The problem with what has been alleged is that it now gives more ammunition to those against SaaS over the web. On the other hand, it makes it all the more important that these companies be forced to use SSL for login sessions.
On a side note, this sounds way too stupid to have actually occurred. If Mark actually did these things, I feel much more confident in my own intelligence (in comparison to his own, and what I previously thought of it).
"Go is not meant to innovate programming theory. It's meant to innovate programming practice."
I have done a lot of reading about Golang and have followed the community since its launch. The people involved are great, and the language is extremely straight-forward. I would put it up against any other language as a first-learned programming language. Golang is a "patterns" based language -- like javascript. This makes it EXTREMELY flexible. It is, however, very different from non-pattern based languages, such as C/C++, ruby, python, etc. Perhaps one of the reasons I have great appreciation for it is because I fell in love with javascript (the good parts), after watching the videos at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/110371/what-javascript-tutorials-on-the-web-would-you-recommend/111177#111177
I see a lot of potential for this language. I have recently been really impressed by javascript, as a completely different approach to programming thanks to closures (I'm coming from C/C++ & Python). I think golang is everything that made javascript a huge leap forward in programming methods back in the 90s, nothing that makes it bad, and add a great multi-threading layer on top of that.
While the libraries are still lacking, that says nothing about the language itself. Libraries come over time. Though, I must say that the base libraries that the language was launched with provide enough for people to do some great stuff.
Please stop following the outdated property rights model. We have the tools and technology to start the shift towards the Chicago school's economic model to intellectual property.
Society needs a re-focusing of the driver for innovation. People should still be paid for their work, however, it should not be a pay-per-use model of intellectual property. There is a good example of this in Canada with the CD tax. When you purchase the recordable media you pay a tax that goes to artists for their work. In exchange you acquire the right to make copies of your music CDs. This is a good beginning, but there is no desire to develop it as it would take the power away from the publishers, and give it back to the artists. Publishers would no longer be the middle man that has made them so rich. Intellectual property laws are no longer appropriate for the new creative landscape. However, they don't need to change, they need to be completely removed and re-thought from scratch. Existing laws and any potential changes will never succeed in what people imagine they exist to achieve: artistic freedom through compensation for efforts expended.
The emphasis of intellectual property rights are on the individual and on the "I made it" or "I invented it". The whole founding principle behind copyright was in-fact to give authors the right to control who publishes their book. It was a direct attack on the way too powerful publishing industry at the time (see context of Statute of Anne UK).
Since that time there has also been the issue of attribution. This was mostly due to the fact that you needed to attribute the work in order to claim copyright and thereby control the work (see publisher battle in previous paragraph).
Lastly, there has been an element of profit introduced, more so recently, but also in the past. Don't forget that before there was the global market place and the invention of the printers people earned their living (or death in the case of Aristotle), through recognition for their works. These days people are no longer making a "living", but rather making their fortunes via the same. Now, there is nothing wrong with this. However, when it becomes the driving force as opposed to contributing to the story of humanity, then there is a problem. This is the great shift that intellectual property laws embrace and were engineered to contribute to from the beginning (accidentally or not).
These days there has been a re-emergence of publishers as an enemy to the artist, and there is a great need for a new "Statute of Anne" to address this. Creators need to start concentrating on the contribution to the humanity, rather than getting bogged down in who should gets a cut. It is only when this shift occurs will humanity be able to shed their shackles of intellectual mediocrity. It is only when there is less concern for profits and more for intangible value added to society will we see some great innovation.
Learn about the Chicago economic theory regarding intellectual property rights.
During my architecture / engineering classes days, I found the winning combination was Laptop + digital camera.
Towards the end of the year, everyone in class had a camera, and the profs would actually play along and ask if everyone has finished taking a picture before erasing the board.
The above was WAY better than any pen and paper. This is because the professor would often make mistakes as they draw and would erase parts. In addition, they would use multiple colours to make the image communicate more information. Impossible to capture this without a digital camera.
Today: I would do Ipad + digital camera for any class... I would just dump the camera pictures into a folder labeled for that lecture along with my
Works great!
I have been an apple user and STRONG proponent since the 6400 days. Though, these days I am no longer a proponent, simply a happy user of the hardware I purchased previously. However, even this is changing, as with every update to the OS, more and more of the sky is being blocked out with the OS becoming more and more closed. This seems like a direct attack at the heart of *nix, which has been the poster-child of openness (Linux/BSD). Microsoft is already on life-support, but the family is selfish and unwilling to let go, and simply pull the plug. Apple seems to be racing with great zeal for the same fate.
The way apple has been making their system more and more closed (ever since they closed-sourced the OSX kernel), has been a steady decline into a place where apple will no longer be the "Alternative".
It seems they are terrified of the prospect of losing their main revenue stream: hardware. However, they changed their business model ever since the old iMac (colored) came out. Where they are no longer just hardware, they are a user experience. On the other hand, they still seem to be terrified of the prospect of a repeat of what happened in the early 90s when they opened their hardware to other non-apple producers and almost went out of business due to cheaper supply of apple hardware from non-apple producers. Sadly, they don't want to accept the new business model as being a solution to this problem. It seems as though they have one leg in the past and one racing for the future. If they don't be careful, this may rip their company apart.
To Apple:
Openness != lower profits. However, openness is the future, I think this is an established business reality at this point. Stop waging war on this, you will lose, and we the people WILL win in the end. So while you may win a few battles with release of some neat things (iPad), you will lose the war, because those you depend on most dearly will abandon you...and they are not the consumer, as you may think... this will begin with the fall of your King. Who has lost his path, perhaps even led astray by those advisors he trusts most. Because they know he is short on time. They know there will be strife. So they are trying to shut all the exits from the outside, so those inside will have no way out. The momentum in the wrong direction is so great at this point, that sadly, there is very little chance the company will be able to stear clear of the rocks ahead.
"Here lays the broken spirit of Apple - April 1, 1976 - January 27, 201X"
"The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl." -- Dave Barry
