1. VB is not portable. You'll be supporting windows based servers forever if you increase your investment in VB. The company I work for switched from VB to Java and we've been able to move our java server app to 3 different OS/HW architectures with zero code changes.
2. You cannot get insight into what VB is doing. Where is the server spending time? Can you see a thread dump? How much time is lost to collecting garbage. VB is a black box. That's death for debugging a large server system.
3. You cannot attract great new engineers to work on a VB application. Great engineers will avoid working on VB apps and you'll be stuck hiring low grade talent. That will perpetuate a downward spiral where any good people will leave to avoid VB and the bozos that like VB.
Opt in for who? The producer or the consumer? It seems to me that the DRM or no-DRM for a given product is the choice of the producer. Then, the choice to consume DRM or not is up to the consumer. Today's producers already make that DRM opt in choice. We are already living the world you describe.
Ryel, Don't buy DRM entertainment if you do not want to. You are free to make a voluntary choice either way. If entertainment is released with DRM that you don't want then don't consume it.
Likewise, you are free today to produce entertainment and release it without any DRM. Here is an exercise for you: produce a movie that millions of people want to see and then release it without any DRM. That's your free and voluntary choice as a producer. Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything they don't freely choose to do.
The problem with your $7 tax idea is that it is extremely regressive tax policy. Your idea will ruin the scores of low income communities who clean hotel rooms, bus tables, landscape, and pick crops. Most of that work is done in spread out suburban areas.
If you are truly progressive and liberal then you'll work toward and end goal of cheap personal energy consumption so low income workers have the utmost in choice in deciding on means to rise from poverty. Let's suppose a landscape worker wants to launch his own gardening business. In my world he buys a used pick up truck and starts the business. In your $7 world he's screwed.
What you want is already within your grasp. Why don't you just make a movie that millions of people want to see and then release it in the model that you just laid out? In that world, everyone is making voluntary choices. You released your film your way and Warner Bros releases their film their way. The consumers are free to weigh all of these factors when making their choice.
There is nothing that ranks higher than a grudge in the world of personal motivators. I wish sales people, especially software sales people, would read Slashdot to see posts of frustration like this one. You can't walk off a used car lot and start selling high tech gear and hope to get repeat business.
I don't accept your assertion that the government can do better long term planning. Mostly I see politicians that can only see as far as the next election. This is in contrast to the company I work at that consistently is looking 5 years ahead.
I'd like to be more careful which 'problems' I allow the government attempt to solve through involuntary compulsion. I don't see why the free market will not solve this problem. Perhaps the reason it has not done so already is that we really don't have a problem. What exactly is 'the problem' that your post refers to?
Tomhudson, I'm against human rights abuses without regard as to who the perpetrator is. If human rights are abused by China, them I'm against it. If human rights are abused by George Bush, then I am against it. Those are my principles. What are yours?
Despite your tongue in cheek escape valve, the tone of your post apologizes for human rights abuses in China because you see some abuses in America. Does this mean that in tomhudson's world that two wrongs really do make a right?
I am a hiring manager in Silicon Valley. There is a shortage of great talent among the IT work force. In the last 12 months it has gotten harder to hire great talent and there is a definite salary inflation situation going on right now because most great candidates are seeing multiple competing offers.
Do IT only if you love it.
Consistently renew your skills. Commit yourself to a lifetime of learning new tech.
Live where the jobs are (e.g. San Jose, CA or Austin , TX).
Find a business where you are excited to apply your skills.
Avoid arrogance and treat people well.
Do these things and you'll always be in a high paying job.
Here is a suggestion for dealing with the DRM problem. Create great video content that is in high demand and release it without any DRM. What's stopping you from doing that?
Oh yes, the man is keeping us down. Or, the 200 MPG story is bullshit. Those patents would be in the public domain by now. Why don't you make one of the carbuerators and let your slashdot friends peer review it?
Snopes as an interesting story about this. 5 minutes with Google is a good way to debunk urban legends. You should try it some time.
Theoretically true. However, patents are all public records. Show us the '50 year' patents that the oil companies are sitting on. We can launch a progressive movement that boycotts the individual patent sitting oil companies until they relent and license the magic patent at an affordable price.
If things like this 'happen all the time' then the free press in the USA would have a field day exposing it with glee.
I have an idea, let's have the collection of smart and curious folks that read Slashdot act as a peer review community for this invention. Please post your friend's patent application here and we'll review the design on its merits.
It is true, as many of you have pointed out, that most lap tops are manufactured in China. However, moral symbolism is overtly at play here. Everyone knows IBM is true blue American and everyone knows Lenovo is an arm of the Chinese communist government. When you tee up a contrast that clear, people will make the choice the avoid the overtly Chinese product. The people who remember watching Chinese tanks crush unarmed teenagers in Tianenmenn Square just don't want to buy Lenovo products.
For me, it does not matter that JBoss is no longer 'independent'. What matters most is that there remain several viable competing options for J2EE containers. As consumers of J2EE we are best served in a world that still contains JBOSS, Geronimo, Weblogic, Websphere, OAS, etc. This is why I am glad Oracle did not buy JBoss. They already have their weakly supported OAS. I really think Oracle bought OAS so their sales reps could say 'Oracle does Java too' even though nobody really uses OAS. If they had bought JBoss the same thing would have happened to it over time. It would rot on the vine and we'd lose one more good option.
That's cool. I'll just shop somewhere else. My spouse often emails me a grocery list while I'm at work and I use my BlackBerry to read the list in the store. Why is that offensive? I still stop and chat up friends and neighbors when I see them there.
I think you made a lot of good points with your post. However, the value of your good ideas is squandered when you use hyperbole like advocating compulsory sterilization. Take more care to be a good communicator and you will be a more effective advocate for your ideas.
Do you have any data that backs up your assertions?
It seems to me, as a consumer, that the Walmart model is very progressive. It keeps prices low and therefore increases the purchasing power of all consumers.
Slashdot Mirror
1. VB is not portable. You'll be supporting windows based servers forever if you increase your investment in VB. The company I work for switched from VB to Java and we've been able to move our java server app to 3 different OS/HW architectures with zero code changes. 2. You cannot get insight into what VB is doing. Where is the server spending time? Can you see a thread dump? How much time is lost to collecting garbage. VB is a black box. That's death for debugging a large server system. 3. You cannot attract great new engineers to work on a VB application. Great engineers will avoid working on VB apps and you'll be stuck hiring low grade talent. That will perpetuate a downward spiral where any good people will leave to avoid VB and the bozos that like VB.
The legal system is already setup nicely to punish Sony. Their costs are running into millions. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_CD_copy_pro tection_controversy
Again, we already live in a fair and voluntary world as far as DRM goes.
Opt in for who? The producer or the consumer? It seems to me that the DRM or no-DRM for a given product is the choice of the producer. Then, the choice to consume DRM or not is up to the consumer. Today's producers already make that DRM opt in choice. We are already living the world you describe.
Ryel,
Don't buy DRM entertainment if you do not want to. You are free to make a voluntary choice either way. If entertainment is released with DRM that you don't want then don't consume it.
Likewise, you are free today to produce entertainment and release it without any DRM. Here is an exercise for you: produce a movie that millions of people want to see and then release it without any DRM. That's your free and voluntary choice as a producer. Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything they don't freely choose to do.
The problem with your $7 tax idea is that it is extremely regressive tax policy. Your idea will ruin the scores of low income communities who clean hotel rooms, bus tables, landscape, and pick crops. Most of that work is done in spread out suburban areas.
If you are truly progressive and liberal then you'll work toward and end goal of cheap personal energy consumption so low income workers have the utmost in choice in deciding on means to rise from poverty. Let's suppose a landscape worker wants to launch his own gardening business. In my world he buys a used pick up truck and starts the business. In your $7 world he's screwed.
MartinG,
What you want is already within your grasp. Why don't you just make a movie that millions of people want to see and then release it in the model that you just laid out? In that world, everyone is making voluntary choices. You released your film your way and Warner Bros releases their film their way. The consumers are free to weigh all of these factors when making their choice.
Go for it. What's stopping you?
There is nothing that ranks higher than a grudge in the world of personal motivators. I wish sales people, especially software sales people, would read Slashdot to see posts of frustration like this one. You can't walk off a used car lot and start selling high tech gear and hope to get repeat business.
I don't accept your assertion that the government can do better long term planning. Mostly I see politicians that can only see as far as the next election. This is in contrast to the company I work at that consistently is looking 5 years ahead.
I'd like to be more careful which 'problems' I allow the government attempt to solve through involuntary compulsion. I don't see why the free market will not solve this problem. Perhaps the reason it has not done so already is that we really don't have a problem. What exactly is 'the problem' that your post refers to?
Tomhudson, I'm against human rights abuses without regard as to who the perpetrator is. If human rights are abused by China, them I'm against it. If human rights are abused by George Bush, then I am against it. Those are my principles. What are yours?
Despite your tongue in cheek escape valve, the tone of your post apologizes for human rights abuses in China because you see some abuses in America. Does this mean that in tomhudson's world that two wrongs really do make a right?
I am a hiring manager in Silicon Valley. There is a shortage of great talent among the IT work force. In the last 12 months it has gotten harder to hire great talent and there is a definite salary inflation situation going on right now because most great candidates are seeing multiple competing offers.
Do IT only if you love it.
Consistently renew your skills. Commit yourself to a lifetime of learning new tech.
Live where the jobs are (e.g. San Jose, CA or Austin , TX).
Find a business where you are excited to apply your skills.
Avoid arrogance and treat people well.
Do these things and you'll always be in a high paying job.
podperson, Let's say we make you absolute ruler of our society. What would you do to make birth control and energy conservation happen?
Here is a suggestion for dealing with the DRM problem. Create great video content that is in high demand and release it without any DRM. What's stopping you from doing that?
What's stopping you from getting it?
Oh yes, the man is keeping us down. Or, the 200 MPG story is bullshit. Those patents would be in the public domain by now. Why don't you make one of the carbuerators and let your slashdot friends peer review it?
Snopes as an interesting story about this. 5 minutes with Google is a good way to debunk urban legends. You should try it some time.
Theoretically true. However, patents are all public records. Show us the '50 year' patents that the oil companies are sitting on. We can launch a progressive movement that boycotts the individual patent sitting oil companies until they relent and license the magic patent at an affordable price.
If things like this 'happen all the time' then the free press in the USA would have a field day exposing it with glee.
I have an idea, let's have the collection of smart and curious folks that read Slashdot act as a peer review community for this invention. Please post your friend's patent application here and we'll review the design on its merits.
Let's set you snide comment aside for a moment.
Do you think the 'oil companies' would really buy this patent for the sole purpose of burying it?
Why would the oil companies do that?
It is true, as many of you have pointed out, that most lap tops are manufactured in China. However, moral symbolism is overtly at play here. Everyone knows IBM is true blue American and everyone knows Lenovo is an arm of the Chinese communist government. When you tee up a contrast that clear, people will make the choice the avoid the overtly Chinese product. The people who remember watching Chinese tanks crush unarmed teenagers in Tianenmenn Square just don't want to buy Lenovo products.
For me, it does not matter that JBoss is no longer 'independent'. What matters most is that there remain several viable competing options for J2EE containers. As consumers of J2EE we are best served in a world that still contains JBOSS, Geronimo, Weblogic, Websphere, OAS, etc. This is why I am glad Oracle did not buy JBoss. They already have their weakly supported OAS. I really think Oracle bought OAS so their sales reps could say 'Oracle does Java too' even though nobody really uses OAS. If they had bought JBoss the same thing would have happened to it over time. It would rot on the vine and we'd lose one more good option.
Isn't this just a committee solution looking for a problem?
That's cool. I'll just shop somewhere else. My spouse often emails me a grocery list while I'm at work and I use my BlackBerry to read the list in the store. Why is that offensive? I still stop and chat up friends and neighbors when I see them there.
I think you made a lot of good points with your post. However, the value of your good ideas is squandered when you use hyperbole like advocating compulsory sterilization. Take more care to be a good communicator and you will be a more effective advocate for your ideas.
Do you have any data that backs up your assertions?
It seems to me, as a consumer, that the Walmart model is very progressive. It keeps prices low and therefore increases the purchasing power of all consumers.