> There is no such thing as pass by value in OO (regardless of the fact that many pseudo-OO languages allow pass by value)
By your criteria, IIOP and RMI are not "distributed objects" protocols, which I think is rather pedantic. If that's your definition of distributed objects, then yah -- that's not going to work. Not being able to do pass-by-value would cripple a network app to the point of being unworkable. But, speaking of strawmen, there's one right there; I've never used such a narrow label for distributed objects in my previous posts here.
First off, I completely disagree that distributed objects has been discarded as unworkable. There are many CORBA and other-ORB based solutions in production today. Distributed objects works, but like anything, it won't work if you misuse it or misunderstand it.
Remember that you are free to serialize objects by value across CORBA (or RMI), and also can keep things as stateless as you desire. I don't think distributed objects and SOA are exactly the same thing. I should have stated that explicitly. SOA is a subset of distributed objects. It is distributed objects with additional restrictions. I believe that it is important to recognize that the very restrictions that makes SOA attractive for some domains may make it inappropriate for others.
What do you think a service is? It is an object. It has an identity. The identity is the provider of the service. You invoke the service, you marshall across your document (ie. a serialized object), the other side does something with it either synchronously while you wait, or you get a callback later with the results. Hey, guess what, that's distributed objects. (It's also a RPC.) A decent distributed object implementation isn't going to necessarily require that the object you are invoking be a single chunk of memory on a single server. It is going to be a virtual identity that has failover, balancing, etc. SOA is distributed objects. Distributed objects is more than SOA.
Again, SOA is just distributed objects with more restrictions; restrictions that, while nice, aren't a panacea.
You bring up EJBs; the EJB spec was fairly straightforwardly updated to support SOA. SOA is a subset of distributed objects. What happens when you need the service to keep state? Or to return something like a reference? Wouldn't it be nice if your framework helped you out with that?
Seriously, to follow your anology, this is like people running around saying the Linux kernel needs to move to C++ because OO is better than modular programming in C.
Use the right tool for the right job.
My point, again, is that people who are running around talking about SOA like it is something profoundly new need to reflect on the principles that already exist in best practices for distributed objects (e.g. in regards to reuse), and additionally recognize that the very constraints they are placing on distributed objects to create SOA may preclude use cases that are actually valuable in some domains. It would be just like the distributed objects people pretending they could close their eyes to the reality that they are doing RPC.
In this particular case, the integration with the trading partner could have been done naturally via an existing ECI/CICS interface, wherein transactional semantics would have been preserved. This would even have required very little coding for the bank.
But hey, that's not quite as sexy as HTTP/XML is it? Remember too this was 2000; SOAP itself had just been out since mid-1998 if I recall correctly. Online trading business-to-business isn't exactly the best time to go with the latest protocol and encoding mechanism, just because its hip.
Warning, opinion ahead, intended for discussion, but some may see as flamebait. That's ok; flame me if you want.
For those who don't know the acronym, SOA means "Same Old Architecture."
It's a clever way for the folks who brought us distributed objects to resell "new" solutions and consulting. What you have is basically distributed objects, with the design patterns that anyone who had half a brain would have already implemented if they were using distributed objects. In the end, you'll probably end up marshalling all your data around via XML over protocols originally intended for other things, like serving up web pages, maybe getting to implement synchronous semantics over asynchronous protocols (or vice versa), all the while trying to keep things nice and reusable & decoupled, etc.
And you'll run into all the same problems you would have hit before, except your CIO will be cool with that because its SOA, you know, and that's hip.
I loved hearing a first rung manager at a bank insist on doing online trading transactions with an external partner over HTTP using XML back in 2000. What a visionary.
But hey, go ahead and explain to me how SOA solves all the old problems. People who couldn't implement robust services and reusable interfaces using CORBA aren't going to magically have all their problems solved with SOA.
If the federal DA's in the US weren't corrupt, they'd have investigated and prosecuted this long before it had affected this many people. The behavior on the part of the RIAA is so worthy of a RICO investigation it is disgusting.
There are many bigwigs in the music and film industry who deserve a nice long prison sentence for this extortion campaign. I'd rather see them in jail than Gotti Jr.
"US copyright case law supports that consumers cannot make copies of computer programs contrary to a license, but may resell what they own. This however is conflicting with both section 117 and 109, and the case law itself is conflicting depending on which circuit the case was heard in."
The right of first sale is a pretty important consideration wrt personal property.
I don't know what gives software developers the idea that they are somehow special because they have this unenforceable thing called an EULA.
If you buy a book and there's a EULA inside the cover that says you can't sell it to anyone after you read it, or your car has that printed on the dash, or you girlfriend has it tatooed on her stomach...
In my opinion, Microsoft isn't too far off from organized crime, and if you expect people to just "move along" about perceived injustice, why the fsck are you reading Slashdot?
Ballmer is the one that needs a nap, and probably detox.
Nice try, but Microsoft is a monopoly convicted of illegal practices when it comes to expanding between markets. Microsoft, as a monopoly, has to play by different rules than "Bob's Hardware." Or did you sleep through the DOJ's case against Microsoft?
Again, my disgust is with Microsoft continually failing in ventures like the XBox, but because of their CONVICTED ILLEGALLY MAINTAINED monopoly, they have an unlimited # of lives, unlike "Bob's Hardware." Take away the OS/Office monopoly gravy train, and Microsoft is a very ineffective business.
And again, my disgust is that America, my country, a crooked organization like Microsoft continues to sit around with a $40 billion warchest of undeserved profits, making $10 billion a year in ill-gotten revenue, and keeps dumping out failures like the XBox, MSN, MSNBC, etc. In a just and regulated market, we wouldn't be having this conversation because Microsoft would not exist in this form.
But I don't expect you to follow this, because you still think its apt to compare Microsoft to "Bob's Hardware."
Business as usual for Microsoft. They cannot kill themselves with their stupidity and incompetence, because they always have the OS/Office gravy train.
In my opinion, Microsoft is a shameful example of the corruption of American business. A corruption which is perceived by many worldwide, and undermines the diplomatic messages of our country. I won't go into other examples of this corruption (RIAA/MPAA, software patents, etc.) My thesis is that this single example is damning on its own.
The collosal economic failure of the XBox is just one in a long line of Microsoft blunders. Microsoft Bob, Tablet PCs, terrible MMRPGs, MSNBC, MSN, etc., etc. Microsoft has tried to leverage their monopoly power in Office and Desktop OS software into about every direction imaginable, and have failed AGAIN and AGAIN. Massively. Few public corporations anywhere in the world have managed to stumble this many times and keep from exploding. It is obvious Microsoft has done little to innovate, and often fails to simply immitate. How do they survive?
"People buy their OSs! Their stuff is simple and works! Office is awesome!" the fan boys will shout. Guess what fan boys, Microsoft's cash cows, Windows and Office, were shown by the DOJ as *illegally maintained.* Microsoft lost in court. Whether or not their products ended up becoming decent after 10 years of reworking, Microsoft was proven, in court, to have illegally used their monopoly status to buy themselves the time to get where they are today. In other words, they were allowed to cheat so long that they eventually had enough time to put something decent together.
Strangely, no serious punishments were handed out; Microsoft basically continues as "business as usual", except you can be sure they have a different attitude to emailing around smoking-gun emails.
Why does this shame America in the world? Because we claim to be the land of freedom, justice, free enterprise. Except, of course, we aren't. Microsoft is a stunning example of that. They were convicted of very serious crimes, crimes which impacted most of the techies reading this site, and yet none of them went to jail. They weren't forced to reorganize significantly. Their stock price didn't go to hell like their competitors that they cheated out of revenue.
So now, we get to read a story like this, of a $4 billion blunder, and we are so numb from the state of the world that its like "d'oh, silly Microsoft!" Those silly crooks; let's give them their own version of Sopranos, and coddle them even more. Crime pays! Ain't that America.
What can I say... you're right! It is a sad state of affairs when a KGB guy is head of Russia, and the son of a CIA/Cold-War-VP/Pres is head of the US.
I guess I just wanted to say, it should give the Russian people pride to see us buying their spacecraft.
Given that China's trade surplus with the US is a relatively significant percentage of their GDP, wouldn't anything that hurts the US hurt them too?
That's a great question, and it hits at the heart the policy's assumptions.
You have to define who the "them" is that would be hurt by something happening to the U.S. In China, there are two "thems". There are (1) the people in government, the unelected "party". (2) The wealthy businessmen who are outside of government, but certainly connected to it. And (3) "everyone else", from the farmers, the factory workers, to the university students who are not "connected."
Let's say L.A. gets nuked. Suddenly there are a couple hundred thousand less consumers in America. Groups #2 and #3 suffer slightly. Group #1 is going to take whatever it wants anyways, because it is the king, and it is good to be king. Group #2 is going to suffer less than group #3, because the workers aren't calling the shots. They are lucky to have the work. Group #2 will simply pass the buck on the economic downturn on group #3.
But what happens if LA or NYC is nuked by NK or Iran? America will lose its belly for defending Taiwan. Suddenly we know, all to real, what it means to have a city nuked. The Chinese are counting on this. They want us to lose our belly for defending Taiwan, and most likely Japan. You see, group #1 still adheres to ideology: they want Taiwan, and they want revenge on Japan. Once we lose our belly for limited nuclear war (which is what it would be with China), China can do as it damn well pleases.
Now China takes Taiwan, and we waffle. Now groups #1 and #2 win! Group #3, powerless, is going to hurt, because there are now more workers to compete with. Workers who are westernized. Workers like the folks in Hong Kong.
Anyways, I know there are assumptions here in how the US would react to a limited nuclear strike (1 or 2 cities), but to think of China as a single entity which loves American dollars is blind: the government in charge is still very much based on an ideology, and the Chinese capitalists and their wage slaves are still very much their pawns.
Economic interdependence will help keep peace. Isolationism won't.
The peace is an illusion, in my opinion. Our own government has cited the collusion of the Chinese government with the proliferation of WMD between Iran, Pakistan, and NK. It's in a PDF I replied to a sibling reply of yours, if you'd care to read it. PM Chamberlain had guarantees of peace too, but peace is meaningless if it is only the calculated prelude to war. And with China, I believe they merely want "war by proxy." With NK, they may have it. Once we've seen an American city nuked, do you think we'll be so gung ho about defending Taiwan?
Isolationism means that the United States can act freely, in OUR best interests. Economic interdependence has done little more than lower the prices at your local department store, as we export wealth and forced our blue collar workers out of jobs.
Need I remind you that China is a totalitarian regime? Since when has it been cool to do business with a totalitarian regime? Show me some examples of when that has worked out good for the U.S.
Progress advances over time. You can't expect it to happen overnight.
Overnight??? It's been more than 30 years now. During those 30 years, China has assisted other countries in obtaining nuclear technology; countries that are TODAY causing us trouble. North Korea, Iran, etc. How much longer do we have to wait until your panacea of a free China comes true?
Wake up; Taiwan will soon be the next victim of this failed policy. These are people's lives, being traded for "rollbacks" at Walmart.
Yes, it is a sad day for our space program, but maybe the sense of pride this will give to the Russian people will help continue to heal the wounds of the cold war, which are many and festering.
I think it's pretty obvious to the US Government what situation it is in with regards to China.
The Chinese government is playing a dangerous game, a game which they can play as recklessly as they want given a complete lack of democratic oversight in their political process. I hope the Chinese government realizes that if the United States is attacked by nuclear weapons from a regime we believe they have helped with proliferation, we may simply take out China during our retaliation while the blood of our citizenry is boiling. We will most likely have the missle defenses, submarines, and pissed off military to do it. I'm not part of our government, so I can only speculate.
I think they're talking more about porn where violence, rape, coercion is depicted, even if fictional. I'm all for cracking down on suck things.
I'm not against a restriction on such things as well, but let's be consistent here: let's ban real and fictional footage of violence too, right?
I shouldn't have to see pictures of terrorist attacks on my television, nor depictions of murder on my crime dramas, nor violence in movies. All those things are fictional or real depictions of crime, they are being SOLD to me, or offered for free to sell advertising.
Really, America -- WAKE UP. If you want to protect the children, TRY TO BE CONSISTENT. Kids are great bullshit detectors, and when they see tobacco and alchohol being glorified, they tend to disbelieve warnings about things like cocaine. Similary, when they can turn on the TV and see a pretty vivid portrail of a violent crime on NETWORK TV, they will see it as hypocritical for someone to say they can't see some other footage or depiction; especially if they believe "it isn't real."
Let's not forget that it is the CREATION of pornography which is typically the true crime. Go after the people making and selling the turly awful crap. Once you cross over the line into chasing down people who have seen something, who did not create it, you run the risk, as another poster above put it, of SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT. "Let's humiliate this guy over here." "Let's humiliate her, she spoke out against us." GO AFTER THE SOURCES.
In China, DVDs of the 9/11 tragedy were sold FOR ENTERTAINMENT. There are people in this country that get off over videos depicting real deaths. ("Faces of death.")
We need to draw the line here clearly, be consistent, and above all, send a CLEAR and CONSISTENT message about WHAT IS and WHAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE, and just as important -- WHY.
I see a few Chinese apologists in this thread, and I invite anyone to have their own opinions, but I'm going to talk about reality here, and it is a cold and harsh reality:
Nixon, facing down the Soviets, began a policy of economic entanglement with China. China was willing to move away from communism towards limited capitalism, but NOT towards democracy. Concerned by an arms race with China, wishing to put some ideological distance between the USSR and China, and in some part, driven by US corporate interests, Nixon launched us on a path which has lead to the consequences discussed in this article: when we do business with China, it is not unlike doing business with Nazi Germany. (Oh no, I invoked Godwin's law, but it is not out of order here.)
By tangling our economic system with China's, America received incredibly cheap labor, and the totalitarian elite in China received great wealth. America conveniently outsourced a lot of blue collar jobs to a country which didn't treat the worker as lavishly as we had to, which kicked organized labor in this country in the gnads, and was basically a similar exodus of jobs to what techies have experienced with India. We got (unethically) cheap labor, and the Chinese elite got rich. Some of this wealth trickled down, but you can be sure that in a non-democratic society, there have not been the mechanisms by which the poor could force some change in wealth distribution.
Nixon's, (and subsequent presidents'), not-so-secret policy towards China has been to hope that a wealthy middle-class would emerge and overthrow the wealthy elite. That has not happened. Look at the masacre in 1989 if you want an example of how easily totalitarian governments can keep control. Nothing has changed except the depth of corruption. In fact, China has actually GROWN in terms of the territory it administers, now able to command the lives of those in Hong Kong, for example. Nixon's policy has FAILED.
The average Chinese worker is a wage slave to American corporations. America exploits them. There is no other way to look at it, in my opinion. Democratic reform has not occured. The only real change has been that we are now dangerously dependent on the Chinese.
This dependency is very real, and very dangerous today. Look at our situation with North Korea. It is obvious the Chinese are not exerting the pressure they could wield there. Remember that train that blew up as it was going to make its way out of NK into China? What do you think that train was associated with carrying? How do you think nuke secrets made it to NK from Pakistan? By boat in international waters? No way! Through China. The Chinese have secretly been encouraging nuclear proliferation because they would rather we got into a nuke war with some minor player, like Pakistan, NK, or Iran. They would rather some other country, by proxy, took the punches and dished it out on us. If we are hurt by a nuke, China will be helped, ESPECIALLY in relation to Taiwan.
The Chinese government is our true enemy, and the people of China need to be liberated.
As an American, I want to see our government disinvest as quickly as it can from China. We should shift that investment into India and other countries with functioning democracies.
We need to punish and isolate the Chinese now before it is too late.
It could just be Steve and Bill, smoking out unhappy employees. I'm sure the Microsoft heads are paranoid and convinced that they've been infiltrated by bad seeds, stirring up discontent, and if they could just purge those bad folks, they'd be a nice happy company again.
It's not like Microsoft hasn't (ab)used online forums before.
(If you love Microsoft, please stop reading now so you don't feel this is flamebait.)
Can you smell it? It's the smell of fear wafting in from Washington state. Either that or Ballmer is "fired up" again. Maybe both. Regardless, let's embrace this as an opportunity:
There may never have been a better time to dethrone Microsoft. If a large portion of the open source community dedicated themselves to a few extra hours a week towards the cause of "cutting off Microsoft's air supply," this would be a great time to unseat them.
We could give the meme/project a label. Since Microsoft has called thier project "Vista", perhaps we could call it "Hasta La Vista". (I'm sure there are more original suggestions out there, as I see that phrase tossed around by pundits.)
What can you do? If you develop software, dedicate yourself to some amount of extra hours a week towards key open source projects confronting Microsoft in its cash cows: Operating Systems and Office software.
If you are a non-programming techie, get involved in a non-programming way. Write documentation. Contribute to a forum. Make suggestions on new features. Test useability. Just make the pledge to donate a certain amount of "extra time" during Microsoft's crunch to crunch them.
If you don't work in tech, vow to break your Windows/Office dependence. Dedicate time each week to make sure that when Vista ships, you won't "need" it. Look at what features are stopping you from making the switch, and let the open source projects know they matter to you.
Everyone can make a difference. Help it happen.
If we roll up our sleeves, band together (if only in spirit), and get fired up about it, perhaps Microsoft will finally get what is due to them.
Microsoft is going to pressure its engineers to put in extra effort to get this polished turd out the door, so let's put in some extra effort to do what the US DOJ couldn't.
The only thing worse than a totalitarian communist country is a totalitarian communist country where the idea of music as a free, common good has gone out the window.
So now, in addition to encouraging the Chinese government to pimp out its poor so we can save a few shiny dimes at Walmart, we have the audacity to expect those same wage slaves to 'respect tha authoritah' of the corrupt US music industry?
Hello America, you can't bukkakke the world's poor and then wonder why you aren't seen as a bastion of freedom anymore. Wake up!
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> There is no such thing as pass by value in OO (regardless of the fact that many pseudo-OO languages allow pass by value)
By your criteria, IIOP and RMI are not "distributed objects" protocols, which I think is rather pedantic. If that's your definition of distributed objects, then yah -- that's not going to work. Not being able to do pass-by-value would cripple a network app to the point of being unworkable. But, speaking of strawmen, there's one right there; I've never used such a narrow label for distributed objects in my previous posts here.
Ah well, we will have to agree to disagree.
First off, I completely disagree that distributed objects has been discarded as unworkable. There are many CORBA and other-ORB based solutions in production today. Distributed objects works, but like anything, it won't work if you misuse it or misunderstand it.
Remember that you are free to serialize objects by value across CORBA (or RMI), and also can keep things as stateless as you desire. I don't think distributed objects and SOA are exactly the same thing. I should have stated that explicitly. SOA is a subset of distributed objects. It is distributed objects with additional restrictions. I believe that it is important to recognize that the very restrictions that makes SOA attractive for some domains may make it inappropriate for others.
What do you think a service is? It is an object. It has an identity. The identity is the provider of the service. You invoke the service, you marshall across your document (ie. a serialized object), the other side does something with it either synchronously while you wait, or you get a callback later with the results. Hey, guess what, that's distributed objects. (It's also a RPC.) A decent distributed object implementation isn't going to necessarily require that the object you are invoking be a single chunk of memory on a single server. It is going to be a virtual identity that has failover, balancing, etc. SOA is distributed objects. Distributed objects is more than SOA.
Again, SOA is just distributed objects with more restrictions; restrictions that, while nice, aren't a panacea.
You bring up EJBs; the EJB spec was fairly straightforwardly updated to support SOA. SOA is a subset of distributed objects. What happens when you need the service to keep state? Or to return something like a reference? Wouldn't it be nice if your framework helped you out with that?
Seriously, to follow your anology, this is like people running around saying the Linux kernel needs to move to C++ because OO is better than modular programming in C.
Use the right tool for the right job.
My point, again, is that people who are running around talking about SOA like it is something profoundly new need to reflect on the principles that already exist in best practices for distributed objects (e.g. in regards to reuse), and additionally recognize that the very constraints they are placing on distributed objects to create SOA may preclude use cases that are actually valuable in some domains. It would be just like the distributed objects people pretending they could close their eyes to the reality that they are doing RPC.
In this particular case, the integration with the trading partner could have been done naturally via an existing ECI/CICS interface, wherein transactional semantics would have been preserved. This would even have required very little coding for the bank.
But hey, that's not quite as sexy as HTTP/XML is it? Remember too this was 2000; SOAP itself had just been out since mid-1998 if I recall correctly. Online trading business-to-business isn't exactly the best time to go with the latest protocol and encoding mechanism, just because its hip.
Warning, opinion ahead, intended for discussion, but some may see as flamebait. That's ok; flame me if you want.
For those who don't know the acronym, SOA means "Same Old Architecture."
It's a clever way for the folks who brought us distributed objects to resell "new" solutions and consulting. What you have is basically distributed objects, with the design patterns that anyone who had half a brain would have already implemented if they were using distributed objects. In the end, you'll probably end up marshalling all your data around via XML over protocols originally intended for other things, like serving up web pages, maybe getting to implement synchronous semantics over asynchronous protocols (or vice versa), all the while trying to keep things nice and reusable & decoupled, etc.
And you'll run into all the same problems you would have hit before, except your CIO will be cool with that because its SOA, you know, and that's hip.
I loved hearing a first rung manager at a bank insist on doing online trading transactions with an external partner over HTTP using XML back in 2000. What a visionary.
But hey, go ahead and explain to me how SOA solves all the old problems. People who couldn't implement robust services and reusable interfaces using CORBA aren't going to magically have all their problems solved with SOA.
If the federal DA's in the US weren't corrupt, they'd have investigated and prosecuted this long before it had affected this many people. The behavior on the part of the RIAA is so worthy of a RICO investigation it is disgusting.
There are many bigwigs in the music and film industry who deserve a nice long prison sentence for this extortion campaign. I'd rather see them in jail than Gotti Jr.
From wikipedia...
"US copyright case law supports that consumers cannot make copies of computer programs contrary to a license, but may resell what they own. This however is conflicting with both section 117 and 109, and the case law itself is conflicting depending on which circuit the case was heard in."
Looks like Lawyer food! mmm
The right of first sale is a pretty important consideration wrt personal property.
...
I don't know what gives software developers the idea that they are somehow special because they have this unenforceable thing called an EULA.
If you buy a book and there's a EULA inside the cover that says you can't sell it to anyone after you read it, or your car has that printed on the dash, or you girlfriend has it tatooed on her stomach
You forgot: "Forgetaboutit."
In my opinion, Microsoft isn't too far off from organized crime, and if you expect people to just "move along" about perceived injustice, why the fsck are you reading Slashdot?
Ballmer is the one that needs a nap, and probably detox.
Nice try, but Microsoft is a monopoly convicted of illegal practices when it comes to expanding between markets. Microsoft, as a monopoly, has to play by different rules than "Bob's Hardware." Or did you sleep through the DOJ's case against Microsoft?
Again, my disgust is with Microsoft continually failing in ventures like the XBox, but because of their CONVICTED ILLEGALLY MAINTAINED monopoly, they have an unlimited # of lives, unlike "Bob's Hardware." Take away the OS/Office monopoly gravy train, and Microsoft is a very ineffective business.
And again, my disgust is that America, my country, a crooked organization like Microsoft continues to sit around with a $40 billion warchest of undeserved profits, making $10 billion a year in ill-gotten revenue, and keeps dumping out failures like the XBox, MSN, MSNBC, etc. In a just and regulated market, we wouldn't be having this conversation because Microsoft would not exist in this form.
But I don't expect you to follow this, because you still think its apt to compare Microsoft to "Bob's Hardware."
Business as usual for Microsoft. They cannot kill themselves with their stupidity and incompetence, because they always have the OS/Office gravy train.
In my opinion, Microsoft is a shameful example of the corruption of American business. A corruption which is perceived by many worldwide, and undermines the diplomatic messages of our country. I won't go into other examples of this corruption (RIAA/MPAA, software patents, etc.) My thesis is that this single example is damning on its own.
The collosal economic failure of the XBox is just one in a long line of Microsoft blunders. Microsoft Bob, Tablet PCs, terrible MMRPGs, MSNBC, MSN, etc., etc. Microsoft has tried to leverage their monopoly power in Office and Desktop OS software into about every direction imaginable, and have failed AGAIN and AGAIN. Massively. Few public corporations anywhere in the world have managed to stumble this many times and keep from exploding. It is obvious Microsoft has done little to innovate, and often fails to simply immitate. How do they survive?
"People buy their OSs! Their stuff is simple and works! Office is awesome!" the fan boys will shout. Guess what fan boys, Microsoft's cash cows, Windows and Office, were shown by the DOJ as *illegally maintained.* Microsoft lost in court. Whether or not their products ended up becoming decent after 10 years of reworking, Microsoft was proven, in court, to have illegally used their monopoly status to buy themselves the time to get where they are today. In other words, they were allowed to cheat so long that they eventually had enough time to put something decent together.
Strangely, no serious punishments were handed out; Microsoft basically continues as "business as usual", except you can be sure they have a different attitude to emailing around smoking-gun emails.
Why does this shame America in the world? Because we claim to be the land of freedom, justice, free enterprise. Except, of course, we aren't. Microsoft is a stunning example of that. They were convicted of very serious crimes, crimes which impacted most of the techies reading this site, and yet none of them went to jail. They weren't forced to reorganize significantly. Their stock price didn't go to hell like their competitors that they cheated out of revenue.
So now, we get to read a story like this, of a $4 billion blunder, and we are so numb from the state of the world that its like "d'oh, silly Microsoft!" Those silly crooks; let's give them their own version of Sopranos, and coddle them even more. Crime pays! Ain't that America.
Given the military nature of the project, perhaps it is just a "PR model" for secrecy.
What can I say ... you're right! It is a sad state of affairs when a KGB guy is head of Russia, and the son of a CIA/Cold-War-VP/Pres is head of the US.
I guess I just wanted to say, it should give the Russian people pride to see us buying their spacecraft.
Given that China's trade surplus with the US is a relatively significant percentage of their GDP, wouldn't anything that hurts the US hurt them too?
That's a great question, and it hits at the heart the policy's assumptions.
You have to define who the "them" is that would be hurt by something happening to the U.S. In China, there are two "thems". There are (1) the people in government, the unelected "party". (2) The wealthy businessmen who are outside of government, but certainly connected to it. And (3) "everyone else", from the farmers, the factory workers, to the university students who are not "connected."
Let's say L.A. gets nuked. Suddenly there are a couple hundred thousand less consumers in America. Groups #2 and #3 suffer slightly. Group #1 is going to take whatever it wants anyways, because it is the king, and it is good to be king. Group #2 is going to suffer less than group #3, because the workers aren't calling the shots. They are lucky to have the work. Group #2 will simply pass the buck on the economic downturn on group #3.
But what happens if LA or NYC is nuked by NK or Iran? America will lose its belly for defending Taiwan. Suddenly we know, all to real, what it means to have a city nuked. The Chinese are counting on this. They want us to lose our belly for defending Taiwan, and most likely Japan. You see, group #1 still adheres to ideology: they want Taiwan, and they want revenge on Japan. Once we lose our belly for limited nuclear war (which is what it would be with China), China can do as it damn well pleases.
Now China takes Taiwan, and we waffle. Now groups #1 and #2 win! Group #3, powerless, is going to hurt, because there are now more workers to compete with. Workers who are westernized. Workers like the folks in Hong Kong.
Anyways, I know there are assumptions here in how the US would react to a limited nuclear strike (1 or 2 cities), but to think of China as a single entity which loves American dollars is blind: the government in charge is still very much based on an ideology, and the Chinese capitalists and their wage slaves are still very much their pawns.
Economic interdependence will help keep peace. Isolationism won't.
The peace is an illusion, in my opinion. Our own government has cited the collusion of the Chinese government with the proliferation of WMD between Iran, Pakistan, and NK. It's in a PDF I replied to a sibling reply of yours, if you'd care to read it. PM Chamberlain had guarantees of peace too, but peace is meaningless if it is only the calculated prelude to war. And with China, I believe they merely want "war by proxy." With NK, they may have it. Once we've seen an American city nuked, do you think we'll be so gung ho about defending Taiwan?
Isolationism means that the United States can act freely, in OUR best interests. Economic interdependence has done little more than lower the prices at your local department store, as we export wealth and forced our blue collar workers out of jobs.
Need I remind you that China is a totalitarian regime? Since when has it been cool to do business with a totalitarian regime? Show me some examples of when that has worked out good for the U.S.
Progress advances over time. You can't expect it to happen overnight.
Overnight??? It's been more than 30 years now. During those 30 years, China has assisted other countries in obtaining nuclear technology; countries that are TODAY causing us trouble. North Korea, Iran, etc. How much longer do we have to wait until your panacea of a free China comes true?
Wake up; Taiwan will soon be the next victim of this failed policy. These are people's lives, being traded for "rollbacks" at Walmart.
Yes, it is a sad day for our space program, but maybe the sense of pride this will give to the Russian people will help continue to heal the wounds of the cold war, which are many and festering.
I think the rule of thumb is:
DRM, it turns the bad into good, and the good into bad.
DRM is kind of the "soviet russia" of technology.
This is rather speculative, do you have any evidence to back it up?
i pts/05_03_10.pdf
http://www.uscc.gov/hearings/2005hearings/transcr
I think it's pretty obvious to the US Government what situation it is in with regards to China.
The Chinese government is playing a dangerous game, a game which they can play as recklessly as they want given a complete lack of democratic oversight in their political process. I hope the Chinese government realizes that if the United States is attacked by nuclear weapons from a regime we believe they have helped with proliferation, we may simply take out China during our retaliation while the blood of our citizenry is boiling. We will most likely have the missle defenses, submarines, and pissed off military to do it. I'm not part of our government, so I can only speculate.
With that said, I pray for peace but expect war.
Rich people are more interested in maintaining the status quo than poor people, as they have the most to lose from change.
I think they're talking more about porn where violence, rape, coercion is depicted, even if fictional. I'm all for cracking down on suck things.
I'm not against a restriction on such things as well, but let's be consistent here: let's ban real and fictional footage of violence too, right?
I shouldn't have to see pictures of terrorist attacks on my television, nor depictions of murder on my crime dramas, nor violence in movies. All those things are fictional or real depictions of crime, they are being SOLD to me, or offered for free to sell advertising.
Really, America -- WAKE UP. If you want to protect the children, TRY TO BE CONSISTENT. Kids are great bullshit detectors, and when they see tobacco and alchohol being glorified, they tend to disbelieve warnings about things like cocaine. Similary, when they can turn on the TV and see a pretty vivid portrail of a violent crime on NETWORK TV, they will see it as hypocritical for someone to say they can't see some other footage or depiction; especially if they believe "it isn't real."
Let's not forget that it is the CREATION of pornography which is typically the true crime. Go after the people making and selling the turly awful crap. Once you cross over the line into chasing down people who have seen something, who did not create it, you run the risk, as another poster above put it, of SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT. "Let's humiliate this guy over here." "Let's humiliate her, she spoke out against us." GO AFTER THE SOURCES.
In China, DVDs of the 9/11 tragedy were sold FOR ENTERTAINMENT. There are people in this country that get off over videos depicting real deaths. ("Faces of death.")
We need to draw the line here clearly, be consistent, and above all, send a CLEAR and CONSISTENT message about WHAT IS and WHAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE, and just as important -- WHY.
Nixon, facing down the Soviets, began a policy of economic entanglement with China. China was willing to move away from communism towards limited capitalism, but NOT towards democracy. Concerned by an arms race with China, wishing to put some ideological distance between the USSR and China, and in some part, driven by US corporate interests, Nixon launched us on a path which has lead to the consequences discussed in this article: when we do business with China, it is not unlike doing business with Nazi Germany. (Oh no, I invoked Godwin's law, but it is not out of order here.)
By tangling our economic system with China's, America received incredibly cheap labor, and the totalitarian elite in China received great wealth. America conveniently outsourced a lot of blue collar jobs to a country which didn't treat the worker as lavishly as we had to, which kicked organized labor in this country in the gnads, and was basically a similar exodus of jobs to what techies have experienced with India. We got (unethically) cheap labor, and the Chinese elite got rich. Some of this wealth trickled down, but you can be sure that in a non-democratic society, there have not been the mechanisms by which the poor could force some change in wealth distribution.
Nixon's, (and subsequent presidents'), not-so-secret policy towards China has been to hope that a wealthy middle-class would emerge and overthrow the wealthy elite. That has not happened. Look at the masacre in 1989 if you want an example of how easily totalitarian governments can keep control. Nothing has changed except the depth of corruption. In fact, China has actually GROWN in terms of the territory it administers, now able to command the lives of those in Hong Kong, for example. Nixon's policy has FAILED.
The average Chinese worker is a wage slave to American corporations. America exploits them. There is no other way to look at it, in my opinion. Democratic reform has not occured. The only real change has been that we are now dangerously dependent on the Chinese.
This dependency is very real, and very dangerous today. Look at our situation with North Korea. It is obvious the Chinese are not exerting the pressure they could wield there. Remember that train that blew up as it was going to make its way out of NK into China? What do you think that train was associated with carrying? How do you think nuke secrets made it to NK from Pakistan? By boat in international waters? No way! Through China. The Chinese have secretly been encouraging nuclear proliferation because they would rather we got into a nuke war with some minor player, like Pakistan, NK, or Iran. They would rather some other country, by proxy, took the punches and dished it out on us. If we are hurt by a nuke, China will be helped, ESPECIALLY in relation to Taiwan.
The Chinese government is our true enemy, and the people of China need to be liberated.
As an American, I want to see our government disinvest as quickly as it can from China. We should shift that investment into India and other countries with functioning democracies.
We need to punish and isolate the Chinese now before it is too late.
It could just be Steve and Bill, smoking out unhappy employees. I'm sure the Microsoft heads are paranoid and convinced that they've been infiltrated by bad seeds, stirring up discontent, and if they could just purge those bad folks, they'd be a nice happy company again.
It's not like Microsoft hasn't (ab)used online forums before.
Can you smell it? It's the smell of fear wafting in from Washington state. Either that or Ballmer is "fired up" again. Maybe both. Regardless, let's embrace this as an opportunity:
There may never have been a better time to dethrone Microsoft. If a large portion of the open source community dedicated themselves to a few extra hours a week towards the cause of "cutting off Microsoft's air supply," this would be a great time to unseat them.
We could give the meme/project a label. Since Microsoft has called thier project "Vista", perhaps we could call it "Hasta La Vista". (I'm sure there are more original suggestions out there, as I see that phrase tossed around by pundits.)
What can you do? If you develop software, dedicate yourself to some amount of extra hours a week towards key open source projects confronting Microsoft in its cash cows: Operating Systems and Office software.
If you are a non-programming techie, get involved in a non-programming way. Write documentation. Contribute to a forum. Make suggestions on new features. Test useability. Just make the pledge to donate a certain amount of "extra time" during Microsoft's crunch to crunch them.
If you don't work in tech, vow to break your Windows/Office dependence. Dedicate time each week to make sure that when Vista ships, you won't "need" it. Look at what features are stopping you from making the switch, and let the open source projects know they matter to you.
Everyone can make a difference. Help it happen.
If we roll up our sleeves, band together (if only in spirit), and get fired up about it, perhaps Microsoft will finally get what is due to them.
Microsoft is going to pressure its engineers to put in extra effort to get this polished turd out the door, so let's put in some extra effort to do what the US DOJ couldn't.
Bleh, I had the same problem on the MUD I was coding in 92. I should have patented it.
The only thing worse than a totalitarian communist country is a totalitarian communist country where the idea of music as a free, common good has gone out the window.
So now, in addition to encouraging the Chinese government to pimp out its poor so we can save a few shiny dimes at Walmart, we have the audacity to expect those same wage slaves to 'respect tha authoritah' of the corrupt US music industry?
Hello America, you can't bukkakke the world's poor and then wonder why you aren't seen as a bastion of freedom anymore. Wake up!
> But how do you solve a problem like MARIAA?
Thank you so much; that seriously made me laugh my ass off. Reattaching ass now.