"Consumer group accuses Hollywood of 'threatening politicians'"

01/20/12 By Brendan Sasso

A Comment...

Low cost modern technology and infrastructure have eliminated much of the need for artistic production middlemen like those that dominate the MPAA and RIAA, the organizations intimidating congress into passing the PIPA/SOPA legislation. Those companies have traditionally provided the capital and other resources for expensive recording, production and distribution facilities that can today be replaced by a few thousand dollars worth of computer equipment and The Internet.

While it may still be wise to take advantage of much of the expertise traditionally supplied by these companies, it's seldom worth the kind of exorbitant prices the industry has been paying.

We are witnessing the death of a business model. That's never pretty.

Like mortally wounded animals, those who have built empires on it will lash out with their dying gasps in any way they can to survive.

Who, with an ounce of compassion could begrudge them the effort?

But, just as if we were watching some poor animal, we protect ourselves while letting nature take its course.

Many who have known and loved these creatures of the industrial era quite naturally are moved to try to save them, while we who have lived with the new technology for many years know that their virtual extinction is inevitable.

Online copyright infringement is assuredly a major problem. PIPA/SOPA supporters however, have chosen to publicly focus on foreign perpetrators only in order to head off opposition were the public to know that no such distinction between domestic and foreign infringement exists in the bills.

We want to encourage and support creativity and innovation while minimizing copycats. Creativity and innovation comes from artists, writers, composers, programmers and other creators. PIPA/SOPA would make it much more difficult for these people to eliminate the now unneeded middlemen and bring their creations directly to their audiences.

Congress must not be intimidated by these fading business creatures.

Just stand back, let them exhaust themselves, and make way for the future.
 

"HP dumps WebOS on open source world"

December 09, 2011 By Ted Samson | InfoWorld

A Comment...

I'm glad HP took my advice, though it was kind of a no-brainer.

I've read a number of positive things about webOS from developers working with it. Unlike in the market-driven world of commercial software, webOS only needs to do something - anything, especially well to be adopted in whole or in part by the purely innovation-driven Open Source community.

Since webOS is based on the Linux 2.6.24 kernel, I would expect future webOS development to probably lean towards being another Open Source alternative to Android on small devices. Maybe Google will adopt it if there's something in it they can use.

Commercial software has become so dominated by market forces to the exclusion of functionality, quality, reliability and value, that the industry seems to be coalescing into two camps -- Open Source, where most of the R&D innovation occurs; and Commercial, where they assemble those innovations into commercially viable packages and market them.

Businesses and individuals that want finished products and have more money than time or computing skill, buy commercial software and support. Businesses that need specialized mission-critical software that gives them a competitive edge over their competition or companies and individuals with more time and/or computing skill than money, choose Open Source for some or all of their operations.

Linux (and perhaps webOS) is the Lowes or Home Depot of software whereas Microsoft is the Ethan-Allen Home Furnishings.

How much you want to bet Ethan-Allen's manufacturers have long-standing accounts at Lowes and Home Depot?
  

"The cloud hazard no one talks about"

September 19, 2011 By Paul Venezia | InfoWorld

A Comment...

Information management is like transportation.

Mass-transit only works well in very populous areas and with lots of redundancy in the system. That's why most people drive cars.

Cloud computing is "mass-transit" for information.

Local processing is like having your own car.

Cloud computing is a solution desperately in search of a problem. Its marketing appeals to the near-sighted, the cheapskates, the people who never think about disaster planning and have to be rescued, at great risk to others, when it happens.

Reliable systems are built by minimizing variables and risks.

Functionality should be implemented as close to the user as technology allows. Anything above first level (i.e. desktop, laptop, phone, etc.) should be asynchronous with alternatives if all the redundant links are down.

Cloud computing's usefulness is not in reducing costs.

Cloud computing's usefulness is in improved reliability through redundancy.
 

Reliable Software

We've known for decades how to prevent software bugs...

1. Design from the top down and build from the bottom up.
   Only reuse modules that are completely debugged and reliable. Code built on unreliable code will be unreliable no mater how perfect it is.
   (Here I use "module" generically to mean any identifiable block of code... variously called "subroutine", "method", "procedure", "function", "macro", etc.)
   
   
2. Don't allow any module to have side effects.
   Side effects cannot be documented sufficiently to make them fully known for future work. They are thus inherently unreliable.
   
   
3. Software development is non-linear. Plan For It!
   An "80/20" rule is far closer to reality than the linear projections forced upon most software projects. To produce reasonably reliable software (we're not even going for "bug-free" nirvana here), about 80% of the development time will be spent on the 20% of the code at the bottom -- the lowest level -- the first modules upon which everything else is built.
   
   
4. Large groups cannot produce good software.
   Practically perfect software can only be produced by a team of... one. No one can wait long enough for one person to build the huge systems used today though so we have to sacrifice some perfection for the timeliness that teams can achieve. Teams of up to around 10, where each member excels in a different discipline and is responsible for a well-defined component of the project (i.e. GUI, business logic, database, testing, cat herding, etc.) can work well. Cat herders (leaders) unthreatened by more technically skilled team members can be hard to find though. We need to cultivate more of them.
   

Software development as it exists today, with its total obsession with speed of development, is untenable.

In business, software is the embodiment of a company's competitive strengths. How can a company that does everything just like their competitors hope to best them?

Government and non-profits are highly dynamic and diverse in their missions. Every software project is thus unique. How can they afford to pay the premium of profits on inferior products with their comparatively modest budgets?

Commercial software products today are much like America's luxurious but highly unreliable cars of the mid-twentieth century.... no longer affordable.

Open source projects and in-house development build on a much greater depth of knowledge of the processes being automated and thus produce more reliable and more productive systems.

Can we afford not to change?