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VA Linux Dropping "Linux" From Name
Several folks noted that VA is changing its name to "VA Software" to reflect the fact that they aren't a Linux company anymore. VA of course owns OSDN which runs various Linux and Open Source web sites including amusingly enough Linux.com. Can't say it matters much to me what they call the thing as long as they let us keep running Slashdot, but it really is sad knowing that most of the cool open source hackers no longer work there. My bad. Anyone have a link to the press release that doesn't require a login?
first post!@~%$£#
http://www.suidrewt.org
1 to three post is me and i rule all va should still be "va research"
fp
...didn't want to call it VA GNU/Linux.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
ook!
i've never heard of va.
Have the top brass figured out the next big buzzword?
VA XML?
VA Java? (haha, I'm just joking)
VA Unlimited Freedom?
VA USA?
VA Voom?
VA cancy?
I guess it doesn't matter, they're within spitting distance of being delisted anyway, but are they going to keep LNUX as their stock ticker? That seems sort of silly to me.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
The subject asks it all. They (apparently) don't do much development (above and beyond sourceforge) and they don't sell hardware. As far as I can tell they sell services for Sourceforge and ads for OSDN sites.
Exactly what business is VA in now?
j00 baby frost pist sux mah nutz!
woah
Are they gonna change their stock symbol, being that it's LNUX?
so does this mean they will change their stock symbol from LNUX or LINX or whatever to a non-Linux like stock symbol?
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Linux droppings? What kind of shit is that?
Heh heh heh.
You said "drop."
VA va voom...
at least from NASDAQ.
it's not your company, besides, Linux is being phased out. It's a fucking science experiment gone terribly amok and corrupt. It must be erradicated, and "VA" are taking those first intelligent steps.
I don't think that it really matters that they change their name, as long as it's not a move away from linux but a move to broaden their open source presence.
in related news cmdrtaco has stepped out of the closet and changed his name to cmdr faggot.
I believe VA Research was one of the former names of VA. Maybe VA shall adapt it again?
It sounds cool and VA can still sell services.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Going to act on the mislabelling of the "Linux"
operating system? Linux is just the kernel.
Linux should be changed to GNU/Linux.
I see large lawsuits in the future.
Thank you and have an Afghan opium-filled day.
I always thought the VA linux hardware was a good route for them, and they discontinued that line and sold off all their machines (I picked one up for cheap on ebay, btw).
So what do they have now? Just sourceforge, thinkgeek, some misc. ads & services? Honestly, does anyone know what kind of move they are planning here, because this seems like another step in the wrong direction to me.
Even VA has seen that Linux is nothing but a burden. A useless OS designed for a 20 year old architecture based on a 30 year old operating system. What innovation.
I don't really follow this sort of thing, but I don't recall ever having the impression that "most of the really cool open source hackers" did work there. Did they?
I am really scared that Slashdot will be dumped real soon by "VA Whatever" and my personal data will be thrown into the wind for the company with the most pennies to snatch up. As we have seen in the past, its real tuff to control your own personal data held by a third party under extreme financial trouble.
I am sure that Pud at Fucked Company will be reporting the demise of "VA Whatever" in the near future. Dump the stock if you got it.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Slashdot will survive. I promise.
---
http://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml
VA XP?
Who fucking cares, VA LNUX scammed hundreds of millions of dollars from hardworking people.
Good riddance.
I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology.
I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to back it up! At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate Linux into our server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing fees was too great to ignore. I reccomended the installation of several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming. I don't believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast. I took it upon myself to configure the system from scratch and even used an optimised version of gcc 3.1 to increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3 machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say the results were less than impressive... We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The 3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise" environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour, we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the Linux boxes.
Needless to say, I won't be reccomending Linux/FSF to anymore of my clients. I'm dissappointed that they won't be able to leverege the free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.
thank you.
VA XP
I wouldn't be surprised.Lately it feels that they are going to need to sell there soul to the devil soon
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
How on earth does this qualify as a "newsable" event? This should be good news to all developer's who value meaningful identifier names... :^)
uhm.... isn't there stock symbol LNUX?
VA XP.
Seriously though, what does this say about two crucial things:
A) What's going to happen to slashdot [if|when] VA Software Corp. goes under? It'll be incredibly hard to maintain the servers/routers/etc. with volunteers only.
B) Is there anyone left from a commercial standpoint other than IBM and Redhat who are willing to stand behind Linux?
Another post suggests that you and /. will "survive"
I only ask that you fix the server's time stamp - unless you've moved your farm to Central Time. What's the command? rdate [-something] tic (or toc).usno.navy.mil in the cron...?
db
Cig:
ôô
welcome to vapressreleases.com!
Linux was great when funded by speculation and greed for huge returns, however, in any economic downturn, a big buzzword is ACCOUNTABILITY. I like linux, I think it's great. I run it at home. However, who in their right mind is going to base their business on a loose confederation of programmers with no accountability? Joe Blow is writing Driver X which you need to interface Z with component Y. Joe Blow is great while he is employeed, writing these drivers on spare company time. You are happy, downloading Joe's drivers and installing them, making your network run. One day, Joe's company goes under. Joe doesn't have a job and when he gets back on his feet, he is actually busy working all the time and doesn't really care about his drivers anymore. In the meantime, MyPOS has been upgraded to fix several nasty bugs, but it requires a new kernel, which unfortunately breaks Joe's last drivers. Now you are stuck: Hire a contract UNIX programmer who may not be able to do anything, Accept MyPOS may eat it once in a while, or buy new hardware with better drivers.
Scale this up and this is open source. It's fine if your home Pentium server crashes and takes out your MP3s, Pron, and Warez archives, but if your in a mission critical situation and your accounting file server crashes, it's a little different.
Accountability. If my MacOS X server dies and it was a code flaw, I sue Apple. If my Windows server dies based on a line of defective drives from IBM, I sue IBM. If my Linux server crashes because Steve's New Kernel Patch sucks, there's no recourse.
VA probably doesn't want to be held accountable any longer for an operating system that is more of a hobby horse than world class.
I can post this ontopic! As part of it's name change and change in corporate structure, is VA changing it's Privacy Policy? Or will Slashdot just remain in violation of it?.
Here's as good a place as any for an open letter to VA!
An Open Letter to VA Concerning Privacy on Slashdot
To whom it may concern,
It has come to our attention that Slashdot is building a detailed database of every visitor and user of Slashdot. This database includes, among other personal details, an address history which permanently records every IP address assosciated with every Slashdot user and comment for all time. We are concerned that this database is a signifigant Intellectual Property asset that may be abused in the event of a sale of Slashdot by VA Linux to a third party.
In addition, we feel that keeping a permanent and indelible record of every IP address used to post every Anonymous comment on Slashdot erases whatever hopes of anonymity that endangered or threatened users may have had. To name two examples, Chinese dissidents and corporate insiders can have no expectation of anonymously revealing civil rights violations and corporate abuse.
It is our hope that given these concerns, VA Linux or Slashdot may choose to provide an opt-out option to users, whereby users could choose not to be tracked and profiled if they so request. Some discussion has been made of a Slashdot subscription service; perhaps one revenue stream for Slashdot would be to sell Privacy Rights. For a low yearly fee, a user could purchase the right not to be tracked, profiled, and logged by IP address.
Whatever steps are taken, it is our hope that Slashdot will address the current privacy concerns in public to allay our fears and to promote open discussion.
Thanks again for creating one of the most popular sites on the Internet, and all the best.
-The Slashdot Privacy Watch Team.
like we give a shit what va does?
Va linux believes that if they remove the 'linux' part of their name people might start taking them seriously and begin think they are a 'real' company (nobody has ever made money from linux)
The Slashdot Effect: A new for
and now: ASCII man with a very important notice: ." ".
| /(o)-(o)\
/_)| / |
|_)| '- |
\_)\ '.___.' / |\/|_
| \ \_/ / _| '/
|_\ \.___./ \ ) /
\ \_/\__/\__ ==|
\ \ /\ /\ `\ |
\ \\// \ |
`\ /\ / |
; | \____/
| | |
/. guys: you better start sending out job applications pretty soon. Helpful hint: getting an MCSE is a good way to raise your marketability!
/. are OSDN sites? No wonder they are in the can! All of their revenue is inter-departmental. I guarantee when /. gets those new half-page popups everyone is talking about, they'll be ThinkGeek ads.
|.- - - -- - - -.| | | | STOCK QUOTE:| | LNUX = $1.29| | _ _ _ _ __ _ | ' - -- . . - - - ' | _|/ |
OUCH, down from more than $200! way to burn money, guys. next time, try selling something people can't get for free.
VA Linux (oops, VA Software) is going down NeXT style. First, cut the hardware (VA Linux servers). Secondly, sell some kind of sloppy software solution (SourceForge). Here's the NeXTSTEP: (hehe) try and come across as some sort of consulting company, which I see VA slowly drifting towards. Sadly, even the genius of Steve Jobs could not save a flailing company, and I don't think whoever is driving down at VA Whatever can either.
As a quick aside, notice how all the ads we see on
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
VA Started as a Linux hardware company.. failed.
Tried being a Linux support company (ala Linuxcare) and.. failed.
I am bit suspicious of companies that keep on changing their business strategy as if it was a pair of gloves at a first sign of economic trouble..
So, are they going to change the stock symbol? I remember where people were pissed because the used Linux(LNUX) as thier symbol. My how things change......
of sh$t.
Sign us up for all updates of Winbloze.
Very truly yours,
Bill Gates, Microcrap Craporation
Steve Ballmer, ditto
Yes boys and girls, it's time to play "Fsck the moderators" again, the game that's as simple as it is fun! You know the rules, now it's time to play!
If you moderate this post as troll, you will get a free sample of anthrax in the mail and die because all the Cipro has been hoarded by people who won't get anthrax. What a shame. You lose!
If you moderate this post as offtopic, you will be in a car accident. Don't worry, you'll survive, but you'll require a blood transfusion and since the blood wasn't tested properly, you'll contract AIDS and die of a nasty opportunistic infection. You lose!
If you moderate this post as redundant, you will get shot during hunting season by several hunters who will mistake you for a deer. Again, and again. Your bullet riddled body will be eaten by ants and other assorted critters. You lose!
If you moderate this post as funny, nothing really bad will happen to you. Today.
If you moderate this post UP, you'll get laid sometime this week by a very attractive person you've been lusting after. You win!
Thanks for playing!
Source Developer's Network?
Dot instead of SlashDot?
Meat instead of Freshmeat?
Live to Code, Code to Live!
You know, the interesting thing about this sig is that nursing is actually a learned (not instinctive) behavior. At least that's what they told us at the hospital when my first was born.
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Apart from coming immediately behind VA Software, what do they do?
-we sell linux-based rackmount servers, desktops, clusters and host websites for companies all over the opensourced spectrum.
VA Software:
-we sell software solutions for businesses and companies wanting a presence on the internet
Next thing you'll hear is that VA Software is moving all their corporate headquarters overseas to China. From which they'll once again change their corporate name to
VA-China
- which of'course will coincide with that "troll" talking about Linus Torvalds', Richard Stallman's, and Eric Raymond's names being anologies for immoral and verry porno-situated ideas...
I still can't get over the naming convention of VA moving to China. VA-China... VA-China... that doesn't sound right, but hey, it'll be the next funny link on www.engrish.com if VA ditches USA, right?
without prejudice
(score: -1, Troll), indeed!
No. And since Linux is the wave of the Future, we must conclude that we have, finally, reached the ultimate Communist utopia, when there is no more greedy commerce to stand between us and infinite happiness.
Call it VA/Doubleclick!
Read more about the future of VA/Doubleclick here: The Slashdot Privacy Watch.
An Open Letter to VA Linux Concerning Privacy on Slashdot
To whom it may concern,
It has come to our attention that Slashdot is building a detailed database of every visitor and user of Slashdot. This database includes, among other personal details, an address history which permanently records every IP address assosciated with every Slashdot user and comment for all time. We are concerned that this database is a signifigant Intellectual Property asset that may be abused in the event of a sale of Slashdot by VA Linux to a third party.
In addition, we feel that keeping a permanent and indelible record of every IP address used to post every Anonymous comment on Slashdot erases whatever hopes of anonymity that endangered or threatened users may have had. To name two examples, Chinese dissidents and corporate insiders can have no expectation of anonymously revealing civil rights violations and corporate abuse.
It is our hope that given these concerns, VA Linux or Slashdot may choose to provide an opt-out option to users, whereby users could choose not to be tracked and profiled if they so request. Some discussion has been made of a Slashdot subscription service; perhaps one revenue stream for Slashdot would be to sell Privacy Rights. For a low yearly fee, a user could purchase the right not to be tracked, profiled, and logged by IP address.
Whatever steps are taken, it is our hope that Slashdot will address the current privacy concerns in public to allay our fears and to promote open discussion.
Thanks again for creating one of the most popular sites on the Internet, and all the best.
-The Slashdot Privacy Watch Team.
I messed up:
Tweedie works for Redhat.
-- &&
... and call itself VA gina. it'd probably turn a profit :)
I have to wonder if that is what they are realling interested in doing? It is damn hard to make money with Linux services and support. Most of the people who are capable of using Linux in a production arena do not need or require support contracts and consulting services. Until there exists an enterprise level killer app for Linux the only people who are going to be interested in running linux are geeks anyway. Think of an exchange killer for the enterprise, that is when the conservative management types will become interested in Linux. That is also when companies will be able to survive offering up expertise and service contracts. Till then, good luck hitching your wagon to the Linux money train because it just does not exist. Quite possible it never will either.
Wanna get high?
Supposing VA Software decides to cut off Slashdot... What's the Slashdot operating budget and can it stand on its own (ad revenues being what they are and whatever other revenue there might be)?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yes, too many bad things happened lately in this world. In order to survive, VA BSD is a good name.
Many of us saw this coming, but that's beside the point. But personally, I'd rather see VA fold than become a commercial software house. What does VA's new focus mean to us? Well:
The future is looking bleak. Our biggest cheerleader has switched sides on us and we are going to be in serious trouble. I certainly hope the Linux community can survive this ordeal.
-CT
VA the state or with Virgin Airlines
Certified Black Helicopter Pilot *** Unwitting Dupe of One World Gov'ment
Dot instead of SlashDot?
no, it will be backslashDot (c)
The bill gates borg icon will get a stylish makeover and a heroic background to boot.
free passport account with your backslashdot registration!
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
My Karma is worth more than VA Linux err VA Software errr VA DOA.
Brush up your resumes guys. They have no money, and they dont have a clue.
It must really suck just waiting for them to pull the trigger.
Funny...Microsoft is making money hand over fist. Do you think its because they have a business model? A clue?
I'm still working on a clever footer.
VA Microsoft
if they do that, my next box will be a Penguin.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Yes, it's sad that a lot of the open source hackers don't work there anymore. But also, I think it may be for the better in reflecting changes that the company just isn't involved in Linux anymore but has expanded its horizons. This is for the better because in the ever-worsening economic conditions and with the complete belly-flop that a lot of the dotcoms and Linux stocks did, expanding their horizons might keep them around. If expanding their business beyond Linux keeps VA around, it's certainly for the better, and everyone should understand this. The name just reflects this. All I can say is best of luck to VA and I hope it works for them.
guk is gay
Saw this one coming.
Vee Eh Software or Vah Software??? Could we get their CEO to record an MP3 of the correct pronunciation?
crazy dynamite monkey
The open source business model is not:
What other possible software market is there besides that, you ask? Look up job offers for programmers. 95% of them have nothing to do with working on a commercial software product. Most programmers develop custom systems. These are seldom sold on store shelves and never exist outside of the environment they're created in.
It just so happens open source software and custom developed systems go hand-in-hand. This is the market the open source business model targets. This market alone is far larger than the commercial software market.
This is exactly what IBM's core business is involved with, and exactly why they're so behind open source.
The thing that really gets to me is what this says about free software businesses, and about our understanding of it. Most people agreed, making a business from free software was supposed to go like this:
Yet VA Whatever has gone down in flames in a major way while RedHat is mostly going strong. Zope Corporation is doing very well too. So was Cygnus before it was bought out. And etc. ad nauseam. I guess we were flat-out wrong.
Or maybe it was VA Whatever's fault. They had it all: big visibility, a whole shitload of cash, and many of the smartest people in the business. The only snag, I think, was that Direction didn't realize that they actually needed a plan, too.
I think they still don't realize that. Someone should tell them and tell them now. Will you do it, or should I? How about you, Taco? You know the guys. GO TO THEIR OFFICE AND CLUB THEM OVER THE HEAD REPEATEDLY WHILE SCREAMING "YOU FRIGGING MORONS".
Thank you.
va research in my bookmark file.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
Microsoft has what it has always had:
Marketing.
this makes sense in a disturbing way considering what they've done with sourceforge... i'm currently working to get an internal SF system running at my company and VA hasn't been too much help (btw, if anyone here has had luck with it please email me or reply here)... what they basically did when they closed SF was to go and completely rewrite a lot of the backend scripts and relicense them as commercial... now they charge insane amounts of money (at least insane in my opinion) for companies to have them come set up a system for them... since their pricing scheme really didn't click well with what we wanted to set up (they charge per log-in account, and we were going to need a few hundred of those, though not nearly as many concurrent users) we're installing it on our own (using the sf-genericinst package, available on sourceforge.net)... the so-called "SourceForge OpenEdition" is still vapor, and when it does get released it will be missing huge chunks of code... namely things like the database tie-ins, and such...
so basically this all makes sense with the name change... VA (s/Linux/Software/) is no longer the open-source-focused company it once was... it's sad to see things go this way...
09
Sure, the sky is falling. But wouldn't you rather be safe and get a copy of your Sourceforge projects, just in case? Be a shame if say, you woke up on Nov 12th and Sourceforge was gone wouldn't it.
According to their press release:
If the proposed name change is approved, the company intends to change its Nasdaq trading symbol. Shareholders will vote on the proposal at the company's annual meeting on Dec. 5.
Sig goes here
Is it a little ironic to anyone else that OSDN.com is running ASP?
Any spoon would be too big.
They expect to make money, hand over fist Immediatly. Most business need 3 -5 years to becoime profitable, a rule of thumb that got tossed by the wayside during the .com hysteria.
/. gang retains the rights to /.
VA will not suddenly start makinging Billions of dollars because of its name, clearly some exec is trying to blame there association with Linux as the reason for not making tons of cash. each move they have made is a panic move, sure to loose in the long run.
I see many opportunities for VA to increase revenue, but they seem to unable to see the forest from the trees.
On a personal note, I hope that if they do go under, the
Of course they could fire Jon. Clearly he makes more then he's worth.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The real reason is that VA is a conjugation of ALLER in French. Some Frenchie's thought it was contridictory to have a name VA Linux, because Linux isn't going anywhere.
In other news, Microsoft merged French versions of IE 6.0 smart tags and French versions Microsoft Word's Thesauraus together. In an effort to bring a better web experience, Microsoft deleted entries of terms that do not exist in their dictionaries as they may confuse people. They did it in English, why not French?
où voulez-vous aller aujourd'hui?
I'm with CmdrTaco on the "seen it coming" bit. I was sort of a fan of VA.. Yet there was a few things about them that bugged me.
Back before the dot-bomb bubble burst, the co. I worked for gave me a huge budget, and pretty much allowed me to order whatever I needed. These orders included a number of Sun and VA servers. Here's the thing:
Why did they HAVE SOUNDCARDS?
Why did they have hardcore 3d cards?
It was basically like paying a bloated few thousand dollars for a Linux Hack's gaming box. Plus a little extra for a rackmount case. I like linux, and I do gaming (on my windows box)... But for a rackmount machine, I don't want a sound card. I dont want a 3d card. I don't want all this novelty bullsh*t (X, games, etc) installed into my kernel by default.
They should have spent some more time accelerating the console administration kernel module. They should have wasted less money on lame 3d graphics chipsets and sound. And, maybe, they should have hired more people with better business sense than ones who basically marketed a rackmountable PC. Oh yeah... What in the heck possessed them to do celeron?
For the former employees: sorry about your misfortunes. For traders who lost exorbitant amounts of money: HAHAHAHAHA. Idiots. Serves you right.
Regards,
-l
I hear a deafening silence! It seems to be coming
from... wait... I can't quite... but I can make out
an e-mail address... it's esr@thyrsus.com... and
the source is... http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/ !!
We
told you so.
I arrived in Moscow, Idaho (Home of Idaho University one block from Best Western) and went to dinner at Best Western. About 85-100 people were in the Restaurant. I'm at a table for about 5 minutes when this "Group" comes in (20 people). They have Anti-War Picket Signs with them. It appears that two of these demonstrators are Professors.
They all sit at a large round table behind me and begin to talk very loudly about US atrocities in Afghanistan. One of the "Professors" stands up and gives a brief talk about how the "US is famous for atrocities" and Afghanistan will be no different. One of the students asked a question about Viet Nam POW's. The "Professor" makes a comment about how that was only US propaganda about poor treatment of POW's.
OK - I'm really mad now and I jump up and go over to their table. (In retrospect - Over the entrance to the Restaurant is a huge American Flag. On each table is an American Flag and a small hand painted sign "United We Stand"). I excuse myself and ask the Professor if I can ask him a question. He says yes. I said that he appears to be of age to have served in Viet Nam, and asked him if he had served. His answer was, "NO - I defended this Campus and told the truth to the students. I then asked if he remembered what he was doing on February 16, 1969. When he answered, "Of course not - that was too long ago," I responded, "Really, I remember what I was doing. That was the second day of my capture and I had been standing in a bamboo cage for 24 hours with water up to my chest". I then said "Sir, your comments about how POW's in Nam were treated are a lie and I personally say to you, you are a ******* liar, as you never were there. I was a POW and they did not treat our POWs humanly. The only other person I have ever heard make the statements like you have is Jane Fonda. Is she telling the truth and not me?" He stood up and after about 10 seconds said, "Jane is a great patriot and I cannot visualize her lying." With that, I reached over and grabbed the small American Flag and United We Stand sign and said, "I'm taking this back to my table where it can be appreciated".
No one said a word to me as I started to walk back. However after a few seconds, people started standing up and applauding all around the restaurant. Two men got up from a table across the room and walked over to me. The first identified himself as former US Marine Lieutenant Flynn and the other man was former Gunnery Sergeant Graboski. In a loud voice after introducing themselves, Lt. Flynn said they were former Marine Guards at a US Embassy. He then said, "We are over at this table to defend the US Flag from all foes, both foreign and domestic." They then sat down and asked their Waitress to bring their meals over to my table. A few more minutes went by with loud comments from the "Anti-War" table. All of a sudden, "Gunny" Sergeant Graboski stood up and in a loud voice said "All of you heard what the President said the other night. You are either with the United States or you are with the terrorists." He then
said, "Please stand and join me in God Bless America."
As he started singing, people all around the restaurant stood up and joined in. Several of the students at the "Anti-War" table also stood up half way through the song and joined in. Both Professors and the majority of the students remained seated and refused to sing. At the end there was a great ovation.
The Manager came up to my table. (He and his staff came out from the kitchen and sang). He thanked me for what I started and then went over to the Anti-War table and asked them to leave. "I will pay for what you have had so far but I cannot in good conscience serve you - get out now!!
One of the Professors then made a remark "Well, we are not going to pay one dime for how shabbily we have been treated." As they were leaving, one customer stood up and said, "Manager, here is $5 towards their bill, anyone else willing to chip in to get this scum out of here?" All over the restaurant, people stood up reaching for their wallet and saying, "I'll chip in" The Manager, in tears said, "My family is from Poland, I am now a citizen and am so proud of what I see tonight." He started crying and a couple of the waitresses
helped him into the kitchen.
The two Marines and I were there for about another 20 minutes and finished our meal. The Hostess came up and showed us more than $100 dollars that all the other tables had told their Waitresses to give towards our bill. I thanked her but said I could not take the money. Lt Flynn suggested donating it in the Restaurant's name to the New York Relief Fund, so I guess that's what will happen. I just can't believe how Americans are coming together now.
Just thought you would like to hear how the rest of the country is reacting to what happened!!!
Four score and seven posts ago our forefathers brought forth a great troll... ...and the post by the trolls, of the trolls and for the trolls, shall not perish from the earth.
On this day we say that we shall NOT be silenced! We have suffered the humiliation and degradation of bans, karmarapage, and we now say that the time has come for the line to be drawn! NO LONGER SHALL THE TROLLS LANGUISH IN THE SHADOWS OF THE EARTH, FOR TODAY IS OUR DAY, WHEN WE STAND TOGETHER TO BE COUNTED. I HAVE A DREAM, THAT ONE DAY MY LITTLE TROLL CAN POST NEXT TO HUMAN POST, WITHOUT FEARING REPRISALS AND PERSECUTION! ON THIS DAY WE STAND UP FOR OUR RIGHT'S!
I am no longer banned, hooray but where I live there is only 25 minutes of Troll Tuesday left. Best get cracking!
I'm a pepper. Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?
What really constitutes a name anyway? Take the communications giant Motorola for example, a name derived from the beginning automotive era. Victrola record players were popular for the home, so Motorola was made a record player for the car. It didn't work that well (naturally) but they kept the name.
IMO, what establishes your image as a business should stay the same. The name "Linux" itself can mean so much than just an operating system. Linux has allowed them to build a decent-sized business with little overhead. Why not just give Linux credit?
I almost thought it was an april fools posting because I thought that would be basically impossible.
People used to not be able to put linux in their names fast enough. How times have changed.
are you really that slow, this is a business spat between oil companies over rights, both human and right of way, and beyond getting Osama, we are in the wrong here I am afraid.
My first system was a VA, but that was before it was VA Linux. But you're right, it normally takes 2-3 years of slim margins (and usually losses) with any new firm.
.com effect, and is still true now.
/. will continue to do well, due to the loyal base of /.ers, but for VA to survive and prosper, they need to stop trying to shift with the wind.
When I did a small game design business I expected to lose money for three years and planned accordingly. To my surprise, I broke even the first year and made money from the second year on (a small profit at first, then a bigger one). Not bad for what started as a hobby.
Most businesses fail due to cash flow. That was true before the
The reason I bought into Red Hat at IPO was that the prospectus showed they understood what it takes to get ahead in business. I seem to recall not getting into VA Linux due to the high multiple for not very great rewards.
Even after selling some of my initial Red Hat shares, I still own 400, which is about the same as my original 100 presplits. And I made money on the trades, when people got too crazy and offered insane multiples, and then buying back in on the inevitable drops.
VA can survive. I would hope that
That doesn't mean that VA might not want to reposition a little bit, but only for sound business reasons.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
1. Sell things you can download for free
2. ???
3. Profit!!
For most of this year, the slowing world economy has caused companies to cut back on investments in technology. After the terrorist attacks on September 11th, much of our business for the quarter, which typically closes in the final weeks, simply did not materialize.
/., for example, will know sell user information. Some organizations will function differently than in the past. Senior managers will take sizeable cuts in pay under VA Linux/Software's performance-based compensation model. Still, we can't just cut our way to profitability. We have to grow our way to profitability.
As a result, VA Linux/Software will post a very disappointing loss for the quarter. Cuts in expenses, many of which were suggested by you, saved VA Linux/Software $29 and a couple of used condoms last quarter, but that was not enough to offset the shortfall in revenue. In order to establish profitable growth, VA Linux/Software will have to make even deeper thrusts into Hemos' and CmdrTaco's anuses.
We examined every scenario that would let us avoid having to lose good people who are not only communists but also smell funny. Unfortunately, VA Linux/Software is in the process of cutting xxx positions, a larger number than we anticipated in our memo to you earlier this year, but an unavoidable number, due to the outlook for open source going down the toilet. VA Linux/Software is granting severance packages that will reduce personal hardships in this economic climate, and we will make extra efforts to assist people with job placement assistance- we're planning on shipping our former employees to communist China, where their ideology will be appreciated. This cut is the most difficult and painful one this company has ever had to make, except for that time when we circumcised Timothy with a rusty hatchet. Owch!
VA Linux/Software has been a highly rated e-communism company for about 7 years. Economic cycles come and go. This downturn will pass in time. And when it does, VA Linux/Software will emerge from it much stronger than competitors who lack our differentiated software technology, base of customers, and our ability to invest heavily in goatse. VA Linux/Software will regain momentum, but only if we tighten our sphincters and sharpen our penises.
The immediate challenge for all of us is to restore growth, leading to profitable growth. Every organization within VA Linux/Software is being asked to do more with less.
I have been in involved in the fields of business and finance for many years. I have seen the fortunes of countless companies rise and fall. I believe I can lead our company out of tough times and into better days. I have never seen a company with as much potential for sustained, long-term industry leadership as VA Linux/Software has today. VA Linux/Software has a terrific team of employees known for their stamina, adaptability, and willingness to do ANYTHING for $5. We have developed unsurpassed software technology, market leadership in the retail e-commerce business, and superlative customer service. In the weeks ahead, we will release news of much anticipated new alliances (e.g., an alliance with North Korea) and software that reinvents the concept of e-communism and enables customers to do more than ever before, at lower costs. Our long-term mission is to extend VA Linux/Software's leadership of the industry. And with your help we will.
Thank you.
Notable quote: "Four years and they haven't fired me?" said Rob "Cmdr Taco" Malda, director of operations, Slashdot. "Now that's a record."
Careful you don't jinx yourself, Rob.
Internet Wire is a PR service and the article is from VA Linux Systems. Notably lacking is any mention of VA dropping the 'Linux Systems' part.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What is VA other than Sourceforge and Slashdot?
SFRG?
SDOT?
SLSH?
If Chevrolet decided to stop making cars would they still be in business? If McDonalds decided "No More Hamburgers" would they still be in business?
/. is going to be left paying the tab for a company that never really had a business plan other than: "We are a hardware company that in the course of 6 months will stop selling hardware..."
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
This could be the beginning of the end for /. They may just decide it isn't worth it and divest all non core businessess, the way corel divested their linux business and spun off rebel.com to die an ignoble death. (Though I heard somebody is picking up a tiny piece of the Rebel.com corpse)
/. better be prepared to go it alone in a few months time if the worst comes to pass. That would indeed be a sad day, but a lot of other once famous online portals have folded their tent and gone 404...
But methinks
(Hoping I am dead wrong on this)
My rights don't need management.
Taco, what if VA goes under (hope not), and what if Microsoft makes a bid on /.? Would you sell?
I - for one, and am not alone, I'm sure - take exception to your sig. I was making personal computers "talk" to each other when you were learning to talk and say "mama" and whatever. Did you ever hear of CP/M? Ward Christenson and XModem? Montezuma Micro? Didn't think so. Maybe you've heard of SCO Xenix...Never mind Atari DOS, C64 Sprites, TRS-DOS & granules, acoustic couplers @ 110 and 300 baud - you were still in diapers, but I was making it work - In fact I had implemented Novell networks well before you broke your arm at age 8.
I personally don't eat at McDonald's. The cheese, for one thing, is not *real*. But I don't blast people for their chosen speciality, just because I don't approve of the product.
One thing that is *real* is the dominance of Microsoft, and I need to make a living. I did not pay for my MCSE - I was "lucky" enough to have a greedy employer whose network I had maintained as a consultant for 12+ years prior who paid for the the courses, Sylvan tests, etc. - so they could hang the "prestigious" MCSP shingle and charge 4x what they paid me for my services.
I can't say I would have saved and done it myself; my reputation for making PCs work spoke for itself. This can be chalked up to experience. My MCSE expires in November, I hear. Big deal - I won't renew it. The coursework was the equivalent of Cliff's notes for the busy professional tech. Without almost twenty years of "on the job" training, I would have been an idiot with no business hanging a shingle. However, every other tech who I studied with was a *real* tech, and would not fit into your generalization criteria.
Point is, you should be modded as a troll on the basis of your sig. When I find the other malicious poster with a similar sig, I'll tell them the same thing.
db
Cig:
ôô
Of course, once I saw the stock price shoot up, I was one of ten million people trying to reach DB Alex. Brown, yelling "SELL! SELL!" (When I finally did reach a broker, she said, "Are you sure you want to sell the stock? It's going down." Well, duh.) The proceeds brought us several months closer to buying a house.
Moral: I am just as incompetent as everyone else at predicting a stock's long-term value. I'm glad I learned that the easy way....
I have to say that you hit the hammer right on the nail by the CAD statement.
/implementation people).
./ in due time I hope.
One thing I have seen during the years, and foresee will be the case for the foreseeable future as well, is that Custom Application Development will always be required. In the future even more so, when the companies realize that all of a sudden application servers and their hosted business logic and services have become the heart of the companies.
Since you all remember the "buzzwords of the year" a while back "Core business" and "outsourcing" of non-core activities, it's easy to envision the current state. Today many companies have become very streamlined and as a result they work almost exclusively with their core business. Now there is not much more to put externally and soon each business wig will wake up and realize that they DO NEED application developers (architects and design
Why?
Because the companies' business processes have become more tightly coupled with computer systems than ever before. This trend is shifting fast. The companies I have worked with (mostly larger like the F100s) are vacuuming the market for technical people. People who can model and implement the business into software and utilize the latest features / 'buzzwords' (Web Services, XML, SOAP etc..).
Having used a fair amount of OSS in later projects, I have come to see the fine talents that many OSS projects apparently possess (like the fine folks in the Apache projects) and as a result, you people should have a golden future!
Doing CAD is pretty much the same as working on OSS (albeit in a different work form... more 'companyish').
Profitizing on OSS have never tasted good in my mouth and I have never believed in it. OSS as a driving force for standards, compromizes between rivaling proprietary technologies, an alternative for those not having millions of $$$ to spend on software is something I do believe in.
There is absolutely nothing stopping OSS developers from having "regular" jobs at "regular companies". In fact, I do believe many (most?) OSS developers already do work in these kind of companies.
If VA, RedHat, Caldera, SuSe or what-not goes under is of minor or no importance to OSS. Hammering the dooms day drums whenever a small OSS exploiting company goes under is something which will cease on
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
I had two friends that interviewed with them that were shocked when they found-out they would be flying to SFO. Thyey had thought (we were in Durham at Duke), they'd drive a few hours to an interview in Virginia. I just thought that was funny.
Does anyone know what the "v" and the "a" part of "VA Research" stood for?
As someone else pointed out the are running mod_perl
Apache:ASP is a module for mod_perl
to allow you to use the ASP "paradigm"
with much more wholesome software.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Probably to FAGS or HOMO or maybe SHIT.
Is this it?
sulli
RTFJ.
D'oh! Jumped the gun and cropped thte title there
Were that I say, pancakes?
OPEN SOURCE PROGRAMMERS STINK
2 51 &mode=thread
Slashot admits the truth here:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/25/219
As we already know open source programmers stink, both at their jobs, and in general. Take RMS for instance. He can't get a job as a real programmer so he starts the FSF. He also hasn't taken a bath or shower in over 20 years making him stink in general. Living in a dark cave doesn't help either. I don't want to know what is crawling around in his hair.
I'm sure there are people at your office who are just like RMS if they can hold their jobs. You know they are close because you can smell them. You are spending hours of overtime fixing their code.
For anyone reading this post none of this is a suprise. However, slashdot is a bastion of open source programmers. That is why the code is so bad, and its the only website that you can smell over the internet because it reaks!!!!
What was suprising to me (and to you I'm sure) was that slashdot admitted in the above linked article that open source programmers stink.
I commend slashdot for admitting the brutal yet honest truth.
Digital Divide? The only divide Linux can bridge is the crack of my ass, when I use it to wipe my ass clean.
Nice troll. DUH - if you post to a PUBLIC site on the INTERNET expect that your ip will be logged...hell, they'd have to turn off Apache logs to erase the record. If you have problems with this, post from an Internet Cafe or something. Or just keep it to yourself. Jeezus.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
How did CmdrTaco get his name?
The story goes something like this. Rob Malda always liked tacos. He would eat them every day. Like most Mexican food, it gave Rob lots of farts and shit coming out of his ass. The farts stank everything up so much so that Hemos (the name Hemos as we know came from the two words he and homos) and the rest complained constantly. The only relief was when RMS would come over to suck their dicks since RMS stank worse than Rob since he hasn't taken a bath or shower in over 20 years.
The other problem was the piles of shit coming out of Rob's ass. The toilet was always clogged meaning that JonKatz would have to piss and shit outside. Needless to say the neighbors did not appricate this leading to JonKatz's arrest many times. (It's too bad that he wasn't kept in jail.) This problem was eventually solved by letting JonKatz shit out stories on slashdot. What??? You thought that JonKatz's stories came from a part of his body other than his ass????
It was later discovered that Rob was a toilet slave. He enjoyed eating other people's shit. Instead the rest of them force fed him his own shit. Thus, he commanded the taco for its entire life cycle earning the name Commander Taco. This was later shortened to CmdrTaco.
Digital Divide? The only divide Linux can bridge is the crack of my ass, when I use it to wipe my ass clean.
Microsoft is dropping 'Micro' from their name...
Perhaps VA has followed in many of the former "dot bomb" naming conventions where one thinks up a good list of names, then determines which are available. As most are probably taken, a domain name, and thus company name, are easily chosen.
So, they found vasoftware.com" was available and went for it. Looks like the record was updated today, too.
So what else might they switch to in the future? Domain squatters are already on the hunt for their next possible name...
The hostname www.vasoftware.com resolves yet there isn't a press release or anything to that effect on the VA website.
I always find it interesting when News sites get press releases like this before the Company itself updates their own website. It's quite telling about who is important, Wall Street (Journal?!) or clients/customers/fans of the Company itself.
Makes me wonder: Are they in business to hype the stock price or are they in business to make good products?
We gave the country away to John Ashcroft, might as well give the TLD away to NeuLevel.
Edith Keeler Must Die
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
Son,
I know it's hard to understand the humor of the 'net sometimes [especially since you've apparently been online for about 3 weeks now]. However, it is no excuse for being trolled so badly and looking so fucking stupid for responding. I sincerely hope that you understand the subject line of this message - again, since you're apparently new to the 'net, you may not. I will leave its meaning for you to figure out [hint: you could start reading usenet or just stop being a tard.] Anyway, son, I'm done talking to you. I don't ever want to see you get trolled that badly again, do you understand? Good! Now go to your room an shut the fuck up!
rob malta-
."
even amongst the imported tulips of fake Holland, did you expect to run a "news site" for four years and not succomb to greater economic pressures? Most people mean good will, and quietly say, "I wish he knew more about the things around him. .
If VA goes out of business, does this meant that slashdot will actually deserve that .org in their domain name (nonprofit status).
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Off of msn.com, linux's arch enemy. Sheesh, what do you expect...
What I have failed to grasp is why so many people, junk magazines et.al. so badly want to see Linux on everyone's desktops and in each company's server farm.
I can make some vague guesses, but would like them confirmed if possible:
Personally, I like different OS' depending on what I do. For graphics, I prefer Mac or MS Windows. For business apps, I use MS Office (as do all my clients), for development I use *nix and MS Windows, mostly MS Windows since I consider the latter to currently be the best client OS for my needs. For deployment Unix is the natural choice (including Linux and S/390 Open Unix).Am I the only one seeing merits of operating systems other than Linux?
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
Anyone remember when they were VA Research and changed their name to VA Linux. Ah, how life comes full circle. And for the time being their stock symbol is still LNUX.
Need I say more?
Here's the link that doesn't require a login but it's only about VA requesting that the shareholders allow them to change the company name. Here
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
hey, there is a backslashdot.com
At least that's what I thought those end of financial quarter results were saying...
BlackNova Traders
Maybe if Microsoft bought SlashDot, they would kick out all you Linux bastards and make one of the standards for visiting the site that you must take a shower more than once a year! FUCKING LINUX ASSHOLE FUCKERS! BURN IN HELL FUCKERS!
I'm sure IBM wouldn't mind hosting it as Linux is very much their strategy these days, and the cost is peanuts to them.
...that all anti-VA posts, such as "Will they change their stock symbol" or "Who cares" have all been modded down as redundant?
:)
...that there are very few "Good idea, VA!" posts?
...that the very few "good idea"s that there are are modded up?
...that they're all biased?
...that CmdrTaco is the only one who seems to care and post articles about the OSDN?
...that adding "Now mod me down for being a troll" at the end gets about "+5, Funny" or "+3, Interesting"?
With saying that....
Mod me down for being a troll, just wanted to put these out...
--joshua
don't believe me? try this:
$ telnet jobs.osdn.com 80
Trying 216.138.211.59...
Connected to H59.C211.tor.velocet.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD /
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 01:41:02 GMT
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 42843
Content-Type: text/html
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDQGQGQNDG=DMGODIHDGCHELGJHPFPPHHGD; path=/
Cache-control: private
Connection closed by foreign host.
$
Actually, Motorola didn't take the name from a record player, they took it from the Victrola radio. Motorola (Motor Victrola) marketed the first successful car radio. Incidentally, the unit was designed by the same man (Bill Lear) who invented the eight-track player, the Learjet, and a long list of other devices.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
Definitely:
FCKD
My point that you missed is the phrase: I personally don't eat at McDonald's. The cheese, for one thing, is not *real*. But I don't blast people for their chosen specialty, just because I don't approve of the product. Shameless persecution of people who are proclaimed "inferior" is not-so-indirectly what we are at war about.
The *sig* sucks, and so does profession-bashing (unless you're talking about lawyers...;-)
db
Cig:
ôô
Say goodbye to UNIX support. It's expensive to develop for UNIX compared to Windows. VB programmers are a dime a dozen and can be hired for $30k a year, so why would a software company want to hire anyone else? The former "LNUX" will soon be in bed with Microsoft before we know it.
This is stupid stuff. Do you really know what the cost of using Windoze junk is? I work at a company that M$ is deep into. The productivity lost is astounding. We have spent fortunes on closed source junk that can never cross comunicate, never works that well and sits on a crippled OS. VB apps that get broken with every change in M$ Office, IE and service pack are the least of our problems. At least we can throw co-ops at maintaining that junk. A larger problem comes from custom applications that never talk to each other, much less the M$ Office the company delcared "standard". Consultants and new hires are astounded at the Byzantine complexity of the tools we are expected to use to get our jobs done. In the end, you find your workers hanging around the printers for jobs that may or may not come through. VA can die, but that won't make closed source junk any better. The alternatives to free software are less and less atractive.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
A company who's sole existence is to pay expensive people to write good code given away for free will not succeed. duh. They need a revenue model.
They completely failed to make and deliver useful hardware better than Dell, Compaq, HP, IBM and the likes. That leaves them with the option to writing proprietary software, or packing their bags and running off to a tropical island with the shareholders money.
Companies who pay good people to write open source code most often already have a functioning business model that depends on something else that having this code out there will promote (star office promotes people to use less windows machines, linux and apache development helps keep your money going to engineers that actually add value to the company and save other costs rather than into microsoft sales rep bonuses).
Does this mean we'll all have to go back to getting our "geek" news via Usenet??
Hey, there's an idea for SlashCode -- hang a Usenet gateway and an NNTP server off of Slashdot. If they make it advertisement free (or relegate all advertisements to ONE newsgroup!), they could make it a pay service (a la Clarinet [what ever happened to them?]). As long as their subscription rate is low, many hackers might sign up.
Possibilities?
Whatever, we'll never change our stripes, or the name of this outfit (couldn't very well just call IT ville software), even after our IPOs.
We will however, be giving away this distinctive set of URLs, to celebrate the death of FraUDuleNT ?pr? fud.
Get it? VACANT. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Happy fucking troll tuesday.
You sucking fuck.
Stefan ,Stefan .. przestan pierdzielic jak pomylony i zaimij sie zonka.
I voted for I.O.U. to replace Linux .
If you thought all along that the Open Source movement needed:
- big name corporate sponsors
- its very own news relay site
- a big centralized FTP/WEB hosting site
- software companies to pay its developers
..then you were missing the point all along.
Granted, all of these things have been very nice, but the fact is the VA leadership proved themselves incapable of reliably providing us with such services because they lacked entrepreneurial direction. (or they were just dot-com'ers looking to make a quick buck and high-tail.. who knows) Had they focused solely on top quality hardware at reasonable prices, they could have stayed in business for years, even if only marginally profitable until a truly brilliant idea came along. But apparently they weren't satisfied with this. Instead they just threw in the towel and blew out all their VC on worthless crap. Thanks but no thanks.
In light of the inevitable future and to prevent any major disturbances to Open Source developers worldwide, I suggest that we quickly, calmly, and intelligently find replacements for the services that SourceForge provided us before it disappears. Until the US internet infrastructure becomes more robust wrt bandwidth and switches over to IPv6, I suggest something of a large-and-permanent-node-only P2P network to share the load of a SF-style (but more lightweight) web interface for project hosting and management. Such a network would, as most of our major FTP sites, be hosted primarily in academia or by generous ISP's or corporate entities. From a security and reliability standpoint, I think this might not be such a bad idea anyhow. Any comments or takers?
i do believe you probably offended a few good codeslingerz just now...
lame.
./vanguard
"I think, therefore I get paid."
POOR
MY POINT IS: Don't defile professions - yours could turn to *shit* at any time. Some poor, non-technical sap with the McDonalds cert (didn't check - might not exist) you asserted in your sig will be hurt by the sig itself.
I can't feel insulted - my wife is the only one to effectively do that. And, I can't see why you'd make an analogy for the benefit "computer illiterate people" on slashdot. Try that on AOL. A much more gullible audience.
Anyway, keep your sig. I'm over it. It's just slashdot, after all. It could be worse - I could catch anthrax. Thank God the small town/county in which I live and work is M$-centric and appreciative of a tech who puts 3-in-one oil on their Colorado QIC40 120mb tape drive's stepping motor shaft to give it another year of life, not to mention the only spores coming in will be from SS checks mailed from DC or wherever.
db
Cig:
ôô
It's sad that a company tries to solve their problems blaming their name. Maybe we should all change our names to William Gates Jr and become billionaires ? =)
OSDN and closedSourceForge are the future!
Who cares?
Now mod me down for being a troll.
sulli
RTFJ.
Folks, there have been many posts about the end of this or that in Linux.
..." They are at the end of their cash, maybe a quarter+ left for them. Dont go that route. Park the egos. The company goes under if you cannot.
First off, VA changing focus again for the umpteenth time is not an indictment of Linux. It is an indictment of an ill-concieved/executed business model. Would anyone say that web-commerce is a flop even though the dot-bomb went off?
Second off, VA (in the hardware area) was well out of its league. Playing with the big boys means you get the crap beat out of you on occasion. I had the chance to compete against VA a number of times, and most of the time we won, in part due to VA not knowing how the hardware was really going to be used.
Third off, in software, who the F*** is VA? What do they have? Why should I risk placing my data on Sourceforge, as VA is in trouble, and the ownership of that data would be in question during bankruptcy proceedings? The ASP model as promolguated by several types over the last several years is so full of horse puckey as a business model, it deserves a rapid anonymous burial. Several friends went to CA to seek their fortune building up ASPs, only to have dot-bomb wipe out any value/confidence in their product, and leave them with no ability to make money.
So where the hell does that leave VA?
1) need a real business plan fast. For this you have to hire grown ups. Sorry folks, but the vast majority of 18-35 year old kids have not brought a sustainable business to market, and grown it year after year. Those that have, have grey hair (voice of experience).
2) find a buyer fast. There is cachet in the brand name. Sell yourself to IBM. Or Compaq/HP. Let them figure out the business portion for you.
3) Ch 7/11. Well, it would be horrible to see this route, but it could come to this if debt is in the picture.
The market is tough. It is brutal. It is unforgiving. Some may protest the capitalistic nature of this analysis saying it ain't fair.
Welcome to the real world. Is the Antelope brought down by the lion going to argue fairness? Will the lion care?
Reality check: Life is cruel. It is not easy. You must struggle to survive. Fairness is an illusory concept developed by humans. Great in discourse so we dont kill each other, but not relevant for most capitalist societies.
VA will not survive if it does not learn how to compete. Pure and simple. Doesnt mean a thing for Linux. If you hire experience, you often get good results. If you apply patronage, you get a VA. Or an SGI.
If anyone asked me what to do with VA, I would think real hard about a niche that they could make money in. Slashdot is a name, a brand. It has value. Think about deploying Slashdot internally at companies as a searchable weblog community builder. It is an enabler of free flow of information which is needed at many companies.
Sure, some geek can download Slashcode and set it up. As much as you may believe in open source providing freedom, ask yourself if you are giving away all of the value that you can provide, for free. If this is true then you need to think carefully as to how to make money off of it.
No folks, GPL is not the be-all-end-all. You have to build value and brand around it to make it work, as people will buy value, and will buy brands. GPL is not an IP destroyer. It just doesn't fit well as the central theme of the business plan. Sure you can do GPL, but you damned well better have a way to pay your programmers in the end. Some of them have families, and need to eat.
So in the end, you have to build value. A value proposition. Something customers actually want. The last thing (actually one of the dumbest things) that a company wants to do is build a product, toss it over the wall, and hope that someone will buy it. This is the better mousetrap concept, and folks, it doesnt work.
If it did, then explain why all those Sun servers are out there, when they suck in comparison to other stuff. Has nothing to do with system quality. Has a great deal to do with branding, value proposition, etc.
VA needs to ask very carefully: "What is it that our customers want? What market niche do we wish to play in? What expertise do we have that will enable us to bring a product to market that customers will buy, and will enable us to survive and possibly even grow?"
I havent heard anyone there try to answer this question. VA needs a grey hair in there now, steering the company. Larry, sorry, but you need to step aside. Find someone with a clue, who knows how to turn companies around, and who wants a challenge.
Dont go the SGI route of "strategy X du jour will save us... no it didnt? Ok, layoffs and move to strategy Y to save us.... no? oh
I'm so glad he'll "still carry his own bags"!
Dell could push out intel boxes cheaper than VA ever could. At the end of it all, it really boild down to this.
...Originally called VA Research anyways?
Heh...any guesses on the severity rating this'll get on FuckedCompany?
C-X C-S
Har, Har and double Har.
but, but --
it's important to remember that *BSD is dying!!
muwahahahahaha!! fuck you, *bsd dying troll!
TOP TEN SIGNS YOUR NETWORK APPLIANCE IS BASED ON LINUX
10) Console sometimes says "Filesystems have gone too long without fsck".
9) Randomly connects to slashdot and posts insipid comments under
anonymous-coward@yourdomain.com.
8) Supposed to be a web cache, but somehow turned into warez cache.
7) Whitepaper is 10,000 pages long, 1 page of info and 9,999 pages of
source code.
6) Manual only comes in two languages, Finnish and elisp.
5) Case made out of space age synthetic alloy of duct tape and dental
floss.
4) Not really sure what it does, but weenie administrator said purchasing
it would be good for "the community".
3) You get a mail from some dork named CmdrTaco wanting you to do an
interview about it.
2) You attach a line printer and it starts alternating between printing
banners of "FREE KEVIN" and something called DeCSS.
1) All your other network appliances complain about it getting drunk
and blasting the free software song at 3am.
GPL considered harmful.... Yes, the explicit purpose of the GPL is to hurt programmers' livelihoods. See Richard Stallman's essay, "The GNU Manifesto," for a frank statement that this is the case. Mr. Stallman does not care whether the programmers harmed by the GPL are working for Microsoft or trying to eke out an honest living despite Microsoft; he wishes to put all of them out of business. Trouble is, it's much easier to hurt the little guy than it is to hurt Microsoft, so guess who suffers?
It is, in fact, ironic just how much the FSF's strategies resemble those of Microsoft.
Microsoft seeks to put other companies such as Netscape out of business by giving away free equivalents of every product they make. The Free Software Foundation seeks to put other companies out of business by giving away free equivalents of every products they make.
Bill Gates has all the money he wants but is motivated by a lust for power and control. Richard Stallman has all of the money he wants but is motivated by a lust for power and control.
Microsoft has a vast hoard of software whose development and licensing it controls. The FSF has an even larger hoard of software whose development and licensing it controls.
Meet the new boss -- same as the old boss.
We're involved in a WAR with extremist muslims
Gee, I thought it was a war against terrorism.
In a relativistic sense, this could be bad for Slashdot - the website. However, if CmdrTaco and the others who run this site really love doing it, I can't imagine them not figuring out another way to support this, or some other site with a similar purpose. You have to remember that it is the people who made this site in the first place, and the thousands of people who come here every day, that make this site what it is.
I don't mean to sound "peppy" or anything, but let's be realistic, rather than freaking out because a company ruled by suits (which all companies are) makes a decision that sheds a negative light upon the marketability of Slashdot, or of Linux. Yeah, the suits probably never understood Linux - they don't teach OS design and the fundamentals of software engineering at schools of management (unless it is a really odd school). And frankly, if their hearts aren't in it (yeah, sappy again), then why the hell should we want their help, and why should we bitch when they jump ship? I come to Slashdot every day, and post very rarely. I would be very sad to see it go, but if this site dies because VA {ARGV0} no longer supports it, it isn't entirely the fault of VA - this site existed well before VA was a glint in the eye of someone, and will exist long after if we keep our heads. And for God's sake, don't worry about how this will affect Linux's development or acceptance. Clued individuals who need the power of Linux already use Linux, and they aren't going to suddenly use Windows (which they can't work with for whatever reason) because Linux suddenly doesn't have much (or any) presence on Wall Street.
Know ye not that ye are Gods???
Clarinet still exist, afaik: IIRC Actrix still gets a feed from them.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
I just poured hot grits down my pants. ahhhh
I made some noise, when I saw jobs.osdn.com running Windows and IIS, but ....... nobody wanted to hear bad things about them.
# HEAD jobs.osdn.com
200 OK
...
..
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
..
..
There are good programmers, bad programmers and mediocre programmers. Why some folks on /. think a one programmer is better than another just because of the language they work in is just baffling.
Most programmers I know work in more that one language anyhow.
Dime-a-dozen programmers are just that. It's nothing to do with whether they write VB, C++, Perl or whatever.
Probably more like backslashStartDotBat
That makes no sense. If UNIX support were as expensive as you say, it would be a highly attractive business proposition for a support provider. The reality is that UNIX/Linux support costs about as much as Windows support, but that companies need a lot less of it. Our support costs for UNIX systems are a tiny fraction of those for Windows, for example.
VA has no reason to support Slashdot, Sourceforge, Themes.org, and other very expensive sites that produce zero revenue.
I don't see why themes.org or Slashdot should be particularly expensive sites, at least in principle.
The business community will believe "Linux is dead" and it will be an uphill struggle to regain their confidence.
Who cares? If company A wants to pay several times as much for their software, maintenance, and support because it runs MS Windows than company B that runs Linux, let company A face the financial consequences. It's a free market, and stupidity has its costs.
Not a Linux company and not a company that has a vested interest in promoting open source. Back in the day, VA's success rested on the success of the Open Source movement. Not any longer - as a software company, they are going to be producing commercial wares that compete with open source solutions.
Who cares? VA Linux was not needed for the growth of open source software, and if they go away, life will go on. The nice thing about open source software is that contributions are, and remain, public and available no matter what happens to the companies involved.
We better get used to the fact that most open source software will have been created and supported by failed companies. That's not because open source strategies make companies fail, but because closed source software doesn't survive the failure of its creators.
So, let's stop belly-aching and get on with life. If VA Software keeps contributing to open source, great. If not, it doesn't matter.
...and my personal data will be thrown into the wind...
/.?
What personal data? The number and frequency of your posts on
I suppose that you guys got lots of VA stock when you sold out to VA. Damn. I hope you guys cashed out a long time ago, or asked for CASH. Otherwise, you guys have built this huge website, and you'll be back to nothing as soon as VA goes under.
or are we basketball jocks?
VA Whatever won't be around much longer regardless of name changes. The sad thing is, at this time, /. persists when a much higher quality site gets the shaft. Typical of the poor decisions and lack of vision that have made VA what it is.
AC's cheerfully ignored
How about
VA Research
...
No one is talking about Sourceforge, has everyone already moved away from Sourceforge? The clock is ticking, the whole schbang is not going to live for much longer, those who depend on Sourceforge are in for a rude awakening.
Sounds like a good time to make sure all the offsite backups are in good order to me.
Anything is possible given time and money.
Now they all work for Red Hat, RHAT hired all of the good VA Linux Open Source programmers a couple weeks ago.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I too am dropping "Linux" from the end of my name. I had it legally added in the late 90's when it was all so hip, fresh, and cool. But now in the 21st century it has just become passe. Just like heroin.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
My MCSE hasn't done me much good since I left the employer who funded it, even to the point of the largest local employer's IT dept called *me* overqualified. I won't/can't relocate, and don't really think I can work for anyone else but myself - so I'm *not* raking in the $$$, I just get by.
The course you linked to seems to be quite comprehensive, but it should be for $7000 and 250 hours. I guess you could check for requirements on a Canadian equivalent of monster.com or whatever, and then supplement your credentials accordingly. I'm really not that familiar with the job market in the US, let alone up there.
OTOH, I *could* have attained the M$ cert by studying from the Transcender tests and paying $100 each to take the 6 (?) M$/Sylvan tests, provided I had the hardware and OS (NT4 in my case) to hook up to break and fix. If you do, that's the cheapest way to go, and get the damned piece of paper the PHBs want to see.
Good luck...
db
Cig:
ôô
Wrong URL. The link to the register article is: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/22559.html. Or you could just read the article at Kuro5hin:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/31/15654/175
According to Kuro5hin's story, it was Roblimo who informed them they were getting the boot too. Inneresting.
What affect will the passing of Slashdot have on the trolls?
Before the invention of the Internet, trolls lived happily under bridges eating the occasional passerby or wantering billy goat. They were few and far between, and easily avoided.
The Internet gave trolls a whole new feeding ground, and like any species exposed to an open niche, the trolls were fruitful and multiplied. Slashdot, in particular, has been a fertile breeding ground for those of trollish nature.
So cry not for SourceForge -- instead, pity the poor, homeless troll who will be abandoned when VA pulls the plug on Slashdot.
Something from the The Register
No replies made to AC posts. Please log in.
One thing that these companies did not realize just a few years ago is that the supply of venture capital is limited. They can not keep on losing money for as long as they want. One thing they should know is that a large change in direction in this stage of a company's life doesn't reassure investors, it scares them.
VA looked like a company that was devoted to a buzz-word, "open-source", rather than to a goal or a business plan. They went out and made expensive acquisitions that had nothing at all to do with their core business. They didn't need to support a pile of open-source developers, and they had no use at all for Sourceforge, or Slashdot or the rest of Andover. Those seemed to be vanity moves with little effort to focus their business or make money.
Their more recent moves look like the last, desperate actions of a dying company. Eliminating their core business basically meant giving up any hope of becoming profitable, in favour of slowly wasting away. Now they want to put big advertisements all over Slashdot because it is losing too much money. Watch most of those ads be for ThinkGeek or OSDN and wonder why.
Way back when, VA appeared to be a sound company, with a well-executed business plan. We all had big hopes that they would be the ones to break through and show that you could make a profit with Linux. Then they went on a completely pointless shopping spree and forget about what they did best. Now, it seems very fitting that their name is VA, which is French for "go", because they are quickly going away.
Being Liberal should be a Crime!
Do not trust a business a community website like slashdot.