The primary problem is that we allow lawyers to write the laws by electing them to our legislative bodies. We somehow expect that once they get elected they will no longer have a vested interest in making the laws as complex and hard to understand as they possibly can. What we end up with is a mess of laws, regulations, and opinions that can only be interpreted, not understood.
In our current environment the laws are not written for the average person, or even a highly trained, non-legal professional, to comprehend. The more difficult it is for the public to understand a law, the more lawyers will be required to assist individuals in determining how or even it that law applies to them.
For this reason, it is unrealistinc to expect that technology experts would be experts on the laws that govern them. The lawyers have done their best to make this impossible. It is also unrealistic to expect those same lawyers to understand the technology they are regulating. If they did so, they might generate laws and legal opinions that make sense in the evolving technological world, thus reducing the client base for future litigation.
The following are two suggestions I have read regarding this problem (which is not limited to technology issues):
1. Prohibit anyone who has been a practicing attorney or a member of the Bar Association within the last fifteen years from running for any public office that would directly affect the creation or interpretation of legislation. This falls under the category of "conflict of interest."
2. Eliminate the requirement that judges be members of the Bar Association. In what other line of business is it a requirement that top management personnel be members in good standing of the union that represents the workers?
If you are uncomfortable with the auto convert from Access to Oracle, flat file the data and then use SQL*Loader to run it into Oracle -- much faster than the auto process. Oracle is probably the best engine to drive what you are after, both from a compatabilitiy and an operations standpoint.
I'm data administrator for a 400+ GB financials warehouse on Oracle. Yes, it does the job very well. We also front-end the warehouse with custom ColdFusion web apps and are porting to BusinessObjects' new BusinessIntelligence web product. The combination offers excellent results with minimal (2 DBAs) maintenance. The DBAs are primarily involved in designing new tables and data sourcing operations (and de-normalizing my models). We support several thousand users with an average of about 50 concurrent multi-dimensional queries. We're running on twinned HP UNIX servers and have had exactly one hour of down time in the last year and a half. So far our users seem to think that Oracle is the appropriate product to use.
Perhaps more appropriate would be the scales of justice with a large dollar sign on one side and a drooling lawyer on the other. Just because some fool claims that he also meant to include some future technology in his patent application does not indicate that there is any validity to the claim. Perhaps the best thing to do with this type of patent is for everyone who uses a computer for any purpose whatever to file a class action suit against the person/organization claiming the patent. The resulting legal fees would be so burdensome that there would be no money left for them to use in filing claims against those they feel are infringing on their patents.
Slashdot Mirror
The primary problem is that we allow lawyers to write the laws by electing them to our legislative bodies. We somehow expect that once they get elected they will no longer have a vested interest in making the laws as complex and hard to understand as they possibly can. What we end up with is a mess of laws, regulations, and opinions that can only be interpreted, not understood.
In our current environment the laws are not written for the average person, or even a highly trained, non-legal professional, to comprehend. The more difficult it is for the public to understand a law, the more lawyers will be required to assist individuals in determining how or even it that law applies to them.
For this reason, it is unrealistinc to expect that technology experts would be experts on the laws that govern them. The lawyers have done their best to make this impossible. It is also unrealistic to expect those same lawyers to understand the technology they are regulating. If they did so, they might generate laws and legal opinions that make sense in the evolving technological world, thus reducing the client base for future litigation.
The following are two suggestions I have read regarding this problem (which is not limited to technology issues):
1. Prohibit anyone who has been a practicing attorney or a member of the Bar Association within the last fifteen years from running for any public office that would directly affect the creation or interpretation of legislation. This falls under the category of "conflict of interest."
2. Eliminate the requirement that judges be members of the Bar Association. In what other line of business is it a requirement that top management personnel be members in good standing of the union that represents the workers?
If you are uncomfortable with the auto convert from Access to Oracle, flat file the data and then use SQL*Loader to run it into Oracle -- much faster than the auto process. Oracle is probably the best engine to drive what you are after, both from a compatabilitiy and an operations standpoint.
I'm data administrator for a 400+ GB financials warehouse on Oracle. Yes, it does the job very well. We also front-end the warehouse with custom ColdFusion web apps and are porting to BusinessObjects' new BusinessIntelligence web product. The combination offers excellent results with minimal (2 DBAs) maintenance. The DBAs are primarily involved in designing new tables and data sourcing operations (and de-normalizing my models). We support several thousand users with an average of about 50 concurrent multi-dimensional queries. We're running on twinned HP UNIX servers and have had exactly one hour of down time in the last year and a half. So far our users seem to think that Oracle is the appropriate product to use.
Perhaps more appropriate would be the scales of justice with a large dollar sign on one side and a drooling lawyer on the other. Just because some fool claims that he also meant to include some future technology in his patent application does not indicate that there is any validity to the claim. Perhaps the best thing to do with this type of patent is for everyone who uses a computer for any purpose whatever to file a class action suit against the person/organization claiming the patent. The resulting legal fees would be so burdensome that there would be no money left for them to use in filing claims against those they feel are infringing on their patents.