? What if those bits are a collection of child pronography? I would say someone's rights and liberties were violated to create that content. Distribution of that content is continued abrogation of that person's rights. Or what about that stream of libelous and slanderous bits? Isn't that as reprehensible as the old fashioned ear to mouth or printed page varieties?
No society has ever allowed completely free communication. While the most successful societies have been those that allow the most freedom of communication and thought, none has been so foolish as to not have some proscribed communication. Such are necessary to protect society from the misinterpretations of simpletons who aren't sophisticated enough to understand that a right is only one so long as it does not infringe upon the rights of another. The basis of libel and slander laws.
I think it less material that the libel is transmitted electronically than the fact that it is libel.
The reason is that M$ does use their patents defensively. Most of us take that term to mean as a counter or bargaining tool against patent enforcment from elsewhere. M$ uses their patents as a defense against anything possible.
To M$ credit though they do actually make products and render services, and those two streams are the lifeblood of that org. M$ patent revenues are insignificant by any rational standard. M$ doesn't so much collect patents for their revenue purposes as some reprehensible organizations exist for the sole purpose of. In point of fact Bill Gates and most of the M$ higher ups have universally condemned this practice. However they have no trouble using a patent to batter a competitor out of business who won't otherwise play their style of ball.
No sir, you are the idiot. Perhaps you'll never get $20 Billion worth of benefits out. You point out one yourself, the people employed, what about the experience they garner and apply to their next job?
As for the more tangible benefits, those could come from any of the particpants in the project, and may not be strictly limited to military applications. I'm not even saying that this is likely, but without hard data denying such an asssertion it not an unreasonable assumption.
If another project might have stumbled on the same device, idea, what-have-you, so what? There is no guarantee any of those hypothetical projects would have gotten past the proposal stage, prophesying their creation of such speculative items, by speculative projects is more tenuous than my original proposal.
Entirely new components huh? Any chance some of those contributed to the unfolding of the commanche program? I mean hell when new discoveries are made, don't you want to leverage those into your new design, assuming they offer concrete advantages?
How about the fact that some of the capabilities built in, eg Stealth technology are still somewhat dynamic, by which I mean to say we are still refining what we know about stealth tech by the real world performance of the systems in use. Never mind that the Commanche program applied these techniques to a new class of aircraft, which is another concrete from the program, the basics of stealthing a chopper.
Is it $20 Billion of silver lining, of course not. Is it $20 Billion wasted with no return, positively not, anyone who tries to make it so is ignoring objective realities, wether by design or by circumstance I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Ummm, I would be hesitant to say that $20 billion were wasted...
After all, how much of that $20 Billion went into basic research that will still be valid the next time someone wants to build a chopper? Wind tunnel data for example doesn't all of a sudden change without reason.
How much of that work led to new systems/ improvements to existing systems that either has allteady been deployed to other choppers, or can resonably be expected to show up in follow on versions and refits of existing choppers?
How much of that money was spent on basic science and engineering whose results will be applied thousands of times in follow-on development projects?
What about all the various lessons learned during the process of design to prototype, is that knowledge lost because the Commanche never went to production?
Lastly, the program was scrapped because the environment which dictated the original requirements is gone, and the new landscape tends to militate against a need for the platform as designed. Several people allready identified areas which ought to be addressed in follow-on designs. The choice to shut down the project as opposed to trying to re-invent it midstream is a money saver, not a money loser. The decision as easily could have been to impose new requirements on an existing project (cough cough B2 cough cough) extending the project by another $20 Billion, still with no production model at the end...
I know that for myself, if I'm building a Windows box for a client I will allways select Intel for the processor.
Conversely, if I'm builing a linux box for a client I allwats select AMD for the processor.
Actually I'll go so far as to say I use Linux in preference for any non-Intel build (VIA, etc. etc.)
I have no evidence to support my position, just a naggin perception that Windows is wrote to work on Intel as advertised, not every architecture out there... Makes sense. given Intel's popularity in the market place... However FOSS folk don't give a rat's ass, they got this brand new Athlon 3200+ and they want every last ounce of performance they can get...
Coupled with the state of Alpha dev for Windows and the current state of 64 bit support, against those same items for Linux... I think I found my justification...
Ever consider that the dinosaurs might still rule the Earth if they had MADMEN?
Anything even remotely on the scale of another Alvarez event will make any of those "real problems" seem trivial by comparison...
Besides, the Earth has been hit many times in it's history, ample evidence exists. The moon and our other neighbours in the inner system all show evidence of repeated strikes from comets/meteors through their history. The number of nuclear weapons detonated through the last 60 years doesn't even come close to being significant in view of the number of strikes the Earth has taken from other celestial bodies.
Bottom line, it's a fact that we've been struck before, and it is a statistical certainty that we will be struck again. Ever seen shooting stars? How often do those small items come to Earth? pretty common event really. Consider the damage that man made items not even a billionth of the mass of a medium sized asteroid have caused coming down...
I'm not marginalizing the other issues you bring up. Environmental degradation and nuclear proliferation are issues which demand our attention, but they aren't justification to marginalize this issue. Nor would an increase in our presence and utilization of space have anything but a positive effect on those issues.
Moving polluting industries to space is the single best way of keeping those polluting industries that our society depends on, while minimizing the environment they can damage. Proliferation of nuclear weapons is less tangible, but still a positive effect. If you are an emerging nation, which is going to be a bigger return for you on the world stage, possessing nuclear weapons or being part of the exploitation of space? Nuclear weapons may intimidate your neighbours, but have never positively impacted any society's material prosperity. Further, history bears out that those nations which partake in colonization outstrip their contemporaries which do not, and in pretty short order. So if the choice is colonize space, and reap the awards, or garner nuclear weapons, and reap some unproductive holes in the ground...
Which IMHO, is the single biggest selling feature when you are chatting up the board. No vendor dependency, no binding agreements. Need special features, write 'em.
Bottom line, this is the real power, to obviate the allways tenous vendor client relationship. You are your own vendor, and bottom line, no-one in the world can meet your own needs the way you can.
You can push that theme in lots of directions, but it all seems to tie back to being able to control your own destiny with your software acquisitions.
Hell that what finally convinced my employer to begin in-house dev again in lieu of buying from an external vendor. (Well, the vendors ridiculous pricing didn't hurt either...)
The leaked code includes 30,915 files......Dated July 25, 2000, the source code represents Windows 2000 Service Pack 1.
Analysis indicates files within the leaked archive are only a subset of the Windows source code...
And...
References to MainWin can also be found throughout the leaked source files, which do not compile into a usable form of Windows.
If you aren't vetting the FOSS code you run, you could potentially be exposed to something like that. But that is an argument for decent software auditing practices, (regardless of source type) not an argument not to use FOSS.
The conclusion is as suspect as a five 9's reliability claim for a M$ OS, but the underlying concern is legitimate.
I applaud that decision, wholeheartedly. If they want employees who can;t think for themselves, then they deserve everything they get.
On a side note, we just procurred a company that bought from EDS. From what I've seen, if you are competent enough to question an NDA, you're too bloody competent to work for EDS. The quality of the product I was exposed to makes a pretty clear case they don't get the best developers available, probably because of their unrealistic NDA.
Keep at it, someone out there is looking to hire IT people who think, not mindless drones what sign whatever is put in front of them...
I don't know about that, if I'm a developer and my lifeblood is writing code, I think it is worth the cost to get my NDA clear and livable with what code is theirs and what is mine.
As for bringing a lawyer in, not necessary, you take the NDA to the lawyer. Anyone pressuring you to sign any contract without competent legal advice is not to be trusted. If your potential employer is pressuring you to sign an NDA without review by a lawyer, or tries to prevent you from getting same, I would reconsider working for them under any circumstances. If they aren;t going to respect your rights as an applicant, what the hell do you think they'll do when they get the hooks in.
I just went through this, from one side, and will be doing more from the other. My boss had no issue with me getting the paperwork looked at by a lawyer, and nobody quibbled at the changes my lawyer requested. It was a painless process, and one which left me full rights to the software I develop outside of work. I won't bore you with the details, but it is possible to get a fair NDA.
On the other side of the coin, I assure you, I would not be likely to hire a developer who didn't want to review the NDA with his/her lawyer. I hire dev people for their brains, and their demonstrated ability to use them. Not having your legal stuff reviewed by a lawyer is not consistent with this requirement.
Yeah, to a point I can see what you mean. But evaluate it in light of the things that various M$ folk over the years have said to the press. Think about all the various "big Brotherish" projects that M$ has supported over the years.
I don't think it is necessarily unfair to apply that label to M$, after all their actions make a pretty good case for hanging it on them.
I agree with you in that I fail to see how the phrase is applicable to this particular project of M$'s, but they got a lot of bad history to live down before I think you can justifiably moderate as Flamebait or Troll a post because "Big Brother" was applied.
Are they signed to a major label, and does that label belong to the German version of RIAA?
I haven;t read the article, but for arguments sake, if that is the case, way to negate your own action. You make the copying easy (and attractive) but contribute to the funds available to prosecute those folk...
If they are with a indie label, or even better, if it was DIY release...
...best move by a band yet.
I'm curious (but far too busy at the moment) to find out the answer to that one.
Hell, my band isn't affiliated with any label, I think we'll rip the idea off. The ditribution of out latest work is being handled by a kid who used to bootleg recordings or our shows... Can't get any farther from RIAA than that.
You don't have to stop buying music. You should stop buying it when the proceeds support organizations who you would rather not support!
Nice to see someone cutting through to the meat of the issue here...
By extension, the question becomes, should you support artists who allow their work to sustain such organizations?
BTW, from personal experience, you don't really miss much. Any genre the major labels put out has an independent scene for. Do you really need these organizations to do your music vetting for you?
At least there is no question of the message a boycott sends.
MusicXML, on the other hand, is intended to complete represent every nuance necessary to represent a complex musical score.
Like traditional music notation does? Do we really need to invent a markup language to represent a markup language? It obviously does not introduce anything new that traditional notation does not. If you have learned, like most musicians, how to read traditional notation, where is the advantage to using MusicXML?
Think for a second. Why create an new markup language to overlay on what is, essentially another markup language? An interesting intellectual exercise, but worhtwhile? That is tha part I'm not convinced of. Really traditional music notation has all the hallmarks of a well designed computer language. It still reeks of a standard to sell software, nothing more.
But, if say a Roland decides to use it, then it becomes much more attractive. In and of itself I don't see any advatage to MusicXML. If the big players in the instrument industry decide it is worth using, then perhaps the exercise is worthwhile. Without that industry acceptance though...
No one yet has given me a reason to think that writing music in this markup language is any better than writing music in its original markup language. That I think is the bigger point. Music has been written on the staff for hundreds of years. In computer speak, it is a robust, well designed language if you will. It satisfies the requirements, is completely human readable in and of its own, is portable, bottom line traditional music notation has all the hallmarks of well written software, especially longevity.
In the face of this, and in this face of the perceived need, a way to display music notation on the web, I don;t see why we are lauding the wrong decision. To satisfy the need required a web-server plugin capable of rendering a MIDI file to musical score. Done, next project please. You got to admit, that would fill the need, and would have been good programming practice. You reuse an existing protocol (MIDI) obviating the need to code some other transport format (MusicXML). Also the logic involved in turning MIDI into human readable score, and vice versa are well known and documented. The task really was taking that output and feeding it to a webserver. Thanks for all the fluff work boys...
In any case, what is the real attraction here, now I'm supposed to learn another method of writing music? One which offers no substantial improvement over the one I currently use, but does impose a leraning curve in order to be able to do what I am allready perfectly capable of doing. Using MusicXML is not going to make me a better song writer, so why re-invent the wheel?
Actually I know a fair amount about music. I write and perform it for fun and profit. I might let a football player redesign my programming language, depends on his qualifications other than playing football.
I don't however, see a need to let a programmer redesign how I write music. The old fashioned staff works well enough for me. The fact that literally thousands of devices and programs exist which present me the staff I know and are comfortable with, but generate MIDI binary format make learning any new language for writing music pointless.
Ultimately I may end up using it, but it would be because, for example, Roland started supporting it, as well as all the other MIDI devices I currently own.
Human readability is nice, but not strictly necessary, not when the binary format fills the need. Why not write software to turn a MIDI file into a webpage... that also satisfies the need, and obviates designing a markup language to replace what essentially is another markup language...
I'm not saying it wasn;t an interesting intellectual exercise, but it looks like something someone came up with to sell software, not to fulfill a legitimate need. However, if say a Roland starts using it, it could becomes a standard, but I fail to see why a Roland would bother...
...a standard non-binary format for rendering music notation on the web is something that's still sorely needed...
Really? I'm a composer and performer and I have never felt the lack... This is an advantage for me how?
Where is this perceived need to render music notation on the web coming from?
Ultimately, a waste of time. I'm not going to laboriously code up my music into MusicXML format, that's completely insane:
Is it easier than writing out the music, scanning and posting the scan? Not if I allready can read and write music... In fact, I'm incurring the overhead of learning an additional language on top of msucial notation in oder to do this. Most songwriters can learn to operate a scanner and a paint program in an hour, how long to reach that level of expressiveness in MusicXML? I suggest the learning probably never really stops...
Oh, I see, there is a program I can use to graphically handle the creation of the score. Oh, well that's so much better than using a program that could convert the same score to MIDI, which the person you want to exchange info with could then use to either obtain the original score, or play it back, or both simultaneously.
There is no advantage here, IMHO these folks learned standards development in Redmond... If you wanted a useful thing, how about a plugin for webservers that could render a MIDI file to readable score? That makes a bunch more sense.
Was there a need for this format? I suggest not. The existing formats, allthough binary handle the job quite nicely. MIDI for example is stable and mature. Not only that it is supported by the companies which make equipment for songwriters and musicians. What MusicXML implies is that there is something wrong with the standard, which is patently false. It is at best poor programming practice to re-invent the wheel, which is what MusicXML aims to do.
Truly the need is a way to render standard music format on the web. Okay, turning MIDI into standard music format is trivial, and allready being accomplished in many devices, and by many programs. What was needed was a way to display the output of this decoding algorithm to a web page, not to invent an unneeded standard.
Really the only purpose I can see for this standard is to sell software which supports it. The fact that no other industry standard equipment is likely to support it shouldn't deter you, look at M$. If enough people do something the wrong way, it still can become a standard.
First of all, the binary formats do do the job. Look where MIDI for example is typically used. MIDI in the music world is generally two (or more) devices communicating to each other. That the devices in question are not high powered computing machines also militates against a textual format, as it is inefficient compared to the binary transmission format. The readability of the format is moot, since generally one device in the chain is capable of interpreting MIDI sequences into a human readable format (flawlessly).
MIDI also goes above a simple transmission protocol for transmitting notes and durations, blah blah blah. There are some device control features and networking like functionality built in.
Lastly, composers are perfectly capable of composing with the traditional staff. This is a human redable format, the tools which do the conversion to binary format have been around for quite some time, are well understood, perform well, and are rock-solid. So MusicXML really doesn't satisfy a need.
Having said all that, I think the idea is pretty cool, but since it really doesn;t address a need, nor does it offer any significant advantages to those producing music in the mainstream allready, I think it's future may well be bleak.
The point that you are so glibly dancing around, and the only relevant point to this discussion is the customer/service(product/what-have-you) relationship.
The sysadmin or NA has no such relationship. The sysadmin does not exist to serve the users. The sysadmin is an employee charged by the company to maintain a machine or a network, period. The company or organization owning the hardware, et. al. may decide to task the sysadmin with providing the best user experience possible, or their tasking may reflect other priorities. Compare and contrast the taskings of the NA at your local ISP and the NA at your local College/University. Note the disparities, how many are policy related? How many of those policies were made above the level of the sysadmin?
Being a sysadmin does not imply that you are in a customer service realtionship with your users. In point of fact, often your responsibilities preclude user wants/needs. Backups, upgrades, disk quotas, firewall port configurations etc. all abridge the 'rights' of the end users, or at least introduce the potential for same, But no sysadmin in his right mind foregoes a backup because it interferes with generic user task. That isn't even a hard and fast rule, I have worked in environs where backups were subordniated to other processes because of BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS, not user discomfort.
As for your business analogy. Buying coffee from Starbucks doesn't entitle you to access their network. Even buying access in an internet cafe does not give you unnabridged rights like your home computer. So if you buy an education from a University that changes? If it does it is because the University chose to give you some level of access to their network, not because they were obligated to. You seem to assert that Universities have to do this and University sysadmins can;t impinge on what users do with their network. I suggest you head on down to your local McDonalds and try demanding network access just because you are a customer. What a load of hogwash. The Univeristy has the same rights to it's property as McDonalds, each is allowed to set reasonable limits on the use of their property. Buying a burger at McDonalds doesn't give you unlimited rights to their property, neither does buying an education from a University.
As for not living by the rules I (used to) make my users live with, well let me say, this comment proves more than anything else that you sir lack the ability to understand and apply best practices. No, sorry, I had a regular user account, which I used for day to day work, and to validate the compaints of my users, and because I'm a responsible administrator, and only use administrative access to accomplish a required task, then I shed the extra rights. Anything else is the mark of a poor admin. And, in point of fact, I did not make the determinations on what could and couldn't happen with the servers and network connections, those were dictated to me by my superiors. I certainly got my input into those policies, but once set, like every other employee I was bound by them, the oonly exception being for adminstrative work requiring privileged access. So God complex is right, I had unlmited power, but tempered it with my responsibliities, perhaps benign tyrant is a better descriptor.
Lastly, you abviously haven;t really read what I've written if you think I support RIAA and MPAA and SCO and M$. I'm a musician as well as a tyrant pal, if anyone on/. has a legitimate beef with RIAA, it is me. However, jsut because I fully believe RIAA is the root of all evil, I don't think that it obviates their rights to their porperty. The truth of the matter is I haven;t bought a single CD/tape or album in almost 7 years that put a single thin dime in the RIAA coffers. Can you say the same? I somehow doubt it, so who supports RIAA, me who gives them no money, or you who does? My issue with RIAA is serious enough that I don't want to see them get any money, period, but even my extreme antipathy to RIAA does
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And every society has protections from free communication, the trivial example are libel and slander laws. Apparently you can't say anything you want. In Canada, you can be prosecuted for publishing material that, for example, denies that the holocaust ever occured, or material which otherwise promotes "hate crimes." In Britain there are laws that are Draconian by comparison to the US and Canada, both countries whose legal systems borrowed heavily from the British system, even to the point of citing precedent....
As for how causing one computer to send bits to another is a credible threat, you can't be that facile, can you? What if those bits are a collection of child pronography? I would say someone's rights and liberties were violated to create that content. Distribution of that content is continued abrogation of that person's rights. Or what about that stream of libelous and slanderous bits? Isn't that as reprehensible as the old fashioned ear to mouth or printed page varieties?
No society has ever allowed completely free communication. While the most successful societies have been those that allow the most freedom of communication and thought, none has been so foolish as to not have some proscribed communication. Such are necessary to protect society from the misinterpretations of simpletons who aren't sophisticated enough to understand that a right is only one so long as it does not infringe upon the rights of another. The basis of libel and slander laws.
I think it less material that the libel is transmitted electronically than the fact that it is libel.
To M$ credit though they do actually make products and render services, and those two streams are the lifeblood of that org. M$ patent revenues are insignificant by any rational standard. M$ doesn't so much collect patents for their revenue purposes as some reprehensible organizations exist for the sole purpose of. In point of fact Bill Gates and most of the M$ higher ups have universally condemned this practice. However they have no trouble using a patent to batter a competitor out of business who won't otherwise play their style of ball.
As for the more tangible benefits, those could come from any of the particpants in the project, and may not be strictly limited to military applications. I'm not even saying that this is likely, but without hard data denying such an asssertion it not an unreasonable assumption.
If another project might have stumbled on the same device, idea, what-have-you, so what? There is no guarantee any of those hypothetical projects would have gotten past the proposal stage, prophesying their creation of such speculative items, by speculative projects is more tenuous than my original proposal.
Entirely new components huh? Any chance some of those contributed to the unfolding of the commanche program? I mean hell when new discoveries are made, don't you want to leverage those into your new design, assuming they offer concrete advantages?
How about the fact that some of the capabilities built in, eg Stealth technology are still somewhat dynamic, by which I mean to say we are still refining what we know about stealth tech by the real world performance of the systems in use. Never mind that the Commanche program applied these techniques to a new class of aircraft, which is another concrete from the program, the basics of stealthing a chopper.
Is it $20 Billion of silver lining, of course not. Is it $20 Billion wasted with no return, positively not, anyone who tries to make it so is ignoring objective realities, wether by design or by circumstance I leave as an exercise for the reader.
After all, how much of that $20 Billion went into basic research that will still be valid the next time someone wants to build a chopper? Wind tunnel data for example doesn't all of a sudden change without reason.
How much of that work led to new systems/ improvements to existing systems that either has allteady been deployed to other choppers, or can resonably be expected to show up in follow on versions and refits of existing choppers?
How much of that money was spent on basic science and engineering whose results will be applied thousands of times in follow-on development projects?
What about all the various lessons learned during the process of design to prototype, is that knowledge lost because the Commanche never went to production?
Lastly, the program was scrapped because the environment which dictated the original requirements is gone, and the new landscape tends to militate against a need for the platform as designed. Several people allready identified areas which ought to be addressed in follow-on designs. The choice to shut down the project as opposed to trying to re-invent it midstream is a money saver, not a money loser. The decision as easily could have been to impose new requirements on an existing project (cough cough B2 cough cough) extending the project by another $20 Billion, still with no production model at the end...
I know that for myself, if I'm building a Windows box for a client I will allways select Intel for the processor.
Conversely, if I'm builing a linux box for a client I allwats select AMD for the processor.
Actually I'll go so far as to say I use Linux in preference for any non-Intel build (VIA, etc. etc.)
I have no evidence to support my position, just a naggin perception that Windows is wrote to work on Intel as advertised, not every architecture out there... Makes sense. given Intel's popularity in the market place... However FOSS folk don't give a rat's ass, they got this brand new Athlon 3200+ and they want every last ounce of performance they can get...
Coupled with the state of Alpha dev for Windows and the current state of 64 bit support, against those same items for Linux... I think I found my justification...
Ever consider that the dinosaurs might still rule the Earth if they had MADMEN?
Anything even remotely on the scale of another Alvarez event will make any of those "real problems" seem trivial by comparison...
Besides, the Earth has been hit many times in it's history, ample evidence exists. The moon and our other neighbours in the inner system all show evidence of repeated strikes from comets/meteors through their history. The number of nuclear weapons detonated through the last 60 years doesn't even come close to being significant in view of the number of strikes the Earth has taken from other celestial bodies.
Bottom line, it's a fact that we've been struck before, and it is a statistical certainty that we will be struck again. Ever seen shooting stars? How often do those small items come to Earth? pretty common event really. Consider the damage that man made items not even a billionth of the mass of a medium sized asteroid have caused coming down...
I'm not marginalizing the other issues you bring up. Environmental degradation and nuclear proliferation are issues which demand our attention, but they aren't justification to marginalize this issue. Nor would an increase in our presence and utilization of space have anything but a positive effect on those issues.
Moving polluting industries to space is the single best way of keeping those polluting industries that our society depends on, while minimizing the environment they can damage. Proliferation of nuclear weapons is less tangible, but still a positive effect. If you are an emerging nation, which is going to be a bigger return for you on the world stage, possessing nuclear weapons or being part of the exploitation of space? Nuclear weapons may intimidate your neighbours, but have never positively impacted any society's material prosperity. Further, history bears out that those nations which partake in colonization outstrip their contemporaries which do not, and in pretty short order. So if the choice is colonize space, and reap the awards, or garner nuclear weapons, and reap some unproductive holes in the ground...
Coongratulations! you are supporting the legal effort against you.
And if you're buying Pepsi....
20 years? Are you kidding? Capitalism has survived at least twice that and this pattern repeats itself, over and over again.
Lenin was almost right. The consumer pays for the rope that business is going to hang them with.
Bottom line, this is the real power, to obviate the allways tenous vendor client relationship. You are your own vendor, and bottom line, no-one in the world can meet your own needs the way you can.
You can push that theme in lots of directions, but it all seems to tie back to being able to control your own destiny with your software acquisitions.
Hell that what finally convinced my employer to begin in-house dev again in lieu of buying from an external vendor. (Well, the vendors ridiculous pricing didn't hurt either...)
In any case, I agree, I'm nowhere near curious enough to bother finding out.
From the last linked article...
And...
If you aren't vetting the FOSS code you run, you could potentially be exposed to something like that. But that is an argument for decent software auditing practices, (regardless of source type) not an argument not to use FOSS.
The conclusion is as suspect as a five 9's reliability claim for a M$ OS, but the underlying concern is legitimate.
It is a employers market now, sure, but if that changes do you want ot be stuck with a shitty NDA?
On a side note, we just procurred a company that bought from EDS. From what I've seen, if you are competent enough to question an NDA, you're too bloody competent to work for EDS. The quality of the product I was exposed to makes a pretty clear case they don't get the best developers available, probably because of their unrealistic NDA.
Keep at it, someone out there is looking to hire IT people who think, not mindless drones what sign whatever is put in front of them...
Then I'll buy in!
As for bringing a lawyer in, not necessary, you take the NDA to the lawyer. Anyone pressuring you to sign any contract without competent legal advice is not to be trusted. If your potential employer is pressuring you to sign an NDA without review by a lawyer, or tries to prevent you from getting same, I would reconsider working for them under any circumstances. If they aren;t going to respect your rights as an applicant, what the hell do you think they'll do when they get the hooks in.
I just went through this, from one side, and will be doing more from the other. My boss had no issue with me getting the paperwork looked at by a lawyer, and nobody quibbled at the changes my lawyer requested. It was a painless process, and one which left me full rights to the software I develop outside of work. I won't bore you with the details, but it is possible to get a fair NDA.
On the other side of the coin, I assure you, I would not be likely to hire a developer who didn't want to review the NDA with his/her lawyer. I hire dev people for their brains, and their demonstrated ability to use them. Not having your legal stuff reviewed by a lawyer is not consistent with this requirement.
I don't think it is necessarily unfair to apply that label to M$, after all their actions make a pretty good case for hanging it on them.
I agree with you in that I fail to see how the phrase is applicable to this particular project of M$'s, but they got a lot of bad history to live down before I think you can justifiably moderate as Flamebait or Troll a post because "Big Brother" was applied.
Ye Gods, hasn't this farce gone on long enough?
But it has this wierd attraction, I see SCO in the posts... ..must resist.. ..overwhelming urge.. ..to.. ..repeat myself...
I haven;t read the article, but for arguments sake, if that is the case, way to negate your own action. You make the copying easy (and attractive) but contribute to the funds available to prosecute those folk...
If they are with a indie label, or even better, if it was DIY release...
I'm curious (but far too busy at the moment) to find out the answer to that one.
Hell, my band isn't affiliated with any label, I think we'll rip the idea off. The ditribution of out latest work is being handled by a kid who used to bootleg recordings or our shows... Can't get any farther from RIAA than that.
Nice to see someone cutting through to the meat of the issue here...
By extension, the question becomes, should you support artists who allow their work to sustain such organizations?
BTW, from personal experience, you don't really miss much. Any genre the major labels put out has an independent scene for. Do you really need these organizations to do your music vetting for you?
At least there is no question of the message a boycott sends.
Think for a second. Why create an new markup language to overlay on what is, essentially another markup language? An interesting intellectual exercise, but worhtwhile? That is tha part I'm not convinced of. Really traditional music notation has all the hallmarks of a well designed computer language. It still reeks of a standard to sell software, nothing more.
But, if say a Roland decides to use it, then it becomes much more attractive. In and of itself I don't see any advatage to MusicXML. If the big players in the instrument industry decide it is worth using, then perhaps the exercise is worthwhile. Without that industry acceptance though...
I've read the other posts.
No one yet has given me a reason to think that writing music in this markup language is any better than writing music in its original markup language. That I think is the bigger point. Music has been written on the staff for hundreds of years. In computer speak, it is a robust, well designed language if you will. It satisfies the requirements, is completely human readable in and of its own, is portable, bottom line traditional music notation has all the hallmarks of well written software, especially longevity.
In the face of this, and in this face of the perceived need, a way to display music notation on the web, I don;t see why we are lauding the wrong decision. To satisfy the need required a web-server plugin capable of rendering a MIDI file to musical score. Done, next project please. You got to admit, that would fill the need, and would have been good programming practice. You reuse an existing protocol (MIDI) obviating the need to code some other transport format (MusicXML). Also the logic involved in turning MIDI into human readable score, and vice versa are well known and documented. The task really was taking that output and feeding it to a webserver. Thanks for all the fluff work boys...
In any case, what is the real attraction here, now I'm supposed to learn another method of writing music? One which offers no substantial improvement over the one I currently use, but does impose a leraning curve in order to be able to do what I am allready perfectly capable of doing. Using MusicXML is not going to make me a better song writer, so why re-invent the wheel?
I don't however, see a need to let a programmer redesign how I write music. The old fashioned staff works well enough for me. The fact that literally thousands of devices and programs exist which present me the staff I know and are comfortable with, but generate MIDI binary format make learning any new language for writing music pointless.
Ultimately I may end up using it, but it would be because, for example, Roland started supporting it, as well as all the other MIDI devices I currently own.
Human readability is nice, but not strictly necessary, not when the binary format fills the need. Why not write software to turn a MIDI file into a webpage... that also satisfies the need, and obviates designing a markup language to replace what essentially is another markup language...
I'm not saying it wasn;t an interesting intellectual exercise, but it looks like something someone came up with to sell software, not to fulfill a legitimate need. However, if say a Roland starts using it, it could becomes a standard, but I fail to see why a Roland would bother...
Really? I'm a composer and performer and I have never felt the lack... This is an advantage for me how?
Where is this perceived need to render music notation on the web coming from?
Ultimately, a waste of time. I'm not going to laboriously code up my music into MusicXML format, that's completely insane:
Is it easier than writing out the music, scanning and posting the scan? Not if I allready can read and write music... In fact, I'm incurring the overhead of learning an additional language on top of msucial notation in oder to do this. Most songwriters can learn to operate a scanner and a paint program in an hour, how long to reach that level of expressiveness in MusicXML? I suggest the learning probably never really stops...
Oh, I see, there is a program I can use to graphically handle the creation of the score. Oh, well that's so much better than using a program that could convert the same score to MIDI, which the person you want to exchange info with could then use to either obtain the original score, or play it back, or both simultaneously.
There is no advantage here, IMHO these folks learned standards development in Redmond... If you wanted a useful thing, how about a plugin for webservers that could render a MIDI file to readable score? That makes a bunch more sense.
Was there a need for this format? I suggest not. The existing formats, allthough binary handle the job quite nicely. MIDI for example is stable and mature. Not only that it is supported by the companies which make equipment for songwriters and musicians. What MusicXML implies is that there is something wrong with the standard, which is patently false. It is at best poor programming practice to re-invent the wheel, which is what MusicXML aims to do.
Truly the need is a way to render standard music format on the web. Okay, turning MIDI into standard music format is trivial, and allready being accomplished in many devices, and by many programs. What was needed was a way to display the output of this decoding algorithm to a web page, not to invent an unneeded standard.
Really the only purpose I can see for this standard is to sell software which supports it. The fact that no other industry standard equipment is likely to support it shouldn't deter you, look at M$. If enough people do something the wrong way, it still can become a standard.
First of all, the binary formats do do the job. Look where MIDI for example is typically used. MIDI in the music world is generally two (or more) devices communicating to each other. That the devices in question are not high powered computing machines also militates against a textual format, as it is inefficient compared to the binary transmission format. The readability of the format is moot, since generally one device in the chain is capable of interpreting MIDI sequences into a human readable format (flawlessly).
MIDI also goes above a simple transmission protocol for transmitting notes and durations, blah blah blah. There are some device control features and networking like functionality built in.
Lastly, composers are perfectly capable of composing with the traditional staff. This is a human redable format, the tools which do the conversion to binary format have been around for quite some time, are well understood, perform well, and are rock-solid. So MusicXML really doesn't satisfy a need.
Having said all that, I think the idea is pretty cool, but since it really doesn;t address a need, nor does it offer any significant advantages to those producing music in the mainstream allready, I think it's future may well be bleak.
The sysadmin or NA has no such relationship. The sysadmin does not exist to serve the users. The sysadmin is an employee charged by the company to maintain a machine or a network, period. The company or organization owning the hardware, et. al. may decide to task the sysadmin with providing the best user experience possible, or their tasking may reflect other priorities. Compare and contrast the taskings of the NA at your local ISP and the NA at your local College/University. Note the disparities, how many are policy related? How many of those policies were made above the level of the sysadmin?
Being a sysadmin does not imply that you are in a customer service realtionship with your users. In point of fact, often your responsibilities preclude user wants/needs. Backups, upgrades, disk quotas, firewall port configurations etc. all abridge the 'rights' of the end users, or at least introduce the potential for same, But no sysadmin in his right mind foregoes a backup because it interferes with generic user task. That isn't even a hard and fast rule, I have worked in environs where backups were subordniated to other processes because of BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS, not user discomfort.
As for your business analogy. Buying coffee from Starbucks doesn't entitle you to access their network. Even buying access in an internet cafe does not give you unnabridged rights like your home computer. So if you buy an education from a University that changes? If it does it is because the University chose to give you some level of access to their network, not because they were obligated to. You seem to assert that Universities have to do this and University sysadmins can;t impinge on what users do with their network. I suggest you head on down to your local McDonalds and try demanding network access just because you are a customer. What a load of hogwash. The Univeristy has the same rights to it's property as McDonalds, each is allowed to set reasonable limits on the use of their property. Buying a burger at McDonalds doesn't give you unlimited rights to their property, neither does buying an education from a University.
As for not living by the rules I (used to) make my users live with, well let me say, this comment proves more than anything else that you sir lack the ability to understand and apply best practices. No, sorry, I had a regular user account, which I used for day to day work, and to validate the compaints of my users, and because I'm a responsible administrator, and only use administrative access to accomplish a required task, then I shed the extra rights. Anything else is the mark of a poor admin. And, in point of fact, I did not make the determinations on what could and couldn't happen with the servers and network connections, those were dictated to me by my superiors. I certainly got my input into those policies, but once set, like every other employee I was bound by them, the oonly exception being for adminstrative work requiring privileged access. So God complex is right, I had unlmited power, but tempered it with my responsibliities, perhaps benign tyrant is a better descriptor.
Lastly, you abviously haven;t really read what I've written if you think I support RIAA and MPAA and SCO and M$. I'm a musician as well as a tyrant pal, if anyone on /. has a legitimate beef with RIAA, it is me. However, jsut because I fully believe RIAA is the root of all evil, I don't think that it obviates their rights to their porperty. The truth of the matter is I haven;t bought a single CD/tape or album in almost 7 years that put a single thin dime in the RIAA coffers. Can you say the same? I somehow doubt it, so who supports RIAA, me who gives them no money, or you who does? My issue with RIAA is serious enough that I don't want to see them get any money, period, but even my extreme antipathy to RIAA does