I’m hoping I’m only out for a day. As I write this, I’ll be recovering from my ACL surgery, though hopefully only slightly limited in work.
We’ll see. I’ve learned to hope for the best, but plan for the worst, and as a result, I decided to take Monday off from work as well, just in case. I never know how these things might go, and while it should be simple, I may want to take it easy for another day.
In deference to my British employers, I’ll use their word.
It constantly strikes me how rude, stupid, and unfriendly people can be on the Internet. I’ve been trying to avoid even reading comments on many places, including Facebook because I’m struck by how people behave. I haven’t completely succeeded and things still strike me at times.
Like today, I saw this tweet.
I read part of the article and then scrolled down to see the comments. This was what I saw:
I get that you might not like the format. Personally I didn’t love it and didn’t read the entire article. However I also recognize that this was a story and designed to present information in a new style. Even the opening leads one, or at least me, to understand this is a story, not a quick technical article.
I suspect that bad behavior is often because of the anonymous nature of comments. Or maybe it’s because the writers are so far removed from others they feel no social contract to mind their manners. Perhaps it’s the ease with which one can toss off their first thought and condemn the rest of us to suffer through it.
If you don’t like something, that’s fine. You get to pick and choose which pieces you want to read and which ones you like. However it’s also easy to just click away to something else and not leave a comment. I’ll paraphrase a few lyricists here (Jay-Z and Salt n Pepa),
If you don’t like the writing, you can click back, close the tab, or turn away from the computer.
Disclosure: I work for Red Gate, and we do want to sell software. That’s how we pay the bills and keep Simple Talk and SQLServerCentral running. We also are a part of the community. We want to teach you. We want you to get better at your jobs, and yes, we want to entertain you.
Please let us know what you like and don’t like, but there’s no nefarious purpose to trick you. If you like our tools, or those of our competitors, and they are worth the price, we hope you buy them.
The 2014 Oscars are this weekend, and while I only have a passing interest in who wins the various awards, I did manage to see a number of the nominees and enjoyed most of them. I missed a few as well, and am hoping to find time to watch some of these movies later this spring.
I didn’t see many technological, science fiction, or “geeky” movies this past year, but my daughter and I did enjoy the latest Marvel installment of Thor and are looking forward to Captain America later this year. I’m not sure I want to see Guardians of the Galaxy, but my “Marvel fan girl” may talk me into it. I did enjoy Ender’s Game last year, and thought it was an interesting take on a book I enjoyed many years ago.
With a few new movies in the works (Star Wars and Star Trek), I wanted to ask you what you might hope for.
It could be a comic book based movie, another installment of an existing movie franchise, or perhaps a book that you wish would appear on the large screen.
I’ve read a lot of books over the years, comic and longer format, and of all of them, I think I’d like to see the Old Man’s War series produced as movies. Or perhaps even as a TV show. I also enjoyed Red Thunder more than once, and think that might make a thrilling movie. Hyperion is an amazing story as well, though I’m not sure it would fit into a movie. Perhaps we’ll see that produced at some point as a multi-year adventure show.
Steve Jones
Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Mevio . 
The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.
I highly dislike the current patent system in the US. I think awarding patents for an idea like “1-click purchasing” is a poor practice that discourages innovation. There are numerous problems with our patent system, not the least of which is that it can stifle new ideas and prevent small companies from building on similar ideas that are, well, what I’d all common sense. I don’t quite share Richard Stallman’s view of software patents, but I do think we have fundamental flaws in the way we handle this intellectual property.
I do, however, think that software has value, and the work we do as software engineers deserves compensation, as noted in this post. We should have some patents, and we should reward those that create truly innovative, and not common sense, ideas in the digital world. How we define those, and how we measure innovation isn’t clear to me, but I do think that non-trivial ideas deserve protection.
Our legal systems around the world are slow to catch up to the digital world, and may never do so. As quickly as we can debate patents, copyright, trademarks, and more, the digital world grows, expands, and changes to stretch and challenge our thinking of how the world works. It almost seems as though digital ideas and software defy analogies and explanations that we can relate to the real world.
I don’t know how I’d change patents, but I don’t want them to go away completely. I do, however, know what I’d do with copyright. I’d change it back to the original system we had, granting 14 years exclusivity to creators, with a single option to renew for 14 years and that’s it. The world certainly changes too fast to wait 95 years to use someone else’s work.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA PodcastListen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Mevio . The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com. |
