Expensive? People have *died* for the freedoms we have today. I'm afraid a little up-front dollar value pales in comparison... We must always fight for freedom. It's naive and stupid to think others won't take it from us if they can.
I agree with what you said except for one thing: People have not died for the freedoms you have today. They died for what they believed in and your freedoms today might not be what they had in mind.
For example, you (I assume you are American) have a (great) constitution that speaks of the freedoms and rights of people; nowadays that usually means freedoms and rights of _American_ people, while mostly ignoring the rights of others... and I'm not sure that's what they had in mind.
My opinion may be off though, as I see things from the outside... and then again, that could make it more accurate.
First, whatever you get, it won't do everything you need it to; You'll have to either adapt your company's workflow, or customize the software you choose.
Second, developing your own is tricky, since it involves lots (and I mean LOTS) of coding and testing cycles (read that as time and resources) and its a bit difficult to justify.
We're in a different situations: being in a corporation, we have our own CRM, which is sold externally, so for us its a matter of eating our own dog-food.
Even in this situation (having our own product), the CRM we use is still heavily customized for our own workflows and we have a dedicated team developing and testing customizations for our internal use.
I don't use password management tools, but mnemonics. Usually I pick a text I remember (like a commercial, or some poem I remember from highschool). Then, I use the first letters of all words (or of the first n words) and use those as a password, translated to l337speak.
It sounds complicated, but for example let's say you take "Where do you want to go today?(Ms)" (I know I'll get modded to troll for this). It becomes Wdyw2gt?(m$)
Its (pseudo)random enough to be impossible to guess if you're not choosing something obvious as source (and it may be hard to guess even if you are), easy to remember and easy to customize/lengthen/add salt to it.
Also, you don't need to rely on a tool for it, and don't need to write anything down either.
Or, just you could just use 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0... I mean, who'd be able to think about that?
Don't worry - it won't last. Sooner or later, European countries will have to start footing their defense bill.
That may be... but I hope the EU won't have the same external political agenda as the US (military dominance of the sky worldwide for defensive purposes only, military dominance of the land for defensive purposes only, and military dominance of the sea worldwide for exclusively defensive purposes, of course).
Basically, what I hope is the EU - in case they decide for a common military front - would do so for truely defensive purposes.
At the moment though, the EU is more of an economic entity and less of a military one, so there is no need for a defense bill.
1. The USA is the world's most progressive nation, [...] Therefore it has a moral right, or even an obligation, to lead others towards the light (at least, those of them who survive the trip).
2. The USA is the world's most powerful nation, [...] Therefore, as the world's biggest gorilla, what it says goes; and it uses this dominance to further its own interests (including those of US corporations and citizens).
[...]It would be nice to know which is the official position.
The official position is the first; The unofficial (and true) position is the second.
Pregnancy should be a definite "NO" - I think. That is not only due to lack of data (it is difficult to estimate the problems in evolution of an embryo in 0G), but for the actual birth, and what comes after it.
Considering that getting _privacy_ is still an issue, having a sterile environment for a birth sounds prohibitive, as does raising a newly born in space (at the moment). You have to think about special food, diapers (or something similar), a baby crying at all hours and breaking the awake/rest pattern of the crew, radiation effect on a newborn and probably two dozen other problems I cannot think about.
Pregnancy in space should be at least a few decades in the future, to have some decent estimates for a healthy baby/crew/mission success.
That means that -at the moment - any decision taken regarding sex on a space mission should take into account some good way(s) of preventing any pregnancy.
If investors and shareholders finally manage to understand this, the patent system could fall.
Nope. The investors maybe (to a degree), but the shareholders? They're not in it for the innovation but for the money. However broken the patents system may be, it apparently encourages the making of money (for the patent holder).
If anything, I'd bet on the shareholders flocking to MS because they hold the patents.
Absolutely! Apple, Sun, and all the Linux vendors. By leaning on customers to break loose from Windows XP, Microsoft is creating an enormous opportunity for anyone with a better product, which is basically everyone besides Microsoft.
Actually its a sound move on part of Microsoft. While they DO create the opportunity for competitors to step in place of windows XP, Vista is the only viable competitor for the mainstream market.
Apple, Sun or Linux (and HP, *BSD and others for that matter) as not actually being competitors for Windows and here is why:
Sun and HP are big in the server market; I'm not talking about "our company has 30 employees and a mail server" servers, but 16-20 processor servers, running some virtual machines, real-time event processing software and supporting a few hundred simultaneous user sessions doing various jobs. Microsoft doesn't even compete in that market.
Apple for the desktop is cool, but only if it (Apple) offers everything you need out of the box. On Apple machines you have no hardware customization options, no games (as far as I know), and no... I don't know what else:)... Also, when was the last time you heard of a large Apple computers network? (I haven't, but maybe there are; I'm not sure about that)
Linux and BSD will not be seen as viable replacements for windows in the business world unless they can do transparently what windows does and offer advantages on top of that; Here, by doing "what windows does" I mean running the exact same applications windows does, because as a stock market trader (for example) you're interested in using what you're comfortable with and getting the job done as fast as you can, not learning to use a different OS, different interface, _and_ a different suite of applications. When MS Word took over the market share from WordPerfect, they had a WordPerfect emulation mode that even had the same keyboard shortcuts (if I remember correctly). Linux offers nothing similar (at least nothing stable and mature enough to speak of).
TCO for Linux can be higher than other applications than Windows (which is very much a factor when you're thinking of a corporation's big user networks, customer support contracts and so on).
I think that, even if this will give a - say - 2% increase in number of users using OSS, it is still a sound strategy on part of Microsoft.
Actually, compared to the other problems faced when designing a space suit, that seems trivial.
There was a low-tech solution for allowing SCUBA divers to drink fresh water/juice while diving to avoid dehydration that basically involved a sealed bag and a straw (though those seem to be frowned upon by serious divers). I'd say something like that could be easily adopted for usage inside a space suit, but it would make far more sense to me to see to such problems as coffee/food/water before getting into the spacesuit completely, especially when you come to design with an attitude of "everything you add extra, is one more potential failure point".
And yet despite your anecdote virtually every collabratively made open source software continues to exist.
That software covers a real need, and there's no denying that.
That said, you loose a lot from cutting on the close contact between employees. In that regard, email is better than snail mail, chat is better than email, phone/VoIP is better than chat, video-chat is better than phone and close contact is better than all of them put together.
When considering team work/communication, the information transfer suffers a lot if you don't have close contact. I'm not sure if its the level of comfort you establish with day-to-day contact or trust in team members or whatever else, but I think working remotely only works as a last resort, or just as a short-term solution.
I've worked in an outsourcing company (writing software for some other company with managers on "the other side") and the contact was always somewhat forced, or it tended to become more forced in a few weeks without close contact. I've also been in three or four-way teleconferences with 10 to 20 people on each side in a separate conference room and its the same: there's a slight feeling of... awkwardness (I guess) that creeps in; conversations are harder to follow, people tent to mute the phone on the other side and chat about something else as long as they don't have something immediate to say and so on...
In the end, you loose on communication, on the volume of information you transfer and big-time on efficiency (its much more difficult and time and resource consuming to make a phone call/open a chat, than to turn your head to your colleagues and announce "Hey, I locked the sources for XYZ on my machine").
In conclusion, I'd consider working from home as a long term solution only as a last resort.
How do you prove it is legal software? Just show the shrinkwrap box? Bzzzt! Try again.
Ummm.... if you're using OSS, you don't. That is because (AFAIK) BSA is not looking for "pirated software", but for pirated software from the companies that sponsor them.
If you're using purchased software, you SHOULD know where it goes, and why, the same as you should know where your hardware (or any other purchased resource for that matter) goes, and why; If you don't you're not really managing your resources.
I think the company in your example chose to pay the fine because they admitted their negligence and because they didn't have a legal base for fighting the accusations.
In our company we have the "Infra Team" keeping track of where and what software is installed. I've been more than once in situations where by switching projects, I was asked to uninstall some softwares from my machine (VMWare and XMLSpy come to my mind as I write this).
Never again will you fear the BSA (Business Software Alliance) knocking on your door wanting to perform a software audit.
As I see it, this is actually one instance where you only fear something if you've done something wrong; I mean... why should you fear an audit if you're using legal software?
I am using Linux at home almost exclusively, but for business cases, I've seen the following scenarios:
small company with legal software (Windows network), the small one being audited by BSA (and nothing bad happening).
small company with illegal software (also Windows network), got a big fine and then switched to Linux (instead of buying Windows) as a legal alternative;
Either way, if you use proprietary software as a business, you should buy it (its part of your running cost, if you want that software).
Also, the entire entry does not take into account the TCO of Linux, which can be a decisive factor. I'm not talking here about Linux versus Windows (though there is that), but I've seen Linux dismissed in our company in favor of SUN/Solaris machines and HP/AIX due to a much higher maintenance/configuration cost for Linux.
I don't like mindless pro-Linux droning either, but personally I prefer to deal with small updates every day, which are very unlikely to affect anything, than a traumatic experience every month which is rather likely to affect something, where you'll have no idea which of the bundled hotfixes are doing the damage.
Ummm... yes, but that is you, not a corporate customer.
A few years back I was working for a company developing a large financial platform, and they were testing a few months before getting to the next service pack (then, the sys-admin installed it on all computers). This was being done on separate machines, and a full battery of tests had to be run, before approving the upgrade company-wide.
You simply cannot afford that, when you have a lot of small upgrades, spread over the same period. Also, when considering the same updates but distributed differently (small updates vs. service-pack) their likeliness of affecting something is exactly the same.
The way to fight DRM is not just to 'not use it', it's to show all your friends how cool it is NOT to be DRM-infested. See what I can do?
*drags music files to a blank CD on the desktop and the CD burns*
Neat, huh?
*drags video to an portable video player and it auto-resamples it, then shows that same video can be shown on the TV in the living room without any extra work*
Neat, huh?
Hmmm... if there was a youtube movie about this, I'd post it on my blog, link to it, email it to people and so on.
Anyone knows about a good enough movie about this? (a three pages text rant with no formatting won't have the same effect, and doesn't make anyone go "Neat, huh?"; I wouldn't send something like that)
Others, such as pair programming just do not work in my opinion.
I haven't had long-term experience with pair programming, but from what I've tried it was cool. This involves a lot of issues to be agreed on beforehand, and respected, like the fact that "inactive guy" needs to actually be very active (follow the logic of the "hot seat", look for mistakes, watch the coding style and so on).
It also involves that the members of the pair are really equal (otherwise you have no pair there and the bennefits dissapear).
When writing code, it's good to have someone watching what you're doing, while you're doing it and being in tune with it (helping when you miss stuff, like "don't forget to increment the index" or "add a comment explaining that because it will look weird", or "we need to recalculate this here, because it might have changed").
I realize this can easily turn to nagging or become annoying, but with a bit of care in the team, you can avoid those situations (some people really are not fit for pair programming but that doesn't make the technique invalid).
When being the inactive coder, you can learn stuff, get a better overall perspective, relax more while working (actually both positions are more relaxing than solo-programming), and do pier review at the best possible moment (while the code is actually being written).
In this case I'm scared. What country could possibly bring the US down?
I'm scared about this too.
I've seen (on slashdot and in other places) lots of talk about "democrats versus republicans" (for example) and they seem like just another flamewar to me, except for half-a-continent-sized population (and that is kind of scary).
I belive it's no coincidence that there is such an emphasis on being "politically correct" in the States (like not calling groups of people by derrogatory names for example), and that this (assigning people to groups then deeming them below you) is because this practice is a big problem in the american culture at the moment.
What looks worying to me is this atitude of "us versus them" (actually make that "U.S. versus them", "them" being sometimes the rest of the world), and I think it keeps growing and if it will continue to do so, the world will start pushing back.
If the US is to go down, I for one hope it will go down from within. As I see it, it is moving fast from democracy to "my group" against "your group" (which automatically makes members of "your group" evil that must be stopped at all cost by the way), and I'd rather not be included in neither of the groups in this scenario.
I also think this behaviour is being pushed forward by politicians and media for short term gains (power and audience ratings respectively), with no regards to long-term changes brought by their actions.
Slashdot Mirror
True ... Not unless you're Australian, or the laws are in the US (and the later seems to apply here). But then, maybe its also a matter of how big the financial interest is, in backing the laws.
Why are you talking about it here? Isn't the blue pill only for people having girlfriends?
I agree with what you said except for one thing: People have not died for the freedoms you have today. They died for what they believed in and your freedoms today might not be what they had in mind.
For example, you (I assume you are American) have a (great) constitution that speaks of the freedoms and rights of people; nowadays that usually means freedoms and rights of _American_ people, while mostly ignoring the rights of others ... and I'm not sure that's what they had in mind.
My opinion may be off though, as I see things from the outside ... and then again, that could make it more accurate.
Hi,
First, whatever you get, it won't do everything you need it to; You'll have to either adapt your company's workflow, or customize the software you choose.
Second, developing your own is tricky, since it involves lots (and I mean LOTS) of coding and testing cycles (read that as time and resources) and its a bit difficult to justify.
We're in a different situations: being in a corporation, we have our own CRM, which is sold externally, so for us its a matter of eating our own dog-food.
Even in this situation (having our own product), the CRM we use is still heavily customized for our own workflows and we have a dedicated team developing and testing customizations for our internal use.
I don't use password management tools, but mnemonics. Usually I pick a text I remember (like a commercial, or some poem I remember from highschool). Then, I use the first letters of all words (or of the first n words) and use those as a password, translated to l337speak.
It sounds complicated, but for example let's say you take "Where do you want to go today?(Ms)" (I know I'll get modded to troll for this). It becomes Wdyw2gt?(m$)
Its (pseudo)random enough to be impossible to guess if you're not choosing something obvious as source (and it may be hard to guess even if you are), easy to remember and easy to customize/lengthen/add salt to it.
Also, you don't need to rely on a tool for it, and don't need to write anything down either.
Or, just you could just use 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 ... I mean, who'd be able to think about that?
That may be ... but I hope the EU won't have the same external political agenda as the US (military dominance of the sky worldwide for defensive purposes only, military dominance of the land for defensive purposes only, and military dominance of the sea worldwide for exclusively defensive purposes, of course).
Basically, what I hope is the EU - in case they decide for a common military front - would do so for truely defensive purposes.
At the moment though, the EU is more of an economic entity and less of a military one, so there is no need for a defense bill.
The official position is the first; The unofficial (and true) position is the second.
Connecting for chat to GTalk is no big deal right now.
What I was interested in, was connecting to GTalk for VoIP. That isn't supported right now.
So ... will it support VoIP?
If it connects with GTalk (for example) it would be cool (and long overdue)
They did; I was one of the victims. The kept offering a "merge with your yahoo account" option, then they made it mandatory :(.
Pregnancy should be a definite "NO" - I think. That is not only due to lack of data (it is difficult to estimate the problems in evolution of an embryo in 0G), but for the actual birth, and what comes after it.
Considering that getting _privacy_ is still an issue, having a sterile environment for a birth sounds prohibitive, as does raising a newly born in space (at the moment). You have to think about special food, diapers (or something similar), a baby crying at all hours and breaking the awake/rest pattern of the crew, radiation effect on a newborn and probably two dozen other problems I cannot think about.
Pregnancy in space should be at least a few decades in the future, to have some decent estimates for a healthy baby/crew/mission success.
That means that -at the moment - any decision taken regarding sex on a space mission should take into account some good way(s) of preventing any pregnancy.
... wish I had modpoints ...
Nope. The investors maybe (to a degree), but the shareholders? They're not in it for the innovation but for the money. However broken the patents system may be, it apparently encourages the making of money (for the patent holder).
If anything, I'd bet on the shareholders flocking to MS because they hold the patents.
Actually its a sound move on part of Microsoft. While they DO create the opportunity for competitors to step in place of windows XP, Vista is the only viable competitor for the mainstream market.
Apple, Sun or Linux (and HP, *BSD and others for that matter) as not actually being competitors for Windows and here is why:
I think that, even if this will give a - say - 2% increase in number of users using OSS, it is still a sound strategy on part of Microsoft.
Actually, compared to the other problems faced when designing a space suit, that seems trivial.
There was a low-tech solution for allowing SCUBA divers to drink fresh water/juice while diving to avoid dehydration that basically involved a sealed bag and a straw (though those seem to be frowned upon by serious divers). I'd say something like that could be easily adopted for usage inside a space suit, but it would make far more sense to me to see to such problems as coffee/food/water before getting into the spacesuit completely, especially when you come to design with an attitude of "everything you add extra, is one more potential failure point".
That software covers a real need, and there's no denying that.
That said, you loose a lot from cutting on the close contact between employees. In that regard, email is better than snail mail, chat is better than email, phone/VoIP is better than chat, video-chat is better than phone and close contact is better than all of them put together.
When considering team work/communication, the information transfer suffers a lot if you don't have close contact. I'm not sure if its the level of comfort you establish with day-to-day contact or trust in team members or whatever else, but I think working remotely only works as a last resort, or just as a short-term solution.
I've worked in an outsourcing company (writing software for some other company with managers on "the other side") and the contact was always somewhat forced, or it tended to become more forced in a few weeks without close contact. I've also been in three or four-way teleconferences with 10 to 20 people on each side in a separate conference room and its the same: there's a slight feeling of ... awkwardness (I guess) that creeps in; conversations are harder to follow, people tent to mute the phone on the other side and chat about something else as long as they don't have something immediate to say and so on ...
In the end, you loose on communication, on the volume of information you transfer and big-time on efficiency (its much more difficult and time and resource consuming to make a phone call/open a chat, than to turn your head to your colleagues and announce "Hey, I locked the sources for XYZ on my machine").
In conclusion, I'd consider working from home as a long term solution only as a last resort.
Ummm .... if you're using OSS, you don't. That is because (AFAIK) BSA is not looking for "pirated software", but for pirated software from the companies that sponsor them.
If you're using purchased software, you SHOULD know where it goes, and why, the same as you should know where your hardware (or any other purchased resource for that matter) goes, and why; If you don't you're not really managing your resources.
I think the company in your example chose to pay the fine because they admitted their negligence and because they didn't have a legal base for fighting the accusations.
In our company we have the "Infra Team" keeping track of where and what software is installed. I've been more than once in situations where by switching projects, I was asked to uninstall some softwares from my machine (VMWare and XMLSpy come to my mind as I write this).
As I see it, this is actually one instance where you only fear something if you've done something wrong; I mean ... why should you fear an audit if you're using legal software?
I am using Linux at home almost exclusively, but for business cases, I've seen the following scenarios:
Either way, if you use proprietary software as a business, you should buy it (its part of your running cost, if you want that software).
Also, the entire entry does not take into account the TCO of Linux, which can be a decisive factor. I'm not talking here about Linux versus Windows (though there is that), but I've seen Linux dismissed in our company in favor of SUN/Solaris machines and HP/AIX due to a much higher maintenance/configuration cost for Linux.
Ummm ... yes, but that is you, not a corporate customer.
A few years back I was working for a company developing a large financial platform, and they were testing a few months before getting to the next service pack (then, the sys-admin installed it on all computers). This was being done on separate machines, and a full battery of tests had to be run, before approving the upgrade company-wide.
You simply cannot afford that, when you have a lot of small upgrades, spread over the same period. Also, when considering the same updates but distributed differently (small updates vs. service-pack) their likeliness of affecting something is exactly the same.
FTFA: "[...] according to Breen."
What? No one is concerned that we have a Mr. Breen in charge of research? Are they sponsored by a company called Black Mesa by any chance?
Its only the beginning ...
Hmmm ... if there was a youtube movie about this, I'd post it on my blog, link to it, email it to people and so on.
Anyone knows about a good enough movie about this? (a three pages text rant with no formatting won't have the same effect, and doesn't make anyone go "Neat, huh?"; I wouldn't send something like that)
Ummm ... no; My computer is connected dayly to the internet and porn is on, 99% of the ... oh, wait!
To paraphrase an old /. post I read a while ago:
So, how much does this mean in Volkswagens?
I haven't had long-term experience with pair programming, but from what I've tried it was cool. This involves a lot of issues to be agreed on beforehand, and respected, like the fact that "inactive guy" needs to actually be very active (follow the logic of the "hot seat", look for mistakes, watch the coding style and so on).
It also involves that the members of the pair are really equal (otherwise you have no pair there and the bennefits dissapear).
When writing code, it's good to have someone watching what you're doing, while you're doing it and being in tune with it (helping when you miss stuff, like "don't forget to increment the index" or "add a comment explaining that because it will look weird", or "we need to recalculate this here, because it might have changed").
I realize this can easily turn to nagging or become annoying, but with a bit of care in the team, you can avoid those situations (some people really are not fit for pair programming but that doesn't make the technique invalid).
When being the inactive coder, you can learn stuff, get a better overall perspective, relax more while working (actually both positions are more relaxing than solo-programming), and do pier review at the best possible moment (while the code is actually being written).
I'm scared about this too.
I've seen (on slashdot and in other places) lots of talk about "democrats versus republicans" (for example) and they seem like just another flamewar to me, except for half-a-continent-sized population (and that is kind of scary).
I belive it's no coincidence that there is such an emphasis on being "politically correct" in the States (like not calling groups of people by derrogatory names for example), and that this (assigning people to groups then deeming them below you) is because this practice is a big problem in the american culture at the moment.
What looks worying to me is this atitude of "us versus them" (actually make that "U.S. versus them", "them" being sometimes the rest of the world), and I think it keeps growing and if it will continue to do so, the world will start pushing back.
If the US is to go down, I for one hope it will go down from within. As I see it, it is moving fast from democracy to "my group" against "your group" (which automatically makes members of "your group" evil that must be stopped at all cost by the way), and I'd rather not be included in neither of the groups in this scenario.
I also think this behaviour is being pushed forward by politicians and media for short term gains (power and audience ratings respectively), with no regards to long-term changes brought by their actions.