Folks, I'm all for cool technology, and I realize one can spoof caller id information. But caller ID can be a very good thing. I know...
Three years ago I had the very unpleasant surprise of finding out my (ex) wife was having an affair. Unfortunately, she had also decided on using tactics designed to ensure her utter victory in the divorce. She'd actually purchased books (I saw them), giving her advice on dirty divorce tactics - "Divorce War! 50 Strategies Every Woman Needs to Know to Win." Apparently, one of the recommended strategies was to call your ex and try to drive him nuts - hopefully he'll say something nasty and you'll be able to bring it up in court, etc.
Well, I realized what she was doing once I started getting anonymous calls at 2:00 - 3:00 AM. Strange, nasty stuff, weird messages. Technology was actually useful - the caller ID information allowed me to get a pretty damn good idea of who was calling. (Hint would-be-nasty-callers: remember to hit *69 before you call!). The police thought it was fun, too. Caller ID and outright stupidity saved the day.
Look, in my case I wasn't directly threatened. it was cruel, it was viscous, it was nasty. But I was never in any danger. However, what if it had been something dangerous? When one's depressed, your willing to listen to anything - and when you see the ID comes out as "Police" or "Crisis Center" - you could be lured into a bad situation. This is real folks - stalkers are out there, I've seen and heard it.
All technology can be abused, I know that. But in this case, let's try to prevent a service which provides fundamental identification information from being turned into something potentially dangerous.
Incidentally, she pretty much wiped me out. Bummer. But all in all, it was for the best...
It is a sink or swim situation. However, when the ship suddenly plunges, it's difficult to avoid being sucked in. Your wages, your job, are dependant not just on your abilities and efforts, bu the state of the entire (in this case) American economy. Being a good mechanical engineer on the Titanic probably didn't help so much when the ship hit the iceberg.
As many people have said on Slashdot, and on more academic boards, the entire point of outsourcing is to lower labor costs. That's it. Nothing else. Nothing more. A capitalist system exists primarily to generate a return to those who own the capital. Cutting labor costs increases the capitalists returns. No, I'm not speaking from any Marxist point of view here. Read Adam Smith.
India's policies work do to the low pay of their workers. Nothing more. Not a policy choice, but a cheap labor force due to a massive and desparate population. So, do you really think American workers can compete against about two billion Indian and Chinese workers? The only way we can do that is to have our own wages plunge to a level that would be difficult for most American's to imagine.
As wages fall for workers facing international competition, wages fall in other fields. Think of this: if the automobile factory closes the next town over, business probably won't be that good. When we combine outsourcing with a taxation system that encourages the concentration of wealth, we can foresee serious structural problems in the American economy. I've tried to think of a simple way to explain this - maybe the greatest evidence is the fact that American real wages have been flat for thirty years, despite incredible increases in productivity.
Jobs are out there - but job quality, measured in wages and in hours, is falling. If your job is outsourced, its unlikely - and against economic theory - that you'll be able to find an equivalent job in the same field and roughly the same locale for the same wage. And as the Democrat's have been happily pointing out, the new jobs being created pay far lower than the ones lost.
Other employers understand outsourcing, and they'll be happy to give you a lower offer. Of course, your bank doesn't care about outsourcing and your mortgage stays the same. So does your health insurance, children's tuition, etc. So your in serious trouble.
I have a question for all of our fun Libertarian economists on/. If immigration to the US averages about 200,000 per month, and the Administration claims that 1.7 million jobs were created in the last four years, how many new jobs were available for the native population? Guys, unemployment statistics are easily manipulated. I'd recommend you visit the Bureau of Labor Statistics site and, well, read between the lines. Alos, please consider that unemployment statistics only count those who are receiving unemployment benefits. Once you've exhausted your six months, you're no longer unemployed, you become a "discouraged worker." Off the roles, out of thought. Same thing occurs if you take a low wage job - say go from being a chip designer to a chif fryer. Still counts as a job.
I have to say this: The government of the United States exists to protect the welfare of the American people, not to protect the welfare of the wealthiest American's bank accounts. And the two are not one and the same.
Jef Raskin has good reason to have been bitter about the way the Macintosh has turned out. His description of the Mac's history ( http://mxmora.best.vwh.net/JefRaskin.html) provides a good introduction.
However, UI's have had to change as computing technologies have become more complicated. When the Mac was introduced, the Internet was still in its developmental stage; computer graphics were limited; and hardware devices were essentially permanently connected to the computer (no plug-and-play type technologies). The world changed, and the interface had to change with it.
It would be great to follow Raskin's advice and reevaluate the Mac GUI - however, it's apparent that Apple is constantly trying to do this. The X GUI has had changes (remember the purple window-shade type button in the X beta's?), and will no doubt continue to change. Right now we're looking at a (I'd say) fairly succesfuly merger of Mac OS 9 and NeXT UIs. But things can always get better.
I respect Raskin tremendously, but I would take his opinions with a grain of salt. His comments should be appreciated and considered, but I certainly don't believe that Apple has abandoned its quest for usability.
Alan Kay, as noted above developed Smalltalk at Xerox Parc. The windowed interface he used was the inspiration for Steve Job's and crew, and his concept of an IDE has been used in some sense all the way to Eclipse. He one the Kyoto prize for computing and I has just won the Turing.
More importantly, Kay has been very interested in educating children in the use of computers. Hence the development of Squeak (with A. Goldberg and many talented others). In Kay's sense, computer education means a hell of a lot more than teaching kids to use Word.
Kay's a real visionary, and is showing us that the 2d windowed GUI is not the end point of interface design.
I think it's a shame that many people will think Smalltalk is a new language. It's funny how so many younger languages are simply trying to reach the level of usability that Smalltalk has had for, in computing time, forever.
Smalltalk has been around for over twenty years, and has contributed many of the ideas that we work with today. Java is, in some ways, the bastard child of C++ and Smalltalk. Objective-C (Mac OS X) uses Smalltalk's messaging semantics for object oriented programming.
I've just started working with Smalltalk after years of Objective-C and Java. Smalltalk used to be hideously expensive, but several environments are available either open source (Squeak, GNU Smalltalk) or with non commercial licenses (Cincom). It's an amazing language, very natural. Almost a relief after the convultions of static typing, and languages designed by a committee. We all went down the Algol family of languages -- but now we have enough computing power to use something better.
Squeak - Croquet's environment - at first looks like a 1980's GUI - but is a rich development environment in its own right. Squeak images work on every major platform - write once, run everywhere. Give Smalltalk and Squeak a chance, you'll be pleasantly surprised to find such a useful development environment.
Re:walmart = oinkers... and now totalitarian IT?
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Inside Wal-Mart IT
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I agree with you 100% - no corporation, ever has done so much damage to workers, the environment, and living standards as Walmart has in the last twenty years. 10% of our trade deficit with China is directly from Walmart. Buy American my ass...
But on this subject, isn't the ultra-centralized Walmart IT structure scary? A central office which can monitor everything down to flower delivery, which tries to arrange goods in trucks to keep workers from having to search through them for material, which now wants RFID "to improve the product mix." Is there any need for any intelligence, iniative, individuality in any of the Walmart stores?
Would you want to work for a company - or shop in a store - which shows so little faith in its employees and customers that its constructing a system to monitor every transaction from a central office? What would it feel like to be an employee in those stores?
And frankly - those who work in IT for Walmart should think about the monster that they've helped create. This is the Orwellian face of capitalism, brought to life by high technology and a compacent public.
Just don't shop at this disgusting, labor crushing, and invasive company's stores!
Think of Windows as an ecosystem - one with a large population and a poorly designed immune system. Viruses tend to propagate in such an environment - in many ways we're watching what occurs in natural evolution is now occuring in the computer sphere. What's ironic (well, one of many ironies) is that Windows success relies almost entirely (IMHO) on it's popularity, which is now the key to its undoing.
Linux may be moving into the same position, but I doubt it:
The number of Linux boxes available for infection is a tiny fraction of the number of Windows Machines - making a much less inviting host (ha! pun) for diseases (viruses)
Second, Linux machines tend to have a better immune system to begin with. Linux evolved - as SCO wants us to remember - from UNIX systems - always designed to be networked and secure. Windows is still a derivative of its desktop, independant days. A stronger constitution leads to less chance of infection, thus a poor grounds for disease infection.
Third, Linux users tend to be able to recognize infection at an earlier point and thus eliminate it. Better doctors...
Fourth, you don't have many mad scientists out to infect Linux - only Windows, widely well, hated, by much of IT.
It's simply biology in action. A weakened, overpopulated organism is bound to be infected. Hopefully the surviving systems will be stronger...
I have to disagree with you. Overpopulation is the greatest danger we face. Simply, even if we (the Western nations) cut our consumption by 50%, it makes no difference in even the short run. Then entire West (US, Canada, Europe, Oceania, Japan) is only about 10% of the world population - and as a percantage has actually been falling for decades.
Look at the math - if the world population stabilizes at 9 billion, those resources relinquished by the West will simply be consumed by the growing third-world population.
This is an issue where our political correctness could damn well prove suicidal. Third world countries, anxious to have a massive and cheap labor pool, care little about controlling their populations and instead point out (correctly) that the West is destroying the enviornment. Yet their population growth is just as dangerous a threat to the world, perhaps more.
I've wondered what would happen if we did cut our consumption down to the level of, say, India, if we did equalize global consumption. Would we just have a vast, impoverished world waiting for famine?
The West needs to use resources wisely, and the third wold must accept that outbreeding the West is not the key to economic success if we are to have any hope for the future of humanity.
You've got a good point. Most corporations currently spew out lines talking about how "everyone is a member of the team, employees are our most valuable resource, we want you to develop as an individual, yada, yada...". If employees work at home, a fundamental construct (hierachical management) is called into question.
Nearly every organization (both government and business) is replete with layers of management and administration that must do something to justify their continued existance. Having employees work from home - directing their own tasks, planning their own days, working whatever hours are necessary to complete their jobs, essentially eliminates mid-level management, a large part of Human Resources (what a tragedy), facilities, etc. More people would be actually producing instead of well, I'm not sure what management actually does (increase transaction costs?).
Fundamentally, your challenging the assumption that professional workers need "leadership" to get their tasks accomplished. Once people figure out they themselves are capable of directing their own work, they may begin to ask terrible questions such as "why does the PHB earn $120k and I earn $45k when I do the work?" Even worse, people may figure out that working themselves to death in the office is not exactly the best way to live life - they may stop working twelve hour days, weekends, whatever, and simply do their assigned tasks.
Freedom! What a goal! Realizing that your office is not your life, wow.
As an American, I have to say I agree with your points. I think the situation is actually far worse:
The economy is loaded with debt - both consumer and governmental - on an incredible scale.
The US dollar is due to collapse, dramatically lowering the standard of living for most Americans.
Our dependance on petroleum continues to increase.
Immigration continues to occur at the rate of 2 million people per year, despite massive unemployment among minorities. When will our minorities actually realize that they have little or no hope of a better future?
Our military is growing, consuming more and more resources and people.
Income inequality is mammoth and increasing. The middle class - key to any democracy - is being squeezed to oblivion.
Our appointed president will likely win the next election through slandering his opponent, bringing four more years of secrecy and gifts to corporations.
The religious right has continued a century-old campaign to eradicate evolution in the classroom;
I think the best thing for America would be to have the Empire fall - concentrate on what made our country great, not attempting to conquer the world. Our arrogance, hubris, is the key to our destruction. And I think it's coming much faster than most people realize.
Cakes and eating it too? How about destroying the US middle class, creating an economy that imports practically all of its manufactured goods and is beginning to import its services? How will we eat our cake if we can't even cook it or pay for it?
Our jobs at $90k are not vastly overpaid, considering the enormous expenses that went into getting them. Consider the minimal $100k investment in tuition made for a BA - not even counting an additional $200k in foregone income whilst in college. Consider that Americans have a ridiculously low level of vacation compared to anywhere else in the world, higher productivity, and in fact paid for the development of the systems being used to outsource our jobs in the first place (the Internet was not developed in Bangalore.)
Furthermore, why should we sit back and watch our economy be destroyed? What possible good does the "free market" do for America if our Middle class is wiped out? Frankly, those 90k jobs pretty much define the American middle class - accountants, programmers, engineers - all the fields in danger of being outsourced.
Your correct - the best deal isn't always about the cheapest labor rates. Often it can involve ensuring that your workers won't complain about lousy labor conditions (i.e. Chinese factories), or even dare to strike (i.e. India, and pretty much all of Southeast Asia). Our corporate masters are happy to find workers who lack any fundamental liberties or rights.
Current tax laws allow US corporations with foreign operations (multinationals) to allow their overseas branches to retain profits. Even worse, many "US" corporations have moved thier headquarters off-shore to avoid paying Federal income taxes on their aggregate operations. Case in point - Accenture, the progeny of Arthur Andersen, has moved its headquarters to the Carribean, is active in outsourcing work abroad, and has many federal contracts.
I suppose your arguing the theoretical point that increased profits for US corporations == growth in the US economy. Certainly, those who own shares in the outsourcing companies will see a rise in their wealth. But how much of the share value is eventually translated into increased domestic consumption, as opposed to being effectively banked, and then spent overseas, or spent for the good of the corporation? Are we better off when those who actually, really own the corporations - the top 1% of those people in the American economy - earn more money through increased corporate profits or when the average worker earns more money?
The world financial system is also unlikely to allow the US to continue with a grossly inflated dollar. US companies will be in a much poorer financial position is we face a currency crisis similar to what happened to the British pound a decade ago. Ironically, our current desire to import all of our manufactured goods, thus creating a gigantic trade deficit, combined with the Bush administration's penchant for enormous deficits, will inevitably weaken the dollar, making outsourcing less atrractive.
But the damage will be done. The wealthiest Americans will get the money. The middle class will continue its long fall into poverty, and investment will be directed from abroad. This is a disasterous situation, all caused by short term greed. We should care more about who gets the money, rather than which country. If we destroy the US middle class, other countries middle classes will follow the same path. We're looking at the beginnings of dystopia.
Your company, like all credit card firms, makes a calculated gamble with each and every loan it grants. Interest rates are set according to credit risk, with those being less unlikely to default being charged lower rates. The people with the high rate are already being charged for the possibility that they'll default. Sometimes when you gamble, you lose. The difference is, you want the cards stacked even more in your favor.
The measures you can take of collecting the money (leant so generously, and only at 19.99% per year, minimum fees no included) are limited by law. Tough, really tough - especially when your firm, if it is like most credit card firms - wants to change the laws constantly so that their financial position is even safer. Making it harder for people to declare bankruptcy seems like the best example of how CC firms are trying to have their cake (high interest rates, stunning profits) and eat it too (if you go bankrupt, you still owe Citibank!)
People don't pick up the phone - I know - often because there is nothing they can do. If you barely have enough money to get by, paying minimal amounts on your credit card bills - while interest mounts - does nothing for you.
If credit card companies want (and you by extension) to be treated as our friends and with respect, don't insult our intelligence. Accept that it's a gamble, and you'll occasionally lose, or set the interest rates low and collect all the time.
According to the newly revised FLSA, the Mars Odyssey would be considered a professional exempt robot, as it's carrying out highly technical, professional tasks. Don't be mean and get the little robot's hopes up!
Dying in a game is, well, dying in a game. I know you understand the difference, we all do. You don't suffer when shot - or in my case, nearly blown up. In a game, you never consider that you just shot an enemy soldier - someone probably trying to serve for the same reasons as you, or not even given a choice. And no, that doesn't mean that I sit ashamed of my service. Its just something that you think about.
No, I'm not saying we should portray the military in a bad light to recruit people. It needs to be honest recruitment, letting people understand that this is a very deadly business, that you must comprehend the risks. This doesn't mean that we should try to scare away good people, just don't make it into a game. Seriously, that's all. The good soldiers - the men and women who keep the military running - know that war is not a game.
We don't need psychopaths, we need mature adults. Please don't take this as an attack - I've recommended to several friends to join the military - just join for the right reasons.
As an ex-infantry soldier - who's actually been in combat in the Middle East - these games have no relation to reality. Combat is hell, it's not a game.
Some of my student employees - I work for a university - were playing America's Army. I watched them for a bit. Though they were not taken up by the adventure, I was still worried. You cannot simulate combat, you cannot simulate the smell, the fear. You can't even simulate basic training. These games are worse than a lie.
I realize that the authors of America's Army have tried not to create yet another Quake - but in the end, that is the result. A nice, quick, sanitary view of military service. All of the excitement, none of the tedium or risks. If you want a real simulation of war, visit a VA hospital.
But isn't this the whole point of the modern US military? Trying to convince the people back in the States that war is a distant, calculated situation, not something up close and dangerous. The Pentagon filters what people see on TV, refuses to show caskets coming home, refuses to discuss the wounded.
Moder warfare is not clean. It requires a degree of courage which playing a video game cannot teach you. To make war trivial and fun is an incredible disservice to all who actually have to fight. Serving in the military is more than being part of an army of one and going to college for free. Though I'm proud to have served, it was terrible. I can't say anything more.
A central point in the article's thesis comes from material written by Open Source Risk Management. That firm is claiming that Linux may violates 283 patents. Which is well and good for OSRM, as they stand to gain by scaring people into purchasing their patent indemnity insurance. Not to be specious, but this reminds me of those firms that sell mold insurance to homeowners while at the same time publishing articles talking about the need for mold insurance. So, OSRM scares the heck out of companies through FUD - possibly some legitimate FUD, though - regarding Linux patents and makes money off of it. Great.
The patent issue - as discussed numerous times on Slashdot - seems to be spinning out of control. Of those 283 potentially disputed patent violations, how many of those violations were constructed in the last few years by firms who exist solely to make money off of exploiting the patent system? How many of the patents have been granted by an incompetent US Patent Office that can barely recognize the concept of prior art? So, we make a gigantic switch in the Linux license to make up for yet another abuse of the patent system.
The US technology industry was helped greatly by a strong patent system, but now its rapidly getting out of control. The point of patents was, according to the Founding Fathers, primarily to encourage the development of new technology and information. Now its been turned into hucksterism that reminds me greatly of the Great Domain Name Gold Rush, where legal loopholes become more valuable than creating much of anything.
I'm glad that he found a liver. I'm glad that his family -- his new wife, his parents -- still have their loved one.
However, we still need to consider how society will allocate organs. The benefit to society in this case may not be optimal. If we create conditions which allow those with wealth to have a higher probability of receiving an organ, what exactly are we saying? That the value of your life is determined by your wealth?
In reality, this is how health care in the US is decided. The wealthy have much better access to life saving care than those who are poor. I believe that this is immoral, that we need to find a more equitable (no, not in the normal politically correct sense, but in a moralsense) means of providing health care to our citizens.
Certainly, if his campaign results in more people donating organs the net benefit could be positive. But we still have to consider the ramifications of yet another award of life to those who have greater economic resources.
First, I'm glad that his life now has a higher probability of being saved. No transplant operation is a guarenteed success. He has a family who cares, he's young, and he deserves a chance.
However, there is a great shortage of organ donors - many of whom are people who do not have access to the financial resources necessary to conduct such an impressive media campaign. Do these people have less of a right to survive? Unfortunately, the success of Todd's campaign will likely encourage future copycat media blitz's.
Are we going to allow wealth to decide who live's or dies? Simple charisma, money, and good looks seem to be the factor which saved (hopefully) this fellows life. What do you say to the single teacher who needs a transplant? Sorry, you just have to wait your chance?
If you want to make a difference for many people, sign your organ donor card, donate to the red cross, encourage stem cell research. And please, try to think of a better way to allocate organs than giving an organ to those who have the most money. I'm sorry that I'm harsh with this, but now someone else has been pushed farther down the line in the transplant list, and that person may not survive.
Well, Java may be back for the time being, but I'm concerned that the language may still crash despite its new found momentum. The Java toolkits are fragmenting, Sun's market position is questionable, and alternative technologies are gaining in both strength and promise.
Sun's marketing materials always mentions Java's strength in enterprise development. But what, precisely, is Enterprise Java? Is it J2EE? Quite possibly, as a theoretical specification. But in real life, the platform is fragmented. On app servers, is Java WebSphere, WebLogic, JBoss, or Tomcat? For persistance: EJB 2, Hibernate, JDO or Cayenne? For Web apps: JSP, Struts, JSF, Tapestry? And just for fun, lets throw in XDoclet, Velocity, Cocoon, AspectJ, and about another thousand or so projects.
The diversity of new Java technologies is both great and terrible: great in the sense that new ideas are being explored that Sun may find to radical to consider putting in their specs, but terrible in the sense that few, if any, Java programmers will have knowledge of the various different projects. This is a real problem, folks. Someone who knows.Net can reasonably be expected to understand most of the C# related APIs. Its unreasonable to expect even a seasoned Java developer to understand how to program the full spread of Java APIs. Someone with Sun certification, an EJB whiz, may be damn well baffled by Hibernate (I've seen this), and may not comprehend why you'd use Tapestry instead of good old JSP.
I think the Java development platform is fragmenting. Sun's work, impressive as it is, often seems to be more concerned with being architecturally perfect at the expense of real world application speed and developer productivity (code astronauts). The Open Source projects seem to be trying to be as cool as possible, at the expense of API consistency and, just like Sun, developer productivity.
The general chaos in the Java world has, thankfully, allowed my development team to finally look at entirely different languages: Ruby, Python, even back to Smalltalk and Lisp. We've chosen this route out of frustration with both the limitations of the Java language and the increasing fragmentation of the toolsets.
As an aside, its fun to watch how hard various Open Source projects are working to emulate a ten year old toolkit: WebObjects. Yeah, WebObjects rules. Object Relational Mapping that works (and Hibernate folks, doesn't require learning yet another XML dialect to get things working). OO web page design, true components (Tapestry is essentially a copy of Web Objects Framework, made more obtuse). I wish Sun had started it's development efforts copying NeXT instead of Microsoft. We'd have a better development world today.
Yeah, some people got greedy. But so what? For all the people on slashdot happily talking about how this "correction" is just a part of the glories of Capitalism: laborers have just as much of a right to be greedy as managers.
Look at the realities of many IT jobs, perhaps nearly all of them:
You're expected to work far in excess of 40 hours per week. Just as an example, for six months I was working over 70 hours per week, week after week.
You're actually on-call, even when you're not working. If the website goes down, even the lowly HTML programmer can be called up at 2:00 AM to help fix it.
You're required to have up-to-date skills, and no every new technology your managers can think of.
As a developer, you have to take bad business ideas and translate them into working software.
And the list goes on. I was up till 1:00 last night (yeah, Saturday night but my wife was working next to me), working on learning Smalltalk. I won't be compensated for it, its part of the job. Is there anything wrong with thinking, gee, even though its part of the job, I should be paid for the extra time I spend learning?
IT workers may have been greedy, but not as greedy as management. Why should someone with an undergraduate Human Resources degree, limited hours, very little need to learn new skills, etc. earn the same amount of money as a programmer who has to do the above list?
Managers became afraid that finally, a group of educated and independant individuals were entering the work force and demanding to be paid what they worth. The nerds had entered the palace! And now, managers are delighted because the nerds are on the run... things are back to the way they should be, with accountants, mid-level managers, human resources staff, and others earning more than those geek-ass goobers.
If Virgin succeeds, it will not be a blessing to Apple -- it will be a curse.
MS will use this as an opportunity to leverage their influence with the RIAA to embrace, extend, and exterminate fairplay and the iTunes music store. There is no way, no possible way, that Microsoft will stand by and let Apple (and a group of other music stores), dominate the delivery of electronic music.
Additionally, Apple developed FairPlay for use with iTunes / iTunes Music Store and the iPod. Will Virgin sell iPods, support the Music store, or simply use the licensing of FairPlay to create their own MP3 player?
Damn! Just we bloody need. Disney, a company which hasn't had an original idea since the 1940's, now comes out with a computer system. I wonder what intellectual property control programs they'll try to come up with.
Jeez, if Disney had its way, the new wonder computer would:
Only play DisneyDVD's (what the hell is that, anyway?
After two years, erase said DisneyDVDs so that you can buy the new, special, re-re-re(..n)lease of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
Automatically inform you of every new way to spend money at Disney World/Land/Epcot Center
Occasionally reroute your travel plans so you visit EuroDisney Plese, someone, visit EuroDisney!
Advise you to buy Disney stock... Please, someone, help Michael Eisner!
Online shopping? Buy your stuff at Wal-Mart, where your children can buy Donald Duck clothes made by slave laborers, who just happen to be children!
Secretly watch you and transmit information to Goofy's Legions of Terror
Erase the Shrek DVD don't make fun of Disneyworld!
Michael Moore DVD? Can't play that!
Convert your computer into another marketing tool of the corporation dedicated to dumbing down our country in an attempt to ensure that noone, but noone, will ever question why you have to buy their garbage.
I took a typing class during the Summer between fourth and fifth grade. Why? I couldn't read my handwriting; my teachers couldn't read my handwriting; my parents couldn't read my handwriting. Typing was a necessity - and did eventually lead to my programming career.
I'm concerned that people are becoming ever more dependant upon more and more sophisticated technologies. Many kids are being taught basic mathematics using a calculator. Yes, I use a calculator when doing work but at least I was taught how to work with a simpler technology (paper and pencil) in order to complete a task. Now children will be taught to interface with a computer using a voice recognition system. What happens with all legacy computers - present everywhere - that don't have sophisticated voice interfaces? How will these kids interact with a computer - very, very, very slowly?
Are we actually trying to ensure that future workers are utterly dependant upon sophisticated machines to accomplish any task?
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Folks, I'm all for cool technology, and I realize one can spoof caller id information. But caller ID can be a very good thing. I know...
Three years ago I had the very unpleasant surprise of finding out my (ex) wife was having an affair. Unfortunately, she had also decided on using tactics designed to ensure her utter victory in the divorce. She'd actually purchased books (I saw them), giving her advice on dirty divorce tactics - "Divorce War! 50 Strategies Every Woman Needs to Know to Win." Apparently, one of the recommended strategies was to call your ex and try to drive him nuts - hopefully he'll say something nasty and you'll be able to bring it up in court, etc.
Well, I realized what she was doing once I started getting anonymous calls at 2:00 - 3:00 AM. Strange, nasty stuff, weird messages. Technology was actually useful - the caller ID information allowed me to get a pretty damn good idea of who was calling. (Hint would-be-nasty-callers: remember to hit *69 before you call!). The police thought it was fun, too. Caller ID and outright stupidity saved the day.
Look, in my case I wasn't directly threatened. it was cruel, it was viscous, it was nasty. But I was never in any danger. However, what if it had been something dangerous? When one's depressed, your willing to listen to anything - and when you see the ID comes out as "Police" or "Crisis Center" - you could be lured into a bad situation. This is real folks - stalkers are out there, I've seen and heard it.
All technology can be abused, I know that. But in this case, let's try to prevent a service which provides fundamental identification information from being turned into something potentially dangerous.
Incidentally, she pretty much wiped me out. Bummer. But all in all, it was for the best...
It is a sink or swim situation. However, when the ship suddenly plunges, it's difficult to avoid being sucked in. Your wages, your job, are dependant not just on your abilities and efforts, bu the state of the entire (in this case) American economy. Being a good mechanical engineer on the Titanic probably didn't help so much when the ship hit the iceberg.
As many people have said on Slashdot, and on more academic boards, the entire point of outsourcing is to lower labor costs. That's it. Nothing else. Nothing more. A capitalist system exists primarily to generate a return to those who own the capital. Cutting labor costs increases the capitalists returns. No, I'm not speaking from any Marxist point of view here. Read Adam Smith.
India's policies work do to the low pay of their workers. Nothing more. Not a policy choice, but a cheap labor force due to a massive and desparate population. So, do you really think American workers can compete against about two billion Indian and Chinese workers? The only way we can do that is to have our own wages plunge to a level that would be difficult for most American's to imagine.
As wages fall for workers facing international competition, wages fall in other fields. Think of this: if the automobile factory closes the next town over, business probably won't be that good. When we combine outsourcing with a taxation system that encourages the concentration of wealth, we can foresee serious structural problems in the American economy. I've tried to think of a simple way to explain this - maybe the greatest evidence is the fact that American real wages have been flat for thirty years, despite incredible increases in productivity.
Jobs are out there - but job quality, measured in wages and in hours, is falling. If your job is outsourced, its unlikely - and against economic theory - that you'll be able to find an equivalent job in the same field and roughly the same locale for the same wage. And as the Democrat's have been happily pointing out, the new jobs being created pay far lower than the ones lost.
Other employers understand outsourcing, and they'll be happy to give you a lower offer. Of course, your bank doesn't care about outsourcing and your mortgage stays the same. So does your health insurance, children's tuition, etc. So your in serious trouble.
I have a question for all of our fun Libertarian economists on /. If immigration to the US averages about 200,000 per month, and the Administration claims that 1.7 million jobs were created in the last four years, how many new jobs were available for the native population? Guys, unemployment statistics are easily manipulated. I'd recommend you visit the Bureau of Labor Statistics site and, well, read between the lines. Alos, please consider that unemployment statistics only count those who are receiving unemployment benefits. Once you've exhausted your six months, you're no longer unemployed, you become a "discouraged worker." Off the roles, out of thought. Same thing occurs if you take a low wage job - say go from being a chip designer to a chif fryer. Still counts as a job.
I have to say this: The government of the United States exists to protect the welfare of the American people, not to protect the welfare of the wealthiest American's bank accounts. And the two are not one and the same.
Jef Raskin has good reason to have been bitter about the way the Macintosh has turned out. His description of the Mac's history ( http://mxmora.best.vwh.net/JefRaskin.html) provides a good introduction.
However, UI's have had to change as computing technologies have become more complicated. When the Mac was introduced, the Internet was still in its developmental stage; computer graphics were limited; and hardware devices were essentially permanently connected to the computer (no plug-and-play type technologies). The world changed, and the interface had to change with it.
It would be great to follow Raskin's advice and reevaluate the Mac GUI - however, it's apparent that Apple is constantly trying to do this. The X GUI has had changes (remember the purple window-shade type button in the X beta's?), and will no doubt continue to change. Right now we're looking at a (I'd say) fairly succesfuly merger of Mac OS 9 and NeXT UIs. But things can always get better.
I respect Raskin tremendously, but I would take his opinions with a grain of salt. His comments should be appreciated and considered, but I certainly don't believe that Apple has abandoned its quest for usability.
Alan Kay, as noted above developed Smalltalk at Xerox Parc. The windowed interface he used was the inspiration for Steve Job's and crew, and his concept of an IDE has been used in some sense all the way to Eclipse. He one the Kyoto prize for computing and I has just won the Turing.
More importantly, Kay has been very interested in educating children in the use of computers. Hence the development of Squeak (with A. Goldberg and many talented others). In Kay's sense, computer education means a hell of a lot more than teaching kids to use Word.
Kay's a real visionary, and is showing us that the 2d windowed GUI is not the end point of interface design.
I think it's a shame that many people will think Smalltalk is a new language. It's funny how so many younger languages are simply trying to reach the level of usability that Smalltalk has had for, in computing time, forever.
Smalltalk has been around for over twenty years, and has contributed many of the ideas that we work with today. Java is, in some ways, the bastard child of C++ and Smalltalk. Objective-C (Mac OS X) uses Smalltalk's messaging semantics for object oriented programming.
I've just started working with Smalltalk after years of Objective-C and Java. Smalltalk used to be hideously expensive, but several environments are available either open source (Squeak, GNU Smalltalk) or with non commercial licenses (Cincom). It's an amazing language, very natural. Almost a relief after the convultions of static typing, and languages designed by a committee. We all went down the Algol family of languages -- but now we have enough computing power to use something better.
Squeak - Croquet's environment - at first looks like a 1980's GUI - but is a rich development environment in its own right. Squeak images work on every major platform - write once, run everywhere. Give Smalltalk and Squeak a chance, you'll be pleasantly surprised to find such a useful development environment.
I agree with you 100% - no corporation, ever has done so much damage to workers, the environment, and living standards as Walmart has in the last twenty years. 10% of our trade deficit with China is directly from Walmart. Buy American my ass...
But on this subject, isn't the ultra-centralized Walmart IT structure scary? A central office which can monitor everything down to flower delivery, which tries to arrange goods in trucks to keep workers from having to search through them for material, which now wants RFID "to improve the product mix." Is there any need for any intelligence, iniative, individuality in any of the Walmart stores?
Would you want to work for a company - or shop in a store - which shows so little faith in its employees and customers that its constructing a system to monitor every transaction from a central office? What would it feel like to be an employee in those stores?
And frankly - those who work in IT for Walmart should think about the monster that they've helped create. This is the Orwellian face of capitalism, brought to life by high technology and a compacent public.
Just don't shop at this disgusting, labor crushing, and invasive company's stores!
Think of Windows as an ecosystem - one with a large population and a poorly designed immune system. Viruses tend to propagate in such an environment - in many ways we're watching what occurs in natural evolution is now occuring in the computer sphere. What's ironic (well, one of many ironies) is that Windows success relies almost entirely (IMHO) on it's popularity, which is now the key to its undoing.
Linux may be moving into the same position, but I doubt it:
It's simply biology in action. A weakened, overpopulated organism is bound to be infected. Hopefully the surviving systems will be stronger...
I have to disagree with you. Overpopulation is the greatest danger we face. Simply, even if we (the Western nations) cut our consumption by 50%, it makes no difference in even the short run. Then entire West (US, Canada, Europe, Oceania, Japan) is only about 10% of the world population - and as a percantage has actually been falling for decades.
Look at the math - if the world population stabilizes at 9 billion, those resources relinquished by the West will simply be consumed by the growing third-world population.
This is an issue where our political correctness could damn well prove suicidal. Third world countries, anxious to have a massive and cheap labor pool, care little about controlling their populations and instead point out (correctly) that the West is destroying the enviornment. Yet their population growth is just as dangerous a threat to the world, perhaps more.
I've wondered what would happen if we did cut our consumption down to the level of, say, India, if we did equalize global consumption. Would we just have a vast, impoverished world waiting for famine?
The West needs to use resources wisely, and the third wold must accept that outbreeding the West is not the key to economic success if we are to have any hope for the future of humanity.
You've got a good point. Most corporations currently spew out lines talking about how "everyone is a member of the team, employees are our most valuable resource, we want you to develop as an individual, yada, yada...". If employees work at home, a fundamental construct (hierachical management) is called into question.
Nearly every organization (both government and business) is replete with layers of management and administration that must do something to justify their continued existance. Having employees work from home - directing their own tasks, planning their own days, working whatever hours are necessary to complete their jobs, essentially eliminates mid-level management, a large part of Human Resources (what a tragedy), facilities, etc. More people would be actually producing instead of well, I'm not sure what management actually does (increase transaction costs?).
Fundamentally, your challenging the assumption that professional workers need "leadership" to get their tasks accomplished. Once people figure out they themselves are capable of directing their own work, they may begin to ask terrible questions such as "why does the PHB earn $120k and I earn $45k when I do the work?" Even worse, people may figure out that working themselves to death in the office is not exactly the best way to live life - they may stop working twelve hour days, weekends, whatever, and simply do their assigned tasks.
Freedom! What a goal! Realizing that your office is not your life, wow.
As an American, I have to say I agree with your points. I think the situation is actually far worse:
I think the best thing for America would be to have the Empire fall - concentrate on what made our country great, not attempting to conquer the world. Our arrogance, hubris, is the key to our destruction. And I think it's coming much faster than most people realize.
Cakes and eating it too? How about destroying the US middle class, creating an economy that imports practically all of its manufactured goods and is beginning to import its services? How will we eat our cake if we can't even cook it or pay for it?
Our jobs at $90k are not vastly overpaid, considering the enormous expenses that went into getting them. Consider the minimal $100k investment in tuition made for a BA - not even counting an additional $200k in foregone income whilst in college. Consider that Americans have a ridiculously low level of vacation compared to anywhere else in the world, higher productivity, and in fact paid for the development of the systems being used to outsource our jobs in the first place (the Internet was not developed in Bangalore.)
Furthermore, why should we sit back and watch our economy be destroyed? What possible good does the "free market" do for America if our Middle class is wiped out? Frankly, those 90k jobs pretty much define the American middle class - accountants, programmers, engineers - all the fields in danger of being outsourced.
Your correct - the best deal isn't always about the cheapest labor rates. Often it can involve ensuring that your workers won't complain about lousy labor conditions (i.e. Chinese factories), or even dare to strike (i.e. India, and pretty much all of Southeast Asia). Our corporate masters are happy to find workers who lack any fundamental liberties or rights.
The US does not get the money.
Current tax laws allow US corporations with foreign operations (multinationals) to allow their overseas branches to retain profits. Even worse, many "US" corporations have moved thier headquarters off-shore to avoid paying Federal income taxes on their aggregate operations. Case in point - Accenture, the progeny of Arthur Andersen, has moved its headquarters to the Carribean, is active in outsourcing work abroad, and has many federal contracts.
I suppose your arguing the theoretical point that increased profits for US corporations == growth in the US economy. Certainly, those who own shares in the outsourcing companies will see a rise in their wealth. But how much of the share value is eventually translated into increased domestic consumption, as opposed to being effectively banked, and then spent overseas, or spent for the good of the corporation? Are we better off when those who actually, really own the corporations - the top 1% of those people in the American economy - earn more money through increased corporate profits or when the average worker earns more money?
The world financial system is also unlikely to allow the US to continue with a grossly inflated dollar. US companies will be in a much poorer financial position is we face a currency crisis similar to what happened to the British pound a decade ago. Ironically, our current desire to import all of our manufactured goods, thus creating a gigantic trade deficit, combined with the Bush administration's penchant for enormous deficits, will inevitably weaken the dollar, making outsourcing less atrractive.
But the damage will be done. The wealthiest Americans will get the money. The middle class will continue its long fall into poverty, and investment will be directed from abroad. This is a disasterous situation, all caused by short term greed. We should care more about who gets the money, rather than which country. If we destroy the US middle class, other countries middle classes will follow the same path. We're looking at the beginnings of dystopia.
Wow. You don't have a clue about this, do you?
Your company, like all credit card firms, makes a calculated gamble with each and every loan it grants. Interest rates are set according to credit risk, with those being less unlikely to default being charged lower rates. The people with the high rate are already being charged for the possibility that they'll default. Sometimes when you gamble, you lose. The difference is, you want the cards stacked even more in your favor.
The measures you can take of collecting the money (leant so generously, and only at 19.99% per year, minimum fees no included) are limited by law. Tough, really tough - especially when your firm, if it is like most credit card firms - wants to change the laws constantly so that their financial position is even safer. Making it harder for people to declare bankruptcy seems like the best example of how CC firms are trying to have their cake (high interest rates, stunning profits) and eat it too (if you go bankrupt, you still owe Citibank!)
People don't pick up the phone - I know - often because there is nothing they can do. If you barely have enough money to get by, paying minimal amounts on your credit card bills - while interest mounts - does nothing for you.
If credit card companies want (and you by extension) to be treated as our friends and with respect, don't insult our intelligence. Accept that it's a gamble, and you'll occasionally lose, or set the interest rates low and collect all the time.
According to the newly revised FLSA, the Mars Odyssey would be considered a professional exempt robot, as it's carrying out highly technical, professional tasks. Don't be mean and get the little robot's hopes up!
Dying in a game is, well, dying in a game. I know you understand the difference, we all do. You don't suffer when shot - or in my case, nearly blown up. In a game, you never consider that you just shot an enemy soldier - someone probably trying to serve for the same reasons as you, or not even given a choice. And no, that doesn't mean that I sit ashamed of my service. Its just something that you think about.
No, I'm not saying we should portray the military in a bad light to recruit people. It needs to be honest recruitment, letting people understand that this is a very deadly business, that you must comprehend the risks. This doesn't mean that we should try to scare away good people, just don't make it into a game. Seriously, that's all. The good soldiers - the men and women who keep the military running - know that war is not a game.
We don't need psychopaths, we need mature adults. Please don't take this as an attack - I've recommended to several friends to join the military - just join for the right reasons.
As an ex-infantry soldier - who's actually been in combat in the Middle East - these games have no relation to reality. Combat is hell, it's not a game .
Some of my student employees - I work for a university - were playing America's Army. I watched them for a bit. Though they were not taken up by the adventure, I was still worried. You cannot simulate combat, you cannot simulate the smell, the fear. You can't even simulate basic training. These games are worse than a lie.
I realize that the authors of America's Army have tried not to create yet another Quake - but in the end, that is the result. A nice, quick, sanitary view of military service. All of the excitement, none of the tedium or risks. If you want a real simulation of war, visit a VA hospital.
But isn't this the whole point of the modern US military? Trying to convince the people back in the States that war is a distant, calculated situation, not something up close and dangerous. The Pentagon filters what people see on TV, refuses to show caskets coming home, refuses to discuss the wounded.
Moder warfare is not clean. It requires a degree of courage which playing a video game cannot teach you. To make war trivial and fun is an incredible disservice to all who actually have to fight. Serving in the military is more than being part of an army of one and going to college for free. Though I'm proud to have served, it was terrible. I can't say anything more.
A central point in the article's thesis comes from material written by Open Source Risk Management. That firm is claiming that Linux may violates 283 patents. Which is well and good for OSRM, as they stand to gain by scaring people into purchasing their patent indemnity insurance. Not to be specious, but this reminds me of those firms that sell mold insurance to homeowners while at the same time publishing articles talking about the need for mold insurance. So, OSRM scares the heck out of companies through FUD - possibly some legitimate FUD, though - regarding Linux patents and makes money off of it. Great.
The patent issue - as discussed numerous times on Slashdot - seems to be spinning out of control. Of those 283 potentially disputed patent violations, how many of those violations were constructed in the last few years by firms who exist solely to make money off of exploiting the patent system? How many of the patents have been granted by an incompetent US Patent Office that can barely recognize the concept of prior art? So, we make a gigantic switch in the Linux license to make up for yet another abuse of the patent system.
The US technology industry was helped greatly by a strong patent system, but now its rapidly getting out of control. The point of patents was, according to the Founding Fathers, primarily to encourage the development of new technology and information. Now its been turned into hucksterism that reminds me greatly of the Great Domain Name Gold Rush, where legal loopholes become more valuable than creating much of anything.
I'm glad that he found a liver. I'm glad that his family -- his new wife, his parents -- still have their loved one.
However, we still need to consider how society will allocate organs. The benefit to society in this case may not be optimal. If we create conditions which allow those with wealth to have a higher probability of receiving an organ, what exactly are we saying? That the value of your life is determined by your wealth?
In reality, this is how health care in the US is decided. The wealthy have much better access to life saving care than those who are poor. I believe that this is immoral, that we need to find a more equitable (no, not in the normal politically correct sense, but in a moralsense) means of providing health care to our citizens.
Certainly, if his campaign results in more people donating organs the net benefit could be positive. But we still have to consider the ramifications of yet another award of life to those who have greater economic resources.
First, I'm glad that his life now has a higher probability of being saved. No transplant operation is a guarenteed success. He has a family who cares, he's young, and he deserves a chance.
However, there is a great shortage of organ donors - many of whom are people who do not have access to the financial resources necessary to conduct such an impressive media campaign. Do these people have less of a right to survive? Unfortunately, the success of Todd's campaign will likely encourage future copycat media blitz's.
Are we going to allow wealth to decide who live's or dies? Simple charisma, money, and good looks seem to be the factor which saved (hopefully) this fellows life. What do you say to the single teacher who needs a transplant? Sorry, you just have to wait your chance?
If you want to make a difference for many people, sign your organ donor card, donate to the red cross, encourage stem cell research. And please, try to think of a better way to allocate organs than giving an organ to those who have the most money. I'm sorry that I'm harsh with this, but now someone else has been pushed farther down the line in the transplant list, and that person may not survive.
Well, Java may be back for the time being, but I'm concerned that the language may still crash despite its new found momentum. The Java toolkits are fragmenting, Sun's market position is questionable, and alternative technologies are gaining in both strength and promise.
Sun's marketing materials always mentions Java's strength in enterprise development. But what, precisely, is Enterprise Java? Is it J2EE? Quite possibly, as a theoretical specification. But in real life, the platform is fragmented. On app servers, is Java WebSphere, WebLogic, JBoss, or Tomcat? For persistance: EJB 2, Hibernate, JDO or Cayenne? For Web apps: JSP, Struts, JSF, Tapestry? And just for fun, lets throw in XDoclet, Velocity, Cocoon, AspectJ, and about another thousand or so projects.
The diversity of new Java technologies is both great and terrible: great in the sense that new ideas are being explored that Sun may find to radical to consider putting in their specs, but terrible in the sense that few, if any, Java programmers will have knowledge of the various different projects. This is a real problem, folks. Someone who knows .Net can reasonably be expected to understand most of the C# related APIs. Its unreasonable to expect even a seasoned Java developer to understand how to program the full spread of Java APIs. Someone with Sun certification, an EJB whiz, may be damn well baffled by Hibernate (I've seen this), and may not comprehend why you'd use Tapestry instead of good old JSP.
I think the Java development platform is fragmenting. Sun's work, impressive as it is, often seems to be more concerned with being architecturally perfect at the expense of real world application speed and developer productivity (code astronauts). The Open Source projects seem to be trying to be as cool as possible, at the expense of API consistency and, just like Sun, developer productivity.
The general chaos in the Java world has, thankfully, allowed my development team to finally look at entirely different languages: Ruby, Python, even back to Smalltalk and Lisp. We've chosen this route out of frustration with both the limitations of the Java language and the increasing fragmentation of the toolsets.
As an aside, its fun to watch how hard various Open Source projects are working to emulate a ten year old toolkit: WebObjects. Yeah, WebObjects rules. Object Relational Mapping that works (and Hibernate folks, doesn't require learning yet another XML dialect to get things working). OO web page design, true components (Tapestry is essentially a copy of Web Objects Framework, made more obtuse). I wish Sun had started it's development efforts copying NeXT instead of Microsoft. We'd have a better development world today.
Well, uh, generally I agree with that... but, earlier today there was a posting about why the number of female Comp Sci majors was dropping.
Hope they don't read Slashdot...
Yeah, some people got greedy. But so what? For all the people on slashdot happily talking about how this "correction" is just a part of the glories of Capitalism: laborers have just as much of a right to be greedy as managers.
Look at the realities of many IT jobs, perhaps nearly all of them:
And the list goes on. I was up till 1:00 last night (yeah, Saturday night but my wife was working next to me), working on learning Smalltalk. I won't be compensated for it, its part of the job. Is there anything wrong with thinking, gee, even though its part of the job, I should be paid for the extra time I spend learning?
IT workers may have been greedy, but not as greedy as management. Why should someone with an undergraduate Human Resources degree, limited hours, very little need to learn new skills, etc. earn the same amount of money as a programmer who has to do the above list?
Managers became afraid that finally, a group of educated and independant individuals were entering the work force and demanding to be paid what they worth. The nerds had entered the palace! And now, managers are delighted because the nerds are on the run... things are back to the way they should be, with accountants, mid-level managers, human resources staff, and others earning more than those geek-ass goobers.
If Virgin succeeds, it will not be a blessing to Apple -- it will be a curse.
MS will use this as an opportunity to leverage their influence with the RIAA to embrace, extend, and exterminate fairplay and the iTunes music store. There is no way, no possible way, that Microsoft will stand by and let Apple (and a group of other music stores), dominate the delivery of electronic music.
Additionally, Apple developed FairPlay for use with iTunes / iTunes Music Store and the iPod. Will Virgin sell iPods, support the Music store, or simply use the licensing of FairPlay to create their own MP3 player?
Damn! Just we bloody need. Disney, a company which hasn't had an original idea since the 1940's, now comes out with a computer system. I wonder what intellectual property control programs they'll try to come up with.
Jeez, if Disney had its way, the new wonder computer would:
I took a typing class during the Summer between fourth and fifth grade. Why? I couldn't read my handwriting; my teachers couldn't read my handwriting; my parents couldn't read my handwriting. Typing was a necessity - and did eventually lead to my programming career.
I'm concerned that people are becoming ever more dependant upon more and more sophisticated technologies. Many kids are being taught basic mathematics using a calculator. Yes, I use a calculator when doing work but at least I was taught how to work with a simpler technology (paper and pencil) in order to complete a task. Now children will be taught to interface with a computer using a voice recognition system. What happens with all legacy computers - present everywhere - that don't have sophisticated voice interfaces? How will these kids interact with a computer - very, very, very slowly?
Are we actually trying to ensure that future workers are utterly dependant upon sophisticated machines to accomplish any task?
Incidentally, my handwriting did get better.