Yes, like in China. Taking money from the labor pool in this nation and spending it on goods that increase the trade deficit is hardly a economicly wise decision.
Don't confuse the Trade Deficite with a Debt. I'm not sure how much money is "loaned" through China, but I would be willing to guess that it is a significantly smaller amount then what is Invested in or traded to China.
No, what I'm saying is that amature (unpaid) OS development is a great way to introduce new concepts and systems. But in order for those systems to mature and be viable consumer options, they need funding, management, and professional development.
1) Of that $2 billion for this agency, over half would likely go to government bloat and other non-development work. Which means you're splitting less then $1bil to 20k developers. That sticks your mean pay at $50k/year. How many senior developers are you going to hold onto for $50k/year?
2) You can't fire incompetent people in the government.
3) The government determines the projects that get worked on.
4) You can't fire incompetent people in the government.
5) The government would be in a great place to ensure all funded projects (VOIP, Operating Systems, Communication tools, database engines, etc) would have some sort of back door or sniffing system.
6) You can't fire incompetent... you get the idea.
7) Encryption technology can not be exported, it would be a felony to export government software with built in security and any related code would need to be protected (IE, not open source)
8) The government could put "closed source" barriers on any software it wanted due to security concerns (see 5, 7)
9) The government always goes with the cheapest vendor. The nice thing about the free market is that consumers are free to chose the best product.
10) The impact on the economy would be huge. If this project were successful (meaning that the gov back agency released acceptable free software) you would quickly decimate Microsoft, Oracle, Novell, Sun, Google, Adobe, and other major developer employers. While I don't imagine the big players would die off, the smaller players who have products that are targeted for OS replacement by the gov would be driven out of business and all of the companies would likely reign in their budgets, which means letting developers go. It would result in a mass devaluing of code writing jobs (huge supply, limited demand).
11) It would reduce consumer choice. As professional product development companies drop out of existence consumers lose options and eventually wind up with a single option.
12) Governmental controls and oversight would stifle development and push more cutting edge development overseas.
There's what, just shy of 300million US residents? That means per capita each person is spending over $300 a year on software that could be provided via free OS projects. Now, I bought XP and Office last year (for about $300) which could have been replaced with Linux and Open Office for free. But this year? I've bought some video games, but I highly doubt that we will see a government back video game company spitting out triple-A title after title each year.
Corporate backed open source works well. Why? Because they have money and pay professional developers. They release professional products and compete against closed source products. But how many truely free, unbacked, unfunded, OS projects really make it anywheres?
"For those who think the latter doesn't work, consider how the scientific community worked for the last 300 years. Imagine that instead of being freely shared and published, work of every scientist was locked up by the employer/corporation."
I did my Comp Sci assoc entirely on campus. Too much lab time to try to do it at home. But my Bacholers is in IT Management. I still take some classes on campus, but things like Accounting, Economics, Business Decision Making, etc... are classes where there is little class room discussion, and no lab. Just read the book, do the homework and take a test. For those classes, its just fine. I have 3 requirements for online classes:
1) Its not a subject I care deeply about 2) Its not a class that is lab dependant (CompSci/Networking) 3) Its not a class with a large amount of class room discussion (Speech, Social issues in technology, Team Development)
That being said, my opinion of online classes is that you will only learn what you teach yourself in them.
"Who really gives a fuck about the case design's aesthetics? "
The original poster that I replied to. That was his claim that people bought Macs because they didn't all look alike.
"People who "mod" their cases with flashing lights and colored memory coolers and crap like that are as stupid as the morons with the coffee-can fart pipes on their Civic's mufflers."
"Microsoft is very successful at aggressively marketing poor quality products."
The quality and impact of Microsoft's products are always up for debate. But it is because of their efforts that the industry is what it is today. If IBM had followed in Apples' shoes and kept their x86 system proprietary we then we would have significantly fewer security and quality issues today. But they didn't, they opened the gates to the market, and Microsoft steped up and has done an amazing job of developing an OS that could operate of a huge variety of hardware with no consistancy in drivers. Microsoft's ability to make an OS that could work with a huge variety of drivers is what really got them ahead in the game. And their marketing department is where the evilness began.
"Apple markets high quality products to a niche market"
Apple markets completely proprietory hardware in a limited market. They have since been opening up (with OS X and the new x86 proc base), but until that point there has been 1 place to get an Mac mother board, 1 place to get a proc, 1 place to get a case, etc. When you have total control over the hardware base, you don't have to worry about drivers. But the trade off is that Apple has a monopoly over the Mac market. You can't buy a Dell running OS X (although maybe in the future, wouldn't that be nice!). Apple serves a niche market because they have to. When IBM opened the flood gates back in the 80's Apple mised the gate. Instead of competing against IBM in the PC market Apple focused on Educational facilities. Apples' poor business sense almost killed them when they were years ahead of the competition.
So Microsoft, while evil in a business sence is good in the industry sence. And Apple, while good in the social sence has done little for the industry.
I'm glad to see Apple coming out into the market more, but if you look at their products now, things like the iPod and iTunes that give complete control to them, push DRMs down your throat, and limit choice... I just have a hard time seeing Apple as a non-evil entity. They are just an evil underdog, and everyone likes an underdog.
How does OS X effect the case design? The point is if you are using a Mac from any specific product line, your case design choices are limited. If you are using a PC, your case designs are almost infinate.
" Not everyone is content with the same uniform workstation at home that they have to use at work / school."
Err hello, Macs historicly where completely homogenized, there was only 1 producer (Apple) and only 1 case style. Even now, sure, you can get a different color plastic bit, but all Macs in their product line will have the same case.
I don't understand why so many people are anti-microsoft and pro-apple. Apple is just as evil as Microsoft, just not as successful.
What they are actually saying is that it takes xwatts to transmit 7.4mbit/s over 900mhz. If you divide x by 900, then divide the transfer rate by that, and play with the numbers a bit you wind up with the "value" of 1 watt. Its usefully for compairing efficiencies, but it doesn't imply that you can simply increase the wattage to gain frequency or transfer speed. Its a formula that describes a senerio, not defines it.
Buy a AAA title opening week and you'll get it for $15. After that it's ~$20. That's for a non-DRM'd, I OWN this movie, purchase. Drop down to $10-15 for older or b rated movies.
Renting a movie is usually $1-2 for an older or b rated movie, 2-3 dollars for a new AAA title. I would be willing to pay ~$3 for a DRM'd to all hell 2 day rental of a movie.
"As everyone else says, this is the basic premise of TFHD:..."
Yes, I realise that now. It appears that the guide has a very valid thesis and a very weak introduction.
"Remember, it's the Hacker's diet. Do you really expect a self-respecting hacker to buy such simple software?"
So, answer me this hacker, how many calaries are in a grilled cheese sandwhich, A cup of OJ, and a side salad with light dreasing? Sure, you could look up each item, figure out how much cheese you used on your sandwhich and how many calories per oz, etc... But it takes time. And most people very little of it. You are correct, Fit Day doesn't do anything revolutionary, but it does have prebuilt lists of foods and exersizes so you can quickly enter your entire day's activities and meals. It takes about 2 minutes to track your entire day, versus having to check each item you eat during the day and record the calories so you can enter it into a Excel worksheet.
I recommended Fit Day because it is very easy to use and extremely fast. Yes, you can do everything it does on your own or in Excel, if you have the time and resolve.
I actually use the flaw you mention in 1) here and in other arguements you've posted as a tool to force result sets to duplicate data and to create "empty" values. Could I achieve the same thing doing it your way, likely. But from what I've seen of your arguement it would take a new table containing the force information to create the joins I need. I don't see anything specificly wrong with your theory, but I've looked at it for all of 10 minutes here. It'd be interesting to see how it could handle subqueries and more complexe joins. I've got a couple multi-page queries at work that it might be nice to run through.
-Rick
Winning the special olumpics and debating an AC...
on
How Would You Improve SQL?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Lets look at something a little more realist:
SELECT Lease.LeaseNum, Lease.LesseeNum, Invoice.InvoiceNum, Invoice.AmountBilled FROM Lease INNER JOIN Invoice ON Lease.LeaseNum = Invoice.InvoiceNum WHERE Lease.LeaseNum = "1234" ORDER BY LeaseNum, InvoiceNum
Okay, that's pretty big to get some basic lease and invoice info. Now how you you write that?
Lease.LeaseNum, Lease.LesseeNum, Invoic e.InvoiceNum, Invoice.AmountBilled Lease JOIN Invoice ON Lease.LeaseNum AND Invoice.LeaseNum Lease.LeaseNum = "1234" Lease.LeaseNum Invoice.InvoiceNum
??? All that's been accomplished is the removal of key words. I'm not seeing any benefit, and I'm seeing the pitfall of it being hard as hell to read.
You have a point there. But I disagree with the impact. Most political blogs that actually have that heavy of a load likely either have a plan in place for covering the next set of elections, or will by that point in time now that the responsibility of web based journalism is being clarified. And even then, so long as the blog owner is paying for the site, at worst it would be considered soft money (like the Swift Boat Vet adds and that Fox pro-Bush TV show) which is not regulated nearly as tightly as party money.
I still think that this ruling will provide for more truthful blogging and less politically funded punditry cluttering up the issues.
In all likelihood, the 2006 elections will be the test bed. The parties will experiment with the bloggosphere for the representative elections, someone will get sued, and the courts will help define the line between a blogging citizen and a political contribution.
"Then you listed a bunch of things that aren't magic secrets as ways to lose weight."
No, I listed 1 way. Not magic, but very much a (media/marketing) secret. No gimic, no huge price, no crazy fad, no marketing department. Just Math. If that's what the guide gets to, great, but the intro made it sound like loosing weight was painful, hard, confussing and very complexe. Which its not. It is challanging though.
Why shouldn't Blizzard be able to sue? If they can show that any player quit because of hackers who managed to cheat because of Sony's DRM they have a pretty good case. Heck, they could even sue for the labor it will take to crack their root kit so they can catch hackers. And they could tack on the cost of a marketing campaign to regain the trust that was lost by the players because of the cheaters. Sony screwed up and someone needs to take them to task. And Blizzard can present a very factual business oriented profit and cost effecting arguement.
I'm getting paid right now, but I'm posting about a political issue. If this issue was an election should I wory? No. Because the money I am earning is in no way related to the political parties involved. Now, if your google adds were for a specific campaigner, then you may have to check on it.
"I'm sorry, but the minute I have start worrying about whether what I post on my blog will get me into legal trouble it is about my rights."
You already do. You can't post liable or slander on your blog. You can't break NDA's on your blog. You can't export encryption algorythms on your blog. There are thousands of things you already can not do on your blog. And in this case its not making political posts illegal. It is holding political posts under the same scruteny as mass media.
For example. Lets say/. did their usual "Top 10 questions" thread to ask each of the next presidential elects. They pick the top 10 questions and send them off to each elect and post the responses. No problem.
Now lets say that the Republican Party paid Cmdr Taco $25,000 to post a "Top 10 questions" thread. Now the thread would be subject to FEC regulation. Atleast to the extent of Cmdr Taco and/. And yes, that regulation goes way beyond disclosure, there are lawyers that would gladly take that $25,000 from Taco to make sure/. was safe from lawsuit.
What would be nice would be if some Blog friendly campaign lawyer would post a clear cut (err atleast roughly serraded) article on where the danger area begins.
Black out dates, limitations and value systems do not apply to individual citizens discussing election campaigns. Heck, with soft money and constituants it barely even applies to mass media. This will have no effect on 99.999% of all bloggers.
What this means is that political parties can't funnel unfettered advertising dollars into blogs and internet based advertising for campaigns. If this amendment had gone through, it would mean that the next election could result in millions of tax payer and private dollars being spent in spam bots flooding the blogosphere with advertisements, payments for backing from prominent political blogs, and paid posters to add emphasis or FUD to different blogs depending on political affiliation.
So if you receive finances from a political party or their constituants, you should be careful and review the FEC rules. But for the vast majority of bloggers, just keep on posting.
Slashdot Mirror
"But the money saved could be spent ELSEWHERE"
Yes, like in China. Taking money from the labor pool in this nation and spending it on goods that increase the trade deficit is hardly a economicly wise decision.
-Rick
Don't confuse the Trade Deficite with a Debt. I'm not sure how much money is "loaned" through China, but I would be willing to guess that it is a significantly smaller amount then what is Invested in or traded to China.
-Rick
No, what I'm saying is that amature (unpaid) OS development is a great way to introduce new concepts and systems. But in order for those systems to mature and be viable consumer options, they need funding, management, and professional development.
-Rick
1) Of that $2 billion for this agency, over half would likely go to government bloat and other non-development work. Which means you're splitting less then $1bil to 20k developers. That sticks your mean pay at $50k/year. How many senior developers are you going to hold onto for $50k/year?
2) You can't fire incompetent people in the government.
3) The government determines the projects that get worked on.
4) You can't fire incompetent people in the government.
5) The government would be in a great place to ensure all funded projects (VOIP, Operating Systems, Communication tools, database engines, etc) would have some sort of back door or sniffing system.
6) You can't fire incompetent... you get the idea.
7) Encryption technology can not be exported, it would be a felony to export government software with built in security and any related code would need to be protected (IE, not open source)
8) The government could put "closed source" barriers on any software it wanted due to security concerns (see 5, 7)
9) The government always goes with the cheapest vendor. The nice thing about the free market is that consumers are free to chose the best product.
10) The impact on the economy would be huge. If this project were successful (meaning that the gov back agency released acceptable free software) you would quickly decimate Microsoft, Oracle, Novell, Sun, Google, Adobe, and other major developer employers. While I don't imagine the big players would die off, the smaller players who have products that are targeted for OS replacement by the gov would be driven out of business and all of the companies would likely reign in their budgets, which means letting developers go. It would result in a mass devaluing of code writing jobs (huge supply, limited demand).
11) It would reduce consumer choice. As professional product development companies drop out of existence consumers lose options and eventually wind up with a single option.
12) Governmental controls and oversight would stifle development and push more cutting edge development overseas.
-Rick
"That $80-120 billion would be spent on..."
There's what, just shy of 300million US residents? That means per capita each person is spending over $300 a year on software that could be provided via free OS projects. Now, I bought XP and Office last year (for about $300) which could have been replaced with Linux and Open Office for free. But this year? I've bought some video games, but I highly doubt that we will see a government back video game company spitting out triple-A title after title each year.
-Rick
Corporate backed open source works well. Why? Because they have money and pay professional developers. They release professional products and compete against closed source products. But how many truely free, unbacked, unfunded, OS projects really make it anywheres?
-Rick
"For those who think the latter doesn't work, consider how the scientific community worked for the last 300 years. Imagine that instead of being freely shared and published, work of every scientist was locked up by the employer/corporation."
Hello Intelectual Property, NDAs, Coorporate ownership.
-Rick
"You're the first person I've met (besides my ex-girlfriend) who thinks that saving money is a bad thing."
It is. Spending money makes the US economy go round. Take a look at Macro Economics.
-Rick
I did my Comp Sci assoc entirely on campus. Too much lab time to try to do it at home. But my Bacholers is in IT Management. I still take some classes on campus, but things like Accounting, Economics, Business Decision Making, etc... are classes where there is little class room discussion, and no lab. Just read the book, do the homework and take a test. For those classes, its just fine. I have 3 requirements for online classes:
1) Its not a subject I care deeply about
2) Its not a class that is lab dependant (CompSci/Networking)
3) Its not a class with a large amount of class room discussion (Speech, Social issues in technology, Team Development)
That being said, my opinion of online classes is that you will only learn what you teach yourself in them.
-Rick
"Who really gives a fuck about the case design's aesthetics? "
The original poster that I replied to. That was his claim that people bought Macs because they didn't all look alike.
"People who "mod" their cases with flashing lights and colored memory coolers and crap like that are as stupid as the morons with the coffee-can fart pipes on their Civic's mufflers."
Yeah, take a look at this moron's ricer: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=802808
-Rick
"Microsoft is very successful at aggressively marketing poor quality products."
The quality and impact of Microsoft's products are always up for debate. But it is because of their efforts that the industry is what it is today. If IBM had followed in Apples' shoes and kept their x86 system proprietary we then we would have significantly fewer security and quality issues today. But they didn't, they opened the gates to the market, and Microsoft steped up and has done an amazing job of developing an OS that could operate of a huge variety of hardware with no consistancy in drivers. Microsoft's ability to make an OS that could work with a huge variety of drivers is what really got them ahead in the game. And their marketing department is where the evilness began.
"Apple markets high quality products to a niche market"
Apple markets completely proprietory hardware in a limited market. They have since been opening up (with OS X and the new x86 proc base), but until that point there has been 1 place to get an Mac mother board, 1 place to get a proc, 1 place to get a case, etc. When you have total control over the hardware base, you don't have to worry about drivers. But the trade off is that Apple has a monopoly over the Mac market. You can't buy a Dell running OS X (although maybe in the future, wouldn't that be nice!). Apple serves a niche market because they have to. When IBM opened the flood gates back in the 80's Apple mised the gate. Instead of competing against IBM in the PC market Apple focused on Educational facilities. Apples' poor business sense almost killed them when they were years ahead of the competition.
So Microsoft, while evil in a business sence is good in the industry sence. And Apple, while good in the social sence has done little for the industry.
I'm glad to see Apple coming out into the market more, but if you look at their products now, things like the iPod and iTunes that give complete control to them, push DRMs down your throat, and limit choice... I just have a hard time seeing Apple as a non-evil entity. They are just an evil underdog, and everyone likes an underdog.
-Rick
"Have you even looked at OS X"
How does OS X effect the case design? The point is if you are using a Mac from any specific product line, your case design choices are limited. If you are using a PC, your case designs are almost infinate.
-Rick
" Not everyone is content with the same uniform workstation at home that they have to use at work / school."
Err hello, Macs historicly where completely homogenized, there was only 1 producer (Apple) and only 1 case style. Even now, sure, you can get a different color plastic bit, but all Macs in their product line will have the same case.
I don't understand why so many people are anti-microsoft and pro-apple. Apple is just as evil as Microsoft, just not as successful.
-Rick
In this case? About -10 billion dollars. Apple's 9% is of a much smaller pie then Dell's 6%.
-Rick
What they are actually saying is that it takes xwatts to transmit 7.4mbit/s over 900mhz. If you divide x by 900, then divide the transfer rate by that, and play with the numbers a bit you wind up with the "value" of 1 watt. Its usefully for compairing efficiencies, but it doesn't imply that you can simply increase the wattage to gain frequency or transfer speed. Its a formula that describes a senerio, not defines it.
-Ruck
That looks more like a sequential process as opposed to a single request. Interesting approach though.
-Rick
Buy a AAA title opening week and you'll get it for $15. After that it's ~$20. That's for a non-DRM'd, I OWN this movie, purchase. Drop down to $10-15 for older or b rated movies.
Renting a movie is usually $1-2 for an older or b rated movie, 2-3 dollars for a new AAA title. I would be willing to pay ~$3 for a DRM'd to all hell 2 day rental of a movie.
-Rick
"As everyone else says, this is the basic premise of TFHD:..."
Yes, I realise that now. It appears that the guide has a very valid thesis and a very weak introduction.
"Remember, it's the Hacker's diet. Do you really expect a self-respecting hacker to buy such simple software?"
So, answer me this hacker, how many calaries are in a grilled cheese sandwhich, A cup of OJ, and a side salad with light dreasing? Sure, you could look up each item, figure out how much cheese you used on your sandwhich and how many calories per oz, etc... But it takes time. And most people very little of it. You are correct, Fit Day doesn't do anything revolutionary, but it does have prebuilt lists of foods and exersizes so you can quickly enter your entire day's activities and meals. It takes about 2 minutes to track your entire day, versus having to check each item you eat during the day and record the calories so you can enter it into a Excel worksheet.
I recommended Fit Day because it is very easy to use and extremely fast. Yes, you can do everything it does on your own or in Excel, if you have the time and resolve.
-Rick
I actually use the flaw you mention in 1) here and in other arguements you've posted as a tool to force result sets to duplicate data and to create "empty" values. Could I achieve the same thing doing it your way, likely. But from what I've seen of your arguement it would take a new table containing the force information to create the joins I need. I don't see anything specificly wrong with your theory, but I've looked at it for all of 10 minutes here. It'd be interesting to see how it could handle subqueries and more complexe joins. I've got a couple multi-page queries at work that it might be nice to run through.
-Rick
Lets look at something a little more realist:
c e.InvoiceNum,
SELECT
Lease.LeaseNum,
Lease.LesseeNum,
Invoice.InvoiceNum,
Invoice.AmountBilled
FROM
Lease INNER JOIN
Invoice ON
Lease.LeaseNum = Invoice.InvoiceNum
WHERE
Lease.LeaseNum = "1234"
ORDER BY
LeaseNum, InvoiceNum
Okay, that's pretty big to get some basic lease and invoice info. Now how you you write that?
Lease.LeaseNum,
Lease.LesseeNum,
Invoi
Invoice.AmountBilled
Lease JOIN
Invoice ON
Lease.LeaseNum AND Invoice.LeaseNum
Lease.LeaseNum = "1234"
Lease.LeaseNum
Invoice.InvoiceNum
??? All that's been accomplished is the removal of key words. I'm not seeing any benefit, and I'm seeing the pitfall of it being hard as hell to read.
-Rick
You have a point there. But I disagree with the impact. Most political blogs that actually have that heavy of a load likely either have a plan in place for covering the next set of elections, or will by that point in time now that the responsibility of web based journalism is being clarified. And even then, so long as the blog owner is paying for the site, at worst it would be considered soft money (like the Swift Boat Vet adds and that Fox pro-Bush TV show) which is not regulated nearly as tightly as party money.
I still think that this ruling will provide for more truthful blogging and less politically funded punditry cluttering up the issues.
In all likelihood, the 2006 elections will be the test bed. The parties will experiment with the bloggosphere for the representative elections, someone will get sued, and the courts will help define the line between a blogging citizen and a political contribution.
-Rick
"Then you listed a bunch of things that aren't magic secrets as ways to lose weight."
No, I listed 1 way. Not magic, but very much a (media/marketing) secret. No gimic, no huge price, no crazy fad, no marketing department. Just Math. If that's what the guide gets to, great, but the intro made it sound like loosing weight was painful, hard, confussing and very complexe. Which its not. It is challanging though.
-Rick
Why shouldn't Blizzard be able to sue? If they can show that any player quit because of hackers who managed to cheat because of Sony's DRM they have a pretty good case. Heck, they could even sue for the labor it will take to crack their root kit so they can catch hackers. And they could tack on the cost of a marketing campaign to regain the trust that was lost by the players because of the cheaters. Sony screwed up and someone needs to take them to task. And Blizzard can present a very factual business oriented profit and cost effecting arguement.
-Rick
"but what if you have ads on your site?"
/. did their usual "Top 10 questions" thread to ask each of the next presidential elects. They pick the top 10 questions and send them off to each elect and post the responses. No problem.
/. And yes, that regulation goes way beyond disclosure, there are lawyers that would gladly take that $25,000 from Taco to make sure /. was safe from lawsuit.
I'm getting paid right now, but I'm posting about a political issue. If this issue was an election should I wory? No. Because the money I am earning is in no way related to the political parties involved. Now, if your google adds were for a specific campaigner, then you may have to check on it.
"I'm sorry, but the minute I have start worrying about whether what I post on my blog will get me into legal trouble it is about my rights."
You already do. You can't post liable or slander on your blog. You can't break NDA's on your blog. You can't export encryption algorythms on your blog. There are thousands of things you already can not do on your blog. And in this case its not making political posts illegal. It is holding political posts under the same scruteny as mass media.
For example. Lets say
Now lets say that the Republican Party paid Cmdr Taco $25,000 to post a "Top 10 questions" thread. Now the thread would be subject to FEC regulation. Atleast to the extent of Cmdr Taco and
What would be nice would be if some Blog friendly campaign lawyer would post a clear cut (err atleast roughly serraded) article on where the danger area begins.
-Rick
Black out dates, limitations and value systems do not apply to individual citizens discussing election campaigns. Heck, with soft money and constituants it barely even applies to mass media. This will have no effect on 99.999% of all bloggers.
What this means is that political parties can't funnel unfettered advertising dollars into blogs and internet based advertising for campaigns. If this amendment had gone through, it would mean that the next election could result in millions of tax payer and private dollars being spent in spam bots flooding the blogosphere with advertisements, payments for backing from prominent political blogs, and paid posters to add emphasis or FUD to different blogs depending on political affiliation.
So if you receive finances from a political party or their constituants, you should be careful and review the FEC rules. But for the vast majority of bloggers, just keep on posting.
-Rick