Vivendi can go stick this up their arse as far as I am concerned…
http://expressurl.net/ws/338
Like it or lump it, the Internet is a playground where people are still relatively free. Piracy of content has always gone on – tape recorders were never banned, so why should file sharing?
I can tell you right now IF you put out content that is worth paying for, then people WILL pay for it. Personally I’m much happier being able to download a book, movie or audio for free, and if it’s a sack of crap I delete it and move on. If it’s something that’s of value to me, I go buy a copy.
Not everyone will do this, but that’s always been the case – deal with it, get over it, and allow the deliciously anarchic nature of the Net to continue to exist. If you control the net too tightly, someone will simply build a new one.
In an environment where Western Australia’s prisons are overcrowded, the police are overstretched, and with no sign of any easing of the pressure, what would be the most obvious thing to do?
Apparently, according to our “esteemed” State Premier Colin Barnett, what you should do in this situation is insist on 3% “efficiency savings” across government, and then proceed to tighten every piece of “easy target” legislation that you can ensuring even more pressure on the justice system.
Cannabis for example. Colin, mate, get real! People have been using the stuff for as long as humans have been around, and it will take more than an alarmist dickhead or two to change that. What is it about right-wing numpties (I’m not biased incidentally, I also believe there are plenty of left-wing numpties as well) that they home in on soft targets like this instead of trying to effect REAL change?
I’m not going to get into all the details of why this is a bad move, and why cannabis is not the evil monster it is portrayed to be, you can find all that easily enough with a Google search or two. What annoys me more than anything is the way idiots make these decisions, pat themselves on the back for being “tough on crime”, and all that really happens is they criminalise something that doesn’t matter, while doing sweet f**k all about the not-so-easy targets.
The latest thing apparently is some new legislation that will, allegedly, bring in tough new restrictions on supplying controlled weapons to minors. I imagine that selling a machete to a kid is pretty illegal already? So how the hell does making it even more illegal do anything? I’m not advocating that people should be allowed to sell machetes to kids, far from it, but think about it – what IS this tough new legislation apart from a bunch of populist headlines that will make stuff all difference, except perhaps to make people a bit more sneaky in how they conduct this business?
Still, in an age where you can win a Nobel Peace Prize for /talking/ about peace, maybe Mr “I reversed my plans to retire so I could have a go at playing premier” should indeed be lauded for such positive changes to the WA justice system.
Having spent the best part of 20 years developing business software, it occurs to me that the business software industry, and the business users/consumers of the software, have (perhaps unwittingly) led us down the garden path.
The idea of a computerised system that captures and models the very essence of a business, automating the decision-making process, and cutting out paperwork is an attractive one, but it has become clear that this is something of a holy grail that remains agonisingly within sight, but out of reach.
In pursuit of this ideal, we create more and more complex computer systems, using increasingly sophisticated design methodologies. We have drawn parallels with the construction industry, and have held up hopes that principles used to build bridges (for example) could be applied to the creation of software solutions.
Now let me say right now, if you are designing a weapons control system, an application that controls and monitors a nuclear reactor, or any other high risk, specialised modelling or control system then yes, absolutely, I want you to test every aspect to the highest degree possible, I want you to capture every rule possible, and I want you to build multiple levels of safety measures into the system.
But… business sofware is a completely different beast. Whether in a private sector or a public sector organisation, day to day business involves people, interactions with people, and regular changes to business rules. In many cases, business rules themselves are flexible and need to be applied in different ways according to circumstances. Capturing and encoding this into fragments of computer logic is not only resource-intensive, but such rules are likely to become stale before final testing has been completed.
It is this fixation with business modelling that has led to a number of different systems development strategies, all of which have brought great techniques and tools to the table, but none of them have provided the silver bullet, or the holy grail. The simple fact is that they can’t – organisations, whether large or small, are infinitely complex beasts and trying to pin down the intricacies of daily operations is like trying to carry water in your hands. If you freeze it, you can carry it easily in the form of ice cubes, but you lose all the dynamic and fluid properties of the original substance!
The problems associated with “freezing” a business into a software model has produced a multi-billion dollar industry, where projects fail, business analysts come into an organisation on a regular basis to re-analyse requirements, and software teams are constantly adding code to cope with caveats, anomalies and changes to business rules. After a while, a system becomes so bogged down with these additions and changes that a system rewrite is recommended, and the whole lucrative circus starts again.
There IS a solution, but I suspect I am somewhat ahead of my time when I suggest this, and so we will have to wait quite a while before it happens (sadly). We need to strip our business systems down to the core requirements of record keeping, report creation and data analysis. Allied to this, we need to return to the situation where skilled, experienced business experts are employed to work with these systems, use them as decision support tools, but ultimately business rule enforcement comes from the application of brain power, and not a reliance on a software system that’s probably using a stale rule-base and is a very efficient way of compounding errors very quickly.
Systemising a business, allowing low-skilled, low-paid staff to operate that business works fine for a fast food franchise, but in most other cases businesses should regard the “meat ware” within their organisation as more vitally important than any software or hardware. It is a fact that people are the greatest resource any business has and, until such time that a bio-computer can make real decisions, we really need to stop looking to computers to do the thinking for us.
In a nutshell, business software is a powerful, flexible way of managing important records that are relevant to your business. By stripping things back to basics, business software can become simpler, more reliable, easier and cheaper to develop/maintain, and businesses can avoid risks associated with vendor lock-in, and the need for massive system rewrites every few years.
Remember this: Software is a business tool that can aid and support decision-making, and inform businesses at operational and strategic levels. It is NOT supposed to run your business for you, nor can it ever accurately capture the up-to-the-minute nuances of your business.
I look forward to a time when we see a return to simpler software, and leave fuzzy rule-enforcement and decision-making to the devices that are capable of that; our brains.
