how can my licensing mechanism best help legitimate customers track their licenses and stay compliant within the licensing agreement
A much better question is, how can we maximize the rewards to our paying customers for providing us with the income we need to pursue our chosen path of software development?
The answers are:
Provide them with a software key that is uniquely theirs so they have the means to protect their investment in us, not so we can attack them.
Archive that software key so we can give it to them again if they lose it.
Never, ever disable, restrict, or otherwise cripple a customer's product.
Provide a means so they can legitimately share our software so as to spread the word.
Price software reasonably; if the market is large, price low. If small, price higher.
Be valuable: Provide strong functionality. Remain valuable: Fix it, improve it, be helpful.
If someone wants a key and can't pay for it or wants to look before they leap, just give them one. Really. Doesn't hurt a thing. People who won't or can't pay aren't going to anyway. Better they use our stuff than our competitor's; better to make them happy than annoy them; better to see to it there's no value to an underground trade, because hacked software presents a security risk to us all.
Last, but not least, don't burden our customers with "agreements" or "licenses." We wrote stuff, they paid for it. Done deal. Now it's up to us to add value to the product so they'll continue to boost our positions by using our support; spreading the word, the demo, the results.
You know the people who will insist on paying you when you mom their lawn, carry groceries, etc.? Those are the socialized, economically stable majority. They'll pay for good stuff as long as you price it sensibly and shovel value at them like it is going out of style (it actually seems to be in some cases, so use that instead of being part of it.) There is simply no need to go to war with everyone else - be a leg up instead of an obstacle to overcome.
I've done extremely well using this approach, as have my loyal employees. The only thing I would raise a flag about is you actually have to have something worthwhile; if you hand customers (and non-customers) bloated, cpu-hogging bugware, no amount of good will can counter the negative effects of the software itself.
The problem here is one I've been warning people about all along. Unlike Linux or OS X, when you use XP or Vista, you do not have control over your computer. Microsoft does. All your work is at risk; all your data, workflow, applications, etc. The computer can be told at any time to stop responding to you based upon policy at Microsoft; you accept this behavior when you click OK in the installer. The current event is one example; all they have to do is have another server screwup (they've had several already) where your validation doesn't validate, and you're down. And in this case, as TFA notes, you're down *and* you're letting malware in the door. Which Microsoft will happily sell you software to combat, which is certainly something to consider more than a little cynically.
If you support software that enables the seller to shut it down after you have jumped through whatever hoops you need to to install it, you're at risk. This is true of productivity software such as editors and image processing applications, and it is even more so for an OS, where *everything* you do can be affected. I rejected Windows as a serious use platform for myself and my businesses because of the activation malware as of XP; been on OS X since I left Win98. If Apple ever decides they have the right to shut me down post-install as evidenced by behaviors that we're seeing out of Microsoft today, I'll be running Linux on the desktop before you can say boo. I already run servers on it. And Linux is getting better all the time.
The problem, as always, are the sheep who accept this kind of behavior from bad actors. They form the majority of the marketplace and the rest of us are constantly affected by policies that use the known compliance / ignorance of the majority to inflict heinous policies.
You bought it; you should NEVER be screwed with by the company you bought it from. Not on purpose, and not by misidentification. In the case of Microsoft, they built in the capability to screw with you and have demonstrated they can and will use it. If that's not a wake-up call, I don't know what is.
Piracy is a fact of selling IP. But any non-zero chance of evaluating someone as a pirate when they are legitimate is unacceptable; far better uncountable pirates get away with it than one legitimate customer, that kind person who has supported your efforts, be so accused. Further, computers aren't hobby machines any longer; sometimes our lives, our careers, our family's welfare depends upon them. Don't allow evil actors like Microsoft to take control of your resources. You owe it to yourself and everyone around you.
Best programming practice is to do everything server side and not hijack the CPU of the site visitor; not depend on client-side active compatibility (for instance, just tried to pay for an EBay auction today, wouldn't work, don't use Explorer...) if you do server side processing, you can make it work for *everyone*. That alone is enough reason to go for it. Then there's Digg; Digg's pages are such a load on the visitor's CPU that I have to click "script not responding, continue?" three times on a page with 800 or so comments with Firefox and a dual-core 2 GHz CPU just to get the page to completely render. Sure, some of this is junk programming, not junk technology, but even so, if the server was doing the work of formatting (like it traditionally has here on slashdot), then it'd just be a matter of my browser reading HTML, instead of trying to run other people's scripts locally. I'd give up the web 2.0 "candy" in a second just to have a reliable web page.
Sadly, I know people will typically go for glitz over functionality, so the only thing that will kill web 2.0 is web 3.0, and I have little doubt it'll be even worse.:(
As for leaning towards good programming practices, my suggestion is to start by taking PHP off your server, learn Python (or Perl if you're feeling feisty) and write something that at least has a chance of being reasonably structured. Keeping in mind I'm a huge fan of Python.
If you (or any other slashdotter) would like, you can visit my contact form and I'll see that you get a copy to evaluate. just use my name in the form (Ben) or mention slashdot. WinImages is a Windows application, runs under Windows 98 and up. Also runs fine under Mac Parallels for Intel / OSX and of course, bootcamp. Haven't heard of anyone getting it going under Linux's various Windows-like solutions, but it shouldn't be much of a challenge - it does, after all, run under Win98.:-)
Ridiculous wages? Really? For people who work in factories?
When the wage is set by blackmail - the threat to strike, for instance - and not by an offer from the employer which the employee decides to accept - then the wage is ridiculous, as well as artificial.
What about the CEO's?
The CEO's are receiving wages the company has decided are appropriate, no one forced the company to pay those wages. That's the difference, you see - is it blackmail, or is it not? If a company offers, freely and of its own choice, to pay a worker X wage, this is, by definition, a fair wage if the worker decides to accept that wage in exchange for the job being offered. Regardless of the amount involved. As soon as the worker attempts blackmail - blowing up buildings, co-opting other workers into destroying the ability of the company to produce, etc. - then no matter how large, or how small, the wage thus obtained is, it is a ridiculous, immoral, inappropriate wage.
The idea that employees should have the power to set their own wages is absurd. That power belongs to the owners of the operation, or to delegated employees. What employees have - and should have - is the ability to decide if the wage offered is sufficient exchange for the job at hand. If it isn't, they need to look elsewhere. If it is, then do the work and be content. If you want more, offer to do more or otherwise make yourself more attractive to the employer. Or find a different employer. Nothing you do somehow transfers the rights to control the company's choices into your hands. Nothing. The company can assign you those rights if it so chooses (for instance, by making you a manager with discretion as to the remuneration of your department) but you can't just take them, or at least, you can't do so legitimately.
So, wait, people want to be paid. There's something wrong with that?
No. What is wrong is blackmailing yourself into control of a resource that isn't yours. As I am sure you are well aware.
Don't imagine for a minute that artificially low wages of labor have no effect on the ability of a consumer to buy a quality product.
I don't. The quality of a product (or service) is one of the issues that define the playing field between competing entities working the same market. A balance has to be found by the company; that's part of the company's basic planning. But that balance isn't something that is to be set from the rank and file upwards. It is set top down, and it always should be. If wages are too low, then employees will leave in unusual numbers, taking skills and training with them while loading the company with new requirements, as well as otherwise compromise the ability to produce. Everyone understands that. But that doesn't mean that you suddenly have the right to get together with a bunch of your co-workers and blackmail your employer.
Or - as is often the case - that you have the right to force every employee into a union and blackmail them into going along with the union's plans.
As a businessman, I can tell you story after story where unions present nothing but unreason and discord.
At a trade show in Chicago, we were forced, at a rate of about $60/hour, to pay for two hours of labor for union employees to set up our display; two employees, one hour each. For about ten seconds of unfolding. When the stand was unfolded, one of the lamps was out. We then had to pay another hour to a union electrician to replace the bulb. As an EE, I am 100% capable of unfolding a stand, not to mention screwing in a new bulb (we had even brought spares.) I was bluntly told that if I did either of these things, we would be forcibly removed from the show floor.
My middle son, Mike, works for the railroad. He's an engineer. He gets paid a truly amazing amount of money for
WinImages' EXE is about 4.6 megs. Feature-wise, it is comparable to Photoshop most ways, with some different approaches here and there. Considerably more powerful than the current release of Gimp. It loads and executes essentially immediately on any modern machine (say a GHz or better), even first time after a system reboot (doesn't depend on OS caching for startup speed.)
It will use 250 megs if that's how much memory is required to hold an image (in four 62.5 meg allocations - R, G, B and A.) If there isn't enough memory to do that, it depends upon the OS to handle the virtualization of the image data. All images are treated as 32-bit for processing purposes. All operators (filters, etc) directly approach the image buffers in memory for maximum speed. Users are definitely better off having enough memory.
WinImages is written in C, intentionally designed to use as few external functions (OS, DLL or otherwise) as possible as initially installed.
The footprint can be enlarged by adding plug ins, scripts, and various data files such as particle systems, ray trace scenes, palettes, brushes, curves, transitions, timelines, operator presets, tool caddies and the usual host of other ancillary files. The actual weight of image files typically dwarfs WinImages' resource usage almost no matter what you do, and none of the above slows the software down in any appreciable manner.
Well, many designs feature a salt and battery; personally, though, I always thought that just because you have bipolar to point at doesn't mean you get off without a charge. From where I sit, the whole bunch of them belong in cells.
I just hope that the people buying their computers from best buy understand that with a mac, the VAST majority of software out there is not going to run.
I run a dual core macbook pro with Parallels. I run OSX, XP, and RH linux concurrently on it. I can run 98, too, I just usually don't. I can run a lot of the software out there on the machine. Far more than someone running just Windows. So I'm afraid your contention doesn't hold water. When people see my mac, they're not likely to go back to a windows laptop with a very positive attitude. But my Mac isn't particularly different from any other modern Mac in this capability.
Honestly only an idiot would buy a MacBook and run Windows instead of OS X.
Well, not exactly. Sort of. For instance, I run Windows XP sandboxed on my dual core MacBook Pro laptop, and that's the only place I run Windows at all. Windows isn't allowed to get to the net where it can get hurt, I just use it to host a few desktop applications that don't have Mac equivalents. With Parallels "coherence" mode, I'm in the OSX filesystem for the images and other files I use under Windows, but I have the Mac right there doing the right things for everything else.
I also run a linux install pretty much the same way (though no coherence, unfortunately.) The linux install is allowed on the net because it considerably more secure "out there" than Windows is. I can run all three OS's at once without any problem and get realistic performance from all of them.
Hence, no need for a Windows machine, and no need to be an "idiot", either.;-)
As for Vista... No need to go there. We won't be writing any applications using Vista specific capabilities, either. As far as I'm concerned, Vista was dead at the starting line.
Sorry, but this is just silly. Are you suggesting that desktop applications never fail?
No. I'm telling you that with a web app, installation is required every time, if indeed the site is accessible and operating properly and hasn't lost your data or "shared" it with half the hackers on the planet. As compared to typically once with a desktop or laptop app. If you'd like to compare the failure rate of installed applications against the failure rate of network connectivity plus your computer plus the remote site, and possibly plus a browser, then I'm perfectly ready to suggest that your computer will be a heck of a lot more reliable on its own.
Not everybody has the dollars or people available to do the maintenance you suggest
I wasn't suggesting maintenance. I was pointing out why you want to choose when to upgrade, as opposed to have it forced on you, and using the best practices of people who really know what they are doing to demonstrate why.
Most business people simply do not have the option of fixing their own stuff and don't want to have to wait for IT to do it.
Or for a web site to come back up, or for the cable the post hole digger cut be repaired, or the phone company to recover from that lightning strike, or the hack of the provider to be undone. That's why it is *always* better to have your software on your machine, where YOU can control it. There are far fewer points of failure with installed binaries; there is literally no way around this. Doesn't matter if you have an IT department, or if you are the "IT department", you're still better off.
What happens if a flood/whatever hits your office?
If you have a local install, a physical, legal, or commercial disaster at your office or power provider could get you. Perfectly true.
However, if you have a web app, a physical, legal, or commercial disaster at your local workplace or power provider will STILL get you, but you can add to this that any disaster at the network service provider location, any router location, the web app provider location, any interconnecting connection, other people's overloading of traffic, hacks anywhere along the line - now all these can get you as well. You've not ameliorated any of your risk with your web app, you've simply added more. A lot more. So your suggestion of local problems as being comparable is simply not true; it is incorrect at its core.
There are two ways to manage risk. First, minimize your exposure. This argues against web apps, because using a web app in every case will increase your exposure.
The second can be in conflict with the first. It is provide redundancy. If said redundancy is, for instance, allowing some other entity access to your data, then you are, unfortunately, multiplying your risk. The correct way to do this is create physical encrypted backups and store them off-site in a bank vault located such that no disaster smaller than a nuclear weapon can get both your archives and your local data; my companies use safe deposit boxes in not-very nearby towns and regular, carefully vetted swap and update methods to eliminate network risks and keep our data relatively safe. This isn't because we're large; it is because we're careful.
Either way, exposure to local disasters is always far less than exposure to disasters distributed everywhere along the chain that starts with you and ends with the web app provider.
What happens if your bank goes under? Do you hide your money in the hall closet?
Interesting question. In fact, I don't keep any significant percentage of my money in banks. Nor do I keep the majority of it in paper money. Nor do I borrow money. So if the local bank - or any other bank - goes under, I yawn and go on
3) No desktop installation required - no screwing around with what build works on your particular OS.
On the contrary, installation will be required every time. If the source is down, you have no software and you cannot work.
4) IT maintenance - while not a big issue for most of us that post here, for all those mere mortals keeping the software up to date, or upgrading to a new version can be a major headache. With software as a service, its done for you.
Good IT departments test VERY carefully before allowing an upgraded or even bugfixed app loose in a large installed base. This is because every company will have core things that they do which are unique to them, and the software "upgrade" may break those tasks. This is a VERY common problem. What you have no is no control over those damage inflicting "upgrades." This is not a good thing. There's a very good reason software isn't just handed to people in shrink wrap with a laconic "hey, install this."
Accessibility - what if you're outside the firewall and can't get thru the VPN? Again, a bigger deal for mere mortals that/.-ers. (of course the disadvantage is no working offline)
You are seriously saying that an app on some web server somewhere, over networks and hardware you and your company have no way to repair or control, is superior to software and data on your laptop in terms of accessibility? There is no way. Individual machines with local software are far more accessible and reliable; if one goes down, one employee loses functionality. If the web service or the pipe to it goes down, they all do.
less start up risk. If I can start with a couple of seats a month for $50/seat versus having to kick out hundreds or thousands of dollars per desktop copy, it's a better deal (well, legally anyways).
Depends on the software. The question is, what business software is not available in a desktop version inexpensively or even free, but you can get as a service inexpensively on a web site? You can get office suites, bitmap graphics software, structured graphics software, accounting software and so forth for not very much money (or none) per seat. Moving from this state to paying a web site to provide it isn't necessarily a better deal, or safer. It *could* be, but it requires very expensive software to be replaced by the web service, and examples of this are actually pretty rare.
Generally the Software as a service providers have better backup/recovery processes than the average SMB (think law firm, not software house).
This isn't an advantage of a web service as compared to shrinkwrap software. Good backup is an entirely separate issue. Furthermore, the web service backing up one software item and it's data doesn't solve the issue that the rest of the computer needs to be backed up as well, and in that sense, this is no favor to the computer user. The correct answer is complete and regular backups of the user's machine.
Previous poster's points you refer to:
Software provider has an 'incentive' to ensure the product is bug free or that the bugs get fixed quickly. With shrink-wrap software, they have your money and are providing fixes for free.
Shrinkwrap providers also have incentives. They'd lke to sell more; they'd like for the user to be enthusiastic both about the product, and about support. If they can't sell more, they go out of business. I know what I'm talking about here, I've been running a software company selling an application that was initially brought to market in 1992. It is complex, extremely feature loaded, fast and stable. These things are the result of an ongoing process driven by precisely these issues - it matters if you leave bugs in or don
Solar's big advantage is that it supplies the most electricity midday, when demand peaks.
Solar's big advantages are that it is essentially pollution free, doesn't up CO2, reduces petroleum requirements which means more lubricants, plastics and so on at reasonable prices, reduction of political leverage of oil rich countries, increase in ability to operate independently at every level from national to individual, and over the long term, it costs less.
Combined with ultracaps, hopefully to be seen as practical power storage come this fall (via EEStor), the power supply landscape may change significantly in the next decade or so.
Seriously, name one american vehicle that would be improved by the abolition of labour unions.
All of them could be. Because it would decrease the cost to build them, which opens up the potential to either sell them for less, or sell them at the same price with more capability. Either of which would also put them on a better competitive footing with Japan, Korea, and so forth.
Don't imagine for a minute that artificially high costs of labor have no effect upon the ability of a business to produce a quality product.
Don't worry about it though; even though labor unions seem to have the upper hand at the moment, they are one of the key forces that bring automation to assembly lines. Sure, they have the power to blackmail employers right now; but at the same time those ridiculous wages are being handed to them across the table, management is handing contracts to industrial robotics firms. American unions are destroying their own member's jobs by making sure they cost more to the company than automation does, and that they are more annoying to have around than robots are.
What FCC rule prevents you from reading your own book on the air, and why? Is this just a rule for ham radio?
Broadcasting; you can't use ham radio to broadcast, you have to talk to specific other licensed operators. I can send an open call to get an answer from any operator, but once they answer, that's who I am to talk to. The rule is designed (as are many rules) to keep hams from creating any commercial advantage. That is reserved for the corporations.
I'm also curious about the ban on encrypted transmissions. What's the FCC's rationale for this?
I think the rationale, or at least the genesis, is the current overriding government drive to control; they fear what they may not be able to understand. And trust me, you get a bunch of really technical guys trying to make good encryption, there's a significant chance they'll make it very hard to break. From my point of view, the purpose of government is not to control, it is to serve.
P.S. Who is your father and can you recommend any of his books in particular?
James Blish; I would suggest "Black Easter" for casual reading. "A Case of Conscience" and two volumes of criticism "The Issue at Hand" and "More Issues at Hand" (as "William Atheling") for the serious SF maven. "Welcome to Mars" is probably the best juvenile.
Good question; every four years, you get a grand, and good panels last 25 years, so you're looking at $6000 or so; you'd certainly get your money back and then some.
Now,.3 KW panel over 8 hours obviously produces 2.4 KWh. That's 1/4 gallon of gasoline per day - about 75 cents at current prices. Not an awful lot.
Multiply that by.85 to account for the general efficiency of electric drive, and you end up with about 64 cents worth of electricity you get to use. 64 cents is $6.40 every ten days, $19.20 a month, about $230 a year.
Doesn't sound so minimal anymore, does it? I know I'd look forward to a check for $230 on my birthday...
Quit regurgitating what you read on Slashdot all the time and say something insightful.
Regurgitating, eh? I'm an extra class amateur radio operator and I hold an FCC commercial radio operator's license (used to be a first class license, guess it still is, sort of, though they don't give them out any longer.) My name is found in more than one edition of the radio amateur's handbook as an innovator, I received technical achievement of the year from a television group at the Dayton hamvention, and some of well known ham radio manufacturer AEA's commercial products were of my design, as well as my responsibility to get tested for FCC approval. My designs have been on the front cover of 73 and reviewed extensively in 73, CQ, and QST magazines - and elsewhere. I've been the engineer at several 10kw through 100kw radio stations, I've been a DJ (progressive rock), and I've even had my fingers in pirate radio a couple of times. Also related to all this, I'm a musician and a recording engineer.
So it could just possibly be that I might have my own informed opinion on these matters, rather than just parroting what you appear to think is mindless slashdot groupthink. Now, for your edification, Here's a short (and woefully incomplete) list of things I can't do for the "common good" by specific FCC edict:
Set up a commercial radio station without paying six to seven figures, plus lawyer fees
Transmit music. Even my own original works.
Broadcast a book to entertain. Even those I own all the rights to (over two hundred, my father was a popular SF author.)
Transmit encrypted content
Broadcast rather than transmit to specific licensed individuals
Transmit what is loosely called "offensive content" which is anti-liberty and offensive to any true patriot in and of itself - you don't like a broadcast, tune the heck away, don't silence it like a pitiful, cowardly third world dictator.)
Innovate with wireless data transfer (no encryption and no freedom of content, so...)
Create a clocked device for sale without paying a lab ten grand (or more) for testing, plus more in fees to the FCC itself
Transmit an FM broadcast band/mode signal more than 3 meters (outright useless.)
Compete with any commercial radio entity
And of course, the amateur radio bands that I am allowed to transmit upon are only available to me because I have passed several technical tests according to the requirements of the FCC; your average citizen has no access to the amateur bands as you should know, and so you cannot hold up the amateur bands as a resource for Joe or Jane blow to do anything in particular with. Not that they are very useful what with all the restrictions on what we can do with them, anyway.
I think that you and I fundamentally disagree on what the phrase "common good" actually means.
What you have to understand is that the purpose of the FCC is to take complete and absolute control as possible of the natural resource of the EM spectrum, and make that resource available to corporations to resell to the citizens at a profit, as well as carve off a few chunks for the government to use any way they like.
The citizens are only allowed the tiniest possible token portions of the resource, with usage of those portions additionally limited in many critical ways. They do all this under the guise of "protecting" the resource.
Once you wrap your head around this, everything the FCC does makes sense.
The FCC probably qualifies as one of the most corrupt agencies of the US government in the sense that what it does is extremely disjoint from the actual interests and needs of the public, and intentionally so. The US government is supposed to serve the interests of the people, not the corporations.
I dont like the store either, but this is NOT really censorship.
Well, whatever it is, I don't buy music, games or video there, and I won't, until or unless they quit doing it. It isn't as if there aren't better sources; anyone who doesn't chop out what the artist put on the media is a better source as far as I'm concerned.
So, someone is hurt by incorrect information, and you think that's ok because they weren't using sources up to your standards? Not everyone understands what wikipedia is. You're not in a position to inform everyone of how to do research or look up something of interest to them (like a bio) correctly, are you? You're also not in a position to evaluate the emotional and/or financial impact of a wikipedia article, are you? As that's the case, you're also not in a position to deliver an authoritative blanket condemnation of everyone who isn't doing it up to your standards.
The fact is that putting wrong or misleading information into such an article intentionally can have the desired effect, which is to cause problems for people, and as such it is no different than any other act that intentionally causes people problems except in degree, and neither you nor I can accurately estimate the degree of damage bad information can cause. It's vandalism; your attempt to defend vandalism is ethically bankrupt, and always will be because people aren't made up of clones of you - they have flaws, weaknesses and shortcomings, and you can't change that.
I strongly suggest nomination of the Gimp; it both has enormous potential, and could stand a significant degree of improvement as compared to other graphics mangulators.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. For instance, it hasn't worked for Windows.
I assure you I actually meant to write "mow their lawn", not "mom their lawn". :-)
A much better question is, how can we maximize the rewards to our paying customers for providing us with the income we need to pursue our chosen path of software development?
The answers are:
You know the people who will insist on paying you when you mom their lawn, carry groceries, etc.? Those are the socialized, economically stable majority. They'll pay for good stuff as long as you price it sensibly and shovel value at them like it is going out of style (it actually seems to be in some cases, so use that instead of being part of it.) There is simply no need to go to war with everyone else - be a leg up instead of an obstacle to overcome.
I've done extremely well using this approach, as have my loyal employees. The only thing I would raise a flag about is you actually have to have something worthwhile; if you hand customers (and non-customers) bloated, cpu-hogging bugware, no amount of good will can counter the negative effects of the software itself.
The problem here is one I've been warning people about all along. Unlike Linux or OS X, when you use XP or Vista, you do not have control over your computer. Microsoft does. All your work is at risk; all your data, workflow, applications, etc. The computer can be told at any time to stop responding to you based upon policy at Microsoft; you accept this behavior when you click OK in the installer. The current event is one example; all they have to do is have another server screwup (they've had several already) where your validation doesn't validate, and you're down. And in this case, as TFA notes, you're down *and* you're letting malware in the door. Which Microsoft will happily sell you software to combat, which is certainly something to consider more than a little cynically.
If you support software that enables the seller to shut it down after you have jumped through whatever hoops you need to to install it, you're at risk. This is true of productivity software such as editors and image processing applications, and it is even more so for an OS, where *everything* you do can be affected. I rejected Windows as a serious use platform for myself and my businesses because of the activation malware as of XP; been on OS X since I left Win98. If Apple ever decides they have the right to shut me down post-install as evidenced by behaviors that we're seeing out of Microsoft today, I'll be running Linux on the desktop before you can say boo. I already run servers on it. And Linux is getting better all the time.
The problem, as always, are the sheep who accept this kind of behavior from bad actors. They form the majority of the marketplace and the rest of us are constantly affected by policies that use the known compliance / ignorance of the majority to inflict heinous policies.
You bought it; you should NEVER be screwed with by the company you bought it from. Not on purpose, and not by misidentification. In the case of Microsoft, they built in the capability to screw with you and have demonstrated they can and will use it. If that's not a wake-up call, I don't know what is.
Piracy is a fact of selling IP. But any non-zero chance of evaluating someone as a pirate when they are legitimate is unacceptable; far better uncountable pirates get away with it than one legitimate customer, that kind person who has supported your efforts, be so accused. Further, computers aren't hobby machines any longer; sometimes our lives, our careers, our family's welfare depends upon them. Don't allow evil actors like Microsoft to take control of your resources. You owe it to yourself and everyone around you.
Best programming practice is to do everything server side and not hijack the CPU of the site visitor; not depend on client-side active compatibility (for instance, just tried to pay for an EBay auction today, wouldn't work, don't use Explorer...) if you do server side processing, you can make it work for *everyone*. That alone is enough reason to go for it. Then there's Digg; Digg's pages are such a load on the visitor's CPU that I have to click "script not responding, continue?" three times on a page with 800 or so comments with Firefox and a dual-core 2 GHz CPU just to get the page to completely render. Sure, some of this is junk programming, not junk technology, but even so, if the server was doing the work of formatting (like it traditionally has here on slashdot), then it'd just be a matter of my browser reading HTML, instead of trying to run other people's scripts locally. I'd give up the web 2.0 "candy" in a second just to have a reliable web page.
Sadly, I know people will typically go for glitz over functionality, so the only thing that will kill web 2.0 is web 3.0, and I have little doubt it'll be even worse. :(
As for leaning towards good programming practices, my suggestion is to start by taking PHP off your server, learn Python (or Perl if you're feeling feisty) and write something that at least has a chance of being reasonably structured. Keeping in mind I'm a huge fan of Python.
If you (or any other slashdotter) would like, you can visit my contact form and I'll see that you get a copy to evaluate. just use my name in the form (Ben) or mention slashdot. WinImages is a Windows application, runs under Windows 98 and up. Also runs fine under Mac Parallels for Intel / OSX and of course, bootcamp. Haven't heard of anyone getting it going under Linux's various Windows-like solutions, but it shouldn't be much of a challenge - it does, after all, run under Win98. :-)
When the wage is set by blackmail - the threat to strike, for instance - and not by an offer from the employer which the employee decides to accept - then the wage is ridiculous, as well as artificial.
The CEO's are receiving wages the company has decided are appropriate, no one forced the company to pay those wages. That's the difference, you see - is it blackmail, or is it not? If a company offers, freely and of its own choice, to pay a worker X wage, this is, by definition, a fair wage if the worker decides to accept that wage in exchange for the job being offered. Regardless of the amount involved. As soon as the worker attempts blackmail - blowing up buildings, co-opting other workers into destroying the ability of the company to produce, etc. - then no matter how large, or how small, the wage thus obtained is, it is a ridiculous, immoral, inappropriate wage.
The idea that employees should have the power to set their own wages is absurd. That power belongs to the owners of the operation, or to delegated employees. What employees have - and should have - is the ability to decide if the wage offered is sufficient exchange for the job at hand. If it isn't, they need to look elsewhere. If it is, then do the work and be content. If you want more, offer to do more or otherwise make yourself more attractive to the employer. Or find a different employer. Nothing you do somehow transfers the rights to control the company's choices into your hands. Nothing. The company can assign you those rights if it so chooses (for instance, by making you a manager with discretion as to the remuneration of your department) but you can't just take them, or at least, you can't do so legitimately.
No. What is wrong is blackmailing yourself into control of a resource that isn't yours. As I am sure you are well aware.
I don't. The quality of a product (or service) is one of the issues that define the playing field between competing entities working the same market. A balance has to be found by the company; that's part of the company's basic planning. But that balance isn't something that is to be set from the rank and file upwards. It is set top down, and it always should be. If wages are too low, then employees will leave in unusual numbers, taking skills and training with them while loading the company with new requirements, as well as otherwise compromise the ability to produce. Everyone understands that. But that doesn't mean that you suddenly have the right to get together with a bunch of your co-workers and blackmail your employer.
Or - as is often the case - that you have the right to force every employee into a union and blackmail them into going along with the union's plans.
As a businessman, I can tell you story after story where unions present nothing but unreason and discord.
At a trade show in Chicago, we were forced, at a rate of about $60/hour, to pay for two hours of labor for union employees to set up our display; two employees, one hour each. For about ten seconds of unfolding. When the stand was unfolded, one of the lamps was out. We then had to pay another hour to a union electrician to replace the bulb. As an EE, I am 100% capable of unfolding a stand, not to mention screwing in a new bulb (we had even brought spares.) I was bluntly told that if I did either of these things, we would be forcibly removed from the show floor.
My middle son, Mike, works for the railroad. He's an engineer. He gets paid a truly amazing amount of money for
WinImages' EXE is about 4.6 megs. Feature-wise, it is comparable to Photoshop most ways, with some different approaches here and there. Considerably more powerful than the current release of Gimp. It loads and executes essentially immediately on any modern machine (say a GHz or better), even first time after a system reboot (doesn't depend on OS caching for startup speed.)
It will use 250 megs if that's how much memory is required to hold an image (in four 62.5 meg allocations - R, G, B and A.) If there isn't enough memory to do that, it depends upon the OS to handle the virtualization of the image data. All images are treated as 32-bit for processing purposes. All operators (filters, etc) directly approach the image buffers in memory for maximum speed. Users are definitely better off having enough memory.
WinImages is written in C, intentionally designed to use as few external functions (OS, DLL or otherwise) as possible as initially installed.
The footprint can be enlarged by adding plug ins, scripts, and various data files such as particle systems, ray trace scenes, palettes, brushes, curves, transitions, timelines, operator presets, tool caddies and the usual host of other ancillary files. The actual weight of image files typically dwarfs WinImages' resource usage almost no matter what you do, and none of the above slows the software down in any appreciable manner.
6809 Flex is 6k. 8k if you want to count the disk and other I/O buffer spaces. 6k is downright reasonable. :-)
Well, many designs feature a salt and battery; personally, though, I always thought that just because you have bipolar to point at doesn't mean you get off without a charge. From where I sit, the whole bunch of them belong in cells.
I run a dual core macbook pro with Parallels. I run OSX, XP, and RH linux concurrently on it. I can run 98, too, I just usually don't. I can run a lot of the software out there on the machine. Far more than someone running just Windows. So I'm afraid your contention doesn't hold water. When people see my mac, they're not likely to go back to a windows laptop with a very positive attitude. But my Mac isn't particularly different from any other modern Mac in this capability.
Well, not exactly. Sort of. For instance, I run Windows XP sandboxed on my dual core MacBook Pro laptop, and that's the only place I run Windows at all. Windows isn't allowed to get to the net where it can get hurt, I just use it to host a few desktop applications that don't have Mac equivalents. With Parallels "coherence" mode, I'm in the OSX filesystem for the images and other files I use under Windows, but I have the Mac right there doing the right things for everything else.
I also run a linux install pretty much the same way (though no coherence, unfortunately.) The linux install is allowed on the net because it considerably more secure "out there" than Windows is. I can run all three OS's at once without any problem and get realistic performance from all of them.
Hence, no need for a Windows machine, and no need to be an "idiot", either. ;-)
As for Vista... No need to go there. We won't be writing any applications using Vista specific capabilities, either. As far as I'm concerned, Vista was dead at the starting line.
No. I'm telling you that with a web app, installation is required every time, if indeed the site is accessible and operating properly and hasn't lost your data or "shared" it with half the hackers on the planet. As compared to typically once with a desktop or laptop app. If you'd like to compare the failure rate of installed applications against the failure rate of network connectivity plus your computer plus the remote site, and possibly plus a browser, then I'm perfectly ready to suggest that your computer will be a heck of a lot more reliable on its own.
I wasn't suggesting maintenance. I was pointing out why you want to choose when to upgrade, as opposed to have it forced on you, and using the best practices of people who really know what they are doing to demonstrate why.
Or for a web site to come back up, or for the cable the post hole digger cut be repaired, or the phone company to recover from that lightning strike, or the hack of the provider to be undone. That's why it is *always* better to have your software on your machine, where YOU can control it. There are far fewer points of failure with installed binaries; there is literally no way around this. Doesn't matter if you have an IT department, or if you are the "IT department", you're still better off.
If you have a local install, a physical, legal, or commercial disaster at your office or power provider could get you. Perfectly true.
However, if you have a web app, a physical, legal, or commercial disaster at your local workplace or power provider will STILL get you, but you can add to this that any disaster at the network service provider location, any router location, the web app provider location, any interconnecting connection, other people's overloading of traffic, hacks anywhere along the line - now all these can get you as well. You've not ameliorated any of your risk with your web app, you've simply added more. A lot more. So your suggestion of local problems as being comparable is simply not true; it is incorrect at its core.
There are two ways to manage risk. First, minimize your exposure. This argues against web apps, because using a web app in every case will increase your exposure.
The second can be in conflict with the first. It is provide redundancy. If said redundancy is, for instance, allowing some other entity access to your data, then you are, unfortunately, multiplying your risk. The correct way to do this is create physical encrypted backups and store them off-site in a bank vault located such that no disaster smaller than a nuclear weapon can get both your archives and your local data; my companies use safe deposit boxes in not-very nearby towns and regular, carefully vetted swap and update methods to eliminate network risks and keep our data relatively safe. This isn't because we're large; it is because we're careful.
Either way, exposure to local disasters is always far less than exposure to disasters distributed everywhere along the chain that starts with you and ends with the web app provider.
Interesting question. In fact, I don't keep any significant percentage of my money in banks. Nor do I keep the majority of it in paper money. Nor do I borrow money. So if the local bank - or any other bank - goes under, I yawn and go on
On the contrary, installation will be required every time. If the source is down, you have no software and you cannot work.
Good IT departments test VERY carefully before allowing an upgraded or even bugfixed app loose in a large installed base. This is because every company will have core things that they do which are unique to them, and the software "upgrade" may break those tasks. This is a VERY common problem. What you have no is no control over those damage inflicting "upgrades." This is not a good thing. There's a very good reason software isn't just handed to people in shrink wrap with a laconic "hey, install this."
You are seriously saying that an app on some web server somewhere, over networks and hardware you and your company have no way to repair or control, is superior to software and data on your laptop in terms of accessibility? There is no way. Individual machines with local software are far more accessible and reliable; if one goes down, one employee loses functionality. If the web service or the pipe to it goes down, they all do.
Depends on the software. The question is, what business software is not available in a desktop version inexpensively or even free, but you can get as a service inexpensively on a web site? You can get office suites, bitmap graphics software, structured graphics software, accounting software and so forth for not very much money (or none) per seat. Moving from this state to paying a web site to provide it isn't necessarily a better deal, or safer. It *could* be, but it requires very expensive software to be replaced by the web service, and examples of this are actually pretty rare.
This isn't an advantage of a web service as compared to shrinkwrap software. Good backup is an entirely separate issue. Furthermore, the web service backing up one software item and it's data doesn't solve the issue that the rest of the computer needs to be backed up as well, and in that sense, this is no favor to the computer user. The correct answer is complete and regular backups of the user's machine.
Previous poster's points you refer to:
Shrinkwrap providers also have incentives. They'd lke to sell more; they'd like for the user to be enthusiastic both about the product, and about support. If they can't sell more, they go out of business. I know what I'm talking about here, I've been running a software company selling an application that was initially brought to market in 1992. It is complex, extremely feature loaded, fast and stable. These things are the result of an ongoing process driven by precisely these issues - it matters if you leave bugs in or don
Keep your eye on these folks.
Solar's big advantages are that it is essentially pollution free, doesn't up CO2, reduces petroleum requirements which means more lubricants, plastics and so on at reasonable prices, reduction of political leverage of oil rich countries, increase in ability to operate independently at every level from national to individual, and over the long term, it costs less.
Combined with ultracaps, hopefully to be seen as practical power storage come this fall (via EEStor), the power supply landscape may change significantly in the next decade or so.
All of them could be. Because it would decrease the cost to build them, which opens up the potential to either sell them for less, or sell them at the same price with more capability. Either of which would also put them on a better competitive footing with Japan, Korea, and so forth.
Don't imagine for a minute that artificially high costs of labor have no effect upon the ability of a business to produce a quality product.
Don't worry about it though; even though labor unions seem to have the upper hand at the moment, they are one of the key forces that bring automation to assembly lines. Sure, they have the power to blackmail employers right now; but at the same time those ridiculous wages are being handed to them across the table, management is handing contracts to industrial robotics firms. American unions are destroying their own member's jobs by making sure they cost more to the company than automation does, and that they are more annoying to have around than robots are.
Broadcasting; you can't use ham radio to broadcast, you have to talk to specific other licensed operators. I can send an open call to get an answer from any operator, but once they answer, that's who I am to talk to. The rule is designed (as are many rules) to keep hams from creating any commercial advantage. That is reserved for the corporations.
I think the rationale, or at least the genesis, is the current overriding government drive to control; they fear what they may not be able to understand. And trust me, you get a bunch of really technical guys trying to make good encryption, there's a significant chance they'll make it very hard to break. From my point of view, the purpose of government is not to control, it is to serve.
James Blish; I would suggest "Black Easter" for casual reading. "A Case of Conscience" and two volumes of criticism "The Issue at Hand" and "More Issues at Hand" (as "William Atheling") for the serious SF maven. "Welcome to Mars" is probably the best juvenile.
Good question; every four years, you get a grand, and good panels last 25 years, so you're looking at $6000 or so; you'd certainly get your money back and then some.
Multiply that by .85 to account for the general efficiency of electric drive, and you end up with about 64 cents worth of electricity you get to use. 64 cents is $6.40 every ten days, $19.20 a month, about $230 a year.
Doesn't sound so minimal anymore, does it? I know I'd look forward to a check for $230 on my birthday...
Regurgitating, eh? I'm an extra class amateur radio operator and I hold an FCC commercial radio operator's license (used to be a first class license, guess it still is, sort of, though they don't give them out any longer.) My name is found in more than one edition of the radio amateur's handbook as an innovator, I received technical achievement of the year from a television group at the Dayton hamvention, and some of well known ham radio manufacturer AEA's commercial products were of my design, as well as my responsibility to get tested for FCC approval. My designs have been on the front cover of 73 and reviewed extensively in 73, CQ, and QST magazines - and elsewhere. I've been the engineer at several 10kw through 100kw radio stations, I've been a DJ (progressive rock), and I've even had my fingers in pirate radio a couple of times. Also related to all this, I'm a musician and a recording engineer.
So it could just possibly be that I might have my own informed opinion on these matters, rather than just parroting what you appear to think is mindless slashdot groupthink. Now, for your edification, Here's a short (and woefully incomplete) list of things I can't do for the "common good" by specific FCC edict:
And of course, the amateur radio bands that I am allowed to transmit upon are only available to me because I have passed several technical tests according to the requirements of the FCC; your average citizen has no access to the amateur bands as you should know, and so you cannot hold up the amateur bands as a resource for Joe or Jane blow to do anything in particular with. Not that they are very useful what with all the restrictions on what we can do with them, anyway.
I think that you and I fundamentally disagree on what the phrase "common good" actually means.
What you have to understand is that the purpose of the FCC is to take complete and absolute control as possible of the natural resource of the EM spectrum, and make that resource available to corporations to resell to the citizens at a profit, as well as carve off a few chunks for the government to use any way they like.
The citizens are only allowed the tiniest possible token portions of the resource, with usage of those portions additionally limited in many critical ways. They do all this under the guise of "protecting" the resource.
Once you wrap your head around this, everything the FCC does makes sense.
The FCC probably qualifies as one of the most corrupt agencies of the US government in the sense that what it does is extremely disjoint from the actual interests and needs of the public, and intentionally so. The US government is supposed to serve the interests of the people, not the corporations.
Well, whatever it is, I don't buy music, games or video there, and I won't, until or unless they quit doing it. It isn't as if there aren't better sources; anyone who doesn't chop out what the artist put on the media is a better source as far as I'm concerned.
So, someone is hurt by incorrect information, and you think that's ok because they weren't using sources up to your standards? Not everyone understands what wikipedia is. You're not in a position to inform everyone of how to do research or look up something of interest to them (like a bio) correctly, are you? You're also not in a position to evaluate the emotional and/or financial impact of a wikipedia article, are you? As that's the case, you're also not in a position to deliver an authoritative blanket condemnation of everyone who isn't doing it up to your standards.
The fact is that putting wrong or misleading information into such an article intentionally can have the desired effect, which is to cause problems for people, and as such it is no different than any other act that intentionally causes people problems except in degree, and neither you nor I can accurately estimate the degree of damage bad information can cause. It's vandalism; your attempt to defend vandalism is ethically bankrupt, and always will be because people aren't made up of clones of you - they have flaws, weaknesses and shortcomings, and you can't change that.
I strongly suggest nomination of the Gimp; it both has enormous potential, and could stand a significant degree of improvement as compared to other graphics mangulators.