For Yahelite under wine on (pick distro) Linux, you can change over to the YCHT (why chat) protocol and connect.
What is really irritating is that you think you've been cracked, so you go around and change passwords everywhere.
I understand that this is all about money, and setting up their chat enironment so that you must view the ads. And I don't mind viewing the ads using YMessenger since they are mostly now well-behaved and don't take over the entire chat screen.
What I do mind is that there is no good Linux client (although you can use the Java client), and that official client does such a poor job of blocking spam 'bots.
If Yahoo would fix these two glaring issues, I might even enjoy chatting using their client. For right now, I'll suffer with Yahelite and the YCHT protocol under wine (with no voice or cam).
After all, it's free so I get exactly what I pay for.
Personally I have no interest in Microsoft products being improved upon, and I will not be contributing to the "How can we make IE better?" parade.
People at Microsoft must understand the following:
Complete and accurate support of publicly available, published standards
The web is for information, not execution. It is especially not for execution of programs on my hard disk.
Remote information should be treated as non-trusted.
If the people at Microsoft don't understand the above, then they have no concept of user requirements, requirements analysis, or software construction.
That would leave Microsoft as a large corporation of marketing wizards bent on trapping unwary customers much like a pitcher plant traps insects.
Well, in case you don't know, police already use cell phone positioning to track your location.
I was angry one night and made the mistake of saying I'm off to ride into the sunset (at 10 PM). I then took off on a 20 mile bike sprint, which I do when I'm really frustrated.
It's amazing how well a little endorphin kick plus some physical exercise brings clarity back to an otherwise murky or ugly situation.
Anyway, since I am on call, I took my cell phone. About 15 minutes into my ride, this black and white cop car pulls onto the bike path (which runs along a river). The police officers flash their lights at me and I pull over.
They ask for my ID, and ask if I normally ride at this time of night. Well, normally no, but it's not unheard of. I ask if I'm under any sort of suspicion, and of course they say no.
Just the same, they want a DNA sample (?!) and detain me until a detective shows up.
After the sample is taken, I ask what this is about (again). They give me some song and dance about a serial rapist who is suspected of using a bicycle to get around.
We'll leave the question about why they thought I was their suspect (didn't fit the description) for another story that police tell you. And yes, the rapist was finally caught, and yes the rapist used a bike, and no that sick person is NOT me.
Finally, I'm allowed to work off my blue funk by finishing up the ride.
It turns out that a friend pulled off a bit of social engineering to convince the police I was an immediate danger to myself or others. I guess the person didn't like my way of dealing with a blue funk.
So folks if you wish to embarass your friends or neighbors, just do the following.
obtain the person's cell phone number
call the local police
social engineer local police concerning eminent danger
Soon you'll have your target being pulled over by police officers in no time.
I do have to admit - it was an elegent piece of social engineering. I wasn't really pleased at being the target of it, however . . .
Hmmm, I suppose you've never looked at the cost of software maintenance, training, and software integration of Microsoft products.
Maintenence . . . . you have forced upgrades, required reboots (translates to downtime), and prohibitively expensive maintenance support costs.
Services . . . . I have yet to find Microsoft services capable of answering even the simplest of questions. For this I can pay a huge amount of money.
Integration . . . The key to any software integration project is the adherence to well-defined, published, and freely available standards. This is why the Internet works so well. This is why you can run SOAP and web services between competing vendors. This is why you can use XML-RPC and accomplish an amazing amount of integration. This is why EDI worked well in the transportation and distribution industry. This is one of the reasons OSI failed (standard costs were expensive).
The challenge with a Microsoft-centric solution is that it adheres to standards poorly if at all. And of course, like Cabletron (remember them, the networking company that eschewed standards for a proprietary management system) this will only be cost-effective in a single vendor solution.
Training costs for Microsoft are every bit as high as training costs for open source products. Many organizations don't train their users on Microsoft products, which is what Microsoft then uses as a training cost baseline.
If you have ever had to work with a reasonably complex Word document that someone else has created, you know what disaster this lack of training can be. Often it is easier to create a properly (?) structured Word document and paste in the contents rather than attempting to fix the original work.
In short, capital costs are lower, maintenance costs and schedules are business-driven instead of vendor-driven, services are better (would be difficult to be worse), integration is better, and training is a wash.
Another clear advantage with open source is that you can train your IS staff on principles and concepts instead of vendor-specifics. This means that when the next IT revolution hits, your staff will be in a position to take advantage of it.
It also means that your IS staff and business are insulated from capricious vendor changes that REQUIRE specialized and expensive training.
Yes, there are extension issues in Firefox. I don't know about Thunderbird because I haven't started using it yet.
I was emailing one of the extension writers the other day about not being able to install his extention on my Linux platform, but it installed perfectly on my Windows/2000 platform.
In part, his response was that the locale portion of the extension manager may need to be tweaked.
To get around this, he recommended installing in a new profile. What I did was to back up my profile, completely delete the.mozilla directory, and then start up Firefox. I then imported my bookmarks, copied back in all my passwords, and set up my extensions.
Everything went smoothly.
For Mozex, you have to hack in the extension since the extension manager API has changed. Other than that, the new releases are great!
In short, when in doubt talk to the developers (nice thing about open source software), haul out your tools, and fix it yourself.
Then publish a brief how-to so that others can avoid the grief.
If people are interested, I'll write up the Mozex hack.
3.8E-01 * 9.3E07 = 3.534E07 miles 3.534E07 / 6 ms = 5.89E05 miles / ms 5.89E05 miles/ms = 5.89E09 miles/sec
5.89E09 / 1.86E05 = 3.2E04 times speed of light
Someone phone the Vulcans, we have warp.
If someone has the distance from Earth to Mars at the end of the Martian winter, plus a more accurate number for the speed of light in a vaccuum, please clean up the number.
Oh, and if we're talking about networks, we've not included propogation delay nor the speed of light for the (small) distance that the signal is present on copper.
It's called software release management (SRM) and infrastructure configuration management (ICM). Both are parts of general configuation management.
According to a Gartner study (I don't have it at my fingertips), over 90% of all failures in mission critical systems are due to poor problem or configuration management. When this study was done, Gartner estimated that only 6% of the major corporations would have industry best practices in place by 2004.
Hmm - sounds like both the Bank of Canada and the English FAA got bit by this big time.
This discipline sounds like a great business opportunity. Unfortunately my previous employer disagreed.
My previous employer also shut down a (formerly) successful consulting organization and laid off 1100 talented individuals.
I wonder how much the Bank of Canada would have paid for this type of expertise. Of course, the check might be a day or two late . . .
This is not about artist, craftsperson, or support person jobs (see the MPAA ads concerning movie pirating).
This is all about job protection. The jobs that are being protected are marketing people, 'executive' management, and other high priced people that provide little to nothing in the way of product or product enhancement.
I have no problem with paying artists, craftspeople, or support people. They are the folks providing me with great music, great movies (?!), great TV (ok . . . maybe not), and great books (?!).
I have a great deal of trouble paying advertising 'executives', focus group managers, and other people who impose their lack of sensibilities on what I may or may not experience.
For a more humorous and scathing treatment of these folks (and telephone sanitizers) read Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
These people use copy protection, DRM, and deep pockets to influence lawmakers for one reason and one reason only . . ..
. . . to protect their 6/7+ figure salries and lifestyles.
What people are willing to pay for is changing. People are less and less willing to pay for garbage. Corporations are less and less willing to pay consultants for knowledge that leaves the company as soon as the consultants leave the engagement.
Traditional (read last 30 years) business executives are scared. Traditional business schools are scared. They will do anything to protect the status quo.
Parallels between selling IP and selling hard goods in the 1900s can be drawn. What sold then was a quality product that would accomplish the task a buyer wished to accomplish.
What will sell now are the insights that artists provide and the skills to solve increasingly complex problems of interest.
Good artists are rare. I will pay (have paid) money to obtain copies of their work. Solving complex and interesting (to me) problems is worth paying for.
The entire business of foisting garbage on an increasingly unwilling public would die if it were not for the activist legislation funded deep-pocketed individuals.
They sell protectionist schemes to lawmakers by promising to support future initiatives and thus keeping the current lawmakers in power.
They sell protectionist schemes to stockholders by promising increased worth.
All of this is for one purpose and one purpose only - the accumulation of wealth/power by people who do nothing but accumulate wealth/power.
The solution . . . . as Sean Penn stated:
"But if we do not participate in an educated democracy, we participate in its demise."
Somewhere around first or second grade, kids go from learning equals fun to learning equals work.
About that same time, learning goes from mostly experiential to mostly abstract.
In junior high and high school you'll hear a common rant - "Why do I have to learn this? I'll never use it in real life!"
I think that rant sums up the problem. The connection between real life and knowledge is broken very early on in our educational system.
Most adults are used to thinking in very complex (to students) abstract terms. They can't imagine or remember how to think with a more limited set of abstract tools.
Shoot, many adults treat children condescendingly because they feel that children cannot understand what is going on. How many times have you heard an adult (usually a parent) say, "That's just the way it is."
Sometimes that happens because an adult is just too lazy to sit down and explain things. However, a lot of the time is because the adult has NO CLUE about how to explain something in terms that are consistent, correct, and within the grasp of the audience.
That is of course, if the adult really knows. How many times have you heard an adult say to a child, "I don't know. Are you interested in finding out with me?"
I think one solution to this problem is to combine experiential learning and abstract learning. I used to do this on my own simply because I was interested in finding out what I could do with my new abstract tools.
However, helping kids make that connection is the key. In doing that, you actually foster creativity, problem solving skills, and encourage curiosity. Shoot - the teacher might even learn a thing or two along the way.
This concept shouldn't be restricted to math and science. How about history? If a teacher could relate historical and cultural past to the way groups of people act now, we might understand rather than hate. We might even move toward solving more difficult problems (sociological, psychological).
Nah - It'll never happen. However, I still remain the idealist.
Like you, I didn't read the entire article since it requires a digital subscription.
There was a time when I would have chosen to read Scientific American, but now I choose not to.
Gee - choice. And I chose. And I'm happy with my choice.
That wasn't too difficult. I don't need a massage. OK, I do, but that's because I did a 60 mile bike ride this weekend and my legs are a bit cranky.
Personally, I think Professor Schwartz misses the cause and effect. These people who stress over too many choices could be the ones who have been told all their lives what to choose. When confronted with real choice and no clear dictum from an authority figure these people stress.
[There are a few good sociology and psychology studies buried in this hypothesis, and maybe I'll take the time to flesh them out.]
By authority figure, I don't mean just mom, dad, the doctor, big (or little) government, or the church. I mean anyone from local pundits to "experts" who people place in a position to tell them what they want.
That's really the key here. People do not know what they want, and if they do, most do not know why they want it. Many people just believe whatever is told them. This includes what they want.
This of course is a principle of advertising.
1. Define a want 2. Broadcast the want 3. Convince the consumer that it is their want
For example - do I want fancy ring tones, cameras, or to play games on my cell phone? Are night minutes starting at 7PM really important to me?
1. No - vibrate works well 2. No - not pleased with picture quality 3. No - the games are ugly 4. No - many people eat dinner between 7-9 pm
Simple. I know what I prefer because I'm aware of what I do.
If you have too much stress from too many choices then you might ask, "What is it that I want?" If you find yourself not knowing what makes you "happy", then it's probably time to start asking.
And if you find that "happiness" depends on other people, then you are screwed . . .
First of all, Microsoft's products do not have a consistent user interface. There are simple issues, such as having Quit exit a program in one product, while Exit ends a program on another product.
There are more interesting issues, such as the location and layout of the Options submenus, which can be different on different products while providing the same functionality.
The only consistent interface at the USER level that I am aware of is the Apple interface. Apple has always been concerned with look and feel, and a large portion of Inside Macintosh was devoted to the 'correct' programming of the user interface. You could not have your Macintosh application Apple-certified if you violated the guidelines set down in Inside Macintosh. Apple even had (still has?) evangelists that go to different companies teaching people the proper way to program a user interface.
The various flavors of UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems really are quite consistent in their user interface provided you stay within a particular desktop environment. I happen to like KDE, and I find KDE 3.2.1 to be very reasonable. Other people like Gnome, and still other people like CDE.
As the desktop environments become more mature, there is the good possibility that the applications running on those desktop environments will become more consistent. Personally, I find the gratuitous interface changes in Windows to be more annoying than anything I've run into in a UNIX environment.
Finally, there is the consideration of a command line interface. Call me old-school, but I cannot be productive without a good command line interface. UNIX commands are written by a large number of people, and the command line switches are many and confusing.
However, they all handle the shell metacharacters in the same fashion. You cannot say this with Windows, where some commands handle the spaces in file names correctly, while others do not. These are commands that are written by the same company, and they still cannot get it right.
Windows is a nearly completely inferior product. The reason that so many people use Windows is due to the following factors.
1. Marketing 2. Default OS on commodity products 3. Conditioning
Marketing has propelled many inferior products to dominance. For example, Novell managed to completely destroy Banyan, although at the time Banyan's StreetTalk was arguably superior to Novell's broadcasting and flat namespace technology.
However, even Microsoft is becoming challenged by this approach. The new Microsoft Office advertisements are painfully bad. I see no reason to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2003 on my Windows/2000 Pro platform. Neither do I see any reason to upgrade to Windows/XP Professional.
Since Windows is the default OS on home platforms, most people will just "go with the flow". People who have little or no knowledge of an area are likely to exhibit "behavioral inertia".
Microsoft has been enhancing this recently by providing Armed Services personnel with free copies of its office software. By building this inertia, Microsoft hopes to retain and expand its government business.
Finally, there is conditioning to take into account. Microsoft products crash, have serious security problems, and are very resource intensive. In addition to that, some problems can only be repaired by completely re-installing the operating system and applications.
People have become conditioned to a poor computing experience. They complain about it all the time, but due to the behavioral inertia issues they are reluctant to change.
For those of us who actually need to get work done on a system, the program failures, security issues, and resource requirements are significant problems. I will happily run Linux/FreeBSD/OS X/Solaris (and even AIX/HP-UX) in order to get work accomplished.
I will play games and chat on Windows/2000 Pro. Occasionally I'll check a web page I'm working on in IE. As for getting work done, I'll stay with OpenOffice (or StarOffice), emacs, NetBeans/Eclipse, and other tools available on multiple platforms.
1. Microsoft products are not compromised until a patch or knowledge base article is released.
2. Therefore, if patches and knowledge base articles are not released, there would be no security exploits.
3. There would be no security exploits because the black hats would be too incompetent to write security exploits without specialized knowledge available only to Microsoft programmers.
4. The fact that other systems (hardware and software) have been exploited before the release of patches or information makes those products less secure (worse) that Microsoft products.
5. This means that Microsoft programmers are better than any black hat programmer.
6. This means that Microsoft programmers are better than any other firmware or software programmer who has ever had a system breached by a black hat.
Sadly enough, there are many CIOs that will believe this sort of logic.
Sadly enough, there are many CIOs that will relinquish control of critical business functions to a company with incompatible business goals.
For those companies, spiraling IT costs and business fragility are "facts" of their business environments.
Welcome to the reactive IT environment. Welcome to CMM level 1.
Yes, I know that we're locked in to MS OS and server, but given the incredible productivity increase, this is a small price to pay.
As another person has already pointed out, this is never a small price to pay.
From a technical point, you've tied your entire IS structure to one company. Your innovations, flexibility, and ability to create services for your environment will be dictated by a single company.
From a business point of view, implementing business critical functions based on a single proprietary environment is always dangerous. In effect, you are entrusting a critical business function to an entity outside your zone of authority.
If Microsoft decides to stop supporting.NET (or any particular technology), your IS infrastructure will have to be completely rewritten. In mainframe days, we called this the forklift upgrade approach. You drive in a forklift, hoist out the old mainframe, and replace it with a new mainframe.
This is exactly the type of capital costs that distributed computing was designed to eliminate. By creating a proprietary single-vendor structure, you've recreated the inherent business and technical risks of single source mainframe computing.
As far as soft dollar (productivity) costs, you've also placed yourself at significant risk. When (not if) the change comes, all of your IS department will have to be retrained. In addition, all of your user base will have to be retrained. This is a serious cost.
The soft dollar cost risk does not end there. Since your field of expertise is narrower (restricted to one vendor's offerings), finding qualified people for senior positions becomes more difficult. This will inflate salary costs at the high end, increasing overall cost of ownership.
To combat this potential salary issue, your company may resort to outside consultants, again placing critical business functionality outside your zone of authority. Your company many also decide that mid-level expertise is adequate, which means that you will not get the benefits of moving to a proprietary, single-source technology.
Having programmed on MVS, UNIX (of all flavors), Windows, and the Macintosh, I realize that some of the IDE offerings for microcomputer platforms are pretty amazing. However, using an IDE is no excuse for not knowing the technology you are using.
In short, if you understand the technology, then learning a tool is just that - learning another tool. I have my preferences in editors, IDEs, and tools (not trolling for an editor religious flamefest!!). However by understanding the technology behind the tools, my choice of tools is based on ergonomics and speed rather than all the technology assist that I potentially get.
When another platform comes along, as I'm sure it will, I will be able to jump right in. By understanding the technology I can be a more flexible geek (gumby-geek?) and provide a better service. If I rely on a single-source proprietary environment, I will go the way a lot of PL/1 programmers went when the next wave of technology arrives.
This is the business that
Seisint is in (from their web site):
Product Overview
Underlying Seisint's data products is a multi-billion record repository of information on US individuals and businesses. With our unique combination of data, association algorithms and technologies, Seisint(R) offers the best-performing solutions in the marketplace.
Seisint's products include:
ACCURINT(R)
Accurint is Seisint's family of information products sold commercially to organizations with legitimate business uses throughout the United States. Accurint has the most in-depth information on U.S. individuals and businesses. The associative links, historical residential information, and other information, such as an individual's possible relatives and associates, are deeper and more comprehensive than other commercially available database systems presently on the market.
Using proprietary algorithms, compilation techniques, and retrieval technology to access data stores containing billions of records, Accurint's ability to deliver high-quality matches and find rates is unparalleled. Given a few pieces of information (e.g. a phonetically spelled name, the city of a previous address), Accurint can rapidly retrieve a complete and accurate picture of an individual or business.
Accurint is powered by Seisint's Data Supercomputer technology, enabling complex searches to be performed at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.
Slashdot Mirror
I have tried the following:
For Yahelite under wine on (pick distro) Linux, you can change over to the YCHT (why chat) protocol and connect.
What is really irritating is that you think you've been cracked, so you go around and change passwords everywhere.
I understand that this is all about money, and setting up their chat enironment so that you must view the ads. And I don't mind viewing the ads using YMessenger since they are mostly now well-behaved and don't take over the entire chat screen.
What I do mind is that there is no good Linux client (although you can use the Java client), and that official client does such a poor job of blocking spam 'bots.
If Yahoo would fix these two glaring issues, I might even enjoy chatting using their client. For right now, I'll suffer with Yahelite and the YCHT protocol under wine (with no voice or cam).
After all, it's free so I get exactly what I pay for.
Personally I have no interest in Microsoft products being improved upon, and I will not be contributing to the "How can we make IE better?" parade.
People at Microsoft must understand the following:
If the people at Microsoft don't understand the above, then they have no concept of user requirements, requirements analysis, or software construction.
That would leave Microsoft as a large corporation of marketing wizards bent on trapping unwary customers much like a pitcher plant traps insects.
Oh . . . never mind . . .
Well, in case you don't know, police already use cell phone positioning to track your location.
I was angry one night and made the mistake of saying I'm off to ride into the sunset (at 10 PM). I then took off on a 20 mile bike sprint, which I do when I'm really frustrated.
It's amazing how well a little endorphin kick plus some physical exercise brings clarity back to an otherwise murky or ugly situation.
Anyway, since I am on call, I took my cell phone. About 15 minutes into my ride, this black and white cop car pulls onto the bike path (which runs along a river). The police officers flash their lights at me and I pull over.
They ask for my ID, and ask if I normally ride at this time of night. Well, normally no, but it's not unheard of. I ask if I'm under any sort of suspicion, and of course they say no.
Just the same, they want a DNA sample (?!) and detain me until a detective shows up.
After the sample is taken, I ask what this is about (again). They give me some song and dance about a serial rapist who is suspected of using a bicycle to get around.
We'll leave the question about why they thought I was their suspect (didn't fit the description) for another story that police tell you. And yes, the rapist was finally caught, and yes the rapist used a bike, and no that sick person is NOT me.
Finally, I'm allowed to work off my blue funk by finishing up the ride.
It turns out that a friend pulled off a bit of social engineering to convince the police I was an immediate danger to myself or others. I guess the person didn't like my way of dealing with a blue funk.
So folks if you wish to embarass your friends or neighbors, just do the following.
Soon you'll have your target being pulled over by police officers in no time.
I do have to admit - it was an elegent piece of social engineering. I wasn't really pleased at being the target of it, however . . .
At the risk of starting yet another editor war:
emacs plus:
If not, you can get todo-mode.el from any emacs source location.
A proposal has been made to add some simple fontification to the todo-mode.el. You can find the mail message here among other places.
I use it because it works with the calendar-mode, diary mode, and since it's emacs it runs everywhere emacs does.
I know, boring, boring, boring. However, when you have the kitchen sink of editors, you might as well turn on the water.
Hmmm, I suppose you've never looked at the cost of software maintenance, training, and software integration of Microsoft products.
Maintenence . . . . you have forced upgrades, required reboots (translates to downtime), and prohibitively expensive maintenance support costs.
Services . . . . I have yet to find Microsoft services capable of answering even the simplest of questions. For this I can pay a huge amount of money.
Integration . . . The key to any software integration project is the adherence to well-defined, published, and freely available standards. This is why the Internet works so well. This is why you can run SOAP and web services between competing vendors. This is why you can use XML-RPC and accomplish an amazing amount of integration. This is why EDI worked well in the transportation and distribution industry. This is one of the reasons OSI failed (standard costs were expensive).
The challenge with a Microsoft-centric solution is that it adheres to standards poorly if at all. And of course, like Cabletron (remember them, the networking company that eschewed standards for a proprietary management system) this will only be cost-effective in a single vendor solution.
Training costs for Microsoft are every bit as high as training costs for open source products. Many organizations don't train their users on Microsoft products, which is what Microsoft then uses as a training cost baseline.
If you have ever had to work with a reasonably complex Word document that someone else has created, you know what disaster this lack of training can be. Often it is easier to create a properly (?) structured Word document and paste in the contents rather than attempting to fix the original work.
In short, capital costs are lower, maintenance costs and schedules are business-driven instead of vendor-driven, services are better (would be difficult to be worse), integration is better, and training is a wash.
Another clear advantage with open source is that you can train your IS staff on principles and concepts instead of vendor-specifics. This means that when the next IT revolution hits, your staff will be in a position to take advantage of it.
It also means that your IS staff and business are insulated from capricious vendor changes that REQUIRE specialized and expensive training.
Yes, there are extension issues in Firefox. I don't know about Thunderbird because I haven't started using it yet.
.mozilla directory, and then start up Firefox. I then imported my bookmarks, copied back in all my passwords, and set up my extensions.
I was emailing one of the extension writers the other day about not being able to install his extention on my Linux platform, but it installed perfectly on my Windows/2000 platform.
In part, his response was that the locale portion of the extension manager may need to be tweaked.
To get around this, he recommended installing in a new profile. What I did was to back up my profile, completely delete the
Everything went smoothly.
For Mozex, you have to hack in the extension since the extension manager API has changed. Other than that, the new releases are great!
In short, when in doubt talk to the developers (nice thing about open source software), haul out your tools, and fix it yourself.
Then publish a brief how-to so that others can avoid the grief.
If people are interested, I'll write up the Mozex hack.
Hmm . . . .
Best distance to Mars . . . . 0.38 AU
3.8E-01 * 9.3E07 = 3.534E07 miles
3.534E07 / 6 ms = 5.89E05 miles / ms
5.89E05 miles/ms = 5.89E09 miles/sec
5.89E09 / 1.86E05 = 3.2E04 times speed of light
Someone phone the Vulcans, we have warp.
If someone has the distance from Earth to Mars at the end of the Martian winter, plus a more accurate number for the speed of light in a vaccuum, please clean up the number.
Oh, and if we're talking about networks, we've not included propogation delay nor the speed of light for the (small) distance that the signal is present on copper.
Yep.
It's called software release management (SRM) and infrastructure configuration management (ICM). Both are parts of general configuation management.
According to a Gartner study (I don't have it at my fingertips), over 90% of all failures in mission critical systems are due to poor problem or configuration management. When this study was done, Gartner estimated that only 6% of the major corporations would have industry best practices in place by 2004.
Hmm - sounds like both the Bank of Canada and the English FAA got bit by this big time.
This discipline sounds like a great business opportunity. Unfortunately my previous employer disagreed.
My previous employer also shut down a (formerly) successful consulting organization and laid off 1100 talented individuals.
I wonder how much the Bank of Canada would have paid for this type of expertise. Of course, the check might be a day or two late . . .
This is not about IP.
.
This is not about artist, craftsperson, or support person jobs (see the MPAA ads concerning movie pirating).
This is all about job protection. The jobs that are being protected are marketing people, 'executive' management, and other high priced people that provide little to nothing in the way of product or product enhancement.
I have no problem with paying artists, craftspeople, or support people. They are the folks providing me with great music, great movies (?!), great TV (ok . . . maybe not), and great books (?!).
I have a great deal of trouble paying advertising 'executives', focus group managers, and other people who impose their lack of sensibilities on what I may or may not experience.
For a more humorous and scathing treatment of these folks (and telephone sanitizers) read Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
These people use copy protection, DRM, and deep pockets to influence lawmakers for one reason and one reason only . . .
. . . to protect their 6/7+ figure salries and lifestyles.
What people are willing to pay for is changing. People are less and less willing to pay for garbage. Corporations are less and less willing to pay consultants for knowledge that leaves the company as soon as the consultants leave the engagement.
Traditional (read last 30 years) business executives are scared. Traditional business schools are scared. They will do anything to protect the status quo.
Parallels between selling IP and selling hard goods in the 1900s can be drawn. What sold then was a quality product that would accomplish the task a buyer wished to accomplish.
What will sell now are the insights that artists provide and the skills to solve increasingly complex problems of interest.
Good artists are rare. I will pay (have paid) money to obtain copies of their work. Solving complex and interesting (to me) problems is worth paying for.
The entire business of foisting garbage on an increasingly unwilling public would die if it were not for the activist legislation funded deep-pocketed individuals.
They sell protectionist schemes to lawmakers by promising to support future initiatives and thus keeping the current lawmakers in power.
They sell protectionist schemes to stockholders by promising increased worth.
All of this is for one purpose and one purpose only - the accumulation of wealth/power by people who do nothing but accumulate wealth/power.
The solution . . . . as Sean Penn stated:
"But if we do not participate in an educated democracy, we participate in its demise."
Of course.
Somewhere around first or second grade, kids go from learning equals fun to learning equals work.
About that same time, learning goes from mostly experiential to mostly abstract.
In junior high and high school you'll hear a common rant - "Why do I have to learn this? I'll never use it in real life!"
I think that rant sums up the problem. The connection between real life and knowledge is broken very early on in our educational system.
Most adults are used to thinking in very complex (to students) abstract terms. They can't imagine or remember how to think with a more limited set of abstract tools.
Shoot, many adults treat children condescendingly because they feel that children cannot understand what is going on. How many times have you heard an adult (usually a parent) say, "That's just the way it is."
Sometimes that happens because an adult is just too lazy to sit down and explain things. However, a lot of the time is because the adult has NO CLUE about how to explain something in terms that are consistent, correct, and within the grasp of the audience.
That is of course, if the adult really knows. How many times have you heard an adult say to a child, "I don't know. Are you interested in finding out with me?"
I think one solution to this problem is to combine experiential learning and abstract learning. I used to do this on my own simply because I was interested in finding out what I could do with my new abstract tools.
However, helping kids make that connection is the key. In doing that, you actually foster creativity, problem solving skills, and encourage curiosity. Shoot - the teacher might even learn a thing or two along the way.
This concept shouldn't be restricted to math and science. How about history? If a teacher could relate historical and cultural past to the way groups of people act now, we might understand rather than hate. We might even move toward solving more difficult problems (sociological, psychological).
Nah - It'll never happen. However, I still remain the idealist.
Like you, I didn't read the entire article since it requires a digital subscription.
There was a time when I would have chosen to read Scientific American, but now I choose not to.
Gee - choice. And I chose. And I'm happy with my choice.
That wasn't too difficult. I don't need a massage. OK, I do, but that's because I did a 60 mile bike ride this weekend and my legs are a bit cranky.
Personally, I think Professor Schwartz misses the cause and effect. These people who stress over too many choices could be the ones who have been told all their lives what to choose. When confronted with real choice and no clear dictum from an authority figure these people stress.
[There are a few good sociology and psychology studies buried in this hypothesis, and maybe I'll take the time to flesh them out.]
By authority figure, I don't mean just mom, dad, the doctor, big (or little) government, or the church. I mean anyone from local pundits to "experts" who people place in a position to tell them what they want.
That's really the key here. People do not know what they want, and if they do, most do not know why they want it. Many people just believe whatever is told them. This includes what they want.
This of course is a principle of advertising.
1. Define a want
2. Broadcast the want
3. Convince the consumer that it is their want
For example - do I want fancy ring tones, cameras, or to play games on my cell phone? Are night minutes starting at 7PM really important to me?
1. No - vibrate works well
2. No - not pleased with picture quality
3. No - the games are ugly
4. No - many people eat dinner between 7-9 pm
Simple. I know what I prefer because I'm aware of what I do.
If you have too much stress from too many choices then you might ask, "What is it that I want?" If you find yourself not knowing what makes you "happy", then it's probably time to start asking.
And if you find that "happiness" depends on other people, then you are screwed . . .
First of all, Microsoft's products do not have a consistent user interface. There are simple issues, such as having Quit exit a program in one product, while Exit ends a program on another product.
There are more interesting issues, such as the location and layout of the Options submenus, which can be different on different products while providing the same functionality.
The only consistent interface at the USER level that I am aware of is the Apple interface. Apple has always been concerned with look and feel, and a large portion of Inside Macintosh was devoted to the 'correct' programming of the user interface. You could not have your Macintosh application Apple-certified if you violated the guidelines set down in Inside Macintosh. Apple even had (still has?) evangelists that go to different companies teaching people the proper way to program a user interface.
The various flavors of UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems really are quite consistent in their user interface provided you stay within a particular desktop environment. I happen to like KDE, and I find KDE 3.2.1 to be very reasonable. Other people like Gnome, and still other people like CDE.
As the desktop environments become more mature, there is the good possibility that the applications running on those desktop environments will become more consistent. Personally, I find the gratuitous interface changes in Windows to be more annoying than anything I've run into in a UNIX environment.
Finally, there is the consideration of a command line interface. Call me old-school, but I cannot be productive without a good command line interface. UNIX commands are written by a large number of people, and the command line switches are many and confusing.
However, they all handle the shell metacharacters in the same fashion. You cannot say this with Windows, where some commands handle the spaces in file names correctly, while others do not. These are commands that are written by the same company, and they still cannot get it right.
Windows is a nearly completely inferior product. The reason that so many people use Windows is due to the following factors.
1. Marketing
2. Default OS on commodity products
3. Conditioning
Marketing has propelled many inferior products to dominance. For example, Novell managed to completely destroy Banyan, although at the time Banyan's StreetTalk was arguably superior to Novell's broadcasting and flat namespace technology.
However, even Microsoft is becoming challenged by this approach. The new Microsoft Office advertisements are painfully bad. I see no reason to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2003 on my Windows/2000 Pro platform. Neither do I see any reason to upgrade to Windows/XP Professional.
Since Windows is the default OS on home platforms, most people will just "go with the flow". People who have little or no knowledge of an area are likely to exhibit "behavioral inertia".
Microsoft has been enhancing this recently by providing Armed Services personnel with free copies of its office software. By building this inertia, Microsoft hopes to retain and expand its government business.
Finally, there is conditioning to take into account. Microsoft products crash, have serious security problems, and are very resource intensive. In addition to that, some problems can only be repaired by completely re-installing the operating system and applications.
People have become conditioned to a poor computing experience. They complain about it all the time, but due to the behavioral inertia issues they are reluctant to change.
For those of us who actually need to get work done on a system, the program failures, security issues, and resource requirements are significant problems. I will happily run Linux/FreeBSD/OS X/Solaris (and even AIX/HP-UX) in order to get work accomplished.
I will play games and chat on Windows/2000 Pro. Occasionally I'll check a web page I'm working on in IE. As for getting work done, I'll stay with OpenOffice (or StarOffice), emacs, NetBeans/Eclipse, and other tools available on multiple platforms.
Let me see if I can follow Microsoft's reasoning.
1. Microsoft products are not compromised until a patch or knowledge base article is released.
2. Therefore, if patches and knowledge base articles are not released, there would be no security exploits.
3. There would be no security exploits because the black hats would be too incompetent to write security exploits without specialized knowledge available only to Microsoft programmers.
4. The fact that other systems (hardware and software) have been exploited before the release of patches or information makes those products less secure (worse) that Microsoft products.
5. This means that Microsoft programmers are better than any black hat programmer.
6. This means that Microsoft programmers are better than any other firmware or software programmer who has ever had a system breached by a black hat.
Sadly enough, there are many CIOs that will believe this sort of logic.
Sadly enough, there are many CIOs that will relinquish control of critical business functions to a company with incompatible business goals.
For those companies, spiraling IT costs and business fragility are "facts" of their business environments.
Welcome to the reactive IT environment. Welcome to CMM level 1.
As another person has already pointed out, this is never a small price to pay.
From a technical point, you've tied your entire IS structure to one company. Your innovations, flexibility, and ability to create services for your environment will be dictated by a single company.
From a business point of view, implementing business critical functions based on a single proprietary environment is always dangerous. In effect, you are entrusting a critical business function to an entity outside your zone of authority.
If Microsoft decides to stop supporting .NET (or any particular technology), your IS infrastructure will have to be completely rewritten. In mainframe days, we called this the forklift upgrade approach. You drive in a forklift, hoist out the old mainframe, and replace it with a new mainframe.
This is exactly the type of capital costs that distributed computing was designed to eliminate. By creating a proprietary single-vendor structure, you've recreated the inherent business and technical risks of single source mainframe computing.
As far as soft dollar (productivity) costs, you've also placed yourself at significant risk. When (not if) the change comes, all of your IS department will have to be retrained. In addition, all of your user base will have to be retrained. This is a serious cost.
The soft dollar cost risk does not end there. Since your field of expertise is narrower (restricted to one vendor's offerings), finding qualified people for senior positions becomes more difficult. This will inflate salary costs at the high end, increasing overall cost of ownership.
To combat this potential salary issue, your company may resort to outside consultants, again placing critical business functionality outside your zone of authority. Your company many also decide that mid-level expertise is adequate, which means that you will not get the benefits of moving to a proprietary, single-source technology.
Having programmed on MVS, UNIX (of all flavors), Windows, and the Macintosh, I realize that some of the IDE offerings for microcomputer platforms are pretty amazing. However, using an IDE is no excuse for not knowing the technology you are using.
In short, if you understand the technology, then learning a tool is just that - learning another tool. I have my preferences in editors, IDEs, and tools (not trolling for an editor religious flamefest!!). However by understanding the technology behind the tools, my choice of tools is based on ergonomics and speed rather than all the technology assist that I potentially get.
When another platform comes along, as I'm sure it will, I will be able to jump right in. By understanding the technology I can be a more flexible geek (gumby-geek?) and provide a better service. If I rely on a single-source proprietary environment, I will go the way a lot of PL/1 programmers went when the next wave of technology arrives.
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