The problem with these denials is that they would say the same thing regardless of whether or not they have collaborated. There is no way to verify the truth. What we do know is that the Government is capable and willing to force these companies to lie or face criminal prosecution. They are intimidating people into immoral treasonous behaviour or face prison. It isn't Apples fault that they are put in this situation; they are in the same boat as all the other US companies.

Of course, the US is far from the only country with intel programs. They are however in the best position to do so, and have budgets that are more than the GDP of small countries (perhaps not so small). Considering the staggering cost of the NSA and its woeful record in terms of actionable intel it may have possibly, maybe, been a better idea to spend it on say space exploration that would get us off this rock.

It is hard to believe the reputation of the US could get lower than under Bush... but it seems I underestimated the ability of the US Administration to stuff up. Good ole United States, has the best politicians money can buy. So you want 'Change'? Who you gonna vote for now?

It isn't like its the wild west out there; we already have strong copyright legislation. What the TPPA is seeking is corporate control over the ability to exclude people from the internet at will, with no judicial oversight. To a large extent it already does; I dared to critique the Business Software Allience on YouTube and my account was closed. No comeback here - to challenge it I would need to agree to defending myself in California. Unless you are a U.S citizen there is no fair use or free speech on YouTube, Facebook, Google, Yahoo etc. You are there at their pleasure, and easily ejected.

The TPPA seeks to extend this power to your local ISP; to actually cut you off from the net totally if you are saying things they don't like.

It isn't about protecting works, it is about controlling the channel. The Internet was a danger to corporate control of how people got their entertainment and information. They are now getting the people back under control, subservient to their masters like they should be. The thing is that most are happy with having their entertainment and information fed to them, told what they should be angry about.

The risk to Hollywood isn't that we will steal their content - it is that we will discover their content is gilt covered crap, and that we can beginb to express ourselves without getting one hundred million dollars from a VC. What the RIAA and MPAA care about is making sue that they control the music we listen to and the movies we watch.

That is the focus of the TPPA. Control.

I think you have to first ask what is required here; whether it is simply the quantity of communication, or rather the quality. The team and communication skills of developers are more correlated with success than technical skills. Communication means being able to effectively transmit what you are thinking and understand what others are saying. Perhaps you should ask your co-workers what aspects of your communication they have difficulty with. Is it that you are unclear, or do you not communicate with those you should? Are you really listening to people; by which I mean actually taking onboard what people say? The "needless communication" phrase indicates a certain degree of hostility towards communication. Obviously you should not have 'needless' communications, but clearly your workmates believe there are issues impacting your effectiveness.

How about this for a reason to write easy to understand code: Its faster. Writing easy to understand code means - get this - its easy to understand it. This means that defects become more obvious and easier to fix. Highly coupled monolithic balls of mud written by developers with an inflated opinion of their own skills are usually the source of intractible defects. Easy to understand code is the sign of an organised mind.

What is it with the Uber Coder mythology? The developer community has its own values. Each profession has certain ideas about what is valuable. Many people value money - that when someone asks how much you make this is a proxy for making a personal judgement. Coders generally don't judge based on money. They judge based on intellect. Not real intellect - that is far too difficult to determine, but rather perceived intellect.

As a result we see a number of interesting effects. The first is the prima donna whose code is impossible to read and proud of it. If anyone questions it they usually reply that if you can't read it it is because you are not as skilled or intelligent as they are. Another effect is that overt technical skills are valued above soft skills. This means that becoming a manager or team leader is seen as almost selling out and becoming the Pointy Hair Boss.

This fails to understand that success in software is not highly correlated with these 'geniuses' who refuse to play nice or refuse to manage teams. Success is correlated to effective teams who actually work at their communications and team development disciplines. The success stories we hear about may or may not be highly skilled; this is not a differntiator. What is key is the ability to develop and maintain effective development teams, and to manage them in a way that gives them the autonomy to be creative but the dicipline to ensure the deliver value.

The skills Larry Page and Sergey Brin brought to the table that allowed them to succeed were not coding skills, and I think that the implicit critique of their technical skill devalues the real reasons they made it.

Is it just me, or is "sensible adult conversation" rather condescending? Why is it that when a whistle blower identifies where the law has been violated, rather than a immediate and far reaching criminal investigation to identify and punish those responsible for breaking the law we see excuses and calls for "sensible adult conversation". There is no need for a negotiation. If I were to spy in this manner there would be no discussion; I would be prosecuted, imprisoned and possibly killed.

National Security is a weak cover for the abuse of power and gross violations of the highest law of the land. How can senior people get away with lying to Congress and not get thrown in jail for life? What does it say when people can lie like this, break the highest law, and face no consequences? No. Instead the whistle blowers are facing life in prison.

I didn't believe all the campaign promises of Obama, but to actually be worse than Bush takes some doing. The US is stuffed. Your 'democracy' was sacrificed many years ago; welcome to the Police State. What other country has tortured people for more than ten years - and now can only keep people alive - people who have not been charged much less given a trial - through forced feeding. The US is a grotesque parody of what it once stood for.

A case can be made for all current 'intellectual property', but in essence it is all founded in a social contract. Its a deal we enter. Trademarks exist to protect good will and brand identity. There is a social benefit in knowing a certain product is made by a certain company because characteristics like quality can be inferred. Without trademarks any time some company got an edge with its name the name would be copied by competitors.

In copyright there is a social benefit in the support of the creative arts. There is a question about whether the author/musician/film maker really needs to retain control for their lifetime plus 90 years however. It would seem more reasonable to limit it to say 10 years, thus giving the creator a opportunity for profit, but allowing it to enter the public domain for reuse in a reasonable period.

Patents are mostly evil and counter productive. Not just in software. From software to healthcare they make things more expensive and higher risk. The benefits usually presuppose what they are trying to establish; the existence of patents. Patents are justified by the social benefit of the release of information such that it will enter the public domain. To a large extent this encouragement to release the details of a software invention was renderer irrelevant by the open source community. The only remaining argument is a ethical one based on the presumed right of someone coming up with an idea to protect it. The problem is that others may come up with the same idea independently. Besides, there is no moral right to profit from ideas in any other intellectual domain.

No - really - we did. Not sure if this is simply ignorance or wilful deception, but Software Patents are toast in New Zealand.

Now it may be true that you can still have embedded software which is part of a larger hardware system, but in terms of getting patents on software that runs on general purpose computers - they are most certainly not going to be granted.

Of course this does not invalidate existing patents, and we are yet to see any test cases that will better define the edge cases.

I guess the problem for the US is that this bill was passed by almost all the house. It enjoys broad support in New Zealand among almost all political parties. Now, the situation may change; I am sure the US State Department are spitting tacks right now. They said that they don't care about the software patents issue in relation to the TPPA. Now they find out we were not bluffing. The US is still trying to act as if they have the single most important market.

Newsflash: New Zealand entered a free trade agreement with China years ago, and strategically it was a great move. China is a high growth market. Sure we have our hiccups, but the bottom line is good for both countries. All the US is doing is further isolating itself from trade.

How did that 'voting for different people' work out for you guys in the US? There was Obama saying that he wouldn't allow illegal spying, and now where are you?

Last night we had politicians talking about what they would do, but what you didn't hear was rousing speeches from them (or at least not from David Shearer) defending the principles of freedom. There was a narrow focus on the one piece of legislation while at the same time other legislation threatens to allow the Government to install spying equipment directly into ISPs so they don't have to ask these ISPs for cooperation. Yeah - direct feeds that they can examine without restriction.

Voting is a blunt instrument that is virtually no use at all. In a single party system like you have in New Zealand and the US, where the same party has two faces and simply takes turns while maintaining overall control, there is no functional way for people to make a change unless we vote for REALLY different people.

Eighty Nine Percent of New Zealanders oppose new legislation to broaden the powers of the GCSB, the New Zealand Signals Intelligence agency that has tradisionally been used to spy on other countries. It is now being turned on those who fund it. However, it must be understood in the context of the countries which are working together. New Zealand is probably spying on citizens of the United States - and that information is being passed back. In fact there are no New Zealanders in the loop - the US gets direct feeds from its spy base here.

It is clear from how Assange, Snowden, KimDotcom, Swartz, Manning, David Miranda and many others have been treated that current administrations are the enemies of freedom. They are supporting a state of affairs more rrepressive and functionally more effective than George Orwells 1984. That a New Zealand Government has been complicit with this pains me.

Let us not forget that the instant that Islamic fundamentalist 'terrorists' once more become useful the US has been willing to arm them. The Syrian rebels are fundamentalists that will no doubt implement strict religious law like the Taliban should the be victorious in Syria. Is this the kind of "Freedom" the US want? The US at one point at least made a good showing of standing for something. It now makes no effort to even disguise its true position, with its clients such as the UK doing its bidding by harassing people like David Miranda in relation to the Snowden leaks. Far from protecting us from terrorists they are once more funding them.

Who will stand for freedom?

When you say "both" you appear to be suffering under the misaprehension that you have two political parties and a functioning democracy. Do don't. You have one party with two brands, and they all are given their marching orders by their funders. There is no more freedom in the United States than in China. The only difference is the mechanism by which the people are controlled. Tomorrow I protest against the corrupting influence of the United States in my own country.

As a New Zealand Citizen I would like to offer my deep heartfelt apologies to every other country of the world for expanding the powers of our secret police and destroying and semblance of privacy in New Zealand. I offer these apologies as this is not who we are as a society. Our Government is not representing the will of it's citizens, as was indicated in a recent poll which indicated that a vast majority of New Zealanders did not support the legislation. It is legislation being put in place to wipe out the balance of power; to enable tyranny in our country. They cannot permit people to stand up to them as Kim Dotcom did. This is not the example I want to make to the world. We pride ourselves on our integrity and independence. This legislation is submission to power, it is a disgrace and a treason against the national interest.

Hibernate is a great tool in many ways, but it is far too easy to allow the actual details of what is going on under the covers to be hidden. As the parent suggests using Hiberate in a naieve way can be very dangerous. Complex queries are usually best handled by native SQL.

Planet Oracle I believe. It is exactly this condesending attitude which we can do without. It is the same propoganda that the business rules should be in the DB so they are protected from the idiot know nothing developers. It is a claim in essenence that a DBA is superior and developers incompetent. There is such a thing as a business layer. The business rules can be enforced there. I know the orthodox thinking, but have never seen a good reason to believe it. I don't know how much time has been wasted on projects with developers fighting DBAs just to get their job done. Yes - stored procs do potentially have a role. In my experience it is a very limited role.