It really strikes me odd that people in the 21st century seek new ways to get from home to work when in the majority of cases (at least in the IT) they can simply get the work to their home. Even heard of telework?
the Communist Party of China really gives us a good laugh every day. Too bad we can laugh only because we are out of their secret police's reach. Unfortunately those who live in the territories they control have to take all this crap seriously or risk being thrown to a prison cell for life. Next time you have a choice between a Chinese product and another country's product (eg Taiwan or Japan), remember that CPC gets a share of the revenues. You wouldn't want to support such a criminal government, would you? Chinese people deserve to live in a free democratic society, and as long as we buy PRC products we make their government stronger and that's bad for everyone on this planet, not just for the Chinese.
If children are raised in an environment where surveillance is common and openly visible, they'll think it's something normal and natural and will never revolt against this unless they read some philosophy or learn to think for themselves at a later age.
The Chinese communist government not only wants to detain Tibetans, monitor Internet useage, and do other nasty things typical of fascist states, but it now also wants to steal the precious screen real estate of its people. It must be ridiculous to live in a state that not only fscks up your rights but also forces you to put silly animated cops on YOUR computer's screen!
Do you have some free time in your hands? If so, search for management training. I have a Bachelor's in Computer Science and I'm now completing my Master's in Management. It's useful, but in order to benefit fully you have to read research papers from business academic journals and not just learn from the university book or lectures. I suggest exploring the distance learning programmes offered by Open University. A programme of study will help your mind get used to the vocabulary and basic ideas and conceptions of management, so you will be prepared to seek more knowledge yourself during and after the formal study.
You can also register to a professional association focusing on management. I am a member of the IEEE Engineering Management Society and I read their and other journals, and I am also associated with the Chartered Management Institute, in addition to many engineering and computing societies (ACM, BCS, IET...). I actually combine business consulting and computer consulting in my work as an independent contractor, and I have also found that management and business consulting in general is way more profitable than technology consulting, so I would surely recommend every techie geek to get familiar with basic business jargon and concepts. There are endless opportunities for IT people who have a good grasp of business out there.
To be a good manager you have to focus on both your business processes and your people. Design good processes for your orgranisation. But merely focusing on processes isn't enough, as you need capable and motivated people in order to implement them. That's why you have to be a people manager as well. You must make people believe in you and trust you. You need to actively help your people succeed in their roles, not just demand from them to do something. If you have firing powers, make sure everyone is aware of them, but use them sparingly and with great care. If you are involved in hiring, make sure you have a good grasp of human psychology and always ask potential hires to write some code. If you communicate with clients, keep in mind that the client has a problem and needs a solution to it, not a technology or a product. Even if you use the best programming language, you will fail if you didn't understand what the client wanted in the first place. Actually the ability to correctly figure out what a client wants is what distinguishes a programmer who can work independently (self-employed) from one who can't (and therefore needs to be the employee of a company or cooperate with others in a firm). It's difficult because it's like having to work two brains at the same time (a techie brain and a business brain with lots of psychological empathy and listening skills), bit it's possible and those who can do it see great rewards. Keep in mind that since you work for an organisation you will have to understand your boss's vision as well, since you are being asked to implement it.
The problem for businesses is that a large percentage of programmers who are capable of interacting with clients and thinking about business leave to work alone when they realise their true abilities, so companies, especially SMEs, are always short of good middle managers. If you can code and handle human issues at the same time, it's good to realise it early in your career. If you are only one-sided (only code or only business) then you can work on it and improve.
Improving your management capabilities can happen in two stages: Since you are a developer I assume you are well-versed in analytical thinking, so you can start by learning about business processes. After your brain starts thinking in business terms, begin stressing it with people management issues and some psychology. Enroll to some training programmes, read independently recent management research (most research papers that weren't written just to grab a grant have something u
I one day somewhere read something about a law that prohibits people from using the legal system to launch fraudulent lawsuits or wasting the court's time. I don't remember the country where this law applied, or whether it's common or not. I wonder whether such a law could be used against a patent troll (IANAL).
Copyright protects a specific piece of software. If you don't want to be attacked with copyright, you just write your own software. Patents, especially when combined with an overworked or incompetent patent office (or a fascist state), have the potential to cover ideas and discourage technological development, as well as economic development (especially for business method patents). They are powerful and dangerous, and that's why they have a 20-year maximum life (this means that even the governments are afraid of patents). It isn't easy to circumvent a cleverly written patent, and just the threat of a lawsuit can shut down an entire startup business or even a free software project.
The problem with deals like the MS-Novell deal is that they have the potential to partition our community. Such deals are also bad from a purely economic point of view, as they give an unfair advantage to a single distributor. I don't think we want any future deals like this, so the GPLv3 included provisions designed to ensure that you can't just choose who will get patent protection - you must extend the protection to everyone if you do offer such protection at all.
Remember that the GPL is designed to protect the users of computer software, and I think GPLv3's provisions against patent protection deals is a good thing. We must attack such deals as a community. The Slashdot headline is a bit too speculative, but I think FSF would have a valid case if this reached the court one day, but IANAL (I'm not a lawyer).
Section 11
How do the new terms of section 11 affect the Microsoft-Novell deal?
We attack the Microsoft-Novell deal from two angles. First, in the sixth paragraph of section 11, the draft says that if you arrange to provide patent protection to some of the people who get the software from you, that protection is automatically extended to everyone who receives the software, no matter how they get it. This means that the patent protection Microsoft has extended to Novell's customers would be extended to everyone who uses any software Novell distributes under GPLv3.
Second, in the seventh paragraph, the draft says that you are prohibited from distributing software under GPLv3 if you make an agreement like the Microsoft-Novell deal in the future. This will prevent other distributors from trying to make other deals like it.
Most taxicubs I have used in the last year have had a GPS device, but I have never seen it being used for good purpose. In one occassion, the driver had a working GPS device, I told him where I was going, and he said I should tell him what streets to take as he didn't know where it was; he didn't touched the GPS at all, so I wonder why he paid for it. The result for me was lost performance, as I always use a laptop working when inside taxis, but with that driver I had to forego working in order to be able to tell him where to turn left or right. The main bottleneck in having a good taxi service is the driver's lack of professionalism, not the lack of cool gadgets. What we urgently need is educational programmes for taxi drivers.
Internet TV will cause the Internet to crash, but not for lack of bandwidth, but for lack of critical thought. Text media give you time to think critically if you do have this ability, but video hinders critical thought, especially when the content providers want to spread propaganda instead of informing the public. That's why TV is full of stupidity.
Security, laws, and social behaviour rules seem to increase wherever the population density is high, or in other words when lots of people share limited resources.
Perhaps we could increase safety by keeping the population density low and ensuring everyone has access to sufficient resources.
it's in the universe's best interest to keep us around
Surely, the universe must enjoy being polluted with toxic human waste, while seeing humans displacing all other life that is not domesticised and driving even unknown species into total extinction.
So what if humans pass into history? It's not just a tragedy for us, but also one for nature.
What a relief it would be!
Without us, there is no one to witness its infinite beauty
Last time I checked animals have eyes just like us.
But we also deserve to continue because we have created things greater than ourselves. Not only scientific and engineering knowledge, valuable as this is -- we have also created new and beautiful ways to see the world through art, music, literature and performance
It is only certain enlightened individuals from our species that were able to understand the difference between a human and an animal and choose to use their brains for such higher purposes as art and science, rather than for pursuing animalistic instincts. Unfortunately, the vast majority of homo sapiens are animals and have no appreciation for anything human. Homo sapiens is born an animal, and usually remains as such, except for a small minority who with great difficulty may at some point of their lives become worthy of being called a human. These individuals surely deserve to live, but I am not so sure about the species as a whole.
The strategy of the free software community is to create a world where free software is the norm. Destroying Microsoft is simply a battle, not the outcome of the war. Actually this battle is close to be concluded in GNU/Linux's favour. Unless Microsoft radically changes its culture or acquires a significant company, I do not expect them to be able to hold even a tenth of the PC market by 2020 or 2025. I believe the most important threat to GNU/Linux and free software nowadays is the government (specifically laws that discriminate or prohibit the use of free software in various applications), not a single corporation.
I am afraid that with the billions we spend in ineffective and often unneeded security, we run ourselves out of money while the terrorists laugh behind our back. We essentially blow ourselves up by destroying our economy and our civilisation, effectivelly doing exactly what the terrorists want.
Am I the only one suspecting that all this paranoia about security and terrorism may in fact be driven partly by the security corporations? Surely, this paranoia is being pushed by the governments for practical reasons (there ARE hostile terrorists out there, unfortunately), as well as for political reasons (1984), but there must be an economic factor as well. Some people who have influence over the governments must earn lots of money by selling various security-related products and services, just like defence-related corporations do by supplying the military. As no defence contractor would ever want world peace, no security company would ever desire the 'war on terrorism' to come at an end.
shuts down all the airports in the country. How does this help them do a "Coup d'etat"?
Perhaps you should read about some coup d'etats in history. Controlling the transport hubs, including airports, as well as mass media such as TV stations, is typically a major objective.
You can't control a people if you can't direct where they go (transport) and what they believe (TV).
The big problem with climate change is not in the arguments presented or in the science behind it, but in the quality and motives of the people who participate in any public discussion about climate change. Practically, climate change has become a tool used by people with political intents, and, of course, as all political issues it has an economic cause: Rich people want more money and therefore want to be able to release as much CO2 as they want (and they do not care whether this destroys the atmosphere they breathe), while poor people want more money and therefore want to destroy the rich (in order to take their wealth and become rich themselves as well, and of course they also do not care about the atmosphere they breathe), and nowadays they are trying to do so by claiming that releasing CO2 is bad. Furthermore, the people who participate in public discussion about climate change on popular media or venues (eg TV, newspapers, political speeches etc, to distinguish against academic conferences and other non-popular venues) seldom have an understanding of science, or even an interest in it, and sometimes do not even possess a brain or mind capable of logical, thoughtful, critical analysis of the issues involved in climate change. It is a serious field that has now been touched by a silly mass of fools with inferior motives, and the result is what you see on your TV or read in popular newspapers. It becomes pretty disgusting when scientific theories or even a small set of scientific data are being used by the masses for purposes other than expanding our knowledge of the cosmos; it really becomes silly and makes you wonder why you have to share the planet with people of so great variance in quality. Perhaps because heretics are needed in all properties and measures for evolution, adaptation, and survival in a complex world.
Could we just design a solution that would guarantee affordable healthcare costs to all the population, while still providing free service to people who need it (eg homeless, unemployed, very poor)?
If healthcare was affordable, insurance would not be needed at all.
we need to get rid of insurance companies and get government healcare
I agree that private insurance companies seek to maximise profit qhile providing no service. The sad thing is, I believe the governments, or perhaps some people within some governments, are keen to do exactly the same.
Slashdot Mirror
It really strikes me odd that people in the 21st century seek new ways to get from home to work when in the majority of cases (at least in the IT) they can simply get the work to their home. Even heard of telework?
the Communist Party of China really gives us a good laugh every day. Too bad we can laugh only because we are out of their secret police's reach. Unfortunately those who live in the territories they control have to take all this crap seriously or risk being thrown to a prison cell for life. Next time you have a choice between a Chinese product and another country's product (eg Taiwan or Japan), remember that CPC gets a share of the revenues. You wouldn't want to support such a criminal government, would you? Chinese people deserve to live in a free democratic society, and as long as we buy PRC products we make their government stronger and that's bad for everyone on this planet, not just for the Chinese.
Last time I checked, China has about 130 nuclear warheads, US has 9 960, and Russia has 16 000.
Guess who is going to be obliterated first when the WW3 begins.
If children are raised in an environment where surveillance is common and openly visible, they'll think it's something normal and natural and will never revolt against this unless they read some philosophy or learn to think for themselves at a later age.
The Chinese communist government not only wants to detain Tibetans, monitor Internet useage, and do other nasty things typical of fascist states, but it now also wants to steal the precious screen real estate of its people. It must be ridiculous to live in a state that not only fscks up your rights but also forces you to put silly animated cops on YOUR computer's screen!
You can make lots of money by customising GPLed code, supporting it, and integrating it into a company.
Do you have some free time in your hands? If so, search for management training. I have a Bachelor's in Computer Science and I'm now completing my Master's in Management. It's useful, but in order to benefit fully you have to read research papers from business academic journals and not just learn from the university book or lectures. I suggest exploring the distance learning programmes offered by Open University. A programme of study will help your mind get used to the vocabulary and basic ideas and conceptions of management, so you will be prepared to seek more knowledge yourself during and after the formal study.
You can also register to a professional association focusing on management. I am a member of the IEEE Engineering Management Society and I read their and other journals, and I am also associated with the Chartered Management Institute, in addition to many engineering and computing societies (ACM, BCS, IET...). I actually combine business consulting and computer consulting in my work as an independent contractor, and I have also found that management and business consulting in general is way more profitable than technology consulting, so I would surely recommend every techie geek to get familiar with basic business jargon and concepts. There are endless opportunities for IT people who have a good grasp of business out there.
To be a good manager you have to focus on both your business processes and your people. Design good processes for your orgranisation. But merely focusing on processes isn't enough, as you need capable and motivated people in order to implement them. That's why you have to be a people manager as well. You must make people believe in you and trust you. You need to actively help your people succeed in their roles, not just demand from them to do something. If you have firing powers, make sure everyone is aware of them, but use them sparingly and with great care. If you are involved in hiring, make sure you have a good grasp of human psychology and always ask potential hires to write some code. If you communicate with clients, keep in mind that the client has a problem and needs a solution to it, not a technology or a product. Even if you use the best programming language, you will fail if you didn't understand what the client wanted in the first place. Actually the ability to correctly figure out what a client wants is what distinguishes a programmer who can work independently (self-employed) from one who can't (and therefore needs to be the employee of a company or cooperate with others in a firm). It's difficult because it's like having to work two brains at the same time (a techie brain and a business brain with lots of psychological empathy and listening skills), bit it's possible and those who can do it see great rewards. Keep in mind that since you work for an organisation you will have to understand your boss's vision as well, since you are being asked to implement it.
The problem for businesses is that a large percentage of programmers who are capable of interacting with clients and thinking about business leave to work alone when they realise their true abilities, so companies, especially SMEs, are always short of good middle managers. If you can code and handle human issues at the same time, it's good to realise it early in your career. If you are only one-sided (only code or only business) then you can work on it and improve.
Improving your management capabilities can happen in two stages: Since you are a developer I assume you are well-versed in analytical thinking, so you can start by learning about business processes. After your brain starts thinking in business terms, begin stressing it with people management issues and some psychology. Enroll to some training programmes, read independently recent management research (most research papers that weren't written just to grab a grant have something u
I one day somewhere read something about a law that prohibits people from using the legal system to launch fraudulent lawsuits or wasting the court's time. I don't remember the country where this law applied, or whether it's common or not. I wonder whether such a law could be used against a patent troll (IANAL).
Copyright protects a specific piece of software. If you don't want to be attacked with copyright, you just write your own software. Patents, especially when combined with an overworked or incompetent patent office (or a fascist state), have the potential to cover ideas and discourage technological development, as well as economic development (especially for business method patents). They are powerful and dangerous, and that's why they have a 20-year maximum life (this means that even the governments are afraid of patents). It isn't easy to circumvent a cleverly written patent, and just the threat of a lawsuit can shut down an entire startup business or even a free software project.
The problem with deals like the MS-Novell deal is that they have the potential to partition our community. Such deals are also bad from a purely economic point of view, as they give an unfair advantage to a single distributor. I don't think we want any future deals like this, so the GPLv3 included provisions designed to ensure that you can't just choose who will get patent protection - you must extend the protection to everyone if you do offer such protection at all.
Remember that the GPL is designed to protect the users of computer software, and I think GPLv3's provisions against patent protection deals is a good thing. We must attack such deals as a community. The Slashdot headline is a bit too speculative, but I think FSF would have a valid case if this reached the court one day, but IANAL (I'm not a lawyer).
Full disclosure: I'm a Contributing Member of the FSF.
I copy from the GPLv3 FAQ written by brett:
Section 11 How do the new terms of section 11 affect the Microsoft-Novell deal? We attack the Microsoft-Novell deal from two angles. First, in the sixth paragraph of section 11, the draft says that if you arrange to provide patent protection to some of the people who get the software from you, that protection is automatically extended to everyone who receives the software, no matter how they get it. This means that the patent protection Microsoft has extended to Novell's customers would be extended to everyone who uses any software Novell distributes under GPLv3. Second, in the seventh paragraph, the draft says that you are prohibited from distributing software under GPLv3 if you make an agreement like the Microsoft-Novell deal in the future. This will prevent other distributors from trying to make other deals like it.Most taxicubs I have used in the last year have had a GPS device, but I have never seen it being used for good purpose. In one occassion, the driver had a working GPS device, I told him where I was going, and he said I should tell him what streets to take as he didn't know where it was; he didn't touched the GPS at all, so I wonder why he paid for it. The result for me was lost performance, as I always use a laptop working when inside taxis, but with that driver I had to forego working in order to be able to tell him where to turn left or right. The main bottleneck in having a good taxi service is the driver's lack of professionalism, not the lack of cool gadgets. What we urgently need is educational programmes for taxi drivers.
See ethology of vervets.
Internet TV will cause the Internet to crash, but not for lack of bandwidth, but for lack of critical thought. Text media give you time to think critically if you do have this ability, but video hinders critical thought, especially when the content providers want to spread propaganda instead of informing the public. That's why TV is full of stupidity.
Security, laws, and social behaviour rules seem to increase wherever the population density is high, or in other words when lots of people share limited resources.
Perhaps we could increase safety by keeping the population density low and ensuring everyone has access to sufficient resources.
It'll be easy to outsource dentists once we develop affordable and safe remote-controlled surgical robots coupled with low-latency networks.
A 3-way server could sell better than 4-way ones in China, as the number 4 in China is associated with death.
Surely, the universe must enjoy being polluted with toxic human waste, while seeing humans displacing all other life that is not domesticised and driving even unknown species into total extinction.
So what if humans pass into history? It's not just a tragedy for us, but also one for nature.What a relief it would be!
Without us, there is no one to witness its infinite beautyLast time I checked animals have eyes just like us.
But we also deserve to continue because we have created things greater than ourselves. Not only scientific and engineering knowledge, valuable as this is -- we have also created new and beautiful ways to see the world through art, music, literature and performanceIt is only certain enlightened individuals from our species that were able to understand the difference between a human and an animal and choose to use their brains for such higher purposes as art and science, rather than for pursuing animalistic instincts. Unfortunately, the vast majority of homo sapiens are animals and have no appreciation for anything human. Homo sapiens is born an animal, and usually remains as such, except for a small minority who with great difficulty may at some point of their lives become worthy of being called a human. These individuals surely deserve to live, but I am not so sure about the species as a whole.
The strategy of the free software community is to create a world where free software is the norm. Destroying Microsoft is simply a battle, not the outcome of the war. Actually this battle is close to be concluded in GNU/Linux's favour. Unless Microsoft radically changes its culture or acquires a significant company, I do not expect them to be able to hold even a tenth of the PC market by 2020 or 2025. I believe the most important threat to GNU/Linux and free software nowadays is the government (specifically laws that discriminate or prohibit the use of free software in various applications), not a single corporation.
I am afraid that with the billions we spend in ineffective and often unneeded security, we run ourselves out of money while the terrorists laugh behind our back. We essentially blow ourselves up by destroying our economy and our civilisation, effectivelly doing exactly what the terrorists want.
Am I the only one suspecting that all this paranoia about security and terrorism may in fact be driven partly by the security corporations? Surely, this paranoia is being pushed by the governments for practical reasons (there ARE hostile terrorists out there, unfortunately), as well as for political reasons (1984), but there must be an economic factor as well. Some people who have influence over the governments must earn lots of money by selling various security-related products and services, just like defence-related corporations do by supplying the military. As no defence contractor would ever want world peace, no security company would ever desire the 'war on terrorism' to come at an end.
Perhaps you should read about some coup d'etats in history. Controlling the transport hubs, including airports, as well as mass media such as TV stations, is typically a major objective.
You can't control a people if you can't direct where they go (transport) and what they believe (TV).
The big problem with climate change is not in the arguments presented or in the science behind it, but in the quality and motives of the people who participate in any public discussion about climate change. Practically, climate change has become a tool used by people with political intents, and, of course, as all political issues it has an economic cause: Rich people want more money and therefore want to be able to release as much CO2 as they want (and they do not care whether this destroys the atmosphere they breathe), while poor people want more money and therefore want to destroy the rich (in order to take their wealth and become rich themselves as well, and of course they also do not care about the atmosphere they breathe), and nowadays they are trying to do so by claiming that releasing CO2 is bad. Furthermore, the people who participate in public discussion about climate change on popular media or venues (eg TV, newspapers, political speeches etc, to distinguish against academic conferences and other non-popular venues) seldom have an understanding of science, or even an interest in it, and sometimes do not even possess a brain or mind capable of logical, thoughtful, critical analysis of the issues involved in climate change. It is a serious field that has now been touched by a silly mass of fools with inferior motives, and the result is what you see on your TV or read in popular newspapers. It becomes pretty disgusting when scientific theories or even a small set of scientific data are being used by the masses for purposes other than expanding our knowledge of the cosmos; it really becomes silly and makes you wonder why you have to share the planet with people of so great variance in quality. Perhaps because heretics are needed in all properties and measures for evolution, adaptation, and survival in a complex world.
I would very much prefer them to support Debian rather than openSUSE.
Why do we need insurance at all?
Because healthcare costs are too high.
WHY are healthcare costs so high?
Could we just design a solution that would guarantee affordable healthcare costs to all the population, while still providing free service to people who need it (eg homeless, unemployed, very poor)?
If healthcare was affordable, insurance would not be needed at all.
I agree that private insurance companies seek to maximise profit qhile providing no service. The sad thing is, I believe the governments, or perhaps some people within some governments, are keen to do exactly the same.