So their share of Google, between the two of them, falls below 50%.
Unless it falls significantly below 50%, a wide array of other parties would have to be in agreement, and against them, for them to not have control. Unless they start screwing up, that is unlikely to occur.
Certainly anything that's a 'two way' kind of site should use encryption (anything that allows users to post stuff, or allows/requires them to sign in) is probably wise to encrypt...
Why?
There are millions of sites out there that allow user posted content. Millions more that require a user login to access free content. On most of those, especially the later category, there's really no point. It's just some web guy jerking off to his ability to do so.
Most of those, I shrug and use my standard, dictionary-attack-vulnerable, stupid password and user name. Because I don't care if someone imitates me on vwspeedclub.com (made that one up) or even on Slashdot. Oh no. Some loser might pretend to be me? On my precious Slashdot? Mod points aren't that important to me.
Likewise, I don't need the email to my mom or my sister about Christmas encrypted. Go ahead, find out what we're having and who's going to be there. See if I care.
Even the email to my lawyer about the house we're buying or my accountant about the taxes - once again, really not much sensitive in there.
At my job, if I want an email sent safely to an outside party, all i have to do is put "[SEND SECURE]" in the subject. I don't think I ever, ever have done that - except once to see what the result looked like - nothing I do is that interesting.
No. I'm not a parent. You're right. Wish I was, but I'm not.
I have a lot of kids I buy presents for, though. Nephew, cousin's kids, friends of the family.
As I said, for the LITTLE kids - the ones who stick everything in their mouth - I do my BEST to not buy Chinese. I don't always manage it, but if you go to the right stores, there's a lot of stuff made in Europe or the Americas for preschoolers.
If I ever am a parent, well, until they're 5 or 6 (or until they're out of the "it goes in my mouth" phase, whenever that is) they can probably live without plastic Mutant Turtles, Transformers and Spider Man.
I totally agree with you, by the way - whoever decided to substitute cadmium for lead absolutely knew what they were doing.
This sort of shit is why you don't want to buy Chinese products if you can help, and never, ever, buy Chinese food products.
When buying gifts for very young children (preschool age and down) I do my best to buy toys made in Europe or the US.
I've accepted that I can't avoid Chinese merchandise in general, but I try to be selective - not for people who don't know not to eat their stuff, and not for things I plan to eat.
I read somewhere that Chinese industry is currently at a safety level - both for their workers and their products - roughly comparable to Victorian England or America. That isn't a world I want to live in if I can avoid it.
Part of interviewing for a position - and then holding one - is a certain amount of respect. Respect for your employer, your supervisor, and business convention.
I'm sure there are companies - perhaps even parts of the world - where flip-flops and shorts are acceptable interview wear.
For the rest of us, we wear long pants and hard shoes, at least to interview, and usually to work as well (although, to be honest, this current job is my first "no jeans, no sneakers, no shorts" job.)
But for all of those jobs I put on a tie and a jacket for the interview.
It's a bad position for both parties in my opinion. But the consumer's complaint was worded so strongly as to be absurd.
I used to be in auto repair. One time I had a guy I assumed to be > 18 agree to an expensive repair. Well, we finished the work and next thing I know, I'm talking to mom. Who says he's 17 and not old enough, and not authorized to authorize that repair.
We wound up getting her to pay something (barely enough to cover our parts costs) and lost a bundle.
And I spent the next three days asking every young looking customer if they were > 18.
I'm pretty consumer-oriented, but some of those complaints - especially, the "entering your house without permission" are bordering on absurd.
In that case, the person complaining's "teenage son" obviously let them in. Contrary to her instructions? Sure, but be mad at the boy, not Best Buy's delivery guys. It never does specify what age the boy was, but even 13 is old enough to let some expected delivery guys in.
Another one's primary complaint, so far as I can tell, is that when purchasing something on Bestbuy.com for in-store pickup, they put a hold on the credit card. (There's a bunch of complications about price, online versus in-store, but that isn't the main point of contention.) Well sure they did. They didn't charge the card, they just reserved some funds for themselves. They want to make sure that there's money left for them when you come in and do what you said you'd do - buy the stuff they're holding for you.
I'm not sure of the point of free tools for W2s and meeting minutes.
For a W2, use your payroll provider or accounting software.
For meeting minutes, just find out what they should look like and reproduce that in the word processing program of your choice. They really aren't anything worth "having a program" for.
One key to a successful business is, so much as possible, to only do things that contribute to your bottom line.
Guess what? SAP doesn't work the way the way the really big business who use it want either. They change their entire business process to use SAP.
I work for a Fortune 200 company. We sell food.
Decades ago they wrote the accounting software in COBOL. I work with some of the guys who did the work. But now they're implementing Oracle Financials, and they're changing business process as necessary.
Quickbooks or a similar package is probably sufficient for you - even if it doesn't work exactly how you want. You can almost certainly live with it, and unless your business is the sale of accounting software (web-based or otherwise) you have no business writing your own.
I'm a "development team lead" which, as you all no doubt know, translates to "a working developer who also had manager duties, but gets no more pay for those manager duties."
So I'm very technical, i know how most of the system works, I really can be of help.
But I don't know how, for example, to do the full two-day build. (Yes, two days. The end product is a disk that installs everything, including Windows, on a naked box.)
So I'm always torn when the guy who does most of the builds is stuck there late. Do I leave, or do I stay?
Sometimes I stay, but I do MY work, and leave him the heck alone, because he can see me from his desk, so if he needs me, he can just call my name out.
And sometimes I go, but I always ask if he needs anything, and I always ask if he wants me to stay.
One time, I stayed and sent him home, because he was to a point where I knew how to finish, and he looked like he was going to pass out.
I have no idea what the right answer is.I don't think there really is one.
The article author claims to not know anyone who wears a watch.
I haven't noticed really, but in my circles I think most everyone wears a watch.
I have a box full of watches myself, from a $10 Casio (analog, not digital) that keeps fantastic time - truly amazing - to a "OMG what did you spend on that" from my wife.
It's darn hard to subtly slip your phone out of your pocket and check the time in a meeting. A little flick of the wrist with your hand in your lap, on the other hand....
And the converse is true, too. Nothing says "shut up and get to it" like pointedly looking at your watch.
I haven't read the article (why break tradition) but the point is probably to make sure nobody's broken the build, and possibly to give them some of their own dog food to eat.
So far as I know, very few closed-source development organizations release a nightly build to end users outside their company.
But there may be a large group of Microsoft developers who get their systems auto-loaded every morning with the latest IE. Probably all of the IE developers at the least.
You are hopelessly naive if you think that works well.
I use a lot of web sites and web-interfaced tools (like Rational ClearQuest) where, if you are not at the default zoom, things don't work at all. Like, the words somehow magically aren't in the fake edit boxes. It's shockingly bad.
Also, try using that to zoom on Slashdot in IE8. It ain't pretty.
So I still have a CRT monitor next to my brand new laptop, and when I can't read something, I drag the window over there.
If you crank your DPI or change (radically) from the default font size the layout in a variety of crappy programs and crappy websites all goes to hell.
And this is one of my main frustrations with Windows.
I'm 41. I wear glasses, have since third grade. I have very good corrected eye sight. I can read things on paper that are very small and signs far away that my wife says, skeptically, "you can read that?"
But the great thing about high resolution screens should be high resolution, not little bitty.
I want nice sized letters on the screen - ones that look about the same size as the letters in a hardcover book held in my hand - with excellent resolution, smooth curves, and pretty serifs.
But with Windows, at least, the only thing that truly, truly works is the default sizes, and on a high resolution monitor, the default sizes are tiny.
There's a sentence in the article, if I recall correctly, that suggests work for hire isn't covered by this.
So Disney (indeed all the movie studios) is probably fine; all their properties, except maybe the very oldest that Walt did himself, is unquestionalbly work for hire. And Walt's family is unlikely to ask for the copyright to Steamboat Willie back.
In most cases, software development would also be work for hire. If a piece of software was independently developed then copyright assigned to a software publisher, then yes, that software probably falls under this. But given the time spans, we'd be talking about things that are for the most part either completely worthless and obsolete or already available for free download.
Write something - whatever is typical in your workplace - to your direct supervisor about this issue.
Explain the possible financial (and criminal, if any, I have no idea) repercussions.
Ask permission to gather software utilization statistics and determine a cost to put things right. Don't run off and take inventory of installed software, and don't work up a price at this point.
Save a copy for yourself.
And get on with doing what you're told.
If you don't like what you're being told to do, find another job.
Your philosophy only works for "work for hire." Much creative work is not work for hire.
If I write a piece of software and try to sell it to the world off my own little web site, who, exactly, am I charging up front?
If I write the great American novel, working on Saturdays for two years, then find a publisher who's willing to publish it but not to pay me except based on sales, why shouldn't I be paid per copy sold?
Take it back a level; suppose we're talking about a script writer on a movie. Suppose the writer gets paid by the studio a fixed amount, with no percent on net. That doesn't mean it's ethical to make and distribute free copies of that movie; the studio has money invested in it and has a reasonable right to a return on that money.
If the studio can't make money off their movies, they will stop making movies and invest their money elsewhere instead. In that world, the only movies that will be made are the crappy little "l love making movies" movies that show up on You Tube. If you get lucky, occasionally you'll get a real gem like "Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" made by people who really love what they're doing. But mostly you'll get dreck like this.
Just because it's a big company you're being an ass to instead of an individual doesn't make it right. I'm not going to say "stealing" because that's a loaded word and there's a lot of debate around here about whether a copyright violation is a theft. But I do think you're being an ass if you copy someone's creative output without their permission.
Let's leave the "chair building" analogy behind and look at some other stuff. A chair is too little effort compared to writing a book or a script.
Some builders get an order for a house and build it to order. Others build it speculatively - they have a good idea what they'll be able to sell it for once it's done, but they don't really know, and they get what the market will bear when they do finish it and sell it.
Some salespeople are paid an hourly rate. Whether they sell something or not, they get the same amount. Others don't get paid anything if they don't sell, but get a commission on it. Depending on what they're selling, that salesperson may have been working on the sale for months before it happens.
Why should creative people only be able to sell "to order" instead of writing something, putting it out there, and seeing what the market will bear? Why shouldn't a blockbuster book or movie be a windfall for its creator?
I'm sure some writers think that they should get $5 every time someone reads their book, whether they read it at the library, bought a paper copy, or downloaded a copy.
My guess is that most of them are probably perfectly happy with the "paper copy model" - every copy that leaves the manufacturer (or really the retailer) gets them some money.
That breaks down in the eBook world, though, when there's no barrier to manufacture and anyone can manufacture a perfect copy. No barrier except DRM, and their readers mostly don't like DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, maybe they don't want to saturate the market for GOOG and prefer to keep the stock price up.
Supply and demand, you know.
So their share of Google, between the two of them, falls below 50%.
Unless it falls significantly below 50%, a wide array of other parties would have to be in agreement, and against them, for them to not have control. Unless they start screwing up, that is unlikely to occur.
Yeah, if you mean compared to developing corporate VB applications.
There are many other types of development that are also complicated in and of themselves.
Embedded software. Automation control systems. Engine controllers. Drivers. Operating systems.
Why?
There are millions of sites out there that allow user posted content. Millions more that require a user login to access free content. On most of those, especially the later category, there's really no point. It's just some web guy jerking off to his ability to do so.
Most of those, I shrug and use my standard, dictionary-attack-vulnerable, stupid password and user name. Because I don't care if someone imitates me on vwspeedclub.com (made that one up) or even on Slashdot. Oh no. Some loser might pretend to be me? On my precious Slashdot? Mod points aren't that important to me.
Likewise, I don't need the email to my mom or my sister about Christmas encrypted. Go ahead, find out what we're having and who's going to be there. See if I care.
Even the email to my lawyer about the house we're buying or my accountant about the taxes - once again, really not much sensitive in there.
At my job, if I want an email sent safely to an outside party, all i have to do is put "[SEND SECURE]" in the subject. I don't think I ever, ever have done that - except once to see what the result looked like - nothing I do is that interesting.
There's a simple reason why you had to use a lowercase "L" instead of a 1.
I learned to type on a combination of IBM Selectrics and manual typewriters in roughly 1985.
The manual typewriters didn't have a "1" key. This was very common.
The manual typewriters didn't have an exclamation mark, either. You had to "build" one using an apostrophe, backspace and period.
No. I'm not a parent. You're right. Wish I was, but I'm not.
I have a lot of kids I buy presents for, though. Nephew, cousin's kids, friends of the family.
As I said, for the LITTLE kids - the ones who stick everything in their mouth - I do my BEST to not buy Chinese. I don't always manage it, but if you go to the right stores, there's a lot of stuff made in Europe or the Americas for preschoolers.
If I ever am a parent, well, until they're 5 or 6 (or until they're out of the "it goes in my mouth" phase, whenever that is) they can probably live without plastic Mutant Turtles, Transformers and Spider Man.
I totally agree with you, by the way - whoever decided to substitute cadmium for lead absolutely knew what they were doing.
This sort of shit is why you don't want to buy Chinese products if you can help, and never, ever, buy Chinese food products.
When buying gifts for very young children (preschool age and down) I do my best to buy toys made in Europe or the US.
I've accepted that I can't avoid Chinese merchandise in general, but I try to be selective - not for people who don't know not to eat their stuff, and not for things I plan to eat.
I read somewhere that Chinese industry is currently at a safety level - both for their workers and their products - roughly comparable to Victorian England or America. That isn't a world I want to live in if I can avoid it.
Part of interviewing for a position - and then holding one - is a certain amount of respect. Respect for your employer, your supervisor, and business convention.
I'm sure there are companies - perhaps even parts of the world - where flip-flops and shorts are acceptable interview wear.
For the rest of us, we wear long pants and hard shoes, at least to interview, and usually to work as well (although, to be honest, this current job is my first "no jeans, no sneakers, no shorts" job.)
But for all of those jobs I put on a tie and a jacket for the interview.
It's a bad position for both parties in my opinion. But the consumer's complaint was worded so strongly as to be absurd.
I used to be in auto repair. One time I had a guy I assumed to be > 18 agree to an expensive repair. Well, we finished the work and next thing I know, I'm talking to mom. Who says he's 17 and not old enough, and not authorized to authorize that repair.
We wound up getting her to pay something (barely enough to cover our parts costs) and lost a bundle.
And I spent the next three days asking every young looking customer if they were > 18.
I'm pretty consumer-oriented, but some of those complaints - especially, the "entering your house without permission" are bordering on absurd.
In that case, the person complaining's "teenage son" obviously let them in. Contrary to her instructions? Sure, but be mad at the boy, not Best Buy's delivery guys. It never does specify what age the boy was, but even 13 is old enough to let some expected delivery guys in.
Another one's primary complaint, so far as I can tell, is that when purchasing something on Bestbuy.com for in-store pickup, they put a hold on the credit card. (There's a bunch of complications about price, online versus in-store, but that isn't the main point of contention.) Well sure they did. They didn't charge the card, they just reserved some funds for themselves. They want to make sure that there's money left for them when you come in and do what you said you'd do - buy the stuff they're holding for you.
I'm not sure of the point of free tools for W2s and meeting minutes.
For a W2, use your payroll provider or accounting software.
For meeting minutes, just find out what they should look like and reproduce that in the word processing program of your choice. They really aren't anything worth "having a program" for.
One key to a successful business is, so much as possible, to only do things that contribute to your bottom line.
Guess what? SAP doesn't work the way the way the really big business who use it want either. They change their entire business process to use SAP.
I work for a Fortune 200 company. We sell food.
Decades ago they wrote the accounting software in COBOL. I work with some of the guys who did the work. But now they're implementing Oracle Financials, and they're changing business process as necessary.
Quickbooks or a similar package is probably sufficient for you - even if it doesn't work exactly how you want. You can almost certainly live with it, and unless your business is the sale of accounting software (web-based or otherwise) you have no business writing your own.
I'm a "development team lead" which, as you all no doubt know, translates to "a working developer who also had manager duties, but gets no more pay for those manager duties."
So I'm very technical, i know how most of the system works, I really can be of help.
But I don't know how, for example, to do the full two-day build. (Yes, two days. The end product is a disk that installs everything, including Windows, on a naked box.)
So I'm always torn when the guy who does most of the builds is stuck there late. Do I leave, or do I stay?
Sometimes I stay, but I do MY work, and leave him the heck alone, because he can see me from his desk, so if he needs me, he can just call my name out.
And sometimes I go, but I always ask if he needs anything, and I always ask if he wants me to stay.
One time, I stayed and sent him home, because he was to a point where I knew how to finish, and he looked like he was going to pass out.
I have no idea what the right answer is.I don't think there really is one.
I use Yahoo, I just don't use it for search..
But if you want weather, movies, or cute cat videos, they're OK.
So, not most major corporations?
I work for a roughly Fortune 200 firm. My peers at other companies and I routinely email "forbidden" file types by changing the file extension.
MDB forbidden? That's OK, MP3 is allowed.
EXE forbidden? Eh, just call it .TXT. Nothing checks.
The article author claims to not know anyone who wears a watch.
I haven't noticed really, but in my circles I think most everyone wears a watch.
I have a box full of watches myself, from a $10 Casio (analog, not digital) that keeps fantastic time - truly amazing - to a "OMG what did you spend on that" from my wife.
It's darn hard to subtly slip your phone out of your pocket and check the time in a meeting. A little flick of the wrist with your hand in your lap, on the other hand....
And the converse is true, too. Nothing says "shut up and get to it" like pointedly looking at your watch.
I haven't read the article (why break tradition) but the point is probably to make sure nobody's broken the build, and possibly to give them some of their own dog food to eat.
So far as I know, very few closed-source development organizations release a nightly build to end users outside their company.
But there may be a large group of Microsoft developers who get their systems auto-loaded every morning with the latest IE. Probably all of the IE developers at the least.
Well, in IE, when you zoom, the grey bar stuff on the left gets article text underneath it.
That's right, underneath it.
I'm guessing #5 means "use zoom in your browser."
You are hopelessly naive if you think that works well.
I use a lot of web sites and web-interfaced tools (like Rational ClearQuest) where, if you are not at the default zoom, things don't work at all. Like, the words somehow magically aren't in the fake edit boxes. It's shockingly bad.
Also, try using that to zoom on Slashdot in IE8. It ain't pretty.
So I still have a CRT monitor next to my brand new laptop, and when I can't read something, I drag the window over there.
Yes, actually, it is.
If you crank your DPI or change (radically) from the default font size the layout in a variety of crappy programs and crappy websites all goes to hell.
And this is one of my main frustrations with Windows.
I'm 41. I wear glasses, have since third grade. I have very good corrected eye sight. I can read things on paper that are very small and signs far away that my wife says, skeptically, "you can read that?"
But the great thing about high resolution screens should be high resolution, not little bitty.
I want nice sized letters on the screen - ones that look about the same size as the letters in a hardcover book held in my hand - with excellent resolution, smooth curves, and pretty serifs.
But with Windows, at least, the only thing that truly, truly works is the default sizes, and on a high resolution monitor, the default sizes are tiny.
IANAL but.....
There's a sentence in the article, if I recall correctly, that suggests work for hire isn't covered by this.
So Disney (indeed all the movie studios) is probably fine; all their properties, except maybe the very oldest that Walt did himself, is unquestionalbly work for hire. And Walt's family is unlikely to ask for the copyright to Steamboat Willie back.
In most cases, software development would also be work for hire. If a piece of software was independently developed then copyright assigned to a software publisher, then yes, that software probably falls under this. But given the time spans, we'd be talking about things that are for the most part either completely worthless and obsolete or already available for free download.
Write something - whatever is typical in your workplace - to your direct supervisor about this issue.
Explain the possible financial (and criminal, if any, I have no idea) repercussions.
Ask permission to gather software utilization statistics and determine a cost to put things right. Don't run off and take inventory of installed software, and don't work up a price at this point.
Save a copy for yourself.
And get on with doing what you're told.
If you don't like what you're being told to do, find another job.
Your philosophy only works for "work for hire." Much creative work is not work for hire.
If I write a piece of software and try to sell it to the world off my own little web site, who, exactly, am I charging up front?
If I write the great American novel, working on Saturdays for two years, then find a publisher who's willing to publish it but not to pay me except based on sales, why shouldn't I be paid per copy sold?
Take it back a level; suppose we're talking about a script writer on a movie. Suppose the writer gets paid by the studio a fixed amount, with no percent on net. That doesn't mean it's ethical to make and distribute free copies of that movie; the studio has money invested in it and has a reasonable right to a return on that money.
If the studio can't make money off their movies, they will stop making movies and invest their money elsewhere instead. In that world, the only movies that will be made are the crappy little "l love making movies" movies that show up on You Tube. If you get lucky, occasionally you'll get a real gem like "Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" made by people who really love what they're doing. But mostly you'll get dreck like this.
Just because it's a big company you're being an ass to instead of an individual doesn't make it right. I'm not going to say "stealing" because that's a loaded word and there's a lot of debate around here about whether a copyright violation is a theft. But I do think you're being an ass if you copy someone's creative output without their permission.
Can't there be room for both models?
Let's leave the "chair building" analogy behind and look at some other stuff. A chair is too little effort compared to writing a book or a script.
Some builders get an order for a house and build it to order. Others build it speculatively - they have a good idea what they'll be able to sell it for once it's done, but they don't really know, and they get what the market will bear when they do finish it and sell it.
Some salespeople are paid an hourly rate. Whether they sell something or not, they get the same amount. Others don't get paid anything if they don't sell, but get a commission on it. Depending on what they're selling, that salesperson may have been working on the sale for months before it happens.
Why should creative people only be able to sell "to order" instead of writing something, putting it out there, and seeing what the market will bear? Why shouldn't a blockbuster book or movie be a windfall for its creator?
I'm sure some writers think that they should get $5 every time someone reads their book, whether they read it at the library, bought a paper copy, or downloaded a copy.
My guess is that most of them are probably perfectly happy with the "paper copy model" - every copy that leaves the manufacturer (or really the retailer) gets them some money.
That breaks down in the eBook world, though, when there's no barrier to manufacture and anyone can manufacture a perfect copy. No barrier except DRM, and their readers mostly don't like DRM.
When I was a kid, I had my dad's collection of Classics Illustrated.
Three Musketeers, Count of Monte Cristo, and many others.
Honestly it's the only way I've read (still) some of the classics.... one of the negative points of an engineering education I guess.