Loki is a business and should intelligently not allow evangelism to dictate their opportunities. If SDL is ported to BSD and that will allow them to build BSD versions of their products with simple recompiles, then it would make sense to do the build and include it on the CDs. If they can get two people to buy their games for BSD and the cost to produce the games is as simple as typing 'make bsd', then they have made money. Not doing so would be a waste of a possible income stream.
True, but the real problem is *support*. If the codebase is *exactly* the same, then it is, of course not an issue. However, I assume that there will need to be at least a slight divergence to get around OS problems. That being said, I do however, think that most xBSD users will be more than happy to put up with any level of bugginess (or help debug, even!) so user interest is shown.
as mentioned in an article before, there is a patch that is required by win95b to utilize the 100mhz-bus chips (K62-350+). Get that he re
Also, since AMD chips are pre-overclocked (they redline more than intel chips), they really need fans/cooling devices. Make sure you upgrade your heat sink to match your processor. I had a tough time playing SMAC after I upgraded from 266 to 400 until I replaced the fan.
I serve a community. I'm wealthy today because my efforts to spread the idea of open source on behalf of that community helped galvanize the business world, and earned the respect and the trust of a lot of hackers.
In short, his *every public action* impacts the world view of OSS. It would be nice if he would acknowledge that his views on gun control (or freedom) are unrelated to his views on OSS/Linux (although it can be argued that they both share many key points).
CLUE: We're talking about the actual price, not the %increase expressed as a fraction (in your example, that would mean that 32 -> 32 1/16)
Although it is debatable that the hard minimum slice of stock is 1/16 of a point, stock splits are all about perceived values (ppl who unknowningly think that 335 is too high for yahoo, but is a bargain for 80, after it has split 4x).
in terms of the flow of information, it has done two major things. first of all, it has shifted the power from those that hold and dole out information to those that seek it. we've gone from a supply based system to a demand based one. this is about as fundamental a shift as the invention of the printing press. the dot coms also lie at the heart of this radical, sweeping change. the second thing is that it has liberated access to information. think about the stuff you now get to read each morning. i get to read everything from science journals that my university doesn't get to intelligence reports that woul normally be difficult to get. i'm sure you're in the same boat, having unparalleled access to information. again, the dot coms have helped to shape and provide this revolution.
Uh... You could easily attribute the entire sentence above to the Internet alone, with no direct reference to Amazon/Bezos. Do you compliment the surfer for creating the wave?
Saying that Jeff Bezos brought the information revolution is similar to saying that Bill Gates invented DOS. Both of them simply marketed the idea/product well, that's all. Also, the fact that Jeff is a "cool guy" really should have no bearing on this award.
I personally would not be surprised to learn that Amazon "bought" this award.
Last random thought - perhaps the overmedicate stories actually come from the same main source as undermedicating - the stigma against mental illness. Its probably easier to say "you're kid needs this well known drug" than to say "Your kid seems to be having some problems, we'd like to get him into some one-on-one counseling and see if he is just jumpy and bored cause he's ahead of his class, if he's acting out for other reasons and you should be seeking some family counseling or if he has a brain chemical imbalance which is effecting his behaviour."
I don't see why counseling should seem out of question. Most parents, IMHO would love to hear something along those lines as opposed to "your son is clinically depressed, lets give him some drugs". The US has a *serious* disconnectedness problem. It seems like it's harder and harder to find a solid, decent community (unless you want to join some religion, and then you have to be careful of a different kind of weirdness there). Most of the problems I see here are due to (IANADr):
Lack of true community and support groups (more dysfunctional families than ever)
Lack of pure food (what kind of shit do they put in tacobell food? MSG? Pectin? Exactly what are "spices"?... okay, I'm prolly conspiracy theorizin here)
Bad environmental controls that exacerbate the two problems above
Highly stressful work: Americans get the least holidays of any modern nation, by far. No wonder we're all crazy...
Looks like Palm is lined up with all the big players, so 3Com is no longer needed to provide "parental support"... kinda like when the kid in college is about to graduate and earn more in a salary than both parents combined...
(not advocating drugs, but) Take a chill pill. I think that the previous poster was simply trying to provide an explanation (bordering on conspiracy theory) that there may not be as many "clinically depressed" people as the media/big business would like you to think.
I have no doubt that these drugs are truly helpful, but often times "situationally depressed" people are perscribed Prozac by docs due to the pressure of the insurance companies.
I had a friend who had a seratonin imbalance, and the doctor recommended him some Prozac, which he didn't need. After 6 months, he stopped, and is now still recovering (over 4 years ago).
My mom also uses some anti-depressants, but I think she really needs them (she really trusts her doctor and has done extensive investigation on the drugs).
We need to be wary of any big$$ for-profit organization in such a controversial market.
"Life *is* pain, your highness. Anybody saying differently is selling something" -Dread Pirate Roberts
And last but not least... Even if Slashdot is in America and by Americans, you can hardly claim the same about the audience. Slashdot's audience, and I think Slashdot's aspirations, are a lot more than just American. But I don't think that you disagree with that, do you?
Au contraire, mon frère... I'm beginning to have my doubts about slashdot. I started browsing while working here in France. I found it was *impossible* to create a user account (the account creation link simply didn't reply to my email). Did my IP check fail? Then I came back stateside for a few weeks... asked to create an account, and voilà, in less than a second. I can log in when in France (again), but I haven't seen any moderator points when I've been outside the country at all... Add to this to the fact that the SLASH "open" source is *horribly* out of date, and I have less and less faith in/. daily.
The tie-in to the shootings is very interesting. Instead of finding the causes, and dealing with those, we are dealing with symptoms (mental illness, school shootings, etc.).
The metadynamics of this patent case are enormous. Amazon is a bellweather of internet companies, and as such, should be accountable for its (unscrupulous) actions.
Boycott Amazon now! Summary of useful links from above articles (not guaranteed to be complete, grepped 'www.*'):
Online Book sites http://www.dealpilot.com http://www.fatbrian.com http://www.bn.com
ISBN Meta sites: http://www.snmputils.com/booksearch http://www.bestbookbuys.com http://www.bookblvd.com http://www.bestbookdeal.com
Computer Literacy used to also be (www.)computerliteracy.com, until they decided that this was way too long of a phrase to type in (unless you're German). I think the new name also has something to do with Paul Allen investing in them.
If you live in the bay area, they also have B&M bookstores, which I find are great places to browse @lunch, etc.
If I had any moderator points... Moderators!please moderate previous post up.
I could not agree with you more. But you have to regress your analysis one level further: The problem is, that parents generally *don't* have the time to do what you outline. Hell, I'm single, and I hardly have the time to do everything that I need to do in one day.
My previous assignment was in France, and here people have 39 hour workweeks (soon to become 35), 5-7 weeks of vacation each year, and most of the problems that we see in the U.S. simply arent prevalent. The folks here have time to care and nurture their children... there are benefits to Socialism.
Ranting aside, something really needs to change in our overworked, overstressed society, or all of this Columbine shit will just get worse and worse.
As far as I see it, games are simply not part of the equation if there is the kids are loved enough (of course, one could postulate that these games would not be anywhere near as popular in such a case)
...is difficult to describe, and multifaceted. I will not try to do so here, but I think I can point out two things that other posters just touched on about:
1) With a growing number of kids who are not doing the same activities as kids one or two generations earlier. We as a society are becoming *increasingly* digital and interconnected. The media/parents/unconnected fail to realize that most of the younger generation of kids are not entrenched in the mindset of "real world" competetive activities (sports, etc). Why? You can get the same rush by playing Quake as you do by playing a game of football, without the potential for injuries/accidents. And you can do this while doing other things on your 'puter. Of course, you get good exercise by sports...
2) The media likes to have scapegoats that are unknown & a distinct minority. Many older folks don't even know what the core of the game is all about. All they see is the blood and gore. Not a high percentage of the total populace play games that dish out gobs of blood (I only played Quake/Doom when my friends did, but I spent far too much time on Starcraft/SpacewardHo).
3) A real fear I have is that most of these games *are* zero sum. The world as we know it, is generally *not* (society is a good example of a non-zero-sum environment). Immersion in this kind of activity for long periods of time, and development of other psychological needs (ego, self worth, etc) based on these games causes a very fragile (and potentially disturbed) individual. Of course the same results with addiction to real world sports (football, tennis, etc), but it's significantly more difficult to get addicted to such activities (due to fatigue, accessibility, weather, etc), and Also, enough people like real world sports that this becomes "okay" with the media.
Checked out the movie, and sure enough, it uses the general "lawnmower" algorithm (mow the edges, then spiral inwards), with a little collision detection to determine the "edges" of it's space.
In any case, when you vacuum, it's the corners that count... and this thing didn't even get close to those.
For a project on the scale of Mozilla, can we realistically expect non-core developers to be useful in "early" stages?
Is the previous question just a fancy way of asking: What does "plausible promise" really mean in context of various projects?
How many open source developers really have the skill sets required to participate in Mozilla (a large OO design and implementation project) in the early stages?... which in turn begs another important question:
what are the "skill and competence" demographics of open source developers?
What are all of the project characteristics (stage of development, project scale, community perception of project, community perception of core developer(s), PR, licensing, etc.) that affect the success of drawing in qualified developers to the project?
Dude, a bit sleepy to reply to each point above, but... OK, I never could resist a test:
Only in the terms of requirements gathering and suggestions for code style (see yourself as the customer *and* sustaining-developer).
Yes, although IMHO, bugginess and plausible promise are semantically divergent enough to be considered two criteria.
see next
Either I am utterly idealistic here, or just seeing things differently. I think that we experience a network effect in OSS for both debugging and distribution of workload. The critical key in any OSS project is the synergy brought on to the team, which is entirely key on the project management. Thus the implicit independency from godlike coders, and a premium on communications skills like feedback, comments, etc.
Need more data...[this questions sounds very much like MBA material]
P.S. Your homework is to find all of the Ph.D.'s you can in the above, and convince competent grads in the appropriate fields to write them. 8-) Neved did homework. Just aced the tests and set the curve for the finals.
I was just rereading ESR's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" the other day, and after seeing this, one of the phrases in his article came to mind:
When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn't have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is (a) run, and (b) convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future.
Question: Does this mean that projects going open-source should be Alpha stage before recruitment begins? If not, then what stage would you call it when your project is ready for open-source?
Disclaimer: I am a/. newbie, so point me in the right direction if this question has already been asked...
YOu live there? I'm sorry for ya. really. Now get out on the net, and start clamoring! 'Cause you might not be able to complain about this later (when your right to free speech gets squelched).
* Some people like salary because of security, lack of pressure * Hourly wage, on average, is more lucrative for the employee * Contractors usually receive hourly wage, and are seen sometimes as "mercenaries" * Stock options/Bonuses are usually considered "extra" unless the company is a startup * Corporate culture, or social setting is important, but hard to quantify in $$.
For the poster: What kind of work is involved, and what kind of company are you? If it is highly research-oriented (find out how to optimize network activity, design a new algorithm to ), then I would strongly recommend salary/bonus, as the work is not easily quantifiable, but the results are. If you are a startup (looking to IPO sometime soon), stock options are *very* appealing. Note, however, that unless you see your stock doing very well, the options often cause more contention than they are worth. Touchy subject. If the work your employees perform is fairly quantifiable (ie, Joe spent 50 hours at work this week, so he performed 25% more work than Suzy, who worked the standard 40), then hourly wage is appropriate, and recommended.
Regarding overtime, I see this as independent of the whole salary/hourly thing. If you expect your average employee to work overtime, they you better well *pay* for it. preIPO Startups pay with stock options; privately owned co.'s who are not going public for some time should pay with overtime. NOTE: well managed overtime benefits are clearly visible to the employee and will result in lower degree of turnover. On the other hand, if you are not so concerned about turnover, you can afford to be mrPHB here.
Here's why they are complaining: (I'm only an advocate, so I don't expect/deserve anything from LNUX)
*This is not a gift, it's a measure of value*
Linux and Open source in general, was created with meritocracy written all over it. Cause that's what turns geeks on. And as long as no final criterion like money is involved, perceived merit (in the way of a friendly reply, virtual pats-on-the-back, etc.) is often good enough to keep the geeks happily coding. As a self-respecting geek myself, I should know.
Now we throw money into the mix, and voilà! You have a new criterion of merit: CA$H. Geeks are *not* stupid. (hypothetical example) As easily as you can send me an email saying: "Great work, looks like your fix is what we needed", I might be expecting a favor later on, when your preIPO opensource company goes public. And then I don't get it.
Money *does* taint. It's like the reference above to Animal Farm.
Analogy: Ever been to a company whose stock is on the rocks? People are pissed off. Why do I have such a low *Net Worth*? When I can be at some other company who is raking in the buck$?
Translation: (earlier post) Why should I be working on Debian, etc. when VA only recognizes other distributions equally?
This is an opensource community, so OPEN THE LIST. Let everyone see who's on and who's off. This should remove some of the contention
You can really save time with this thing. The only problem I see is how you would attach it to your finger. COuld be painful after awhile (like wearing glasses).
Now take your setup one step further and add one thimble to the index finger, one to the middle finger, and one to the thumb, and voila! You would need more than one input connection, but hell... I don't know why we don't already have that. Imagine drawing on the computer like you are hand painting/sculpting... multiple input points.
YOu can grasp things. Tap once on surface for click; Tap twice for doubleclick; Press two fingers together for right click; Press thumb and forefinger together, then roll up or down for scrolling (like how you might rotate a pen you are grasping).
You now have true 3D manipulative powers (assuming you had 3D positional sensors). Kinda like Johnny Mnemonic.
What we geeks forget is that there are millions (perhaps billions) of non-techies (tech-nots) out there. People who can't tell the difference between winNT and win95, much less the difference between debian vs. redhat. People who do not move at "internet speed".
Do not forget the people living in areas with little web access, but beaucoup print.
Print *is* a useful medium for these people for both leisure reading and getting reasonably up to date information. In many cases, it does not matter for them whether they hear about the Microsoft FoF today, or a week later.
I still buy Wired at the airport gift stores, just to gawk at the pretty advertising. But more and more, as a techie, I don't actually read the magazines anymore.
Someone above said that the web is more dependent on advertising than print. The kicker is that websites have massive turnover (the urge to click elsewhere to get the same/similar content), and writing trash that panders to your advertisers at the expense of the reader will surely make your pages less "sticky". To add to the turnover, there is a lot of metacontent (search engines, why_product_x_sucks pages, etc.) which tends to force the truth.
This whole concept of selling more product, to hire more programmers, to speed development doesnt compute here.
Why? 1) programming, and most projects in general, don't scale linearly. more like geometrically. Blizzard has chosen not to grow like that. 2) most of the actual work on Blizzard games is the artwork. they have impressed me by paying boucoup attention to detail. you just can't rush art and keep the quality high and the artist satisfied. adding more cooks does not make the pot boil faster.
...though I do agree with you that add-ons for Diablo would have been neat.
btw, anyone wonder if Blizzard releases these titles late *on purpose*?;-)
Slashdot Mirror
True, but the real problem is *support*. If the codebase is *exactly* the same, then it is, of course not an issue. However, I assume that there will need to be at least a slight divergence to get around OS problems.
That being said, I do however, think that most xBSD users will be more than happy to put up with any level of bugginess (or help debug, even!) so user interest is shown.
as mentioned in an article before, there is a patch that is required by win95b to utilize the 100mhz-bus chips (K62-350+).
Get that he re
Also, since AMD chips are pre-overclocked (they redline more than intel chips), they really need fans/cooling devices. Make sure you upgrade your heat sink to match your processor. I had a tough time playing SMAC after I upgraded from 266 to 400 until I replaced the fan.
I serve a community. I'm wealthy today because my efforts to spread the idea of open source on behalf of that community helped galvanize the business world, and earned the respect and the trust of a lot of hackers.
In short, his *every public action* impacts the world view of OSS. It would be nice if he would acknowledge that his views on gun control (or freedom) are unrelated to his views on OSS/Linux (although it can be argued that they both share many key points).
I think your analogy is a little flawed, since we should only be comparing the chips themselves (like the engine of the car).
No offense, but...
CLUE: We're talking about the actual price, not the %increase expressed as a fraction (in your example, that would mean that 32 -> 32 1/16)
Although it is debatable that the hard minimum slice of stock is 1/16 of a point, stock splits are all about perceived values (ppl who unknowningly think that 335 is too high for yahoo, but is a bargain for 80, after it has split 4x).
Fear the profit-taking on 12/31/99!!!!!
Then why do I constantly see stock prices like 23 31/64, or 45 117/128? If these prices are valid, then your first point doesn't carry a lot of water.
Honestly, I would like to know...
Your other points do make sense, tho (as opposed to making $$)
Uh... You could easily attribute the entire sentence above to the Internet alone, with no direct reference to Amazon/Bezos. Do you compliment the surfer for creating the wave?
Saying that Jeff Bezos brought the information revolution is similar to saying that Bill Gates invented DOS. Both of them simply marketed the idea/product well, that's all. Also, the fact that Jeff is a "cool guy" really should have no bearing on this award.
I personally would not be surprised to learn that Amazon "bought" this award.
I don't see why counseling should seem out of question. Most parents, IMHO would love to hear something along those lines as opposed to "your son is clinically depressed, lets give him some drugs".
The US has a *serious* disconnectedness problem. It seems like it's harder and harder to find a solid, decent community (unless you want to join some religion, and then you have to be careful of a different kind of weirdness there). Most of the problems I see here are due to (IANADr):
Looks like Palm is lined up with all the big players, so 3Com is no longer needed to provide "parental support"... kinda like when the kid in college is about to graduate and earn more in a salary than both parents combined...
Just some names: Nokia, Motorola, Sony
Handhelds: PalmOS vs. Linux???
Dude,
(not advocating drugs, but)
Take a chill pill. I think that the previous poster was simply trying to provide an explanation (bordering on conspiracy theory) that there may not be as many "clinically depressed" people as the media/big business would like you to think.
I have no doubt that these drugs are truly helpful, but often times "situationally depressed" people are perscribed Prozac by docs due to the pressure of the insurance companies.
I had a friend who had a seratonin imbalance, and the doctor recommended him some Prozac, which he didn't need. After 6 months, he stopped, and is now still recovering (over 4 years ago).
My mom also uses some anti-depressants, but I think she really needs them (she really trusts her doctor and has done extensive investigation on the drugs).
We need to be wary of any big$$ for-profit organization in such a controversial market.
"Life *is* pain, your highness. Anybody saying differently is selling something"
-Dread Pirate Roberts
Au contraire, mon frère... I'm beginning to have my doubts about slashdot. /. daily.
I started browsing while working here in France. I found it was *impossible* to create a user account (the account creation link simply didn't reply to my email). Did my IP check fail?
Then I came back stateside for a few weeks... asked to create an account, and voilà, in less than a second.
I can log in when in France (again), but I haven't seen any moderator points when I've been outside the country at all...
Add to this to the fact that the SLASH "open" source is *horribly* out of date, and I have less and less faith in
Moderators, please take note of previous post...
The tie-in to the shootings is very interesting. Instead of finding the causes, and dealing with those, we are dealing with symptoms (mental illness, school shootings, etc.).
^
|
|
Someone please moderate this up!
The metadynamics of this patent case are enormous. Amazon is a bellweather of internet companies, and as such, should be accountable for its (unscrupulous) actions.
Boycott Amazon now!
Summary of useful links from above articles (not guaranteed to be complete, grepped 'www.*'):
Online Book sites
http://www.dealpilot.com
http://www.fatbrian.com
http://www.bn.com
ISBN Meta sites:
http://www.snmputils.com/booksearch
http://www.bestbookbuys.com
http://www.bookblvd.com
http://www.bestbookdeal.com
actually,
Computer Literacy used to also be (www.)computerliteracy.com, until they decided that this was way too long of a phrase to type in (unless you're German). I think the new name also has something to do with Paul Allen investing in them.
If you live in the bay area, they also have B&M bookstores, which I find are great places to browse @lunch, etc.
If I had any moderator points... Moderators!please moderate previous post up.
I could not agree with you more. But you have to regress your analysis one level further:
The problem is, that parents generally *don't* have the time to do what you outline. Hell, I'm single, and I hardly have the time to do everything that I need to do in one day.
My previous assignment was in France, and here people have 39 hour workweeks (soon to become 35), 5-7 weeks of vacation each year, and most of the problems that we see in the U.S. simply arent prevalent. The folks here have time to care and nurture their children... there are benefits to Socialism.
Ranting aside, something really needs to change in our overworked, overstressed society, or all of this Columbine shit will just get worse and worse.
As far as I see it, games are simply not part of the equation if there is the kids are loved enough (of course, one could postulate that these games would not be anywhere near as popular in such a case)
...is difficult to describe, and multifaceted. I will not try to do so here, but I think I can point out two things that other posters just touched on about:
1) With a growing number of kids who are not doing the same activities as kids one or two generations earlier. We as a society are becoming *increasingly* digital and interconnected. The media/parents/unconnected fail to realize that most of the younger generation of kids are not entrenched in the mindset of "real world" competetive activities (sports, etc). Why? You can get the same rush by playing Quake as you do by playing a game of football, without the potential for injuries/accidents. And you can do this while doing other things on your 'puter. Of course, you get good exercise by sports...
2) The media likes to have scapegoats that are unknown & a distinct minority. Many older folks don't even know what the core of the game is all about. All they see is the blood and gore. Not a high percentage of the total populace play games that dish out gobs of blood (I only played Quake/Doom when my friends did, but I spent far too much time on Starcraft/SpacewardHo).
3) A real fear I have is that most of these games *are* zero sum. The world as we know it, is generally *not* (society is a good example of a non-zero-sum environment). Immersion in this kind of activity for long periods of time, and development of other psychological needs (ego, self worth, etc) based on these games causes a very fragile (and potentially disturbed) individual.
Of course the same results with addiction to real world sports (football, tennis, etc), but it's significantly more difficult to get addicted to such activities (due to fatigue, accessibility, weather, etc), and Also, enough people like real world sports that this becomes "okay" with the media.
Checked out the movie, and sure enough, it uses the general "lawnmower" algorithm (mow the edges, then spiral inwards), with a little collision detection to determine the "edges" of it's space.
In any case, when you vacuum, it's the corners that count... and this thing didn't even get close to those.
- For a project on the scale of Mozilla, can we realistically expect non-core developers to be useful in "early" stages?
- Is the previous question just a fancy way of asking: What does "plausible promise" really mean in context of various projects?
- How many open source developers really have the skill sets required to participate in Mozilla (a large OO design and implementation project) in the early stages?
... which in turn begs another important question: - what are the "skill and competence" demographics of open source developers?
- What are all of the project characteristics (stage of development, project scale, community perception of project, community perception of core developer(s), PR, licensing, etc.) that affect the success of drawing in qualified developers to the project?
Dude, a bit sleepy to reply to each point above, but... OK, I never could resist a test:- Only in the terms of requirements gathering and suggestions for code style (see yourself as the customer *and* sustaining-developer).
- Yes, although IMHO, bugginess and plausible promise are semantically divergent enough to be considered two criteria.
- see next
- Either I am utterly idealistic here, or just seeing things differently. I think that we experience a network effect in OSS for both debugging and distribution of workload. The critical key in any OSS project is the synergy brought on to the team, which is entirely key on the project management. Thus the implicit independency from godlike coders, and a premium on communications skills like feedback, comments, etc.
- Need more data...[this questions sounds very much like MBA material]
P.S. Your homework is to find all of the Ph.D.'s you can in the above, and convince competent grads in the appropriate fields to write them. 8-) Neved did homework. Just aced the tests and set the curve for the finals.When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn't have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is (a) run, and (b) convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future.
Question: Does this mean that projects going open-source should be Alpha stage before recruitment begins? If not, then what stage would you call it when your project is ready for open-source?
Disclaimer: I am a /. newbie, so point me in the right direction if this question has already been asked...
YOu live there? I'm sorry for ya. really. Now get out on the net, and start clamoring! 'Cause you might not be able to complain about this later (when your right to free speech gets squelched).
So far, what I've seen on this board is:
* Some people like salary because of security, lack of pressure
* Hourly wage, on average, is more lucrative for the employee
* Contractors usually receive hourly wage, and are seen sometimes as "mercenaries"
* Stock options/Bonuses are usually considered "extra" unless the company is a startup
* Corporate culture, or social setting is important, but hard to quantify in $$.
For the poster:
What kind of work is involved, and what kind of company are you? If it is highly research-oriented (find out how to optimize network activity, design a new algorithm to ), then I would strongly recommend salary/bonus, as the work is not easily quantifiable, but the results are.
If you are a startup (looking to IPO sometime soon), stock options are *very* appealing. Note, however, that unless you see your stock doing very well, the options often cause more contention than they are worth. Touchy subject.
If the work your employees perform is fairly quantifiable (ie, Joe spent 50 hours at work this week, so he performed 25% more work than Suzy, who worked the standard 40), then hourly wage is appropriate, and recommended.
Regarding overtime, I see this as independent of the whole salary/hourly thing. If you expect your average employee to work overtime, they you better well *pay* for it. preIPO Startups pay with stock options; privately owned co.'s who are not going public for some time should pay with overtime. NOTE: well managed overtime benefits are clearly visible to the employee and will result in lower degree of turnover.
On the other hand, if you are not so concerned about turnover, you can afford to be mrPHB here.
Here's why they are complaining:
(I'm only an advocate, so I don't expect/deserve anything from LNUX)
*This is not a gift, it's a measure of value*
Linux and Open source in general, was created with meritocracy written all over it. Cause that's what turns geeks on. And as long as no final criterion like money is involved, perceived merit (in the way of a friendly reply, virtual pats-on-the-back, etc.) is often good enough to keep the geeks happily coding. As a self-respecting geek myself, I should know.
Now we throw money into the mix, and voilà! You have a new criterion of merit: CA$H. Geeks are *not* stupid. (hypothetical example) As easily as you can send me an email saying: "Great work, looks like your fix is what we needed", I might be expecting a favor later on, when your preIPO opensource company goes public. And then I don't get it.
Money *does* taint. It's like the reference above to Animal Farm.
Analogy: Ever been to a company whose stock is on the rocks? People are pissed off. Why do I have such a low *Net Worth*? When I can be at some other company who is raking in the buck$?
Translation: (earlier post) Why should I be working on Debian, etc. when VA only recognizes other distributions equally?
This is an opensource community, so OPEN THE LIST. Let everyone see who's on and who's off. This should remove some of the contention
Amen to that!
You can really save time with this thing. The only problem I see is how you would attach it to your finger. COuld be painful after awhile (like wearing glasses).
Now take your setup one step further and add one thimble to the index finger, one to the middle finger, and one to the thumb, and voila! You would need more than one input connection, but hell... I don't know why we don't already have that. Imagine drawing on the computer like you are hand painting/sculpting... multiple input points.
YOu can grasp things. Tap once on surface for click; Tap twice for doubleclick; Press two fingers together for right click; Press thumb and forefinger together, then roll up or down for scrolling (like how you might rotate a pen you are grasping).
You now have true 3D manipulative powers (assuming you had 3D positional sensors). Kinda like Johnny Mnemonic.
I think... and the future appears.
What we geeks forget is that there are millions (perhaps billions) of non-techies (tech-nots) out there. People who can't tell the difference between winNT and win95, much less the difference between debian vs. redhat. People who do not move at "internet speed".
Do not forget the people living in areas with little web access, but beaucoup print.
Print *is* a useful medium for these people for both leisure reading and getting reasonably up to date information. In many cases, it does not matter for them whether they hear about the Microsoft FoF today, or a week later.
I still buy Wired at the airport gift stores, just to gawk at the pretty advertising. But more and more, as a techie, I don't actually read the magazines anymore.
Someone above said that the web is more dependent on advertising than print. The kicker is that websites have massive turnover (the urge to click elsewhere to get the same/similar content), and writing trash that panders to your advertisers at the expense of the reader will surely make your pages less "sticky". To add to the turnover, there is a lot of metacontent (search engines, why_product_x_sucks pages, etc.) which tends to force the truth.
This whole concept of selling more product, to hire more programmers, to speed development doesnt compute here.
;-)
Why?
1) programming, and most projects in general, don't scale linearly. more like geometrically. Blizzard has chosen not to grow like that.
2) most of the actual work on Blizzard games is the artwork. they have impressed me by paying boucoup attention to detail. you just can't rush art and keep the quality high and the artist satisfied. adding more cooks does not make the pot boil faster.
...though I do agree with you that add-ons for Diablo would have been neat.
btw, anyone wonder if Blizzard releases these titles late *on purpose*?