Most managers work for the better of the company and are burdened by workers who "just work there". No sense of loyalty or obligation to the ones who hired them in the first place.
Only an idiot, or someone completely ignorant of standard business practices over the last few decades, would blame lack of employee loyalty on the employees.
Here's a clue for you: Loyalty is earned. Companies that show loyalty to their employees have loyal employees. I think it's kind of funny when allegedly highly educated MBAs can't understand that basic relationship.
It's not mutually exclusive to spend money on technological resources and teachers is it?
Yes, it is. Money is a finite resource. The more they spend on tech toys, the less they have to spend on things that will actually effect how much the kids learn, like teachers.
The common arguement, of course, is that the money comes from a different place. That's bullshit. It all comes from the same place, the taxpayers pocket.
I don't mind paying taxes, I think it necessary to keep our society functioning , but I do object to my money being wasted on something of such dubious educational value.
How many of the 10^26 features of word does the average school kid actually need?
I think that's the wrong question. The real question, which you touched on later in your comment, is how many of those features are they better off without?
There have been studies that have linked the availability of spelling and grammar checkers to a decline in writing ability in college freshmen. Of course, that comes as no suprise to those of us who actually know how to properly construct a sentence and have witnessed the tragedy that is the MS grammar checker.
I think if you handed them OpenOffice to use for a couple of weeks, they'd probably stick with it once they found out it was free (as in costs $0).
I know only one person that hasn't been true for, and that's my step-mom. It seems that OpenOffice 1.0 had some stability problems in a multi-user Win2k environment.[1] She got fed up and told my dad she wanted her damned paperclip!
I don't think it would have been a problem if they had just said something to me at the time, but you know how people can be about that sometimes; they don't want to impose, especially if it's something you gave them for free.
[1] In all fairness, it may not have been OO's fault. According to my dad he had some similar problems the the version of Works(?) that he bought, and when I got ahold of it recently for some much needed updates I found they'd been infected with Blaster (though I believe the OO problems pre-dated Blaster).
Interesting how you seem to have skipped over the first sentence of that paragraph. Here it is, with emphasis added to the pertinant part:
Mitch and Gordon's small team disassembled the machines, mounted the displays in handmade wood frames with the motherboard and hard disk, and added Wi-Fi and their own Linux-based software.
I can't help but think, if the process has to be started by someone, it isn't automatic, is it? And if it's so damned important, why wasn't it started automatically?
Seems to me the stupidity predates the technician.
Odd, I've never seen a robot drop, mis-feed, or jam a tape. And they cost far less, and work far more hours than a high-school kid.
Don't have much experience with robots, do you?
I say this as someone who works in the repair center of a company that once produced a tape loading robot, and at my last job I designed and built custom industrial robots.
Even microsoft complains that many of the crashes in their OS are due to bad drivers
I guess we'll find out how true that is, won't we. Just because Microsoft says so doesn't mean it is so. (Nothing against MS there, that's true of any corporation)
Either way it turns out will be good for computing as a whole, I think. Either MS will have to face the facts and make some changes, or the hardware vendors will. I don't see anything wrong with that.
First of all, excuses don't change facts. Nothing you've said invalidates my point.
Second, Having spent a few years in Corporate America, I feel quite confident in saying that the only limiting factor that actually has any effect is impatient shareholders. You seem to have missed what experience has told me is the largest factor: the demise of corporate loyalty. I'm not interested in a discussion of who started it, but merely in pointing out its effects. Most importantly, I'm not even talking about people in the lower ranks, I'm talking about management.
Take my company as an example. We recently had a going away party for a guy who was retiring after 23 years with the company. I'm the new guy at just over one year, the next "newest" has been with the company 15 years, and the "old guy" has been here almost 30 years. Our manager was shocked to hear this, as he had never been with any company for more than 2-3 years, and after observing some of his decisions I can see why.
He's a big fan of outsourcing, which can sometimes be a good thing, but sometimes, as in our case, it actually costs more. However, since the outsourcing costs come out of a different bucket than the headcount costs, he'll get his bonus for cost-cutting and be on his way before anyone figures out what the actual costs are (assuming they ever do, which is unlikely, since managers seem to avoid anything that might prove their theorys wrong like the plague).
The worst part is, he's not unusual in that respect, and he's actually a much better manager (at least from my perspective) than the guy he replaced. The question remains, though, how can there be a long term plan if your leadership has a turn-over rate of 2-3 years? And if there is no long term plan, how can the company expect to survive in the long term? If anything, that only makes dismissing China that much more dangerous for American business.
china needs to wake up if they want to play with the big boys in the global economy
Says who? China is THE big boy, and they've proven already that they're perfectly willing and capable of going it alone if need be. It seems pretty arrogant of western businessmen to try and tell the largest market in the world they need to play by our rules, especially given their current rate of economic and technological expansion.
You can get HDTVs in the 40-52inch range for around $1000 today, provided you don't have a problem with rear projection. I don't think it's going to be irrelevant much longer, especially with the FCC pushing it so hard.
From Groklaw...The firm will be enforcing and defending SCO's intellectual property rights, including the protection of our UNIX System V source code and our copyrights that were reaffirmed as a result of the BSDI settlement agreement.'"
That's certainly an interesting interpretation of the BSDi ruling. IANAL, but that certainly isn't my understanding of it. It is, however, in line with their ass-backwards interpretation of copyright law.
Re:Thinking about this financially...
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If I had a corporation w/ 100+ users, there's not a chance in hell that I'd pay $699 oer license, per user.
Really? How does that compare to having those users on Windows with full installs of MS Office, and connecting them to an Exchange server and maybe a few MS fileservers? I think you'll find it's about the same, and yet, somehow, corporations find a way to justify that everyday.
Re:Linux written to compete with SCO?
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
And what about Netware? I'm no expert on Novell products, but hasn't Netware been running on x86 for ages? It certainly competes with "Unix-on-Intel".
Given that Netware is Novell's core product, I very much doubt that Darl's claim has any basis in fact.
While in general I agree, sometimes it is necessary to speak to someone in their own language. Sadly, there are some people in this world who can only understand a punch in the face.
Both points of view are important. Not everyone can be an activist, some of us have to actually get stuff done. I'm not saying what RMS does isn't important, but how long have we been waiting for the HURD?
Stallman raises some good points, but some of use would like to be able to use our machines now, today, rather than wait years for the hackers to figure out how to write drivers for the hardware we own now. Where would FOSS be today without practical people like Torvalds? Exactly where it was before Linux; a backwater in the world of software, influencing nothing.
Torvalds never said he was an activist, and has never wanted to be one, so why do you insist that he be one? He uses the GPL the same way he uses Bitkeeper: as a tool to better accomplish his goals. That certainly doesn't mean that he doesn't understand patent or copyright issues.
Torvalds reaffirms apathy by tossing off subjects as unimportant.
Is it apathy or pragmatism?
In the case of his stance on patents, joking comments aside, I think it's pure pragmatism. The simple, legal fact is that researching patents to make sure Linux implementations were non-infringing would make hime more liable, not less.
How about copyright? Again, pragmatism rules. How do you think SCO would have reacted if he'd gone to them a year ago and said "Hey, I'd like to compare Linux against the SysV source tree and see if there's any infringing code?" I think the response would have been something like "We're not showing you our proprietary, trade-secret code. Piss off!" And I'll bet the vast majority of software companies would respond pretty much the same way. So, given that verifying the "IP integrity" of the code is an imposibility, why worry about it? How he deals with that issue is frankly much better than you will ever get from a proprietary software company; the code is right there in the open, and anyone who cares can compare it against their codebase and have the code removed.
And, again, there is the issue of plausible deniability. As long as he doesn't know how they did it, he can do it any way he wants.
That doesn't sound ignorant or apathetic to me. Quite the contrary, in fact.
And there are Linux users that actually care about copyrights and piracy.
Exactly.
I made a decision to live a more honest life, and part of that was giving up pirated software. Since I find Windows overpriced, I switched to Linux. The irony is, I spend far more on software now than I ever would have under Windows.
For the Desktop Suse is better, even you cannot deny this fact.
I wouldn't dream of denying it, in fact I quite often make the same claim, in fact I often even go so far as to say that SuSE is better on the desktop than any other distro. You did catch the part where I said that SuSE is my personal distro of choice, right?
My main point was that UnitedLinux is not Debian-based, which the post I was responding to seemed to imply.
I think we agree on my other point, which is that SuSE is not Debian. I never said I thought that was a bad thing!
I have to disagree. There are many circumstances in which a Live CD will actually give the user a worse impression of Linux than they would get if they just installed one of the "easy" distros, such as Mandrake or SuSE.
Case in point would be a friend of mine, who actually wants to start using Linux and is fairly computer savvy, at least in a DIY with Windows way. He had a lot of trouble with Live CDs due to his having an nForce2 motherboard with integrated graphics. He managed to find a work-around, which was basically random key stabbing based on what he might try if it were Windows, but I very much doubt anyone else in either of our families would have been able to figure it out.
On the other hand, I know, since I have a very similar setup, that installing SuSE on that motherboard is just a brainless insert-disc-and-click-next procedure.
I agree that Live CDs are a great tool for a knowledgable person to introduce others to Linux, but they shouldn't be mass-mailed like AOL CDs. That would do much more harm than good.
the ideas behind free software are incomprehensible to non-programmers
My 3 year old knows perfectly well what I mean when I say "if you can't share you can't have it at all", and she is certainly not a programmer. How different is that from what the GPL says?
Slashdot Mirror
Most managers work for the better of the company and are burdened by workers who "just work there". No sense of loyalty or obligation to the ones who hired them in the first place.
Only an idiot, or someone completely ignorant of standard business practices over the last few decades, would blame lack of employee loyalty on the employees.
Here's a clue for you: Loyalty is earned. Companies that show loyalty to their employees have loyal employees. I think it's kind of funny when allegedly highly educated MBAs can't understand that basic relationship.
It's not mutually exclusive to spend money on technological resources and teachers is it?
Yes, it is. Money is a finite resource. The more they spend on tech toys, the less they have to spend on things that will actually effect how much the kids learn, like teachers.
The common arguement, of course, is that the money comes from a different place. That's bullshit. It all comes from the same place, the taxpayers pocket.
I don't mind paying taxes, I think it necessary to keep our society functioning , but I do object to my money being wasted on something of such dubious educational value.
How many of the 10^26 features of word does the average school kid actually need?
I think that's the wrong question. The real question, which you touched on later in your comment, is how many of those features are they better off without?
There have been studies that have linked the availability of spelling and grammar checkers to a decline in writing ability in college freshmen. Of course, that comes as no suprise to those of us who actually know how to properly construct a sentence and have witnessed the tragedy that is the MS grammar checker.
I think if you handed them OpenOffice to use for a couple of weeks, they'd probably stick with it once they found out it was free (as in costs $0).
I know only one person that hasn't been true for, and that's my step-mom. It seems that OpenOffice 1.0 had some stability problems in a multi-user Win2k environment.[1] She got fed up and told my dad she wanted her damned paperclip!
I don't think it would have been a problem if they had just said something to me at the time, but you know how people can be about that sometimes; they don't want to impose, especially if it's something you gave them for free.
[1] In all fairness, it may not have been OO's fault. According to my dad he had some similar problems the the version of Works(?) that he bought, and when I got ahold of it recently for some much needed updates I found they'd been infected with Blaster (though I believe the OO problems pre-dated Blaster).
Interesting how you seem to have skipped over the first sentence of that paragraph. Here it is, with emphasis added to the pertinant part:
Mitch and Gordon's small team disassembled the machines, mounted the displays in handmade wood frames with the motherboard and hard disk, and added Wi-Fi and their own Linux-based software.
I can't help but think, if the process has to be started by someone, it isn't automatic, is it? And if it's so damned important, why wasn't it started automatically?
Seems to me the stupidity predates the technician.
Odd, I've never seen a robot drop, mis-feed, or jam a tape. And they cost far less, and work far more hours than a high-school kid.
Don't have much experience with robots, do you?
I say this as someone who works in the repair center of a company that once produced a tape loading robot, and at my last job I designed and built custom industrial robots.
Even microsoft complains that many of the crashes in their OS are due to bad drivers
I guess we'll find out how true that is, won't we. Just because Microsoft says so doesn't mean it is so. (Nothing against MS there, that's true of any corporation)
Either way it turns out will be good for computing as a whole, I think. Either MS will have to face the facts and make some changes, or the hardware vendors will. I don't see anything wrong with that.
First of all, excuses don't change facts. Nothing you've said invalidates my point.
Second, Having spent a few years in Corporate America, I feel quite confident in saying that the only limiting factor that actually has any effect is impatient shareholders. You seem to have missed what experience has told me is the largest factor: the demise of corporate loyalty. I'm not interested in a discussion of who started it, but merely in pointing out its effects. Most importantly, I'm not even talking about people in the lower ranks, I'm talking about management.
Take my company as an example. We recently had a going away party for a guy who was retiring after 23 years with the company. I'm the new guy at just over one year, the next "newest" has been with the company 15 years, and the "old guy" has been here almost 30 years. Our manager was shocked to hear this, as he had never been with any company for more than 2-3 years, and after observing some of his decisions I can see why.
He's a big fan of outsourcing, which can sometimes be a good thing, but sometimes, as in our case, it actually costs more. However, since the outsourcing costs come out of a different bucket than the headcount costs, he'll get his bonus for cost-cutting and be on his way before anyone figures out what the actual costs are (assuming they ever do, which is unlikely, since managers seem to avoid anything that might prove their theorys wrong like the plague).
The worst part is, he's not unusual in that respect, and he's actually a much better manager (at least from my perspective) than the guy he replaced. The question remains, though, how can there be a long term plan if your leadership has a turn-over rate of 2-3 years? And if there is no long term plan, how can the company expect to survive in the long term? If anything, that only makes dismissing China that much more dangerous for American business.
china needs to wake up if they want to play with the big boys in the global economy
Says who? China is THE big boy, and they've proven already that they're perfectly willing and capable of going it alone if need be. It seems pretty arrogant of western businessmen to try and tell the largest market in the world they need to play by our rules, especially given their current rate of economic and technological expansion.
I'd say it's your CFO who needs to wake up.
irrelevant (unless you own an HDTV)
You can get HDTVs in the 40-52inch range for around $1000 today, provided you don't have a problem with rear projection. I don't think it's going to be irrelevant much longer, especially with the FCC pushing it so hard.
I would imagine tapes went quicker; there were very few cars manufactured eight track players, and probably none with LP's.
Actually...
Seems like a disaster in the making to me, but people gotta have their tunes!
Wow, that would make it just like the rest of his claims. I wish I had some of the stuff he's smoking.
As a friend of mine used to say, "Whatever you're on, I'll take two."
From Groklaw...The firm will be enforcing and defending SCO's intellectual property rights, including the protection of our UNIX System V source code and our copyrights that were reaffirmed as a result of the BSDI settlement agreement.'"
That's certainly an interesting interpretation of the BSDi ruling. IANAL, but that certainly isn't my understanding of it. It is, however, in line with their ass-backwards interpretation of copyright law.
If I had a corporation w/ 100+ users, there's not a chance in hell that I'd pay $699 oer license, per user.
Really? How does that compare to having those users on Windows with full installs of MS Office, and connecting them to an Exchange server and maybe a few MS fileservers? I think you'll find it's about the same, and yet, somehow, corporations find a way to justify that everyday.
And what about Netware? I'm no expert on Novell products, but hasn't Netware been running on x86 for ages? It certainly competes with "Unix-on-Intel".
Given that Netware is Novell's core product, I very much doubt that Darl's claim has any basis in fact.
While in general I agree, sometimes it is necessary to speak to someone in their own language. Sadly, there are some people in this world who can only understand a punch in the face.
Both points of view are important. Not everyone can be an activist, some of us have to actually get stuff done. I'm not saying what RMS does isn't important, but how long have we been waiting for the HURD?
Stallman raises some good points, but some of use would like to be able to use our machines now, today, rather than wait years for the hackers to figure out how to write drivers for the hardware we own now. Where would FOSS be today without practical people like Torvalds? Exactly where it was before Linux; a backwater in the world of software, influencing nothing.
Torvalds never said he was an activist, and has never wanted to be one, so why do you insist that he be one? He uses the GPL the same way he uses Bitkeeper: as a tool to better accomplish his goals. That certainly doesn't mean that he doesn't understand patent or copyright issues.
Sorry but at $792/box we are not even going to touch it. At $50/box/year mabye, over that - forget it.
I'm curious why you feel you need to buy a box for each system?
Torvalds reaffirms apathy by tossing off subjects as unimportant.
Is it apathy or pragmatism?
In the case of his stance on patents, joking comments aside, I think it's pure pragmatism. The simple, legal fact is that researching patents to make sure Linux implementations were non-infringing would make hime more liable, not less.
How about copyright? Again, pragmatism rules. How do you think SCO would have reacted if he'd gone to them a year ago and said "Hey, I'd like to compare Linux against the SysV source tree and see if there's any infringing code?" I think the response would have been something like "We're not showing you our proprietary, trade-secret code. Piss off!" And I'll bet the vast majority of software companies would respond pretty much the same way. So, given that verifying the "IP integrity" of the code is an imposibility, why worry about it? How he deals with that issue is frankly much better than you will ever get from a proprietary software company; the code is right there in the open, and anyone who cares can compare it against their codebase and have the code removed.
And, again, there is the issue of plausible deniability. As long as he doesn't know how they did it, he can do it any way he wants.
That doesn't sound ignorant or apathetic to me. Quite the contrary, in fact.
And there are Linux users that actually care about copyrights and piracy.
Exactly.
I made a decision to live a more honest life, and part of that was giving up pirated software. Since I find Windows overpriced, I switched to Linux. The irony is, I spend far more on software now than I ever would have under Windows.
I don't know about you, but I know what's going on the top of MY christmas list. Hell, at that price, I might get two!
For the Desktop Suse is better, even you cannot deny this fact.
I wouldn't dream of denying it, in fact I quite often make the same claim, in fact I often even go so far as to say that SuSE is better on the desktop than any other distro. You did catch the part where I said that SuSE is my personal distro of choice, right?
My main point was that UnitedLinux is not Debian-based, which the post I was responding to seemed to imply.
I think we agree on my other point, which is that SuSE is not Debian. I never said I thought that was a bad thing!
I have to disagree. There are many circumstances in which a Live CD will actually give the user a worse impression of Linux than they would get if they just installed one of the "easy" distros, such as Mandrake or SuSE.
Case in point would be a friend of mine, who actually wants to start using Linux and is fairly computer savvy, at least in a DIY with Windows way. He had a lot of trouble with Live CDs due to his having an nForce2 motherboard with integrated graphics. He managed to find a work-around, which was basically random key stabbing based on what he might try if it were Windows, but I very much doubt anyone else in either of our families would have been able to figure it out.
On the other hand, I know, since I have a very similar setup, that installing SuSE on that motherboard is just a brainless insert-disc-and-click-next procedure.
I agree that Live CDs are a great tool for a knowledgable person to introduce others to Linux, but they shouldn't be mass-mailed like AOL CDs. That would do much more harm than good.
the ideas behind free software are incomprehensible to non-programmers
My 3 year old knows perfectly well what I mean when I say "if you can't share you can't have it at all", and she is certainly not a programmer. How different is that from what the GPL says?