I actually read through some of the other parts of this post after having replied to your post. I probably should have read them before getting so critical.
turn to be screwed
I've only had this happen once. A manager went against my instructions and it cost the company about $5,000 in a printing mistake. The manager was only supposed to run off 2 copies of a mylar orthophoto plot for quality control and the manager ran off several hundred (NOTE: The printing was handled via an outside vendor as the plots were digital to plate and over 36 inches in the X and Y directions). I had a simple mistake (map tic marks out of position) that would have been caught on review of the two sample plots, but the manager, in the interest of saving time, decided to run all the plots. I took the blame for that. Fortunately for me, I already had a new job awaiting me.
For the second point of paycheck vs job satisfaction, I too work for the paycheck and the job satisfaction. Maybe I'm an exception, but why not have both. I do have the fortune of living in the DC Metro area so jobs are a bit easier to come by. Of course that is why I moved to the area from Pennsylvania where jobs were scarce and employers could "screw" employees. As for age, I'm mid-30s and my hobbies generally involve activities with my kids, so work is not the only satisifaction. I coach various sports activities with them (soccer, football) so I'm not working all that much overtime unless necessary. Unpaid overtime is necessary at times. All I can hope is that any OT will reflect well on my performance reviews (which apparently it has). As an additional note (as I mentioned with my previous post), I switched positions within my current employer. If money were the only issue, I'd have stayed with the one position rather than my current position. I gave up about $14,000 (mostly shift differential and various position bonuses) to take a more interesting/challenging position. The position I gave up was a mindless job of watching systems to make sure they were available (services running, resources available, etc...) and the current one involves software research and development. In my opinion, pay isn't everything if the position doesn't provide some challenges or will bore you to death.
I've had periods where I have to do the 60-80 hours a week (usually demo prep, product delivery, or critical milestones in the development process) as well as stretches where 40 hours is all I do. In most cases, I've found the managers to be quite flexible in working around any scheduling conflicts with personal activities.
Maybe I'm addicted to IT (my wife would probably agree with that) but it's helped me tremendously in advancing my career which in turn greatly benefits my family.
So if you don't enjoy your job, why do you stick with it? Over my 10 years as a professional, I've worked for 4 companies (and two positions with the current employer) and migrate to work that is enjoyable. Working in a position where you don't get both monetary and personal satisfaction probably indicates a need for change.
Please stop speaking for the rest of us
I wasn't speaking for everyone. I was under the impression that this is a forum where everyone can express their ideas, even if others will disagree with them. In this case, I disagree with your statement that "I'm speaking for everyone".
OK, so some questions for you then...
Would belonging to a union really improve job satisfaction?
Do you only work for a paycheck or do you want personal satisfaction from accomplishing a task?
While an increase in pay would certainly be appreciated by anyone, would you stay at a job only for the pay if another challenging position were available? Consider people that choose careers (social services, teachers, church leaders, police, and many others) where they receive little or no pay and still choose the career because they get other satisfaction from the work.
...who work because we have to...
I certainly "have" to work to cover bills (two kids - elementary and middle school so no college yet, but saving for it; a wife who is a returning adult student in college; and the usual expenses (shelter, food, utilities, vehicles, etc...) for family activies). I do work with some single people who have considered cutting back work schedules to part time status, just to enjoy life, but they haven't because they seem to enjoy the work too. Basically I'm trying to say that very few people could give up working all together and therefore most people (other than those with huge trust funds) end up having to work to make ends meet.
My wife worked as a cashier in college a while back and she was in a similar situation as you. After paying the union dues, she was making less than minimum wage. The union provided nothing to her as a part time employee and actually cost her more than it was worth (the pay rate less than minimum wage).
Since when have cubicle jobs rewarded for "performance"?
As my follow up to the other poster indicates, I've worked in the cubicle farm environment. I did data conversion projects (hard copy maps to digital datasets primarily) and while the rewards were not what I would have wanted, relative to other coworkers (I had 10% raises while many others were in the 3-5% with a few getting 0%. Please note though that 10% of a low salary isn't exactly much to brag about though, no matter the spin the my manager put on it.), I didn't do too badly. In fact, the first "real" company I worked for probably paid the worst but provided the best learning opportunity for me. I of course looked for other opportunities where I could continue to advance my career, financially and technically. I knew that the company couldn't pay much beyond what I was already getting without passing the cost along to the customers. Then again, the cubicle farm is generally an environment where you are hiring a lot of similarly skilled employees to do bulk work and want to keep the cost level. The pay level is generally dictated by what the company can afford to pay while continuing to bring in new work. By overpaying one employee, they'll have to make it up elsewhere or they won't remain competitive. If they can't compete, the company won't have any jobs to offer and then you'd have people in the unemployment line.
Oddly enough, some people don't have a reason to get rid of their dial-up. They are content with the slower speed if it saves them $20+/month. These users typically check email and not much else. While I question AOLs decision to drop broadband, maintaining dial-up for the users who don't have need for broadband is still viable (although as broadband prices drop, I'm sure this will change rapidly).
I realize that unions have benefited workers in the past and do help some industries (particularly ones where the working conditions are physically dangerous and implimenting safety protocols will cost money to the company). I disagree though about "Unions in a sweatshop cubicle XP farm where people are cranking out dull code and being payed by the hour - definitely." being one of the appropriate places to have a union though.
(Maybe my understanding of unions is a bit biased so please forgive me, and feel free to point out, if I am mistaken on the details.)
Don't unions collectively bargain for pay rates? Doesn't that ensure that every employee at a position category will receive the same pay no matter how well/poorly they perform? This doesn't exactly encourage people to put forth their best effort.
Unions protect the employees by making employee termination much more difficult to the employer. While the advantages are probably pretty obvious, this puts additional burden on the employer to build a case against an employee for termination if the employee truly deserves termination? In extreme cases, this could lead the employer to additional risk if the employee is endangering people or projects.
Unions typically prohibit companies from hiring non-union employees. If you as a software programmer want to work for company X, you can only do so by joining the union, even if you don't want to. Union's will look at any attempts to hire a non-union employee as "stealing a job" from a union worker.
Unions see overtime as potential for another worker rather than an opportunity for current union members to pick up additional income. (This is the case with my father, a plumber, who made more money as a non-union plumber due to being able to work overtime. When his shop was unionized, his annual income went from about $54K to $32K. Sure, he didn't have to work any overtime, but now he can't possibly make enough money to maintain his lifestyle. As pointed out above, he can't potentially make any more money due to the union setting the rate.)
I guess if I were an underachiever, I'd probably welcome a union. For what it's worth, I've worked places (construction - plumbing and concrete finishing and geospatial data conversion shops) where at the time I probably would have welcomed a union, but looking back, I believe it would have been a mistake. If the jobs were unionized, I might have made a little more money (of course paying a bit of that back to the union), but I might not have been as driven to find better opportunities.
Now why would I want to get my pay based on seniority rather than performance? I have several family members (father included) in construction unions and I don't see how the benefits would help in the technology sector. If anything, I'd see unionization as a sure way to move jobs out of the country even faster.
The comparison is not entirely fair though. Game developers for console systems know that they are limited to a specific configuration while PC game developers are, as you say, pushing the cutting edge.
I tend to think that even with onboard graphics we'll find that the hard core gamer will still desire to go to the latest hardware and hard core developers will follow.
I don't know if that's really true. Fraud seems to stem from greed, not need, and greed is universal.
I'll agree with that to some extent. My thought was that a person who has more to lose will be a bit more careful with their actions. Doesn't guarantee that a person will be honest, but it probably reduces the chance they'll commit fraud.
My neighbor, who had her credit ruined, is doing much better now. Her incident was a couple years back so things are starting to return to normal. They also managed to find the person involved, which helped a bit too. She still had to deal with the creditors involved though to prove that it wasn't her, and they weren't always willing to clear things up too quickly.
Generally agree with you but how will paying 200% (defraud me of $6000, pay me $12000 back) really work? Likely the money will come from the account of another victim. If the person doing the fraud had a significant amount of money to begin with, they'd be less likely to do identity fraud.
For the rest of the punishment ideas, what you listed sounds good to me. I have a neighbor who has the misfortune of having a very common name (Kim Smith) and she's been battling for about 5 years because another Kim Smith ruined her credit.
I'll be needing a bit more than 1GB of storage at that point. Some of my favorite games are 2GBs+ for the just the basic install.
Likely the applications installed so that all users could have access and personal data would be stored per user. You probably wouldn't require all that much personal space for applications. (NOTE: This would require a change in the applications for restricting usage based on user licensing rather than system license) Now for files like music (although a music service could be offered and you wouldn't personally need a copy in your disk space), video (again, a service could be offered), and pictures, you may require a bit of space.
Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ
on
A Dual Monitor Experiment
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· Score: 4, Interesting
You may be interested then in multi-head displays from PanoramTech. We tried their 3 headed displays for a demo environment and it was well received by analyst who typically leave their main application up on one, a web search on the second, and email, reporting tools,and other apps on the last screen. While not practical for all users, multiple screens have their use.
I doubt that government programs could solely support themselves as the benefits/users of the program may not be able to entirely afford the program but the indirect benefits affect many. You could also run into issues where cooperation between programs would be reduced due to no requirements from higher up the government chain. In some cases though, I do agree that self sustainment for programs should be possible, but I doubt it would work for all programs. If all programs were self funded, I think we'd see an increase in economic disparity and getting out of an ecomonically challenged area to better one would be extremely difficult.
Sometimes we have to look at the benefits of a civilization beyond a local level as the impact of some programs will go well beyond the local area.
I think what BlueFoot was trying to say is that paying taxes is an understandable expense as long as it's not wasted. If so, I fall in that category. Government needs money to operate and I understand that some of my earnings must support it. Maybe I'm at the income level where the amount I pay in taxes isn't as noticable as when I first started my career. In general, I can afford most of the basics that I need to survive (a house in the DC Metro being the one thing that is beyond me at this time). Paying taxes provides many services that allow this country to thrive.
I think most people would appreciate a smaller more efficient government, but the debate will start with "how small". Reducing government and it's programs will certainly lower the amount of taxes needed but deciding on what gets cut is the difficult part, hence electing people who we feel will make the changes to government that we support.
Actually we should point them to first person shooter games.
My two kids and my wife play NeoPets, although my wife and son play it more than my daughter. My son has actually become pretty good at buying/finding items and selling them for profit. He's figured out the economics of the game. They all enjoy the game challenges, but if gambling is really that much of a concern, we'd have to ban quite a few sites that offer gambling style games. Guess the kid orientation of the site is causing the problem, but in my opinion, responsible parents should be checking what their kids are doing online. Parents should make the decision on their own to allow/disallow access rather than trying to take the site down. Parents should allow/disallow their children from accessing certain sites based on their own values and the maturity of their kids.
I agree that the read-only isn't appropriate for every environment, but it can be effective. System security is still the best practice for any system (read-only or read-write). Even on the r/o system, you still want to secure information (if you password resides in/etc/passwd or/etc/shadow, you'll still want to lock it down, even if r/o) to protect it.
The systems in question are critical systems so the additional lock down is justified. The customers really didn't want anyone changing configurations without a bit of effort.
As for future systems, a multi-layer approach to security will likely be used but may differ from system to system based on user requirements. In some systems, the r/o approach may still fit in their scheme. The securing method will all depend on security requirements.
The idea of mounting a filesystem read-only isn't all that far fetched. In a product environment mounting the OS and application file systems as read-only prevents modification. On several production environments for clients I've dealt with, I've seen where only the only r/w filesystems were the/var directory, home directories and a couple data directories. A configuration like this may not work for all environments (software development, maybe a home system where frequent software installs occur, etc...), but it has reasonable uses.
I hadn't considered the Copyright aspects of this. In most cases, your probably right that the companies could make back their investment but at the individual level, this might not be true. If you take a very small company that creates a very desirable (new/unique) product, they may not be able to ramp up marketing/sales as fast as a huge company that realizes the benefits of the product and duplicates it with it's resources. The huge company could easily take the idea and surpass the originator before they can recover. Using a patent should provide a limited amount of protection, particularly in the case of an individual or small company.
As for someone someone coming up with a similar idea (you don't inherently deserve to be compensated just because somebody else was able to come up with something similar and It is the responsibility of the software's creator to find a way to sell a product in a timely fashion.), who determines how much time a person/company has to recoup the investment cost? Some companies have the resources to do this at a much quicker pace than others so should they get the advantage? If so, would you forsee a decline in business startups due to the likelyhood that they would be driven out by high development cost with a very high risk of not being able to recover that development cost due to weaker marketing?
Depends on which home. Many home PC's are used as gaming systems and until the vendors start supporting Linux, you won't get the mass conversion (and yes, I'm aware that some vendors do support Linux, but people will want all the popular titles). For the email and office like use, sure Linux can replace the operating system. Users will just expect a comfortable interface to protect them from really knowing how the OS works.
In the case of software, where the cost of reproduction is essentially nil, the inventor is not prevented by financial constraints from further developing their idea beyond the prototype.
You mention the cost of reproduction, but what about the cost of discovery? If a person/company invest time/money into development of a unique software concept, what allows them to cover the cost of time/money for the discovery process? Should this person/company be able to recover the cost of time/money at all? I'm gathering by your posting that individuals should figure to not to recover any of the investment of discovery. In that case, do you have any software ideas that I can market? I don't know about you, but I have financial responsibilities to my family.
but it also specifies a date after which the invention is to be given to society at large for the benefit of everyone.
I totally agree with you on this. A patent on an idea should allow the inventor a reasonable time period to recover the price of discovery after which it should become public domain.
FYI, I'm not involved in patent type work, so I'm not trying to justify any work I'm doing. I can just appreciate some of the protections offered under the patent system. I'm not saying the system is without flaws and I certainly don't claim to understand much beyond the basics of patents.
May work for you, but what about the company that invested in the discovery? Do you believe they should be compensated for the money invested in the discovery process? I realize some patented ideas are very obvious, but some are for ideas that required some real effort/money and should allow for some level of reward. I realize that some people are motivated to innovate for the sake of innovation, but many innovate for the rewards.
I think it's a CD included on the back cover of the Bible. The EULA is a bit strict though. Make sure to get the most recent version (the one with the New Testament). Other GOD compiler's exist (although the licensing agreement for the predominant one may restrict you to only use it's version) for various operating systems so make sure to get the appropriate religious text.
Back to the topic and only being a novice programmer myself, I'd think that any feedback from the compiler on known exploit flaws could be useful. I wouldn't necessarily want to release software just relying on the compiler flags over good programming practices.
I actually have my emails set to auto delete from Slashdot and occasionally check past postings when I hit the web page. The AC just happened to be in the tree.
I imagine that we could argue this without reaching an end so I'm just going to point that changing the state of information from unknown to known is as intangible as the information itself (neither having a physical state). As for divulging the information, this still falls under discovery and the end consumer of the information, while indirectly funding discovery, is likely under the impression that they are buying information. Even if information doesn't have a physical state, it has a value placed on it by those who value the information.
Could one argue that computers (operating sytem, hardware, and software) themselves are inducing people to commit copyright infringement? Without the PC, how many games/music/movies/software/etc... would be copied?
Just because a tool can be used for illegal actions doesn't mean the tool itself is bad (as you point out with the knife example). If tools are considered responsible for criminal activities, we might as well eliminate quite a bit of the technology we use (cars, guns, knives, PCs, VCRs, baseball bats, plastic wrap, rope, paper, fuel, etc...) as they can all be quite useful when applied incorrectly.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually read through some of the other parts of this post after having replied to your post. I probably should have read them before getting so critical.
turn to be screwed
I've only had this happen once. A manager went against my instructions and it cost the company about $5,000 in a printing mistake. The manager was only supposed to run off 2 copies of a mylar orthophoto plot for quality control and the manager ran off several hundred (NOTE: The printing was handled via an outside vendor as the plots were digital to plate and over 36 inches in the X and Y directions). I had a simple mistake (map tic marks out of position) that would have been caught on review of the two sample plots, but the manager, in the interest of saving time, decided to run all the plots. I took the blame for that. Fortunately for me, I already had a new job awaiting me.
For the second point of paycheck vs job satisfaction, I too work for the paycheck and the job satisfaction. Maybe I'm an exception, but why not have both. I do have the fortune of living in the DC Metro area so jobs are a bit easier to come by. Of course that is why I moved to the area from Pennsylvania where jobs were scarce and employers could "screw" employees. As for age, I'm mid-30s and my hobbies generally involve activities with my kids, so work is not the only satisifaction. I coach various sports activities with them (soccer, football) so I'm not working all that much overtime unless necessary. Unpaid overtime is necessary at times. All I can hope is that any OT will reflect well on my performance reviews (which apparently it has). As an additional note (as I mentioned with my previous post), I switched positions within my current employer. If money were the only issue, I'd have stayed with the one position rather than my current position. I gave up about $14,000 (mostly shift differential and various position bonuses) to take a more interesting/challenging position. The position I gave up was a mindless job of watching systems to make sure they were available (services running, resources available, etc...) and the current one involves software research and development. In my opinion, pay isn't everything if the position doesn't provide some challenges or will bore you to death.
I've had periods where I have to do the 60-80 hours a week (usually demo prep, product delivery, or critical milestones in the development process) as well as stretches where 40 hours is all I do. In most cases, I've found the managers to be quite flexible in working around any scheduling conflicts with personal activities.
Maybe I'm addicted to IT (my wife would probably agree with that) but it's helped me tremendously in advancing my career which in turn greatly benefits my family.
Please stop speaking for the rest of us
I wasn't speaking for everyone. I was under the impression that this is a forum where everyone can express their ideas, even if others will disagree with them. In this case, I disagree with your statement that "I'm speaking for everyone".
OK, so some questions for you then...
Would belonging to a union really improve job satisfaction?
Do you only work for a paycheck or do you want personal satisfaction from accomplishing a task?
While an increase in pay would certainly be appreciated by anyone, would you stay at a job only for the pay if another challenging position were available? Consider people that choose careers (social services, teachers, church leaders, police, and many others) where they receive little or no pay and still choose the career because they get other satisfaction from the work.
...who work because we have to...
I certainly "have" to work to cover bills (two kids - elementary and middle school so no college yet, but saving for it; a wife who is a returning adult student in college; and the usual expenses (shelter, food, utilities, vehicles, etc...) for family activies). I do work with some single people who have considered cutting back work schedules to part time status, just to enjoy life, but they haven't because they seem to enjoy the work too. Basically I'm trying to say that very few people could give up working all together and therefore most people (other than those with huge trust funds) end up having to work to make ends meet.
My wife worked as a cashier in college a while back and she was in a similar situation as you. After paying the union dues, she was making less than minimum wage. The union provided nothing to her as a part time employee and actually cost her more than it was worth (the pay rate less than minimum wage).
Since when have cubicle jobs rewarded for "performance"?
As my follow up to the other poster indicates, I've worked in the cubicle farm environment. I did data conversion projects (hard copy maps to digital datasets primarily) and while the rewards were not what I would have wanted, relative to other coworkers (I had 10% raises while many others were in the 3-5% with a few getting 0%. Please note though that 10% of a low salary isn't exactly much to brag about though, no matter the spin the my manager put on it.), I didn't do too badly. In fact, the first "real" company I worked for probably paid the worst but provided the best learning opportunity for me. I of course looked for other opportunities where I could continue to advance my career, financially and technically. I knew that the company couldn't pay much beyond what I was already getting without passing the cost along to the customers. Then again, the cubicle farm is generally an environment where you are hiring a lot of similarly skilled employees to do bulk work and want to keep the cost level. The pay level is generally dictated by what the company can afford to pay while continuing to bring in new work. By overpaying one employee, they'll have to make it up elsewhere or they won't remain competitive. If they can't compete, the company won't have any jobs to offer and then you'd have people in the unemployment line.
Oddly enough, some people don't have a reason to get rid of their dial-up. They are content with the slower speed if it saves them $20+/month. These users typically check email and not much else. While I question AOLs decision to drop broadband, maintaining dial-up for the users who don't have need for broadband is still viable (although as broadband prices drop, I'm sure this will change rapidly).
(Maybe my understanding of unions is a bit biased so please forgive me, and feel free to point out, if I am mistaken on the details.)
Don't unions collectively bargain for pay rates? Doesn't that ensure that every employee at a position category will receive the same pay no matter how well/poorly they perform? This doesn't exactly encourage people to put forth their best effort.
Unions protect the employees by making employee termination much more difficult to the employer. While the advantages are probably pretty obvious, this puts additional burden on the employer to build a case against an employee for termination if the employee truly deserves termination? In extreme cases, this could lead the employer to additional risk if the employee is endangering people or projects.
Unions typically prohibit companies from hiring non-union employees. If you as a software programmer want to work for company X, you can only do so by joining the union, even if you don't want to. Union's will look at any attempts to hire a non-union employee as "stealing a job" from a union worker.
Unions see overtime as potential for another worker rather than an opportunity for current union members to pick up additional income. (This is the case with my father, a plumber, who made more money as a non-union plumber due to being able to work overtime. When his shop was unionized, his annual income went from about $54K to $32K. Sure, he didn't have to work any overtime, but now he can't possibly make enough money to maintain his lifestyle. As pointed out above, he can't potentially make any more money due to the union setting the rate.)
I guess if I were an underachiever, I'd probably welcome a union. For what it's worth, I've worked places (construction - plumbing and concrete finishing and geospatial data conversion shops) where at the time I probably would have welcomed a union, but looking back, I believe it would have been a mistake. If the jobs were unionized, I might have made a little more money (of course paying a bit of that back to the union), but I might not have been as driven to find better opportunities.
The technology sector is ripe for unionization.
Now why would I want to get my pay based on seniority rather than performance? I have several family members (father included) in construction unions and I don't see how the benefits would help in the technology sector. If anything, I'd see unionization as a sure way to move jobs out of the country even faster.
The comparison is not entirely fair though. Game developers for console systems know that they are limited to a specific configuration while PC game developers are, as you say, pushing the cutting edge.
I tend to think that even with onboard graphics we'll find that the hard core gamer will still desire to go to the latest hardware and hard core developers will follow.
I don't know if that's really true. Fraud seems to stem from greed, not need, and greed is universal.
I'll agree with that to some extent. My thought was that a person who has more to lose will be a bit more careful with their actions. Doesn't guarantee that a person will be honest, but it probably reduces the chance they'll commit fraud.
My neighbor, who had her credit ruined, is doing much better now. Her incident was a couple years back so things are starting to return to normal. They also managed to find the person involved, which helped a bit too. She still had to deal with the creditors involved though to prove that it wasn't her, and they weren't always willing to clear things up too quickly.
Generally agree with you but how will paying 200% (defraud me of $6000, pay me $12000 back) really work? Likely the money will come from the account of another victim. If the person doing the fraud had a significant amount of money to begin with, they'd be less likely to do identity fraud.
For the rest of the punishment ideas, what you listed sounds good to me. I have a neighbor who has the misfortune of having a very common name (Kim Smith) and she's been battling for about 5 years because another Kim Smith ruined her credit.
I'll be needing a bit more than 1GB of storage at that point. Some of my favorite games are 2GBs+ for the just the basic install.
Likely the applications installed so that all users could have access and personal data would be stored per user. You probably wouldn't require all that much personal space for applications. (NOTE: This would require a change in the applications for restricting usage based on user licensing rather than system license) Now for files like music (although a music service could be offered and you wouldn't personally need a copy in your disk space), video (again, a service could be offered), and pictures, you may require a bit of space.
You may be interested then in multi-head displays from PanoramTech. We tried their 3 headed displays for a demo environment and it was well received by analyst who typically leave their main application up on one, a web search on the second, and email, reporting tools,and other apps on the last screen. While not practical for all users, multiple screens have their use.
I doubt that government programs could solely support themselves as the benefits/users of the program may not be able to entirely afford the program but the indirect benefits affect many. You could also run into issues where cooperation between programs would be reduced due to no requirements from higher up the government chain. In some cases though, I do agree that self sustainment for programs should be possible, but I doubt it would work for all programs. If all programs were self funded, I think we'd see an increase in economic disparity and getting out of an ecomonically challenged area to better one would be extremely difficult.
Sometimes we have to look at the benefits of a civilization beyond a local level as the impact of some programs will go well beyond the local area.
I think what BlueFoot was trying to say is that paying taxes is an understandable expense as long as it's not wasted. If so, I fall in that category. Government needs money to operate and I understand that some of my earnings must support it. Maybe I'm at the income level where the amount I pay in taxes isn't as noticable as when I first started my career. In general, I can afford most of the basics that I need to survive (a house in the DC Metro being the one thing that is beyond me at this time). Paying taxes provides many services that allow this country to thrive.
I think most people would appreciate a smaller more efficient government, but the debate will start with "how small". Reducing government and it's programs will certainly lower the amount of taxes needed but deciding on what gets cut is the difficult part, hence electing people who we feel will make the changes to government that we support.
Actually we should point them to first person shooter games.
My two kids and my wife play NeoPets, although my wife and son play it more than my daughter. My son has actually become pretty good at buying/finding items and selling them for profit. He's figured out the economics of the game. They all enjoy the game challenges, but if gambling is really that much of a concern, we'd have to ban quite a few sites that offer gambling style games. Guess the kid orientation of the site is causing the problem, but in my opinion, responsible parents should be checking what their kids are doing online. Parents should make the decision on their own to allow/disallow access rather than trying to take the site down. Parents should allow/disallow their children from accessing certain sites based on their own values and the maturity of their kids.
I agree that the read-only isn't appropriate for every environment, but it can be effective. System security is still the best practice for any system (read-only or read-write). Even on the r/o system, you still want to secure information (if you password resides in /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow, you'll still want to lock it down, even if r/o) to protect it.
The systems in question are critical systems so the additional lock down is justified. The customers really didn't want anyone changing configurations without a bit of effort.
As for future systems, a multi-layer approach to security will likely be used but may differ from system to system based on user requirements. In some systems, the r/o approach may still fit in their scheme. The securing method will all depend on security requirements.
The idea of mounting a filesystem read-only isn't all that far fetched. In a product environment mounting the OS and application file systems as read-only prevents modification. On several production environments for clients I've dealt with, I've seen where only the only r/w filesystems were the /var directory, home directories and a couple data directories. A configuration like this may not work for all environments (software development, maybe a home system where frequent software installs occur, etc...), but it has reasonable uses.
I hadn't considered the Copyright aspects of this. In most cases, your probably right that the companies could make back their investment but at the individual level, this might not be true. If you take a very small company that creates a very desirable (new/unique) product, they may not be able to ramp up marketing/sales as fast as a huge company that realizes the benefits of the product and duplicates it with it's resources. The huge company could easily take the idea and surpass the originator before they can recover. Using a patent should provide a limited amount of protection, particularly in the case of an individual or small company.
As for someone someone coming up with a similar idea (you don't inherently deserve to be compensated just because somebody else was able to come up with something similar and It is the responsibility of the software's creator to find a way to sell a product in a timely fashion.), who determines how much time a person/company has to recoup the investment cost? Some companies have the resources to do this at a much quicker pace than others so should they get the advantage? If so, would you forsee a decline in business startups due to the likelyhood that they would be driven out by high development cost with a very high risk of not being able to recover that development cost due to weaker marketing?
Depends on which home. Many home PC's are used as gaming systems and until the vendors start supporting Linux, you won't get the mass conversion (and yes, I'm aware that some vendors do support Linux, but people will want all the popular titles). For the email and office like use, sure Linux can replace the operating system. Users will just expect a comfortable interface to protect them from really knowing how the OS works.
In the case of software, where the cost of reproduction is essentially nil, the inventor is not prevented by financial constraints from further developing their idea beyond the prototype.
You mention the cost of reproduction, but what about the cost of discovery? If a person/company invest time/money into development of a unique software concept, what allows them to cover the cost of time/money for the discovery process? Should this person/company be able to recover the cost of time/money at all? I'm gathering by your posting that individuals should figure to not to recover any of the investment of discovery. In that case, do you have any software ideas that I can market? I don't know about you, but I have financial responsibilities to my family.
but it also specifies a date after which the invention is to be given to society at large for the benefit of everyone.
I totally agree with you on this. A patent on an idea should allow the inventor a reasonable time period to recover the price of discovery after which it should become public domain.
FYI, I'm not involved in patent type work, so I'm not trying to justify any work I'm doing. I can just appreciate some of the protections offered under the patent system. I'm not saying the system is without flaws and I certainly don't claim to understand much beyond the basics of patents.
May work for you, but what about the company that invested in the discovery? Do you believe they should be compensated for the money invested in the discovery process? I realize some patented ideas are very obvious, but some are for ideas that required some real effort/money and should allow for some level of reward. I realize that some people are motivated to innovate for the sake of innovation, but many innovate for the rewards.
I think it's a CD included on the back cover of the Bible. The EULA is a bit strict though. Make sure to get the most recent version (the one with the New Testament). Other GOD compiler's exist (although the licensing agreement for the predominant one may restrict you to only use it's version) for various operating systems so make sure to get the appropriate religious text.
Back to the topic and only being a novice programmer myself, I'd think that any feedback from the compiler on known exploit flaws could be useful. I wouldn't necessarily want to release software just relying on the compiler flags over good programming practices.
I actually have my emails set to auto delete from Slashdot and occasionally check past postings when I hit the web page. The AC just happened to be in the tree.
I imagine that we could argue this without reaching an end so I'm just going to point that changing the state of information from unknown to known is as intangible as the information itself (neither having a physical state). As for divulging the information, this still falls under discovery and the end consumer of the information, while indirectly funding discovery, is likely under the impression that they are buying information. Even if information doesn't have a physical state, it has a value placed on it by those who value the information.
The AC that responded before me hit on this with a pretty good example. I'll add my own:
Company X, that produces widgets, just discovered a new process to develop widgets more efficiently.
Company Y sends employee Sneaky out to have lunch with employee Broke from company X.
Employee Sneaky knowing employee Broke's financial difficulty offers to pay $50,000 for the secret of Company X's Widget enhancement.
What exactly is employee Sneaky paying for? Even though information does not have a tangible form, it can still have a value.
Could one argue that computers (operating sytem, hardware, and software) themselves are inducing people to commit copyright infringement? Without the PC, how many games/music/movies/software/etc... would be copied?
Just because a tool can be used for illegal actions doesn't mean the tool itself is bad (as you point out with the knife example). If tools are considered responsible for criminal activities, we might as well eliminate quite a bit of the technology we use (cars, guns, knives, PCs, VCRs, baseball bats, plastic wrap, rope, paper, fuel, etc...) as they can all be quite useful when applied incorrectly.