IBM Kernel Hackers Respond

Dave Hansen, the IBM programmer who organized this interview (questions were posted on May 28), says, "Perhaps I didn't make this clear enough during the call for questions, but myself and my group are kernel programmers. But, we were able to dredge up some responses for answers that we couldn't do ourselves. We haven't been able to get an answer to the ViaVoice question yet, but if there is real interest, I'll make sure that we do get some kind of answer back to Slashdot. IBM Kernel Hackers:

A note: we answered these questions individually, but in the interests of Slashdot's disk space, we decided to coalesce the answers into a single, unified one. You might say we "became one voice". (the IBMers in the audience will get that one) These were edited by management, but they mostly corrected our spelling mistakes and cleaned up our dirty language :)

Remember, if you're interested in Linux on large systems or if you have more questions, be sure to check out the LSE site, find us on LKML, or look for us at OLS (we're giving lots of talks).

1) Multi-CPU Scalability
by morbid

Now that Linux has been ported to run on high-end machines under virtualization, when will we see a kernel tuned for (e.g.) scalability to 64-128 processors natively?

IBM Kernel Hackers:

Assuming you're talking about single systems running one instance of Linux, we are focusing on 8 way scalability this year, 16-32 scalability next year. After that, we'll do whatever the hardware people can produce ... there aren't many 64-128 processor systems around.

The open source community is tackling the complexities in getting multi-cpu systems to scale well, and with that understanding also comes a realization that sometimes entire subsystems are bottlenecks. Major rewrites of some of these are underway in 2.5 (not just by IBM people mind you). The scheduler is being wrestled to the ground, the I/O subsystem is being dissected, and virtual memory implementations are creating rhetoric worthy of the Cold War. All of these efforts have had contributions from IBM people in Beaverton and other parts of the Linux Technology Center.

2) OS Blending
by 2names

As Linux developers inside IBM, do you get to see the AIX source code? If you do, are you allowed to "steal" some ideas from AIX and implement them in Linux? If not, why not, and what's the IBM official line?

IBM Kernel Hackers:

First of all, before any of us were allowed to contribute to Linux, we were required to take an "Open Source Developers" class. This class gives us the guidelines we need to participate effectively in the open source community - both IBM guidelines and lessons learned about open source from others in IBM.

We are definitely not allowed to cut and paste proprietary code into any open source projects (or vice versa!). There is an IBM committee who can and do approve the release of IBM proprietary or patented technology, like RCU.

That covers "stealing" code, but what about ideas? We might talk to an AIX programmer and comment we're seeing performance issues in Linux in this area or that area and she tells us they discovered that they really needed to profile the network routines when they saw that. Having solved the problem once, our non-Linux peers can help steer us without spelling it out for us, allowing us to still develop solutions that can then be open sourced.

It's a fine line to walk, especially as an engineer who just wants the answer :)

3) The Open Source model
by larry bagina

IBM will be using linux to help sell their hardware. Other companies have tried this (VA Linux, which owns Slashdot, once had linux hackers on their payroll). Obviously, IBM's hardware is in a different league as an x86 clone, but do you have any thoughts on Open Source business models and their validity? Once the kernel is running smoothly, will you be disposable since the "Open Source community" can continue development for free?

IBM Kernel Hackers:

We think the Open Source business model is more than just valid, it is revolutionary. Linux has become a real "killer app"; the ability to run Linux on IBM hardware is increasingly high on customer's lists. Being able to run it doesn't really hurt AIX or VM, but not being able to run it would cost hardware sales.

As far as our disposability: don't get too concerned on our behalf, Linux will always have bugs and there will always be room for improvement.

4) Getting your changes accepted?
by korpiq

Is Linus accepting your changes well? How directly do you submit patches, and what are your experiences on the overall Linux kernel development style?

IBM Kernel Hackers:

Linus himself is wonderful about accepting patches on technical merit alone. He doesn't "grade" them differently if they come from ibm.com or mit.edu. We submit patches the exact same way that everyone else does: append the patch, mail to Linus and CC linux-kernel. If it's good, it gets in. If it sucks, you get flamed.

However, the submission process can be more complicated than first appears. Often, you need to figure out who is maintaining a particular area of code, followed by talking to them to gauge if someone else is already working on the same thing. Once you submit your code to them and the appropriate list, (isn't always lkml..) you may not get a response. This can be discouraging, but you have to find out why, or just simply resubmit, over and over and over. But, once you have a reputation, it does get easier to get quicker responses.

Sometimes it's frustrating when you've put a lot of effort into something that doesn't get accepted, but there's normally a good reason for it. Even work that doesn't get accepted can influence other people's thinking and development in the future. On the flip side you can also just point out problems and other people fix them for you, so in general you win more than you lose ;-)

5)linux on thinkpads
by Olinator

IMHO, IBM makes some of the best mobile hardware out there -- one of the professors I support raves about his ThinkPad 600, that went with him into the Israeli desert for several months and is still running strong, no service required -- but the linux support for that hardware has been, um, erratic at best. Yes, we've been occasionally been able to purchase the odd model with linux preinstalled (usually it's more expensive than the comparable model with MicroSoft preinstalled, grr) but an awful lot of the hardware (mini-pci modems, etc...) is rather difficult to drive with a penguin behind the wheel. Why does IBM's linux enthusiasm fade so quickly at the small (physical) end of the hardware scale? Is there momentum underway to change this?

IBM Kernel Hackers:

All of the people in our group and most in the LTC have Thinkpads for their daily development and run Linux on them (I'm writing this on one as I sit in my apartment). There may not be as much corporate support there as you want, but there is plenty of grass-roots support. We had to learn all the quirks to get Linux installed and get all of the little things working (just like you). I've always wished that we shared more of this information, but there are usually people who are farther ahead than we are. I've uploaded the meager information that we put together during a meeting once. If you're curious, take a look: http://www.sr71.net/slashdot/thinkpad/linux-desktop

People don't buy many small computers just because they will run Linux (the geek population just isn't that large). People do, however, blow large chunks of cash on big machines just to run Linux. Mom-and-Pop can almost always undercut IBM on prices for small machines, and geeks are thrifty. You don't have to sell many million dollar machines to justify being involved in Linux development.

6) Issues with middle management
by Consul

When you were starting out as a group, did you encounter a lot of friction and resistance from middle and/or upper management about your wanting to work on Open Source projects for IBM? If so, what did you do to overcome the objections and become the team you are now? I think the answer to this would help a lot of other people in other companies get mainstream acceptance of the idea of OSS in corporate environments.

IBM Kernel Hackers:

The management chain from engineer up to VP has been surprisingly a non-issue. We believe this is mostly because of the way the Linux Technology Center was founded. You might think the LTC evolved "up" from renegade engineers, but the truth is that our first Linux corporate strategy in 1998 called for the creation of a team, composed of some our best OS engineers, that would join the community to

1. Learn from doing,
2. Grow Linux skills
3. Give back to the community
4. Help make Linux better.

The LTC was founded then with full corporate backing already in place. Boring!! The early funding story for the LTC did involve renegade behavior and a table outside the BOFs at LinuxWorld in 1999, but that's a different story. Our director, Dan Frye, is owed much of the praise for the LTC's existence and smooth operation within IBM. The critical thing here is that engineers shouldn't be fighting corporate political battles, you need management that will go to bat for you on those issues (and win ;-)) We have that, and they do a good job of keeping that stuff off our backs. On the whole, our only work in this arena is to inform the management of what we need, and to feed them with the ammunition they need from a technical standpoint to fight these battles for us.

7) When do you estimate Linux can surpass Solaris?
by wytcld

Solaris 9 is getting great reviews. Between the strengths of the traditional open source community and IBM's resources, do you see a point in the next several years where you expect Linux to surpass Solaris in all of its core strengths? Or does Solaris have some unique values which will allow Sun to continue to position itself to advantage, at least for some applications? Please answer this as a technical rather than marketing question.

IBM Kernel Hackers:

We don't have a Solaris machines to back up any claim we may make, nor do we want to stir up another epic Linux on mainframe battle. It is safe to say, however, that today Linux/x86 is able to outperform¹ Solaris/Sparc in many areas that Sun has a long history of success. If your core business was threatened, wouldn't you make some serious changes?

¹ I know, I know, outperform is a very vague term. Just think price, performance, stability, etc...

8) OS/2 Developers
by reaper20

I'm one of the few people who really enjoyed the OS/2 desktop and its features. Have any of the former OS/2 developers been contributing to Linux?

Specifically, the user interface and accessibility people - OS/2 was very polished - does IBM see a benefit by offering this expertise to the GNOME/KDE projects?

If so, how does this tie into IBM's vision of Linux of the desktop, if you have one? :)

IBM Kernel Hackers:

Yes, there are a number of former OS/2 developers in the LTC including the majority of the teams working on: JFS, EVMS, and Print, as well individuals contributing in the areas of networking, security, RAS, performance and other projects. Remember, OS/2 had JFS support and EVMS supports the OS/2 partitioning scheme.

While IBM is not actively contributing code from the OS/2 user interface, we are supporting and sponsoring both the GNOME and the KDE projects through our involvement in the KDE League and the GNOME Foundation. And as you mentioned, we place a high level of importance on accessibility and so are participating in the community efforts in that area as well.

10) IA64
by sabre ...

Do you think that IPF64 line will see any kind of broad industry adoption? Will it become just like rest of the (non-embedded) processor architectures designed since the x86 -- constantly fighting for 5% of the market? Do you think the AMD Hammer architecture will be a meaningful player in the field?

IBM Kernel Hackers:

Quite possibly, never underestimate the importance of being able to run the huge installed base of ia32 apps natively, and at high speed. But IA64 has lots of industry backing as well. The good news is that Linux runs well on both, so we the community don't have to choose. The market will do that for us.

Additional questions and answers:

What features do you find linux most lacking in? (If we don't examine our weaknesses, we will be crippled)

Linux on the desktop still doesn't really cut it for some of us (though we do use it). Applications are not nearly as robust as they should be, and though we are perfectly capable of configuring X, we'd rather spend the time coding. Though it's fun to throw stones at Windows and the Linux OS is more stable than the Windows OS, as a whole desktop package with the apps, installation, usability and everything rolled together, Linux is not always preferable.

There are thorns in our side daily because of the lack of debugging and profiling ability in the kernel. We're always patching kernels for kernprof or lockmeter and porting them around to new kernel versions. Although Linus has pretty much said that debuggers are for sissies, the built-in facilities are much better than they were during the old days (think readprofile). So, there are advances being made.

...I'm not surprised that your responses have to be vetted by management. But, I'd love to know what guidelines IBM has for hackers' interaction with the rest of the GNU/Linux/Internet community. Are you allowed to criticize IBM management, or other IBM products, for example?

This is the Internet. We are hackers. Our management has been great allowing us to resolve many of our own problems involving certain email systems and desktop OS rules. Working in the kernel group of the LTC we have free reign to do our work on the kernel in the Open Source community.

There's no day-to-day vetting of anything we post or say, they trust us to be sensible. We would not say "IBM product X sucks, and you should buy competitor's product Y instead" in a public forum, but if we don't think something works well, I'm not going to endorse it either. We're engineers who get paid to work on Linux by IBM, not IBM corporate drones ;-)

From the brief bios, and Sequent pedigree, it looks like there is a lot of focus on high-end features like NUMA, async I/O and the like. Other commercial organizations, notably SGI, are also putting forth effort in those areas. There is actually quite a bit of overlap.

Since these are "open source" projects, do you collaborate with your traditional "enemies" such as SGI and Sun on Linux? What is your management's attitude toward that type of collaboration? If not, do you "look" at the work \ the others are doing in comparison to what you are doing?

We have been working smoothly with engineers from HP, Intel, SGI and many other companies through the Linux Scalability Effort Open Source Project. Whatever legal issues there might be within each company, it appears to me that the engineers who are working on open source are allowed to do their work with no problems. Hanna runs the bi-weekly LSE Conference Call and can say the biggest percentage of attendees are from either IBM, SGI or Intel every time. This is nice, but we want more members from the Open Source community to join: (http://lse.sf.net/mtg).

Management doesn't really care too much who actually writes the patch at the end of the day, they want to see Linux work well in their focus areas. Persuading other (external) developers of the correct approach or solution to a problem is just as important a part of our jobs as writing code.

Why isn't IBM making more of an effort to recruit developers directly from the Linux community, as opposed to hiring people who have very little if any working familiarity with the platform?

IBM has hired lots of existing Linux developers such as Rusty Russell, Greg Kroah-Hartman, and Ted Ts'o. There are also others that post to LKML and don't even use their IBM email addresses because they were firmly established community members (with those email addresses) before they were hired. We do have a site where you can view many of our patches, or a list of developers. Keep in mind that there are still developers who don't submit patches here.

What are your opinions regarding the shrinking number of women in the industry? (actually I believe the numbers are rising again in schools)

This is a tough field and many young women are discouraged from sticking it out through all of the math and science classes, as are many young men. Companies, like IBM, help by hiring bright women who move up the technical chain. This shows the less experienced that there is a future for women in engineering.

Shrinking? The numbers seem to be increasing based on what we see at work every day. IBM is active in programs that introduce young women to engineering in an attempt to get them interested in pursing careers in engineering. An example of these programs is Camp EXITE, check this site out for more info: http://www.ibm.com/ibm/ibmgives/grant/education/camp.shtml

An interesting interview regarding the number of women in industry is available at: http://www.nspe.org/etweb/16-02viewpoint.asp

Questions Rick Lindsley liked that didn't make the top 10, plus answers:

Best way into the Professional Linux world?

As many people here, I am a huge Linux fan, but I am so much so that I am trying to figure out how to get into the professional Linux world when I graduate.

I attend Clemson University and am in the Computer Information System (CS + business) program (and doubled in Political Science). My goal is to become a Linux sys admin, or perhaps some other Linux guru type job. The work that IBM is doing with Linux is also very appealing to me.

So, how did you get your job, and what would you recommend as the path to follow for us geeks just getting started in the professional world as to how to get into Linux? How can I become as entrenched with Linux as the professionals at IBM? I have had two internships (not with IBM, nor with Linux, but with other CS stuff), but how can I get an entry-level job in a Linux intensive environment like IBM? How can said job lead me into a career where I can be deeply involved in the Linux world?

Rick:

First: I've done recruiting at a "significant Big 10 university whose mascot's name is Bucky" so let me tell you what I look for in a college candidate.

Knowledgable -- your resume should reflect what you know, but don't puff it. Just because they make me dress up when I'm on campus doesn't mean I can't tell perl from shell scripting. Accentuate your strong points. You gain points for knowledge, but you lose them for lying or "overstating."

Communicative -- a person who cannot talk about what they know might as well know nothing. Seriously consider taking a public speaking course your junior or senior year. Also: it's ok to say "I don't know."

Grade point -- Personally, I really don't care so much about your GPA as you might think. Unfortunately, you will be judged by it by far too many people, right or wrong. So if you're not 3.9 or 4.0, you might be ready to spin it a bit. "Yes, it's 3.2, but I've buckled down and have 3.84 in the last three semesters." "Yes it's 3.1, but you'll note it's 3.6 on courses in my major." Don't get surreal but make that number say something good about you.

Work experience -- you get a big edge for doing something other than a teaching assistant. Internships, co-ops, and summer jobs can help you more than you think in the end.

Second, how did I get my job at IBM? Luck, in part. Right place, right time. Sometimes it really does work for you. Along with that luck, though, was the fact that I'd established a reputation as a smart coder and a fast learner. While I knew far less about Linux then than I know now, that reputation made managers believe that "coming up to speed" would not be a problem, and they judged right. Your reputation, as reported by your colleagues and not yourself, will be your greatest ally (or enemy.) This is never more true than in the Linux community.

Third, advancing? Once you get your foot in the door, work at interacting. Nobody really advances very far without interaction. At first this is with your cubie neighbor or office mate, but pretty soon it's chatting with people down the hall, and then in other projects. Eventually, you have opportunities to help organize informal seminars with the local user's group, and then it's helping out with conferences, and then you're writing papers, and chairing sessions, and before you know it you're standing puzzled in front of a thousand people, wondering how troubled their life must be that they would want to listen to <em>you</em> speak.

Dave Hansen's answer -

Purdue University's Computer Science program. I went to one of the CS job fairs where someone in the large IBM booth saw "Linux" on my resume. I handed my resume off, had a nice chat, and got a sit-down interview a couple of days later. That was followed soon by a plant trip and a job offer. The moral of the story: if you want a Linux job, put Linux on your resume! Make it bold. Make it half the page if that is really want you want to do. Most importantly, you have to learn to walk the walk before you can talk the talk. Engineers usually have better BS detectors than most people and you won't fool them for long.

Advancing - This is probably evident to anyone who has gone through an engineering program at a large school, but the most successful engineers are those who can teach others. You'll notice that there are lots of brilliant engineers and lots of teachers, but those who can do both are a rarity. Learn as much as you can from your colleagues then share as much as you can. The more people who know your name and come to you for help, the more visible you are. There is probably a fine line between getting noticed and being annoying and I have the feeling that a Slashdot interview may be WAY beyond the line :)

Comments

AI Kernel

[brunes69]

Dave Hansen, the IBM Kernel who organized this interview...

Wow, IBM wrote a kernel with embedded AI?? And it was smart enough to conduct an interview??!?! Linux hackers, we have to get cracking, IBM is showing us up!

Re:AI Kernel

[Fantanicity]

How does it make you feel that IBM is showing us up! ?

Re:AI Kernel

[carlos_benj]

No, that's his rank. They just spelled colonel wrong for /.

Re:AI Kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god it's full of trolls.

Re:AI Kernel

[msouth]

well, "not unusual", for one thing... :)

Re:AI Kernel

[rhost89]

I think they got it backwards though, i thought a kernel with embeded AI should have been named HAL and call everyone else Dave :)

Re:AI Kernel

[ian_vader]

Well, HAL is just a letter shift (-1) of IBM, so it all makes perfect sense.

Re:AI Kernel

[quantaman]

If they made one smart enough to do an interview maybe they can also make one smart enough to proof-read the stories!;)

Linus

[glrotate]

thorns in our side daily because of the lack of debugging and profiling ability in the kernel

It really is time for the community to put more pressure on Linus to adopt this.

Re:Linus

[TweeKinDaBahx]

If a compromise can't be made on DEBUGGING, I can't imagine what other problems must be going on.

It's really no wonder that Linux is in the state it is in.

Re:Linus

[EastCoastSurfer]

I can actually understand both sides of the argument. Linus sees using a debugger as a crutch for not understanding what is going on in your code. People who want to add/use more debugging facilities are just wanting to use all the tools in thier toolbox to create the best possible code.

Re:Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

Pressure? Linus won't react to pressure. No, show him the benefits and how they vastly outweigh the downsides. Becareful, though, because MS uses lots of debugging tools and still we have Windows...

Re:Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like it, and enough people agree with you, FORK the kernel and integrate your patch. If everyone stops using Linus' kernel, the point becomes moot.

Re:Linus

[scot4875]

Linus sees using a debugger as a crutch for not understanding what is going on in your code.

Which is complete crap. A debugger is a tool like any other. If you've got the option to use a wrench or a ratchet to tighten a nut, the ratchet isn't a "crutch for not understanding what's going on with the nut." Anyone with that attitude is probably looking so far down their nose that *any* tool you offer them is just a crutch for the weak.

The biggest reason I use Linux so sparingly is the lack of decent debugging tools. I had an excellent debugger in Turbo Pascal when I first started programming in '91. I've yet to find something that's even *that* good for Linux.

And anyone who believes that inserting printf()'s into your code is any substitute for a real debugger is a fool.

--Jeremy

Re:Linus

[Jyrinx]

Ya know, I agree, but how important is it that debugging become a part of Linus's kernel? It seems like a better use of effort to come up with a good "debugging patch" and demonstrate that it's useful than to scream at Linus a lot for not writing it. It could still see wide use even if not merged with the official kernel - anyone hardcore enough to run a debugger on the kernel will have no problem applying a separate patch. Jyrinx

Re:Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

printk()'s

Re:Linus

[Tony-A]

Linus sees using a debugger as a crutch for not understanding what is going on in your code.
A debugger is a tool like any other.
A wrench is a tool like any other. Not very good at hammering nails though.
A debugger is good for showing state through *one* execution path and makes it easy to catch superficial bugs that show up that way. Something like an operating system needs to stay valid over *all* execution paths and a debugger tends to be more counterproductive. Then you get the fun situations where a program works if it's being debugged and not if it's not.

Re:Linus

[Darby]

And anyone who believes that inserting printf()'s into your code is any substitute for a real debugger is a fool.


Or, perhaps, really *really* freaking good.

Seriously though, I've only tried using a debugger a few times and it didn't help.
I'm not a great programmer and know absolutely crap about compilers and debuggers.
What's a good resource for learning more about them?

Re:Linus

[scot4875]

But having the opportunity to use a debugger is still better than nothing. And any decent debugger will let you set conditional breakpoints that you can set up to only fire on certain execution paths.

And yeah, the only-works-in-debugger situation really sucks, though I've only ever run into it one time, and that was because the "release" version of a library I was using had a bug that the debugging version didn't. Talk about a pain in the ass...

--Jeremy

Re:Linus

[r6144]

Gdb is excellent when used correctly. If you want to do kernel hacking with gdb, use remote debugging via a serial line (of course you need another machine, but an old Pentium-133 does not cost that much, you just have to find room for it).

Well, I do miss Turbo Pascal, not for the debugger (although it is usable enough), but for the blazingly fast compiler that compiles 1000 lines/sec of Pascal code on a 386. Now I program in C using gcc, and the compilation speed is about the same on a PII/233 without optimization.

Re:Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

the "release" version of a library I was using had a bug that the debugging version didn't. Talk about a pain in the ass...

Could be a memory-related problem. eg. Overwriting debugging information won't cause a segfault, but when the debug info is gone you are trying to overwrite another process's memory.

ThinkPad support?

[qurob]

People don't buy many small computers just because they will run Linux (the geek population just isn't that large). People do, however, blow large chunks of cash on big machines just to run Linux. Mom-and-Pop can almost always undercut IBM on prices for small machines, and geeks are thrifty. You don't have to sell many million dollar machines to justify being involved in Linux development.

I think they should have given us a better answer than this. IBM should hire 10 guys like me, pay them $25 an hour, UPS them some equipment, and let them hack ThinkPads all day from home. I use a lot of Dell laptops, most of their machines work great under Linux.

How do other companies handle their Linux+laptops? Or don't they?

Re:ThinkPad support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I run SuSE linux on my Sony VAIO laptop and its great (except for the WINMODEM). Overall, laptop support is getting a lot better for linux!

Re:ThinkPad support?

[CLIT]

Not to mention that those filthy Lunix hippies don't even bathe, either. They say "Hot water wants to be free" and don't pay their electric bill.

Re:ThinkPad support?

[qurob]

I've had fairly good luck with Sony laptops also. Toshiba's have been so-so

Re:ThinkPad support?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running beehive 0.5.0 linux on my IBM thinkpad, and it works like a charm. What would be the fun in running linux if you skipped the "personalizing/configuring" stage and everything worked ;-)

Re:ThinkPad support?

[HiThere]

Think pads work great ... except for the modem.

I understand that there may be modem drivers available on the web, but without a modem, I can't get them.

(Well, that's a slight overstatement. I could, but everytime I changed the OS I'd need to go and get them again [in the appropriate version, unless the same one would work with, say, LibraNet and Red Hat].)

Actually, I suppose I could just download all of them onto some floppyies, and keep them around. But I've never bothered, not even to verify as to whether or not the modem drivers really existed. (I've sort of assumed that if they were decent then they'd be installed with the next versio of the OS, and they never have been.)

Re:ThinkPad support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a PCMCIA modem/ethernet adapter or something. Winmodems are retarded, and IBM should be beaten for using them.

Re:ThinkPad support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing you're talking about LUnix users and not Linux users.

Re:OS/2, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

AIX, anyone?

Dont know what to put here...

[sheepab]

First of all, before any of us were allowed to contribute to Linux, we were required to take an "Open Source Developers" class.

SIGN.......ME.........UP!

Re:Dont know what to put here...

[LinuxCumShot]

I thought to be an open source developer you need to take one CSc course in university and then you could just fly at it. Or at least thats the way it seems from a lot of the code i've seen.

Re:Dont know what to put here...

[sheepab]

I thought to be an open source developer you need to take one CSc course in university and then you could just fly at it. Or at least thats the way it seems from a lot of the code i've seen.
Its not the code, its more or less licensing, copywrights, business stuff for the big companies in open source.
Someone please mark him -1 Troll/Flamebait.

Re:Dont know what to put here...

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for the aforementioned company,and the OSS course is just a pile of crap which goes on about the "viral" nature of the GPL and how to ensure no proprietary code makes its way into OSS without the appropriate red tape handoffs.

It's nothing revolutionary.

Re:Dont know what to put here...

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's all you got from it, you obviously (A) didn't pay attention or (B) had a bad attitude about having to attend.

Based on your note, I'd say (B) is a lock.

I dont understand

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont understand the last line, could you explain it please?

-CLIT, anonymously because i am banned.

Re:I dont understand

[Anonymous Coward]

This troll is baed on the Jay-Z song Izzo (H.O.V.A.)

his lyrics go
h to the izzo
v to the izza
fo shizzle my nizzle see me dribble down the va

I changed this to a goatse troll. The last line always starts with fo shizzle my nizzle, and then whatever you like. When I first started this troll, I would say "fo shizzle my nizzle see me ram a coke can up my ass", clearly reference the size of the goatse gap. I recently decided to change it to deal with whatever the story is about. Thus the linux kernel hacking. And no, I have no idea what fo shizzle my nizzle means. I am white and lame.

Re:I dont understand

[Anonymous Coward]

fo shizzle my nizzle means "for sure, my nigga"...

i believe it was Snoop Dogg who coined this term.

Re:I dont understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes sense. Thank you for brightening my day. Someone should mod this up as +3 Informative

Re:I dont understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, spizzle on my dizzle.

A spin on my GPA, as per Dave's suggestion....

[moniker_21]

Yes it' a 2.2, but you'll notice that's up from a 0.7!
*sigh* It's a miracle I'm still in college.

Re:A spin on my GPA, as per Dave's suggestion....

[jdcook]

I described my GPA as "making the top half of the class possible."

Re:A spin on my GPA, as per Dave's suggestion....

[cperciva]

Even better spin...

"People say that they've never heard of a student graduating in computer science with a GPA like mine."

Re:A spin on my GPA, as per Dave's suggestion....

[quantaman]

How about "I HAVE A 4.0 GPA!... on the 9 point scale"

Re:A spin on my GPA, as per Dave's suggestion....

[Majestix]

NO! That should be, "I enabled the top half of the class."

Re:OS/2, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nobody gives a fucking shit you whiney little nolifer geeks", anyone?

Dave Hansen, IBM Kernel

[kguilber]

dave hansen is a kernel? where can i sign up for this? and do i get a cool mascot?

Patches

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM's site is nice, but you can find a more complete set at this site.

Cooperating eh?

[quantaman]

Hanna runs the bi-weekly LSE Conference Call and can say the biggest percentage of attendees are from either IBM, SGI or Intel every time.
(emphasis mine)

IBM Dude: Sure we're getting along... They stick to their events we stick to ours!

p.s. This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts and his answer (in case you didn't catch on to the bad joke;)

Re:Cooperating eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, either is used when comparing two, not three entities, so IBM, SGI must be one entity and Intel the other.

you are bleeding...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are really up to bleeding edge, arn't ye?
I always cut my veins to be "bleeding edge" when i compile my stable 2.2 keral.

Re:you are bleeding...

[Anonymous Coward]

and i thought you were running GNU/Turd...

Lets play...

[Sanity]

...spot the PHB contributions! I'll start:

We think the Open Source business model is more than just valid, it is revolutionary.

Just doesn't sound like something a hacker would say.

Re:Lets play...

[TweeKinDaBahx]

It doesn't sound like something a business analysts would say.

OSS is an economic nightmare.

Re:Lets play...

[TweeKinDaBahx]

OH NO THE TRUTH IS OUT!!!!

Re:Lets play...

[Zathrus]

Funny. I seem to recall seeing that exact phrase daily on /.

Guess there's a lot of PHB's hanging out here then.

Re:Lets play...

[tswinzig]

Actually the original sentence was:

"We think the Open Source business model is more than just valid, it is fucking cool!"

He wasn't kidding when he said, These were edited by management, but they mostly corrected our spelling mistakes and cleaned up our dirty language :)

Re:Lets play...

[bilbobuggins]

How about things they _didn't_ catch, like this jewel of marketing speak:

As far as our disposability: don't get too concerned on our behalf, Linux will always have bugs and there will always be room for improvement. (emphasis mine)

Any MS marketing execs probably passed out cold when they read this, coming straight from the horses mouth...

Re:Lets play...

[stephanruby]

Just doesn't sound like something a hacker would say.

Just doesn't sound like something a programmer would say.

Re:Lets play...

[MicroBerto]

I also seem to recall hundreds of businesses using the "open source business model" going out of business within the past year and a half.

Re:Lets play...

[kisielk]

I seem to recall thousands of businesses not using it going out of business last year too. What's your point?

Re:Lets play...

[hansendc]

Believe it or not, this actually came from an engineer. I won't blow their cover, but it wasn't who you think it was :)

Re:Lets play...

[Tony-A]

Linux will always have bugs
Any MS marketing execs probably passed out cold when they read this

Yep. Methinks IBM "gets it" and Microsoft can't.
Reality. Just because a program has bugs does not mean that you can find any or will ever run into one. If you are paying high dollars for a Linux system, you want "other people" to be running into the bugs and fixing them as much as possible. Much cheaper.

Re:Lets play...

[PacoTaco]

Guess there's a lot of PHB's hanging out here then.

Perl Hacking Badass?

Other IBMers existed too

[peterdaly]

I work in a shop that has, among other system an AS/400. The guy who usually comes to work on our hardware doesn't know or really understand anything about linux. I have known him professionally for about 5 years now, and for most of that time he has known I work with Linux.

The past few times I have seen him he has struck up a conversation about all the great stuff about Linux he is hearing at IBM, and how important it may be in the future.

I have worked with many AS/400 type people, and let me tell you, it is hard to get them on the bandwagon for stuff like this. I don't know what IBM is doing to communicate their Linux vision, but whatever it is they are doing right.

-Pete

Re:Other IBMers existed too

[slutdot]

IBM is definitely helping in this arena. I had a meeting this morning the the AS/400 group manager for our company. We were discussing FTP connections and my suggestion was to install a Linux OpenSSH server instead of a Winders 2000 machine. When he began to get that face that managers get when you talk about installing a Linux server in their environment, I quickly mentioned IBM's support for Linux. He looked surprised and pretty relieved to hear that IBM is behind the OS. I got my way and we're going with the Linux solution. While this isn't the only Linux box we have, it's a start of a change in the attitude at my company that says Microsoft is the only way to go on a PC considering that getting the first Linux box here was like getting teeth pulled. Having IBM back the OS certainly helps.

Re:Other IBMers existed too

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that you can run PowerPC flavors of Linux in a logical partition on an AS/400 (or iSeries).

Re:Other IBMers existed too

[oPless]

If you've ever worked with/on an AS/400 you'll know why it is hard to get off "that bandwagon" as you put it.

To put into perspective my very first "real" O/S was a SysV implentation of Unix, my first "real job" was programming an AS/400.

Being a PFY and loving how you can hack Unix to do pretty much what you want to do, and then trying to grok AS/400 stuff is something that gave me frequent headaches. Sure theres nice OS/400 Unix command references *now*, but how can you explain what a "Logical File" is to a Linux person, or even a display file...

Then again the fact that AS/400 treats nearly everything as a "database", is comparable to how unix treats nearly everything as a filesystem object. (Gross over-generalisation there I know)

A lot of corporate iron out there are racks upon racks of AS/400 kit, and I suspect System/36 kit too... Linux won't replace those beasts in the short to mid term, but may in the long term it will be.

Those IBM engineers have access to (the brains, if not the code directly) of many, many Man-Years of O/S code - Certainly more than Microsoft will ever have :-)

Wandering back on topic for a bit, then I'll hit submit, I promise :-) Mainframe programmers also tend not to be too interested in the nuts and bolts of the hardware, "it just works" this is something only a propriatry hardware/software system can do - Forget setting up the machine, just do your work ... Imagine the man-hours you've lost writing code on your M$/Unix machine only to find out that you've just broken the O/S by tickling an obscure bug ? - Just doesnt happen in the mainframe world. :-)

Would I go back and do AS/400 work ... no - it's just not sexy enough anymore - unless I needed a decent database server of course :-)

/op

Re:Other IBMers existed too

[pato perez]

AS/400 is an alternate universe. I worked with a couple of IBM AS/400 developers who were tasked with porting some code I wrote to AS/400 and talking to them was a totally alien experience. The superficial terminology stuff, DASD etc., was just a matter of translation. But beyond that, wow... Of course they were totally appalled that in my universe you could simply walk off a cliff or accidentally lock yourself out of your house, etc. AS/400 allows no accidents.

Re:Other IBMers existed too

[plsander]

You do know that Linux will run on a logical partition on an AS/400 ^h^h^h^h^h^h iSeries?

See http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/linux / eqs.html for more details.

Re:Other IBMers existed too

[drinkypoo]

There are two good things about AS/400s. One, object files from various languages can be linked together. Or so they told me when I took a class at IBM's campus in Dallas. Two, they have a database and they aren't afraid to use it. So many linux projects in use today would benefit dramatically from the use of a RDBMS, yet nearly none of them do. I know, ReiserFS, blah blah blah. I'm not excited.

Anyway, other than that... linux has become very stable (unless you're on the bleeding edge, or close to it) and it runs on a lot of nice cheap hardware that you can scale up or down without amazing price jumps. You can even buy pretty good support for it now, right? The one thing the AS/400 still has over other operating systems is that you can build apps with it so quickly, I mean simple database frontends with a little math or generating a print job or what have you. On the other hand, a lot of things are a super big pain in the ass, so it's not a free lunch or anything.

Re:Other IBMers existed too

[chabotc]

>> Being a PFY and [..]

For those of us who never read the 'net clasic BOFH (basterd operator from hell) PFY stands for "Pimple Faced Youth"

What am i saying, if you do not know the BOFH, go read it now! http://bofh.ntk.net/

Re:Other IBMers existed too

[billmil]

I started out programming on AS/400's at Andersen Consulting when they first got out--in the late 1980's. A/C and their clients liked them a lot because of the quickness of developing applications and their low 'tco' (total cost of ownership). Whereas with a mainframe you needed a separate 'security guy' (could be a gal), a 'print spooler guy' an 'OS guy' and what not, with the AS/400 all you needed was an operator to load tapes.

Just two years ago I talked to a consultant at a big law firm in Chicago. They had Unix, NT, and AS/400 systems. An army of unix guys, an army of nt guys, and one as/400 operator--to load tapes. (Plus they ran several apps on their as/400).

The AS/400 (and its predecessor the system/38) was revolutionary in its own way. It had a separate hardware abstraction layer, it was (somewhat) object oriented, a built in database, and it was easy to get up and running.

To conclude: concede the revolutionariness of the AS/400 and its effectiveness for transaction oriented systems and its superiority over the Big Iron mainframe. But mention that it lacked threading and ability to run anything beyond a database system.

Further your point that IBM has relegated the AS/400 to a database server. (and DB2 does not port perfectly from linux to OS/400). IBM spends more money marketing websphere than all of the AS/400 line. In short, the market is not growing at all and IBM's pretty letting it die a natural death.

Re:Other IBMers existed too

[(outer-limits)]

If there is one thing out there that has succeeded in computing terms, it is the RDBMS. Databases are being built and run now using RDBMS that would never have been thought possible years ago. It is time that the UNIX flat file idea, (If I can recall that puffed up piece of waffle, called, I think, The Programmers Guide to Unix, by Saints KR etc, Unix doesn't have any specified file types, it leaves it up to the programmer to do whatever he wants with a flat, binary file. Talk about getting Unix stuck in the stone age.

A simple RDBMS should be built into the operating system, complete with transactional, editing tools. Then you can use tables all the time, and never have to worry about the overhead. The SAP system has built tables built into the programming language, and it's the rare program that does not use them.

Re:Other IBMers existed too

[oPless]

or even Here or Here

Hint: If you're intent on being a Karma Whore, try harder :-)

Re:OS/2, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Remember, these people couldn't even promote THIER[sic] OWN operating system

Doesn't help matters when two internal divisions infight with each other. That doesn't seem to be happening with their Linux efforts.

Learning from history, perhaps?..

Re:Linux Geekin'

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, sir. I will push ever forward in my attempts to bring quality trolls to the folks here at slashdot.

Re:rofl

[Anonymous Coward]

> Unix doesn't belong on the desktop, it wasn't designed for that purpose. It's like racing a hummer against a ferrari.

Unix was designed for that and many other purposes. If it wasn't, KDE and Gnome and window mgrs wouldn't be in the state they are today, and wouldn't be improving at their current high rate.

And lest we forget, OS X is already there, and it's Unix.

Unix is on the desktop, and will continue to be there, and will continue to improve in this area. Get Over It.

Re:rofl

[Anonymous Coward]

They wasted their time with Mirco$oft in the 80's, and made them the evil monopoly they are now.

Re:OS/2, anyone?

[Havokmon]

Remember, these people couldn't even promote THIER OWN operating system

Having worked at Best Buy when both OS/2 Warp and then Win95 came out, I can say it wasn't just IBM marketing.

Our store manager didn't even want to put up the OS/2 stuff. Is that because he wasn't won over by the marketing, or was it HIS boss that wasn't won over?

In any case, there are VERY many people who didn't see marketing materials because of just a few people. I still have that nice heavy 3'x5' Warp poster at home.

Speaking of Kernel hackers...

[ryanwright]

Any kernel hackers out there want a job?


(I know, it's off-topic, mod me down, et cetera, but do you know how hard it is to find qualified Linux kernel hackers?? I'm willing to risk some karma...)

Re:Speaking of Kernel hackers...

[jazman_777]

Any kernel hackers out there want a job? [monster.com] (I know, it's off-topic, mod me down, et cetera, but do you know how hard it is to find qualified Linux kernel hackers?? I'm willing to risk some karma...)

Richland, WA, eh? That fellow who tried to build his own nuclear reactor, well he'd fit right in... It's right near the US Energy Research and Development Administration site, aka "Hanford", which is the worst superfund site in the country.

Re:Speaking of Kernel hackers...

[Anonymous Coward]

That is one cool cluster, I know from experience. In fact, if you get this job, you'll get to know me quite well. BLEEDING edge stuff here, way fun stuff. Next gen IA64 machines, first of its kind in the world, huge huge cluster.

Re:Speaking of Kernel hackers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit, it's hard to find good, qualified candidates for ANYTHING these days. Yeah, lots of good people are out of work, but the challenge is finding them among the flood of also-unemployed sucky candidates. :-/ I mean, finding a good perl programmer is markedly dissimilar from the science of rockets, but goddamn... It's taken my employer almost two months to find a good perl hacker to back me up at work. Secondarily, I honestly don't think that discussions about jobs (specifically real, concrete opportunities) are ever really off topic here. Slashdot's purpose is to help the community. What better way than to give a good home to a good hacker, and a good hacker to a good home? There is a level of prequalification inherent here too, the likelyhood of a good C programmer reading a story here about the C99 status of various compilers is a lot higher than, say, browsing Yahoo! News or salon.com... Honestly, I wish I was qualified to work with you. I'm strong on perl and the science, and would love to relocate to the Pacific Northwest, but a kernel hacker I am not. Mumble, mumble, back to the coal face... ;-)

Re:Speaking of Kernel hackers...

[Anonymous Coward]

The risks of living near a superfund site are no better nor worse than living anywhere else in the country. Millions of people live within spitting distance of superfund sites and suffer no ill effects. I can't recall a single incident involving harm to the actual workers at Hanford, let alone the general public.

Your comments indicate unfounded fear and ignorance with a touch of paranoia. You're more likely to suffer harm caused by a falling star than you are from any sort of issue directly related to living near a superfund site. I personally suggest you find more realistic things to worry about - your next date, perhaps.

(Posting anonymously; I don't have an account here nor do I wish to create one, but I live a couple hours away from the Hanford site in Spokane and have friends in Richland, so I know the area well. This post just irked me.)

Re:Speaking of Kernel hackers...

[elvum]

hmmm... as usual, the "mod me down" request has the opposite effect...

(off-topic, mod me down, etc. :-) )

Re:rofl

[Anonymous Coward]

> Solaris (NOT x86 SLowLaris) ownz Linux in every
> aspect.

Like what? Spontaneous rebooting? Cost? VM performance?

http://www.specbench.org/osg/jvm98/results/jvm98 .h tml

Re:rofl

[sheepab]

Why is IBM wasting their time? who knows. I do know IBM is a VERY political company.

Because they know Linux is evolving and growing faster than any other unix operating system out there. "Free eh? Open source eh? And we can hack it? And call it our own? And mass market it?". Seriously, IBM is really marketing Linux because everyone keeps hearing about it. "What is this 'Linux'? I dont know, but IBM is backing it, so it must be big!" and up goes the stock.

sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

i did not mean to impost you, i am just a part of the clit, of course not the REAL clit as a user/person.

sorry for causing trouble!

IBM and Linux

[ebuck]

That IBM would validate Linux was a big stamp of approval that even PHBs could recogonize.

I can't tell how many times before IBM jumped into the ring I heard from the Linux ignorant, "I hear great things about it, but who uses it?" You could then rattle off names all day without effect.

Re:rofl

[TweeKinDaBahx]

it's only evil because you're not the one making money off of it so STFU and post logged in bitch.

Re:My rejected code!

[Anonymous Coward]

At least get your C correct, there is no "then" in C.

Kernel

[URoRRuRRR]

Dave Hansen, the IBM Kernel who organized this interview

I keep telling people, it's spelled C-O-L-O-N-E-L. I don't know why there isn't an R in it, but it's just spelled that way. I wouldn't be disrespecting any colonels asking why, either.

Re:Kernel

[meringuoid]

The military are weird. There's no R in Colonel. There's no F in Lieutenant. And it's a little-known curio of some smaller Welsh regiments that 'Sergeant' is actually pronounced 'Wibble'.

Re:Kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

I-T W-A-S A J-O-K-E

How to get hardware information?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know who at IBM can be contacted in order to receive information related to hardware capabilities, specs, and programming information for open source drivers?

Specifically, I have two older IBM laptops that have sound chips that are rather simplistic, but as of yet do not have a Linux driver written for them. (TP755C and TP360) I would be more than willing to spend time writing the driver, but where/from whom can I get the information needed to do so?

Re:How to get hardware information?

[vrmlknight]

maybe if you were logged in and not an Anonymous Coward someone could have responded to you....

Re:OS/2, anyone?

[wo1verin3]

Ahhh... the IBM unified voice.

In any case, "THESE" people as you refer to them are the real linux hackers, not corporate drones. I guess it's true not everyone will understand the one voice thing at the top

Re:rofl

[King Louie]

Funny thing about Ferrarris -- they only go fast on very smooth roads. Hummers can go fast without paved roads. Most of the planet is not paved, so for most terrain, the Hummer will run the Ferrarri into the ground.

Kind of like OSs -- most of the world is a rough place, and your OS (even on a desktop) needs to be able to handle the rough spots without crashing. I'm not saying AIX and Solaris have that problem, but other well-known OSs do.

Off the record

[WellHungYungWun]

I would like an off the record type interview with Linux Hackers. The whole thing looks like a team of High ballers sat and collaborated on each answer. I want the truth!! You can't handle the truth.

Re:Off the record

[hansendc]

Post to LKML, and ye shall recieve :)

These were edited by management...it shows

[unitron]

"These were edited by management, but they mostly corrected our spelling mistakes and cleaned up our dirty language :)"

...myself and my group are kernel programmers...

myself (is a ) kernel programmer

To know whether to use me or I or myself, convert from plural to singular. If you don't have it right, it'll be painfully obvious.

And usually, but not always, you put yourself second and give the other party(ies) top billing.

My group and I are kernel programmers.

Re:These were edited by management...it shows

[swillden]

...myself and my group are kernel programmers...

Misuse of "myself" is rampant in corporate America, in both subject and predicate and in both plural and singular cases. I hear things like "Then Bob gave the message to myself" all the time, particularly when the speaker is trying to be very formal and correct. The worst part is that it is so widespread that using the correct pronoun sometimes makes *you* appear the uneducated one.

I think everyone has been slapped down for using "me" and "I" incorrectly, so they know that they're sometimes wrong, but don't really understand when and just avoid them all the time.

The rules for first-person pronouns are actually very simple. Not that it will do any good, here they are:

• In the subject, always use "I". Use of "me" and "myself" is always wrong. If you're including yourself in a group it's "The group and I" ("I and the group" is fine, but emphasizes your role which is sometimes impolite).
• In the direct object, always use "me", unless the subject is "I".

That's it. Not difficult at all. Here's a quiz:

1. Me and John rewrote the VM in an afternoon.
2. John and myself rewrote the VM in an afternoon.
3. John and I rewrote the VM in an afternoon.
4. He gave the documentation to myself.
5. He gave the documentation to I.
6. He gave the documentation to me.
7. He gave the documentation to John and myself.
8. He gave the documentation to John and I.
9. He gave the documentation to John and me.
10. I wrote that section for me.
11. I wrote that section for I.
12. I wrote that section for myself.
13. I wrote that section for John and me.
14. I wrote that section for John and I.
15. I wrote that section for John and myself.

Answers: Sentences 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 are correct. Sentences 7, 8, 14 and 15 are wrong, but common. Sentence 9 is correct but is often percieved as incorrect by people who incorrectly prefer 7.

Today's grammar lesson is brought to you by the number 15 and the word "pedantic".

Re:These were edited by management...it shows

[4of12]

Answers: Sentences 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 are correct.

Why didncha just cut to the chase and tell us that proper English grammar is as simple as

bool correct_usage = (sentence_number%3 == 0);

instead of all this complicated string usage rules with "myself"?

Re:These were edited by management...it shows

[Dephex Twin]

In the subject, always use "I". Use of "me" and "myself" is always wrong. If you're including yourself in a group it's "The group and I" ("I and the group" is fine, but emphasizes your role which is sometimes impolite).
In the direct object, always use "me", unless the subject is "I".

The problem is, if these people had any comprehension for subject and direct object, they wouldn't be making those mistakes.

Just remember to drop the other part of the group. If you are wondering about "Bob and I", take out Bob to see if it is I, me, or myself.

Surely even an intelligent monkey can follow that!

mark

Re:These were edited by management...it shows

[swillden]

Very true. The only problem is that that approach only addresses errors caused by compound subjects/objects.

OTOH, those are the most common ones, so your technique is helpful.

Re:These were edited by management...it shows

[sforster]

"Answers: Sentences 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 are correct. Sentences 7, 8, 14 and 15 are wrong"

Hold on a sec, so '15' is both right... and wrong?

Wow, this grammar thing is more complicated that I thought. No wonder there's so much misunderstanding in the world :)

Re:These were edited by management...it shows

[hensley]

for those really wanting to learn, you omitted
the answers to 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 13.

my bet:

1, 2, 4 (unsure about usage, but surely not the best language use), 5, 11, 13(unsure, see 4) - wrong

10 - right

hensley (non-native speaker)

P.S.: finale will be Germany-Turkey in 11m-Shooting (this word is missing in my dict): 4:5

Re:These were edited by management...it shows

[swillden]

Hold on a sec, so '15' is both right... and wrong?

Do you have a problem with that? All you geek types are so stuck on that silly Law of the Excluded Middle. Sheesh. ;-)

My bad, obviously. 15 is right, not wrong.

Re:These were edited by management...it shows

[swillden]

No, sorry I wasn't clear. Only 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 are correct, all of the others are wrong. The two rules I stated above should make this clear.

10 is interesting because it doesn't "feel" wrong to me. Rather it feels like the speaker is emphasizing his reasons for writing the section of code (or whatever). I believe it actually is incorrect, though, and 12 is definitely correct.

Re:These were edited by management...it shows

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,
It is obvious to the more mild mannered among
us that you need to sh*t.
yes, sh*t. And you need to do so in a manner
unchronicled since the abbreviated iniquities
emendated by terrified scatologists in the 13th and 14th centuries in the that vast repository
of scat, "der anus und colon".
Mein freund, make a statement to the relief of all involved and disavowal your load: visit a potty today.

Re:These were edited by management...it shows

[unitron]

10 is incorrect, but acceptable in colloquial usage, although in that case it should probably be "I wrote that section for me, dammit, so back off!".

Re:These were edited by management...it shows

[ynohoo]

... unless yourself is speaking Oirish Anglish, where myself, yourself, herself and himself are part of common speech, and they couldn't give a toss what the Anglish think ;)

Re:rofl

[TweeKinDaBahx]

Another expansion on the car thing:

When you get linux, you get a car in a box you have to assemble yourself. Some parts aren't right, don't function, or are currently unsupported. By the time you're done you have something that looks like a cross between a yugo and pinto and runs like colt vista.

To those who are still in school....

[2Bits]

Grade point -- Personally, I really don't care so much about your GPA as you might think. Unfortunately, you will be judged by it by far too many people, right or wrong. So if you're not 3.9 or 4.0, you might be ready to spin it a bit. "Yes, it's 3.2, but I've buckled down and have 3.84 in the last three semesters." "Yes it's 3.1, but you'll note it's 3.6 on courses in my major." Don't get surreal but make that number say something good about you.

If you are still in school, and are thinking about applying for a job at IBM, I'd suggest that you ramp up your GPA right now. The importance of GPA for IBM can't be stressed enough. It's an understatement that you will be judged by it by far too many people. You can be the best and brightest programmer in the world, but your GPA is the only thing that will get you an interview. Only after you got an interview can you show how much you know, right?

At the time when I was about to graduate (I didn't apply to IBM or any big corporations, coz I wanted to work in small companies), the only people who got an interview from IBM are the straight-A students, regardless of how much they know about computer and programming (not to be pejorative!!!).
(Notes: at our school, straight-A GPA does not necessary mean you are good programmer, coz our school is very theory-oriented).

I started working at a small company the day after my last exam, so as two of classmates who were hired by IBM. We bumped into each other one year later. By then, I've developed two drivers already, and theses folks are still in training, and had not written a single line of code yet.

IBM can hire the "best students" (in terms of GPA) and send them to training for a long time.

Good for them. This is not sour grape though, as I've never applied to IBM anyways.

Re:To those who are still in school....

[Anonymous Coward]

I do work for IBM, and I also recruit back at my college. Sometimes other factors such as work experience can far outweight a stellar GPA. A lack of experience or other factors such as personality can even counter a high GPA. Being book-smart doesn't mean you'll work out well in a development team.

When I go recruiting, I consider a "low" GPA to be 3.0 or lower. 3.1 and above I consider fine. For those in the low 3.x level, work experience and good references coupled with good personal interaction skills can outweigh the lower GPA. And as the quoted comment indicates, you could be 3.1 in general, but having 3.7 in your major is something we notice.

As an example, the new hire across the hall from me just got a full-time job in January with a 3.2 GPA in Electrical Engineering. He'd previously been an intern in my area as well, and he's done a very good job here so far. So I disagree with the assumption that a stellar GPA is all we look at.

A well-rounded invidual with an average GPA can be fat better than a person with a 4.0 in many cases.

Re:To those who are still in school....

[lindsley]

True -- the importance of GPA to corporations can't be stressed enough. The importance to actual recruiters varies greatly. Many, sadly, will use it as their primary and sole filter. However, when I was hired into my first job, it was with the "pitiful" GPA of 3.4. The person interviewing me fortunately had also come from that University and understood, without even asking, the implications of some of the coursework, course load, and jobs I'd had. He scheduled an interview and, after confirming his theory, fast-tracked me into an on-site interview and so began my career.

I think that was an excellent example of how to really find good people, and I've tried to return the favor. The GPA doesn't tell the whole story. I've met some 3.97 people with a PhD in CS and a MS in Physics and Astronomy who couldn't handle a simple perl script. (But we did have a fascinating discussion about solar events and their effect on the ionosphere.)

Yes, I chat up the 3.9+ folks. There's no denying that in today's tougher job market, that GPA will be your best billboard. But I also talk to 3.2 and 3.4 folks if I recognize job experience or coursework in their resumes and transcripts which looks interesting.

And yes, again sadly, that's unusual. But we do exist.

Re:To those who are still in school....

[aiabx]

There's another way in to IBM. Get some real work experience and then join as a professional hire. No one even hinted at caring what my GPA was, because I had 11 years of useful experience. Lucky thing too, my GPA is adequate for getting a job flipping burgers.
-aiabx

Re:To those who are still in school....

[Zombie]

Funny. I don't have a high school degree. Four years after I joined IBM as an end user helpdesk support agent, I was being sent around the world at their expense as a senior software architect.

Once you get in, a whole world of opportunity opens before your eyes. What you studied and how well you performed in school is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is how you perform - correction - how well you manage to convince your management chain that you perform well.

It is possible that an IBM recruiter who goes out to universities looks at your grades. Without a reputation or experience, what else do you have to show for? But maybe you should look for a way to build up your reputation and experience (e.g. contributing to useful open source projects, doing I.T.-related jobs while studying as a freelancer) and try to tap into the recruitment process from a different angle.

Re:To those who are still in school....

[Samrobb]

I've seen worse... I graduated from college with a degree in Metallurgical Engineering, then spent 4 years as an officer in the US Navy. When I got out, I came back to Pittsburgh and got into software development by dtudying, reading, and working on my own, and ended up working as a senior C++ developer for a couple of startup companies. Over 10 years of work experience, a motivated self-taught developer, with excellent references and more than half that time as a senior C++ developer working on a wide variety of projects.

Last year, looking for a job, I ran into a company that refused to even look at my resume until I had my college send them a certified copy of my transcript. That wasn't just ignorant, it was insulting, and I told them so.

Re:To those who are still in school....

[Tam-Lin]

Nonsense. Due to a disasterous year as a mechanical engineer, I barely had a 3.0 GPA. Within my CS major, though, my GPA was a 3.8 or something. And I was hired by IBM.

Re:To those who are still in school....

[Anonymous Coward]

> Last year, looking for a job, I ran into a company that refused to even look at my resume until I had my college send them a certified copy of my transcript. That wasn't just ignorant, it was insulting, and I told them so.

I'd have thought so too - until at one company, doing the resume screening drill, and we found several candidates had lied about their transcripts.

So, without doing the checking, how would we have known? You certainly don't want to hire anyone who's lied about there experience, academic or otherwise.

Re:To those who are still in school....

[mian]

I also had the oppurtunity to work at IBM when i was 17 years old, due to lots of personal things my highschool education level is year 8 (school ended at 14). Luck played a VERY big part ofcourse though, the unemployment lady helping me had a son and husband that both worked there, the husband being very good friends with the manager, the only thing i had to even do was meet the manager to show i was capable of dressing presentable.. i still had/have 3 foot long looking hippy hair i just had to dress up slightly. This was by no means coding etc, it was on the hardware side in the warranty/repair shop fixing the hardware with 2 other guys who were 45-50, and then there was about 3 guys who took care of the maintenance contracts going out to the jobs for mainly the big companies. I had NO 'formal' hardware experience myself, everything was self taught by sitting at home pulling my Amiga2000 apart and putting it back together, then Amigas bored me so a change to x86 was almost immediate. I've never really been into games so after computer magazines and a little thing called the 'modem' grabbing my attention i just had to get one, so i did.. messed around on BBS's and learning Turbo Pascal by myself at home (i used DOS, never touched win3.1), i then discovered Linux and and FreeBSD and i knew i was at home, downloading the Slackware disksets over 2400 bps modem, getting it installed, i was in love (especially with the command line interface, multitasking, network environment.. all of it).. i messed around on it for ages, learning C from man pages and Opensource technologies, also learning about networking and administration by installing and learning about all the apps, and especially security side interested me, buffer overflows etc, trying to understand it all, because i believe you can't secure something if you don't understand it in the first place (did same thing learning howto crack software, now i can use that knowledge to employ as many anti-cracking routines as possible in my software). i then moved to Windows programming, first learning by writing a few modules for the Litestep opensource shell for Windows, after a very quick pickup and my LS modules becoming very popular i was asked onto the Litestep development team where i learnt more and more about Windows coding, and quickly (within first ~2 months of coding C on Windows) gained a reputation in the shell community and being referred to as a coding machine, with the ability to churn out code so quickly (partly due to having no life).. anyway now i'm co-owner of a small virtual company, we have very low overheads due to all working from home, the other application programmer with us also started on Linux.

anyway sorry for rambling and getting off track, can't help it sometimes.. my point is, my personal life is a complete mess, but the things i talked about above are the only things that ever made me truly happy, and i've never really thought about it until now but when you look back at the roots the one thing that helped create it was Linux. it truly is not only a great server OS but a fantastic learning tool too, and for that i thank you.

and to IBM, while it was a relatively short stay (bout 8 months) due to them closing up the work centres for cost cutting, i thank you too for the only 'proper' job in my life, i thank you for giving me a chance to proove myself and not judging me based solely on education level. i know i taught the guys there stuff (i was the 'Windows 95 expert' because it had just came out, and the 2 older guys i worked with were a bit set in their ways and slightly old fassioned).. but they also taught me alot too, i especially thank Quentin for taking the time to teach me one on one, this wasn't a class environment or anything but he still took the time to not only sit down explaining things to me and teaching me a bit about electronics on the side, with regards to the hardware that can't just simply be 'replaced', within the first few months, because things like failed monitors often had a common cause, and no troubleshooting was involved i was allowed to solder and repair them too, i also had the oppurunity to go out and install custom touchscreen thinkpads in the Telstra vehicles, setting up radio packet modems and everything, even people in other departments took the time to help me learn, the networking guys would go print up entire books for me free of chargem, pulling thinkpads apart that needed repair. the point is noone has given me so much trust in my entire life, sure i did break some things (i dropped a printer cover a bit of plastic broke off, and i installed an imported Compaq (we did their repairs too) power supply into the machine without checking the switch was on 240v first (it was still on 110v) so when i plugged the cord, while leaning over the desktop case to get to the back, and proceeded to get the biggest shock of my life when it blew up inches from my head, only a cap in the ps blew and Q repaired it.. i felt really bad but they were all laughing and joking around saying don't worry about it. but i wasn't alone when one of the older guys had just put a new flyback transformer into a monitor, without attaching the suction cup thing back into the tube, he proceeded to turn it on to check if it worked, the suction cup looking thing was just hanging loose onto the metal workbench.. so all the power from the flyback transformer went into the workbench, back into the power circuit, the whole room was buzzing with energy because it was like being in an electrified metal cage, the flourecent lights going nuts and managed to fry a terminal or 2 we used, and the old 286 work machine.. everything was easily repaired tho and everyone had a good laugh, and i learnt that everyone makes mistakes.

once again sorry for rambling, i have no idea how much i've written, and if you want to skip over it here's the summary: both Linux (and lets not forget OpenBSD, FreeBSD.. Opensource.. the whole community) and IBM do make a difference and once again i'm greatful to both for bringing some hapiness and meaning into my life.

Re:To those who are still in school....

[Samrobb]

For a recent grad, yah - ask for a transcript. It's exepected, and given the lack of significant work experience that many new grads have, it's a way to gauge their skill and general knowledge.

What were they going to get from my 12-year-old transcript, though - particularly since it was one that detailed my educational achievements in a completely unrelated field (something that they would have understood if they would have just read the stupid thing)? At that point, I didn't even have my GPA on my resume - just that I graduated in '91 with a degree in MEMS. Also, while I had taken several continuing education and graduate courses in CS in the past few years, they didn't care about those... nope, they wanted my undergrad transcript.

All in all, it sounded an awful lot like someone in HR came up with this policy after the sort of situation you described... someone more interested in covering their own butt than in actually doing a decent job screening candidates.

The whole situation reminds me of the one I ran into when I got out of the Navy, before I decided to look for a job as a developer... I figured, since I had a degree in metallugical engineering, and I was living in Pittsburgh, hey! - it might be a good idea to inquire about open positions with some of the steel companies in the area. Half a dozen phone calls later, every company I called had told me that, essentially, they only hired people through the Pittsburgh Job Bank, and that I would have to file for unemployment before they would consider me. Grrrr... I suppose they must have had a different policy for new grads ("Hey! Great interview, we love you, just file for unemployment as soon as you graduate and maybe we'll hire you...") At that point in my life, filing for unemployment just wasn't a smart idea, so decided to do something else entirely.

Re:To those who are still in school....

[Inthewire]

Junis? Is that you?

Re:OS/2, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We can all see that your trolling is a thinly veiled expression of your serious emotional inadequacy", anyone?

Re:F is for firsty

[MissMyNewton]

For some strange reason, I just walked down to the kitchen and got a cookie, even though I wasn't the -least bit- hungry!

Weird.

Wonder what that was all about...

Thinkpads...

[Bartab]

I have three laptops, a Vaio F190, Tecra 8100, and a Thinkpad 600E. Only the 600e works flawlessly in Linux. It's the only working winmodem in the lot, the only one that allows me to configure the hardware from linux, the only one where every bit of the hardware actually functions under linux (at least, the later 2.4 kernels) and the only one to have "How to Open the Case" documents on the web.

I've had it for awhile, and while it took some time to ramp up the Thinkpad Linux support is far superior to pretty much every other laptop support available. To call the support "sporatic" is inflamatory at best.

Re:Thinkpads...

[Ymerej]

To call the support "sporatic" is inflamatory at best.

And at worst, it shows that you don't spell very well.

Re:Thinkpads...

[Anonymous Coward]

and a Thinkpad 600

This is posted on a Thinkpad 600 with RH7.x on it. It is an old 233 that takes several minutes to compile things and start tomcat up etc. I tried to replace it a year ago with a Thinkpad a21e(?). I had to send that one back, it didnt support Linux at all well. If the power cable fell out the machine would lock up amongst others. I am still using the old 600 but it is showing its age, there isnt much paint left on the front. I have been looking at the laptops at www.asacomputers.com , as maybe a replacement. IBM wont get my money again for a laptop.

mocom--

i work at red hat and *i* want to take this class.

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat doesn't have anything like this, sadly. There are people you can ask about this stuff, but there's been no comprehensive effort to spread knowledge. Pity.

They wouldn't say otherwise though, would they?

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that all these vendors, which do not originate from software production, with how much passion they promote OSS/FS developement, and
always for the community --the oldest myth.

I always though that OSS/FS developers were writting software to satisfy themselves and produce software usefull for them and the community.

Well, with IBM's, Sun's, Transmeta's,... investments on LINUX, I can tell you for sure that what you see out and merget on OSS/FS, is what has or will have a great financial impact for those vendors.

What do you expect IBM Linux engineering team to promote, Windows application deployment?

Re:rofl

[Shiblon]

Unix doesn't belong on the desktop, it wasn't designed for that purpose. It's like racing a hummer against a ferrari.

I suppose that Mac OS X doesn't belong on the desktop, then?

In my experience, it's very slick and very easy to use, certainly more like a Ferrari than a Hummer. My wife had no trouble adapting to it, and she has serious misgivings about learning to use Linux. Unix appears to work quite well on the desktop.

Re:Linux Geekin'

[Anonymous Coward]

And I suppose you wrap your terminal at 40 because it also 'looks cool'.

Nice troll, though. I guess.

MOD PARENT UP +5 Insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm glad someone noticed this. People only laugh at you when you try to interject 'myself' into sentences where it doesn't belong.

Even though you're trying to make yourself sound eloquent and show that you've mastered the English language, you only sound like a retard.

Re:rofl

[MrResistor]

When you get linux, you get a car in a box you have to assemble yourself. Some parts aren't right, don't function, or are currently unsupported. By the time you're done you have something that looks like a cross between a yugo and pinto and runs like colt vista.

I'm not sure what sort of Linux you're using, but I find this comment fairly amusing since you also advocate BSD. Personally, I haven't noticed any of these problems in the last year or two. I use SuSE. I buy the new version, throw the DVD in the drive (from which it boots cleanly, in your face MS!), spend about 30 seconds modifying the partition recomendations to my liking, 20 minutes or so modifying the default package install, and let it go. No fuss, no muss. No CD shuffle or endless reboots as I install the drivers for my hardware and the apps I need to make my machine useful.

Every Linux install I've done since SuSE 7.1 has been smooth like butter, and I've done a few. I've also done more installs of the various Windows flavors than I care to think about. Judging from my experience, your comment describes Windows perfectly, but doesn't apply to Linux at all.

Perhaps you should try a modern distro one of these days?

AI Kernel

[noz]

Dave Hansen: HAL, do my next 3 work assignments for me!

HAL9000: I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave...

Re:F is for firsty

[carlos_benj]

Subliminal reaction to your /. identity. You were missing your Fig Newton and went to get one.

Re:F is for firsty

[carlos_benj]

g/subliminal/s//subconscious/

Or maybe subcutaneous, I don't know....

Re:rofl

[MaxVlast]

Man, you have issues. Maybe it's because meat popsicles aren't socially accepted yet.

I'm no fan of KDE/GNOME/etc., but the fact that they're there is saying something.

You, on the other hand, said nothing. Simply stating that UNIX wasn't designed for the desktop and giving a random analogy doesn't prove any points. Why is it like a hammer? Who is the Ferrari? Windows? Why is it unsuitable?

BSD-basedness of Mac OS X isn't at all a whole 'nother can of worms. It's a UNIX system. Libraries run on UNIX systems. Avi's been asked why OS X isn't Linux-based before and he pointed out the obvious: they already had a perfectly good OS running on Mach/BSD. Not because another kernel/etc. couldn't do it, but because there was no need to re-do work. The reader with the long attention span will note that the OpenStep libraries were released for Solaris and Windows NT. It doesn't have anything to do with which can of worms it occupies. And Macs are good for much more than graphics, but I'll opt to stop here and not further feed a troll.

Re:rofl

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux IS Unix. gah.

What does IBM *REALLY* think of Linux....

[Anonymous Coward]

There are several business choices that IBM continues to make that when reading between the lines could cause you to wonder if IBM thinks Linux is the future or a present fad. It is true that IBM is putting forth resources to Linux but that was also true of the PC when IBM still considered the PC to be a fad.

Consider this:

- While IBM considered the PC to be nothing more than a fad they where slow to release the basics that would make the PC more competive with the mainframe such as networking adapters. It wasn't until ethernet had already come out that IBM got around to releasing Token Ring. They continued to push that mainframe 3270 terminals where a super-set of the PC capablities.

- While IBM states that Linux will run on several of their systems including the RS/6000, they continually refuse to release the basics. There is no Tivoli Storage Manager to backup Linux PPC and the specifications for writting drivers for their SSA adapters are still unavailable to Linux developers.

- IBM now promotes AIX to now be a super-set of Linux which is now at the version 5.1"L" (where L stands for Linux personality). In fact, this marketing move seems to clearly indicate that IBM considers Linux to be nothing more than hot-word compliant as AIX 5L does nothing to acknowledge the additional features Linux provides such as /dev/random & ipchains/iptables. Since AIX 5L pritty much does not provide any of the additional features provided by the only thing that is truely Linux (the kernel), it would be more approbate to call it AIX 5G for it's "compatiblity" with GNU libraries/applications. But GNU is not as hot-word compliant as Linux.

Solaris vs Linux -- Hardware is a big part of it

[RussRoss]

One of the biggest strengths of Solaris has always been the Sparc hardware. Hot swappable components, beefier IO channels, etc. have contributed much to typical Solaris installations over a typical x86 server running Linux. x86 machines are built with home and business users in mind, not servers. Server lines from most vendors are little more than home machines with a little extra memory and a bigger hard drive.

Have a look at Solaris on x86, which Sun dropped completely for a while (I don't remember for sure, but I think they brought back some support for it). It has never been used much, because those that need the scalability and stability that Solaris is reputed to provide know that they'll only get it when using Sun's hardware.

I'm guessing that we'll see an iterative process that will improve matters on the x86/Linux side. As Linux is used more widely for server deployments, more hardware vendors will jump in the game and provide better hardware, and as the hardware becomes available the reputation of Linux on that hardware will improve and the cycle will repeat itself. For now, there are a few small vendors (small marketshare) trying to make x86 server hardware that is actually appropriate for big installations, but most people buy a machine labeled for server use and install Linux on it, and then they blame the shortcomings of the desktop user hardware on Linux.

- Russ

GPA

[bluGill]

I've never understood how so many people can look for a 4.0 GPA. 2.0 is average, and in all my classes the professors made sure that most of the students got a C. Now I can accept that the F and D students re-take the class or drop out, but that still doesn't explain how there can possibly be that many people with GPAs of more than 3.5.

There is one exception to the above: honors class. To stay in Honors you need a 3.0 are better GPA, so a C in honors can easially mean you learned less than a F student in the equivelent non-honors class. Yes I'm bitter, I had friends in honors with a better GPA for this reason alone.

Re:GPA

[larry bagina]

2.0 is the average number between 0.0 and 4.0, but it might not be the average GPA... Quite frankly, there is grade inflation in many colleges or classes... a more honest standard would show your GPA as well as the average GPA for every class you take.

That said, though, a lot of the 0.0-1.0 GPA crowd drop out or get kicked out, so the students that are left are more serious about their education.

Re:GPA

[Squeamish Ossifrage]

It depends where you go to school: At most schools, a C is no longer average, due to grade inflation. Even at Northwestern, which is actually a fairly respectable school, the average GPA is up to 3.3. When you consider that a lot of less-than-driven students drift through large state universities, the average GPA for the real students is actually probably higher still.

Re:GPA

[Waffle Iron]

My university had a policy that if an engineering student's GPA dropped below 2.25 for two semesters, they got booted out. (Most of the ones I knew who met this fate later reemerged as actuaries; one or two of these went on to become well paid, golf playing insurance company vice presidents.)

If we assume a roughly symmetrical bell curve starting there, that would put the actual average GPA of the surviving engineers at about 3.1; mabye a bit lower if the bell curve is skewed by the discontinuity at 2.25.

Re:GPA

[SocietyoftheFist]

Your GPA alone is meaningless unless the class average of each course is known. So you got a A in cs4xxx hey, well look at this the average grade was a B+. Kind of takes the luster off the A doesn't it?

Re:GPA

[sc00p18]

Your GPA alone is meaningless unless the class average of each course is known. So you got a A in cs4xxx hey, well look at this the average grade was a B+. Kind of takes the luster off the A doesn't it?

Not necessarily. Knowing each class average doesn't help unless you are willing to assume that there is a varied distribution of students in each class. I'd say that's not a very good assumption to make all the time. Grading as a technology (yes, believe it or not grading is a technology) actually does a better job of highlighting those students who are conscientious, organized, diligent, hardworking, etc. That being said, it is still very difficult to earn high grades without being somewhat bright. If more students valued learning as much as they value their grades, the need for a grade would likely vanish. -Greg

Re:GPA

[Erwos]

The funny thing about Honors programs is that they tend to be easier than those for the normal folk. Here's why:

Your average Calc class in University of Maryland at College Park (which is where I go to school) is composed of a few hundred people. The average _Honors_ Calc class has a fraction of that, maybe 40 kids. Now, it's easier to learn in a smaller class. Thus, people who get into Honors have a much better chance of doing better at Calc than me because _they get a smaller class_.

My second semester, I was in a 300 person Calc class. Grade? D. The next semester was summer - I retook it, and got an A. While I will say it was a touch easier in general, make no mistake about it - the thing that mattered the most was the smaller class size.

If my crap GPA (2.53 right now?) means I can't work for some well-known firm right out of college, oh well. I'll just have to work for 40k a year at some smaller place until my GPA stops mattering. It's a lot better than not having work at all.

-Erwos

Re:GPA

[ScottBla]

Your GPA alone is meaningless unless the class average of each course is known. So you got a A in cs4xxx hey, well look at this the average grade was a B+. Kind of takes the luster off the A doesn't it?

Not necessarily...depends on who's in the class. It could be a class full of top notch students where everyone gets A's & B's and really deserves them.

Since the GPA is used to gauge the relative performance of different groups of students (whole school or dept or those applying to a specific company or whatever) and the grades are handed out by different instructors teaching under different circumstances, it seems like your only real choice is to assume that they'll average out to something meaningful in the end. It doesn't seem that narrowing down the population whose average you're looking at (e.g. class average) would necessarily give a more accurate measure of how well a particular student is relative to a particular employer's needs.

(spoken by a software engineer, not a statistician :)).

Re:OT: IBM Commercials

[Anonymous Coward]

I think i have noticed Spud Web out there too.

Re:Linux Geekin'

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't understand how you people on 40 column systems manage to use Slashdot. So are you on a Atari or a C64 or what?

Re:OT: IBM Commercials

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah. I forgot him.

Is one of the coaches George Gervin?

Re:rofl

[Sivar]

OT: Hummers, at least the military ones (HMMWV = Highly Mobile Military Wheeled Vehicle) can not only not go fast without paved roads, it cannot go fast at all.

The top speed of a military HMMWV is officially 55MPH (over any road) but you can sometimes push it to 63MPH. That may or may notr be considered fast, but it is definitely not when you are comparing them to Ferraris. :) (I do not know about civilian hummers, which are probably different)

Re:F is for firsty

[ian_vader]

Hell, I'm hungry and I don't have any cookies. That's irony for you.

Re:Linux Geekin'

[vrmlknight]

you are my idol I wish I could be 1/2 the Anonymous Coward that you are

Re:rofl

[PissingInTheWind]

When you get linux, you get a car in a box you have to assemble yourself. Some parts aren't right, don't function, or are currently unsupported.

Yeah, maybe somewhat, but a least the hood isn't welded shut.

Re:That's why Microsoft stays at the top

[Anonymous Coward]

No, IBM (according to the post to which you replied) only interviewed straight-A students, which I've found are not necessarily smarter or better at anything than less-than-A students. In fact, those straight-A students that *were* hired by IBM hadn't even written a single line of code by the time 2Bits had written two drivers.

I don't know if 2Bits was a straight-A student, but I know that high GPA's sure don't indicate someone's knowledge or abilities anymore!

Re:That's why Microsoft stays at the top

[Bingo Foo]

Damn, no mod points....

Re:OS/2, anyone?

[Gleef]

From what I remember, even with all these obstacles, OS/2 Warp sold more retail copies than Windows 95. Microsoft's big marketing coup for Windows 95 was with the OEM's, IBM just didn't have the pull there, especially since IBM directly competed with OEM's with their PS/2 line of computers at the time.

After it was clear that they had lost the consumer desktop, they focussed marketing efforts on direct sales to corporations, and a little on large embedded machines (eg ATMs) and apparently had reasonable success in both those arenas.

Re:ThinkPad support? PowerPC!

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that Thinkpads can't be "thrifty" enough for the "geek market," especially with the (wrongly placed, IMHO) popularity of Apple's iBook. IBM makes tons of low-cost, low-power PowerPC chips, they don't have to worry much about supply issues or markups, Linux runs great on 'em, and Certain Consumer Platforms could be compatible.

Really, IBM has scored some big hardware wins in the 'geek market'- think of the keyboards ;)- and in some cases, the geeks make purchasing calls. If people will buy expensive ruggedized PDAs (Husky, some of Psion's industrial equipment), surely they'd consider a rugged mid-end laptop instead, and PowerPC board designs can be shrunk enough (and PPC is cool enough) that you could encase the whole innards in cushioning rubber while still looking svelte.

As the purveyors of POP, I'm pretty miserable that IBM doesn't actually offer any POP kit for 'normal humans.' If an iPaq can retail for $400, surely a POP laptop, based around a preexisting Thinkpad casing (no design costs) could run below $2,000 and still hit profit. It'd be a niche item, sure, but one the industry needs, and a great way to demonstrate PowerPC's viability outside of fruity clothes.

HZ-less Linux kernel patch?

[Anonymous Coward]

When will IBM contribute this?
HZ=100 constant must go!

-1 Flamebait?

[Sanity]

Lest we need any more proof that you can't criticize Linux or Open Source on Slashdot without our wonderful censorsh...er, I mean moderation system kicking in.

Re:rofl

[Anonymous Coward]

Every Linux install I've done since SuSE 7.1 has been smooth like butter, and I've done a few. I've also done more installs of the various Windows flavors than I care to think about. Judging from my experience, your comment describes Windows perfectly, but doesn't apply to Linux at all.

When are you slashdot kids going to learn that lying about Linux, doesn't actually make it better?

Re:Not again

[NoahsMyBro]

I've been using Win2k Pro for about a year-and-a-half, and I agree. It has proven to be exceptionally stable for me as well.

There is one exception, though. I have found one way to consistently crash (Blue-screen) my Win2k installation. This technique is 100% repeatable. With the PC in sleep/hibernate-mode (power apparently off, but will resume where it was upon a mouse-wiggle), alter the hardware. Change video cards, add a parallel-port card, plug in a USB hub, etc... When you bring the system back up it will freak out.

I can excuse this, as I don't think it's fair to demand the OS hadle this. But it will nail Win 2k dead-to-rights. Other than that situation, though, I've not seen Win2k crash either.

Re:OS/2, anyone?

[rjamestaylor]

What an intelligent, value-adding contribution!

Depends on the race.

[kaladorn]

If I was doing Paris-Dakar, I'd prefer the Hummer (stock) to the Ferrari. The first time the Ferrari hit a stone, it'd have a flat. The first time it hit a 12" drop, it'd smash a strut. The first time it hit 24" of water, it'd die.

Then ask yourself, over the race, which had the higher average speed? I think the Hummer would have a clear victory.

Depends on the race you are trying to run (or task you are trying to perform). If I wanted to take a landmine explosion or to engage a hostile target with fire, I'd consider the Hummer a much better platform. If I wanted to convince hot-but-shallow women to sleep with me, the Hummer might not be a bad choice, but it's noisy and rough riding. The Ferrari would probably be a better choice.

So, what race are you running?

Re:Depends on the race.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what race are you running?

Indy 500.

Re:Depends on the race.

[SK-null]

In 1996 a Hummer entered the Dakar. Due to its weight, it ran in the truck class.
Still, it proved slower than bigger trucks -- about 96 hours slower.
Results

Re:Depends on the race.

[Grishnakh]

Well, I'd certainly rather sleep with hot-but-shallow women than risk my life with landmines and hostile targets, so I guess I'll take the Ferarri.

Re:Depends on the race.

[kaladorn]

You have a point. A really good point. I can't argue with that logic.

I don't get the IP policies

[swillden]

It seems strange to me that the Linux developers can't lift code or at least ideas directly from AIX. It makes me wonder if someone hasn't thought this through.

Lifting a snippet of AIX code and putting it into Linux would constitute relicensing that code under the GPL. Doing so would in no way compromise IBM's ability to continue selling that code under the closed-source license as part of AIX; dual-licensing schemes are an established, proven business model.

The policies described seem very wasteful. Consider: IBM owns the AIX code because they paid the salaries of the engineers who wrote it. In exactly the same way, IBM owns the code written by the IBM kernel hackers, but IBM's management has decided that they'd like to donate this code to the world by releasing it under the GPL. If the IBM kernel team is solving a problem that the AIX team has already solved, then IBM is paying two sets of engineers to solve the same problem twice (IBM does a lot of that, but not usually on purpose). It's likely that both teams will arrive at the same solution (particularly if the AIX team is giving hints), and even to generate highly similar code, but IBM has to pay for it twice!

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense for IBM's kernel team to save developer hours by copying ideas or even code from AIX? It's IBM code that's being given to the world via GPL either way, right? Or are is the AIX team so much better than the Linux team that their code is too valuable to donate, while the crap the Linux team produces is okay to shovel out the door? ;-)

Allowing relicensing of snippets of AIX will allow the kernel team to be more productive, getting IBM more of what it wants Linux to be for less money, that's pretty clear. And IBM would in no way lose control of AIX, so what's the downside?

I can certainly see that it might be a good idea to keep the AIX developers away from Linux code, since succumbing to the temptation to lift a useful routine and drop it into AIX violates the GPL and puts IBM at risk of losing its right to use Linux at all if the misappropriation is discovered. And I can see that there might be certain features or techniques in AIX that IBM prefers not to put in Linux, so it might be good to avoid giving the Linux team free access to the AIX codebase, but I cannot see any reason why, for features/refinements that the Linux team is going to make anyway, they shouldn't save time by getting them from AIX.

How does this intentional reinvention of the wheel protect IBM's IP?

Re:I don't get the IP policies

[cpeterso]

IBM very well does not own all of the AIX code. Why didn't Netscape open-source the JVM? Because they had licensed it from Sun.

Also, I seriously doubt someone could simply cut and paste a "useful routine" from one codebase to another. For a codebase as specific as an operating system kernel, there are too many code dependencies to make cut and paste (from AIX to Linux or vice versa) of much value. Porting JFS to Linux took a long time and that JFS code came from OS/2, not AIX.

Re:I don't get the IP policies

[swillden]

Also, I seriously doubt someone could simply cut and paste a "useful routine" from one codebase to another.

Of course not. I didn't want to get into the technical issues around how the reuse/porting would have to be done, particularly since they're obvious to anyone who's written much software.

The article indicates that the Linux team is not even permitted to see the AIX code, and the AIX team has to be somewhat circumspect about how much they can help. They're restricting and controlling the flow of information. Sure, even if it were unrestricted, a bit of code would at the very least have to be carefully tweaked to fit into its new environment, but they're going far beyond that, making it clear this is for other reasons.

Porting is a lot of work, but generally *is* less work than reinvention, which is why it's done.

Re:I don't get the IP policies

[lindsley]

Since I've already identified myself as an IBM kernel hacker just by participating, this answer will definitely require that I state, for the record, that I do not represent IBM's views on this. These are my personal opinions, and if you sue IBM and make me lose my job, I will find you and get you kicked out of your trailer park.

Now then ...

The short story is, the problem is not one of proper licensing. It's one of losing a business advantage. And I think it's fair to suggest this dilemma is not being faced solely by IBM either.

Let's examine your theoretical snippet of AIX code. It could fall into one of three buckets.

• Useless. Nobody cares if it's open sourced. The overhead and accompanying fear is unnecessary. (That's almost always discovered in hindsight, unfortunately :)
• Useful but hardly secret. The main danger here is that while not secret, it still gives some advantage to "the competition". Maybe the breakthrough was to drop the bubblesort and use a B-tree. Hardly revolutionary but sometimes clever code really isn't complex. (Simple example, I know, but you get the point.) If "the competition" hasn't figured this out already, IBM doesn't want to give them any clues.
• Patent or trade secret. Ok, now IBM has invested real dollars in documenting and protecting this information. Serious scrutiny will happen before it goes out, just because of the dollars already invested.

And of course, remember through all this that "the competition" is not Linux or even Open Source. It's those companies (who may also be promoting and participating in Open Source) who simply happen to send sales people to the same customers IBM is sending sales people to. If IBM can show AIX is better in some way, it would be karma-good but business-stupid to give that up voluntarily. And by placing advantageous code into Open Source they will both make it available to the community at large (good thing) and make it available to the competition (not a good thing.)

Determining code that is patented or constitutes a trade secret is relatively easy. Separating useless from useful is hard (read /. moderating flames if you need an example!) and involves even more lawyers and hackers alike. That's what takes most of the time and effort.

It may comfort you to know there are a host of Linux hackers, only a subset of which participated in the interview, which are hammering at your questions all the time. The engineers hammer, and the lawyers hammer back. In general, the perception is that engineers could care less about IP and lawyers could care less about sharing with the community. Neither is entirely true. Their jobs and goals are very different, and objectively, their ongoing battles -- ahem, I mean dialogues -- do in the end yield a pretty good balance.

Re:I don't get the IP policies

[rice_burners_suck]

I have a better idea. IBM, Sun, SGI and HP should all release all of their source code, no matter what it's for, under the GPL. Then, these companies should put all of their money, engineers and programmers together into an enormous team that would put the best bits of all their source code into Linux and all components and programs that run under Linux, debug these until there are no bugs at all, and optimize them for maximum possible performance (writing the most time consuming portions in the most tightly optimized assembly language possible for every platform supported by Linux).

Linux is cool now. But if this takes place, it will be more cool.

Re:I don't get the IP policies

[swillden]

Since I've already identified myself as an IBM kernel hacker just by participating, this answer will definitely require that I state, for the record, that I do not represent IBM's views on this.

Well, for the record then, I will also state that I am an IBM employee, although not affiliated with the LTC. And my views are also mine and have nothing to do with IBM's.

There, now we're both covered ;-)

The short story is, the problem is not one of proper licensing. It's one of losing a business advantage.

This appears to make sense, but I don't think it really does. I say this because IBM *also* loses the *same* business advantage if the Linux team re-implements some functionality as if it is ported over from AIX. And this lost advantage costs IBM more money than if the functionality were ported.

It seems to me that the issues that should be weighed are related to what the Linux team implements, not whether the implementation borrows from AIX. I can clearly see both sides of the issue, but it seems to me that the "contamination-avoidance" approach doesn't really solve the problem, it just pushes it off to where it doesn't have to be addressed directly.

From the point of view of the IBM kernel hackers, that may actually be the best approach, because you can probably reimplement stuff from AIX with little more than a few hints whereas if you actually had to get permission to adopt AIX ideas you'd never get it done. Plus, writing code is more fun than porting it :-). But that kind of bureacratic end-run, while workable, doesn't seem to be the most efficient way of doing business.

It may comfort you to know there are a host of Linux hackers, only a subset of which participated in the interview, which are hammering at your questions all the time. The engineers hammer, and the lawyers hammer back.

This is what I expected, actually. Engineers are smart people who are perfectly capable of understanding the legal and business situation when they want to, and in this case they have ample reason.

In general, the perception is that engineers could care less about IP and lawyers could care less about sharing with the community.

I wouldn't expect that at all; at least not the part about the engineers. I'm an engineer and I care quite a lot about IP. I do think it's possible that the lawyers couldn't care less about sharing with the community, though :-) Actually, to be fair, my experience with IBM attorneys is that they usually understand that their goal is to facilitate IBM's business, not impede it, and in this case it's clear that to comply with the terms of the GPL, IBM would at least have to give its changes to customers, who would be free to redistribute them, so it makes sense to participate openly in the community.

their ongoing battles -- ahem, I mean dialogues -- do in the end yield a pretty good balance.

Obviously, I'm viewing this from far outside, but I'm not sure I'd agree. The "balance" struck seems not to be a balance at all, but rather a way of avoiding the issue via duplication of effort. IMO, a real balance would be a process for evaluating the business case for and against making particular enhancements to Linux and then approaching the implementation of the selected enhancements in the most efficient way possible.

Good luck to all of you in finding an appropriate balance, by whatever means. Open source is so radically different from the way business has been done that it's quite understandable that even very forward-thinking companies like IBM are still a long way from settling the issues. At least your part of IBM *understands* the issues. I set up a Linux box running SourceForge a couple years back and I got calls from a raft of "very concerned" executives who were concerned about whether or not we could use the SF code without licensing it from someone. They understood that "IBM is into Linux, so we can use it", but couldn't quite grasp the idea that this other pile of software could be used without sending a check to someone. And the notion that we should publish some of our SourceForge enhancements back to the community was met with unabashed horror.

Re:I don't get the IP policies

[swillden]

Whoosh!

Re:I don't get the IP policies

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that you work for IBM, I'm really hoping that your opinon in no way resembles IBMs opinion.

I can understand that they may not own all of the kernel code, and thus cannot release it. But all of the other reasons are very business-stupid, as well as karma-stupid.

Consider, for example, if IBM decided that JFS or EVMS shouldn't be released from AIX so that AIX has an edge. All they've done is make sure that the Linux community will use XFS or reiserfs as the next gen. fs and that LVM will be the volume manager tool (Ie. they've just lost probably millions of dollars in training/PR for their products).

I'm not sure all of IBM understands this, but I'd have hoped you would (then again Red Hat doesn't with rhn, so...).

Re:I don't get the IP policies

[natmsincome.com]

The problem isn't so much the code but the Patents. I would expect this is more to protect the programers than the code. :-)

Re:I don't get the IP policies

[swillden]

The problem isn't so much the code but the Patents. I would expect this is more to protect the programers than the code. :-)

Maybe. If the code that is protected by patent is documented as such (as it should be, and as the IBM coding guidelines I have suggest), then it's a simple matter of recognizing that the code cannot be ported to Linux without getting a decision from management to license that patent for use by open source projects. If management okays it, then fine. If not, then that's the end of it.

Note that this situation is precisely the same even if the IBM kernel hackers can't lift code from AIX. If they semi-independently reinvent the patented algorithm or technique (not unlikely if they get any hints from AIX developers) then the same situation exists, with the difference that the kernel hackers are less likely to know of the patent encumbrance.

Re:I don't get the IP policies

[Suppafly]

if they are going to allow snippets, they may as well relicense the entire aix os..

Re:I don't get the IP policies

[swillden]

That doesn't follow at all. AIX is better than Linux in many ways, and IBM makes money selling AIX. My point is that for features that exist in AIX that IBM is adding to Linux, it makes more sense to port than to reimplement. There will be other features which IBM will not want to add to Linux so as to retain the competitive advantages of AIX.

GPA is not all important

[Firehead]

I graduated with a 2.7 GPA and was hired by IBM.

I fully agree with Rick's comments about spin. Overall GPA is less important than good marks in classes related to the job you are applying for.

If your worried about being passed over for interviews because of your GPA, don't put it on your resume. Instead, try to emphasize applicable skills/coursework/experience. Do the same thing in your interviews. Try talking about your favorite project rather than explaining why you failed calculus three times. If you can demonstrate that you know your stuff, you will get hired.

Re:GPA is not all important

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you so much, I have a 2.7 after my junior year but a lot of good experience w/ the Navy programming. Good to hear your story. :)

Re:GPA is not all important

[Suppafly]

Glad to see its possible to get a real job even if you failed calculus 3 times.. perhaps there is hope for me yet.

Re:GPA is not all important

[enneff]

He's a janitor.

yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe in marketing.

it sure hasnt help them code well

Re:Not again

[schon]

I've been running a Win2K system very hard for well over a year without a single system crash, burp, or BSOD. Not one.

And I do work for a company that was running a Win2K server not hard at all (9 users, doing nothing more strenuous than file serving), and they've experiences two major crashes (which required "disaster recovery" measures) in less than a year, both due to bugs in the OS.

Only in MS-land does "you're low on disk space" equate to "SYSTEM ERROR - MAJOR FAULT - I WILL NOT BOOT ANY MORE!", and require you to do a fresh install so that you can delete the stupid log files (that weren't deleted because of an OS bug) that were simply logging "YOUR DISK IS ALMOST FULL"

Re:Not again

[Anonymous Coward]

I too have been running W2K for quite a while, and NT4 for years before that. I've also been running XPPro for almost 6 months now, and I'm about to ready to give up on that and wipe the disk clean and install W2k on that machine. XP is just too flaky... no blue screens, just system hangs and have to hit the reset button to restart the damn thing too often. When it runs, XP does indeed run *some programs* more quickly and smoothly, but the instability tells me that they hurriedly shipped this thing out the door before it was really done. W2K/SP2 kicks XP's butt for dependability.

sound on thinkpad 600E

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone got their sound working on a 600E post or email me, i've never been able to get the sound working!
email me at spamme@ll.net (seriously thats my email addy)

Linux on ThinkPads

[hyyx]

I thought this was funny. In his response, he gave a link to "meager information that we put together during a meeting once" regarding getting Linux to run on ThinkPads. I think "Neat-o, I have a ThinkPad and would love some Linux configuration help for it." I follow the link, then I chose Networking. I see the option for

Accessing the IBM interal net from outside

"That sounds pretty interesting", I thought. Try it for yourself. No soup for you!

Re:Linux on ThinkPads

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.sr71.net/slashdot/ gives

"bad, bad 3l334 /. h@x0r$"

Re:Linux on ThinkPads

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it is a wry comment meant for IBMers. The IBM intranet is notoriously hard to get working over a standard internet connection. The programs (MTS/SINE) are some of the flakiest things I have ever seen.

Re:Linux on ThinkPads

[hyyx]

IBM has phasing out intranet connectivity using MTS and SINE. They have been pushing AT&T Net Client for some time now. It works pretty good for me and seems secure enough (Managed VPN - IPSec Dual Access). Using SINE was so cool though; you got a RSA SecurID key fob that had a red LED display to show your (numeric) key.

probably Customer driven: IP policies

[fw3]

Allowing relicensing of snippets of AIX ... And IBM would in no way lose control of AIX, so what's the downside?

Even if it's just 'party line / pro-forma'. I can well imagine that some of IBM's customers would be unhappy to think that AIX code were being placed into GPL.

One of IBM's major motivations for leveraging Linux is not to capture the x/86 servers into IBM's hardware sales (tho I'm sure that happens). Rather, OSS has moved substantially to a place where Linux-isms are the bread and butter and if you want to run OSS software on UNIX, it's more efficient to create AIX-L(inux) to simplify OSS support for the platform.

*That* (I think) is the driver for investing in linux generally, and IBM recognizes that you don't really get to play in OSS without giving something back. And they are getting to play in the design and understanding in detail which will allow thier AIX5L to interoperate better with linux itself.

Additionally, just pulling the code from one unix and inserting it to another probably wouldn't play well in terms of reliability. Kernel data structures are going to be different, and I think to generate bug-free code you're better off simply taking the *idea* and writing it from scratch in the different environment.

Also, note: it's hardly a new phenomenon. I know AIX coders who've consistently provided substantial pieces of code directly to the Linux platform since the mid '90's. And I know of instances where some (not very smart) IBM customers were substantially unhappy about this.

Umm... College GPA

[kunsan]

Not high school. Last time I checked (about 5 years) colleges / universities use only 4.0 grade scales. That Honors crap is only in high school!

You get what you earn! Mine was 3.8

Cheers!

Windows 2000 - what its really suitable for

[Indy1]

Windows 2k professional makes for a pretty good WORKSTATION os. IT doesnt crash very often, has a good IP stack, and a lot of apps availible for it. Windows 2000 Server is a bloated, buggy, mediocre hack of 2k professional. It tacks on a pile of services and builds them deeply inside the OS instead of treating them like daemons /normal programs that linux/unix does. And thats why Windows sucks so badly as a server. In unix/linux, if your dns/samba/whatever daemon bombs, it just bombs, it doesnt usually take out the kernel, the ip stack, other services, etc. With win2k server and active directory, if one thing goes, the whole taco goes boom.

One thing though regarding the low disk space = server crash problem. Did you enable user qouta's? Did you separate the OS partition from the share's partition? No matter what OS your running for a server, you should always separate your OS from your data.

Re:Not again

[Tsugumi]

Well, I'm sorry, but that honestly just means that your company doesn't know how to admin their win2k server. I work i9n a team of Solaris/Linux sysadmins, but we sit pretty close to the wintel guys, and they know how to keep their servers up. Stop going for the cheap anti-M$ karma.

Re:rofl

[datastew]

In my opinion, the Pinto and the Yugo didn't look that bad, and I have a Colt Vista which runs just great!

Did IBM management approve this quiz?

[John Harrison]

First off, all the high school students out there who want to take the ACT test should study this list. If you can get the right answers and understand the hows and whys of them this knowledge will serve you well on the test. High test scores never hurt. IBM gives all prospective new hires an "Information Processing Aptitude Test" that is something of a beast. First test of its type that I have ever taken in which I was pressed for time. Doing well on this test may be important to your future at IBM depending on the department you are in.

Secondly, Shawn should know that I have not been helping him rewrite the VM and there is nobody else at IBM who is named John who currently writes any code with Shawn, thought this was not always so.

How do we encourage ViaVoice?

[RabidChipmunk]

As a user/developer/writer who's hands are on the way out. Voice Rec is a beautiful thought. I own ViaVoice Pro 8 for MSWin. It was the only thing holding me near windows.

I'll happily both pay and code for the newest engine under linux. If it would get it past the 99.9% accuracy point, I'd buy a power5 to run it on.

I tried to use the contact on the SDK page, but it bounced. Who do I have to bribe?

If IBM is listening, be aware that people who have hand problems are more than willing to shell out the cash for the top end hardware. A dual Opteron is cheaper than a new pair of hands. The minimum hardware requirements are pointless. Use my CPU power; I'll buy an extra one to run emacs with.

How about multiple microphones?

Re:How do we encourage ViaVoice?

[Anonymous Coward]

As I work for IBM Voice Systems, I think that I should be qualified enough to extrapolate a tad bit. Yes, there are unix flavors available for ViaVoice core technology components of TTS and recognition engines. These are usually server oriented and aren't delivered as part of the consumer desktop oriented product. However, there is a product that may support desktop needs,
http://www-3.ibm.com/software/speech/linux/dicta ti on.html

IBM ViaVoice Dictation for Linux allows you to:

Say letters and numbers naturally
Dictate memos and documents using natural voice
Correct, edit, and format documents using your voice
ViaVoice Dictation for Linux's Dictation's text-to-speech feature reads text out loud to you
Multi-users are supported for each system

Re:rofl

[MrResistor]

When are you slashdot kids going to learn that lying about Linux, doesn't actually make it better?

Perhaps when we actually have to start lying?

ViaVoice is available for Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www3.ibm.com/software/speech/linux/dictatio n.html

IBM ViaVoice Dictation for Linux allows you to:

Say letters and numbers naturally
Dictate memos and documents using natural voice
Correct, edit, and format documents using your voice
ViaVoice Dictation for Linux's Dictation's text-to-speech feature reads text out loud to you
Multi-users are supported for each system

Re:ThinkPad support?--Been There, Done That.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Linux & FreeBSD running on my TinkPad 600X and ThinkPad 390E for well over a year now. I will say however I use FreeBSD (no problems) more than Linux, so YMMV. I found drivers for everything I need on it, so support--there is support.

I guess I should go see what all the fuss is about.

Re:rofl

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the laugh, your complete lack of knowledge about the Mac has given me a laugh.

If you actually think you have to pay $3500 for a decent Mac, you haven't even looked at Apple's site. Hell, you have to be a VERY out-of-touch sys admin to think that the only Macs available are $3500 graphics powerhouses.

How is being BSD based a whole different can of worms? BSD is more "Unixy" than Linux.

I sure as hell wouldn't want someone like you in charge of ANYTHING at my business; even the watercooler.

Someone mod the above either -1 Troll or -1 Moron.

The unanswered question still remains...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do IBM engineers keep their data on IBM GXP hard drives?

http://www.tech-report.com/news_reply.x/3494

Re:Not again

[trybywrench]

i played with win2k pro. server a while back and came away pretty impressed, more so then with any other Microsoft OS. The networking stuff that has been added/revised is pretty rad and the built in telnet server is cool too ( provided it is used wisely ). I still run strictly Linux servers (file and DB) at my job but if i got into a position where Microsoft absolutely had to be used I wouldn't panic.

supporting both GNOME and KDE?

[ReinoutS]

hmmph, the whole of bugzilla.gnome.org contains five bugs reported by people with an ibm.com address, of which three are AIX-specific.

Well they do have one or two articles on GNOME development on their developerworks site. But I'm convinced Sun has contributed countless more manhours to the user interface aspect of GNOME than IBM has.

Re:supporting both GNOME and KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

> hmmph, the whole of bugzilla.gnome.org contains five bugs reported by people with an ibm.com address, of which three are AIX-specific.

...and you're certain, are you, that IBMers couldn't possibly have contributed under non-IBM email addresses?...

I would panic.

[SHEENmaster]

I run my server/desktop on Linux Mandrake 8.2 because off the combination of user-friendlyness, and the inherent superiority of UNIX-based opensource operating systems. I have an old celeron hooked up running win2k pro for compiling win!#$ binaries of my software(not really necessary, but most windos users don't know how to run a java program).

If I had the resources to run a dedicated server, it would be OpenBSD. OpenBSD is a bitch to install. It has limited hardware support, and a suffocatingly strict security scheme. But its record of security speaks for its self. No remote holes in 4 years. Windows is something like 4 second.

Re:I would panic.

[Anonymous Coward]

My inherent superiority is hooked to the fact that my ego is absolutely out of control.
How about you?

Re:OS/2, anyone?

[DrVxD]

> From what I remember, even with all these obstacles, OS/2 Warp sold more retail copies than Windows 95
"Shipped" might be a better word than "sold" - myself and a whole bunch of people I knew at the time got copies of Warp for the price of a postage stamp.
I really liked it, except for the poor driver support (IIRC, I had an Orchid F1280 video card at the time, and the best resolution I could get under Warp was 640x480x16colours - which sucked bit time.)

Re:rofl

[Anonymous Coward]

> Linux IS Unix. gah.

Yes, but the post was about Linux vs OS X, not Unix in general. Wife liked OS X and wasn't sure about Linux.

Re:rofl

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you looked at IBM's stock price lately!?!

How funny

[Anonymous Coward]

I would guess that you work at MS, so you must be aware that in any group situation there will always be differences. In this case, the group is large and with varied corporated differences. In spite of this, the Linux kernel (and OS) have much lower security issues than that wonderful OS that you sell.
As to the state that Linux is in, well, it is in every state in the world and growing bigger by the minute (soon the second). Perhaps that is what caused your troll

Hurd?

[extrasolar]

Isn't this what the Hurd is for?

linux at IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

unfortunately, IBM's Linux strategy doesn't carry through to all the morons in the company. where i work i'm getting flack for suggesting that we use Linux unstead of w2k for departmental file serving, despite the fact that we're discussing the issue specifically because w2k is totally inadequate.

Re:linux at IBM

[gtester]

I'm surprised to hear this. In Australia, IBM is migrating from OS/2 departmental file servers to Linux. It was unexpected but a very cool thing to do.

crashing win2k

[Anonymous Coward]

Last night I was at my friends place. He was going to make me a copy of redhat. He runs win2k pro and said it hasn't crashed on him. Well when he tryed to download redhat it locked up. He killed task and tryed again, this time it really locked up and he had to hit the power button. This also happened to another friend of mine, different website. Seems win2k pro only crashes when I am there to witness it. They both swear that that was the first time win2k pro has crashed. My linux box has ran for a hundred and twenty days straight with out any problems. 17 students tryed to install win2k pro, 2 succeeded, 15 failed. Same students installed redhat on same systems 17 succeeded. Not impressed with win2k pro.

GPA is all that can get you in the door

[barzok]

Doesn't matter how good your resume is, how l337 you are, if you don't have that magic number on there, you won't get an interview.

When I was campaigning for jobs towards the end of college, I put in a bid for an interview with a company that I won't name but it's the parent company for one of the Big Three TV networks in the US, a company known primarily by its 2 initials. I got called by the interviewer ahead of time, and she said "your GPA is lower than we usually look for, but you worked for us 3 summers, who'd you work for so I can talk to them?" I told her, she made some calls.

Got the interview even though my GPA wasn't what they were looking for. Did pretty well at the interview, she passed me on to other areas of the company. Someone at corporate HQ called me, and didn't have my resume in hand. She asked me to tell her about myself, then cut me off - "what's your GPA?" I told her, she said "I don't understand why you were even given a resume, you shouldn't have been. Send me your resume." I did, and never heard from that company again.

Re:Solaris vs Linux -- Hardware is a big part of i

[Anonymous Coward]

NO, Most server machines are NOT home machines with a little extra memory and larger hard drives.
I'd hate to be where you are at thinking nonsense like this.

Re:Not again

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm.
Karma is cheap because it's fake, like you.
Secondly:
If you want win2k to play with and know how to make it work then do it.
But please don't accuse other people of egregious
grief when all they were doing is commenting on
a demonstrable problem with the OS.

Thank You::you can go now!

Great interview

[firefly_blue]

I find it very encouraging that IBM are alot of effort in to Linux and they are doing it fairly i.e. contributing back to the community.
Fantastic!

Re:Solaris vs Linux -- Hardware is a big part of i

[TheOrquithVagrant]

A modern "high-end" x86 server in the same price range as a SUN Sparc-based server is most definitely NOT "little more than home machines with more memory and a bigger harddrive". In fact, the only components that you won't find hot-swappable in any x86 based server are the CPU and RAM, and I'm not 100% sure about RAM. PCI cards, Harddisks, powersupply etc can all be hot-swapped on decent x86 servers.

IBM dropping Thinkpad support? (Re:ThinkPad suppo)

[Rick_T]

> IBM should hire 10 guys like me, pay them
> $25 an hour, UPS them some equipment, and let them
> hack ThinkPads all day from home.

According to a post (this morning!) on the Thinkpad mailing list, IBM's dropping their Thinkpad Linux support project and laying off those employees.

It looks like you'd be better off staying with those Dells if their Linux compatibility is good...

Here's an excerpt from the message to the Thinkpad mailing list about Linux support for Thinkpads:

>> But, after 3 years, IBM has decided to
>> no longer fund that project, and as of Monday,
>> June 24th, [the guy who sent the mail] will be
>> layed-off from IBM as part
>> of IBM's recent Server Group "resource action."

Women not in engineering

[leandrod]

I can't remember the URL and haven't bookmarked it, but some time ago there was a nice explanation for women going into Medicine instead of Engineering or Computing: Medicine pays more and work less.

Not to mention that there may be a natural or social differentiation in roles and tastes, and that's not bad in itself. I don't see anything in the Natural Law stating each profession must have a 50-50% split on sex lines. We Brasilians tend to like being real men and having our women really different from ourselves.

Re:Women not in engineering

[ChanxOT5]

Having just completed my first year at the University of Toronto for Engineering [obviously I don't speak on behalf of anyone], I'd like to say that your post is disgusting.

First of all, there are a lot of women in undergrad engineering at U of T, and a lot of my T.A.s (grad engineering students) were women too.
Some of them are even hot :P

Most disturbing, however, is that "We Brasilians tend to like being real men."

What the hell does being a "Real man" have to do with engineering? Nothing. Most of the female engineers I know are doing much better than I am, and I'm doing pretty well. Additionally, most of them look better than I do too :)

It's pigs like you who turn them away. You should be ashamed.

PS Waterloosers suck.

Re:Women not in engineering

[ChanxOT5]

Oh yeah, and I notice that your .sig doesn't say
anything about a being a P.Eng or any B.ASc or B.E.

Don't speak on behalf of us if you haven't put in the time.

[note I'm not either, but I'm working damn hard towards it.]

Re:Women not in engineering

[leandrod]

> your post is disgusting.

You disgust yourself too easily. Spoiled by Northern Europe cultural malaise AKA bad conscience AKA political correctness, probably.

> First of all, there are a lot of women in undergrad engineering at U of T, and a lot of my T.A.s (grad engineering students) were women too.

and? I didn’t say there are no women, just less. And that’ a general statement, you can’t disproof it just by citing a particular experience.

> What the hell does being a "Real man" have to do with engineering?

Perhaps if people will do what they like instead of trying to keep a stupid 50-50% split in every profession, men will follow their natural or social tendency towards some of them, and women towards other. And then, perhaps Engineering and Computing Sciences will be preferred by more men than women. Is that so difficult to understand?

Re:Women not in engineering

[leandrod]

> Oh yeah, and I notice that your .sig doesn't say anything about a being a P.Eng or any B.ASc or B.E.

And...? Why would that be relevant?

> Don't speak on behalf of us if you haven't put in the time.

You must be talking to someone else, I never spoke on behalf of anyone, at least not in this thread. Oh, sorry, spoke on behalf of Brasilians, from which part of Brasil are you?

Re:Women not in engineering

[AForwardMotion]

I have an old good woman friend (from high school) who is hellbent on pursueing a career in computer programming. She's going to graduate school next year and a 4.0 student so watch out! (She doesn't talk to any of us normal uber nerds anymore because she thinks she is becoming a "super uber nerd") -Chris Peters 22 year old programmer

Re:Women not in engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have a good point and present it pretty well too. I'm a marine engineer in Mexico and wish there were more women in my field, but things just aren't that way I guess.

I agree it's probably the rampant political correctness in the U.S. that causes people to think the way they do. Unfortunately it will probably take this pathetic wave of PCness to get way more women into the sciences. The two best mathematics teachers I've ever were women (well, I'm sure they're still women), there should just be more, so whatever works.

Re:Women not in engineering

[leandrod]

> I think you have a good point and present it pretty well too.

Thanks for the compliment, that’s a rare thing indeed around here!

> I'm a marine engineer in Mexico and wish there were more women in my field, but things just aren't that way I guess.

I guess it’s not PC to say that, but there may be more than one reason for that wish!

> Unfortunately it will probably take this pathetic wave of PCness to get way more women into the sciences.

But then is that a good thing in itself?

> The two best mathematics teachers I've ever were women (well, I'm sure they're still women), there should just be more, so whatever works.

A reasonable conclusion, but from a small sample. And we must be careful about roles: women traditionally have been into teaching, but many woman teachers will rather have a male than female school principal, and that not because of any romantic delusion, but just to avoid known, common problems that tend to arise with female principals.

Last but not least, I must disagree with the ‘whatever works’ part. There are something that must be done or avoided because of ethics, not expediency.

It's taking a long time to find your backup?

[vanguard]

Well, I don't know what you're running into but I wonder if you're looking for somebody who can do what has taken you years (?) to learn? It's going to be very difficult to find somebody who is an exact copy of you because you've become custom built for your job.

Hopefully, you'll find somebody who can learn and fit in as well as you have.

Vanguard

linux kernel debugging and profiling

[Dossy]

Why must Linus adopt this? The community has already done something about this: Linux Kernel State Tracer (LKST) and Linux Kernel Crash Dumps (LKCD) ... When these things have proven themselves to be both generally useful and stable, I'm sure they'll make their way into the mainstream Linux kernel and distributions. -- Dossy

Re:Not again

[Tsugumi]

Wow. Flames from anonymous cowards are about as interesting as "windoze sucks" comments.

Re:Not again

[Jeffk67]

It's your hardware but the idea of changing video cards while the PC is in sleep mode makes me cringe. The power isn't really OFF off. You can damage your PC like this and possibly electrocute yourself. I have two removeable hard drives one with Win2K and on with Linux. After installing the last service pack I haven't had anymore problems with it. The Linux install works great except that when running X it sometimes locks the PC up hard. I think this is a driver issue with my Radeon video card and I put the blame on ATI for not developing drivers for X. I should have checked before buying an ATI card. Works great under windows though.