This notion of "open source" makes this 83 year old developer insanely angry. I work hard at both software development and technical writing.
Just how am I supposed to get compensated for those efforts? Giving my work away for free sure doesn't pay the rent or put food on my table.
Would some of you high minded folks please tell me how I should earn a living from my work? Or are you suggesting that it's good for the soul
to work for free?
I spent a number of years as part of a team testing nuclear devices. They could be used as Russia has done
to cut this off but at a mile deep I'd be worried to death about the potential for unexpected side effects.
It may be the only option we have given the current failures but the chance of a catastrophic failure is far
more likely than the LHC producing a large black hole.
It's about f...ing time My wife spent 5 years learning English and social studies in order to become an American citizen. It makes me crazy
listening to the bleeding hearts complain about the horrible treatment being afforded people in this country ILLEGALLY!!!!!!!!!! Give me a break already!!!
I usually avoid the Mac versus PC discussions with a passion. I'm a game player and a developer. I run a high resolution dual monitor system with a couple of terrabytes of disk, 8 GB of memory and an Intel Quad core processor. The whole shebang cost me less than a Mac. As an Empower ISV I get thousands of dollars worth of development tools for $ 395 a year. But according to every Apple afficianado a Mac is better than my system. So would someone please step up and tell me where I went wrong? I have Expression Studio and can run Adobe stuff if I want. Exactly what is it that makes a Mac better than my system running Windows 7 x64? You can email me at bud@dotnetchecks.com to let me know.
This whole objection thing pi$$es me off! I have about 20 old books that I wrote years ago. This deal is worth anywhere from $ 1200 to $ 2000 that I could sure use but now everyone is weighing in to prevent that. I WANT my books included!
Ermmm - the world is going thin client folks. This means cloud computing. Can you run Azure apps from a Linux browser? If you can't today I bet you can very soon. Microsoft could likely have Linux for lunch but why eat what you can use?
I don't often make comments but don't write Microsoft off to early LOL. What sometimes amuses and enthralls me is that most give Bill Gates all the credit for Microsoft's success. The real man behind Microsoft is firmly in control at this point. When Bill first hired Steve Balmer Steve observed that Microsoft needed more people. Bill said NO but Steve went out and hired more people anyway. He's been a major force behind Microsoft's success from the day he was hired. He may throw chairs but he's a force to reckon with. There is no question that a great part of the world in 10 years will be thin client but that takes servers... MS will likely be around making money for a lot of years.
Not this child - I watch Paul Potts and Susan Boyle but I sure as hell wouldn't pay to watch them. I have a million other things to pay for but not YouTube...
I go by GGBlogger on geekswithblogs.com - that's Geriatric Geek. At 81 I'm a self taught programmer. Started with mainframe COBOL and punched cards.
I'm not likely to get hired but I completed an 86 thousand dollar project last year for the State of Ohio and have new bids in the works.
So the work is there and no one asks my age when I quote programming jobs.
I spent the better part of a 17 year Navy career testing and working with atomic weapons and follow on technology. In 1941 the notion of an atomic bomb was science fiction.
It took a war to make the thing work. I can't to this day discuss many of the things I know but when I left the service in 1963 I was inspecting
little light 1 kiloton tank killers and rumors had an atomic rifle grenade... Lord only knows how far things have come in 40 plus years.
My experience has been that is you can envision something it has a basis in fact. Can you even imagine how devastating cold fusion would be
to the oil industry? I wouldn't be a bit surprised to discover that cold fusion is already a reality. It - like many other related things - never
see the light of day for many reasons. Developing Fat Man and Little Boy took a war. So folks - don't write it off as a pipe dream/
When I went through electronics school in the late 40s there were resistors, capacitors and inductors. The real news here is that we have a totally new circuit element and heaven only knows where that can take us.
Check out Microsoft's Small Basic. It's like a cut down Visual Basic complete with intellisense!
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx
It was concieved and designed specifically to get people started in programming.
I read and scanned through this thread. My life started teaching COBOL and assembly language for Control Data Corporation's line of computers. I learned C, C++ and a slew of other languages through the years. I now make a substantial living writing in Visual Basic 2008 for Windows and thank god every day for Intellisense. My real question is a very, very honest one. How does one earn an income writing open source? At this point I know how to earn a living in Microsoft technologies but haven't a clue how to earn in the Linux and other open source venues.
I usually try hard to avoid discussions like this. Seems to me Ubuntu / Linux users are constantly trying to convince themselves of the value proposition of "free" software. Granted Linux is free but at some point someone needs to expend time and effort (with no compensation) to get the job done. It's my understanding that many OpenSource developers are beginning to rethink how they can make money in the current climate. Let's face it folks - EVERYTHING has a cost somewhere along the line.
That said - I have absolutely NO problem with you choosing any platform you like but I would respectfully ask that you don't bad mouth MY choice. I spent a day at the PDC. I walked past one gentleman sitting at a table working on his laptop. I said to him "You using a Mac and the PDC?" and chuckled. He said "Yup." My take was simply whatever works for you is fine with me. Well folks Windows Vista Ultimate works beautifully for me. I won't bore you with the details of my day or why I love the OS so much but at 81 I deserve a little respect I think. I still spend most of my day developing MICR check printing software for my company dotnetchecks. Can Ubuntu provide me with an environment where I can write and sell my software? So folks PLEASE extol the virtues of Ubuntu for you but stop calling my choice crap.
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More importantly it only applies to carbon based life I would assume. How about silicon based life - as an example?
I think patents are great - for physical things. I think software patents are stupid in the extreme. I hope this starts happening around the world!!!
This notion of "open source" makes this 83 year old developer insanely angry. I work hard at both software development and technical writing. Just how am I supposed to get compensated for those efforts? Giving my work away for free sure doesn't pay the rent or put food on my table. Would some of you high minded folks please tell me how I should earn a living from my work? Or are you suggesting that it's good for the soul to work for free?
I spent a number of years as part of a team testing nuclear devices. They could be used as Russia has done to cut this off but at a mile deep I'd be worried to death about the potential for unexpected side effects. It may be the only option we have given the current failures but the chance of a catastrophic failure is far more likely than the LHC producing a large black hole.
It's about f...ing time My wife spent 5 years learning English and social studies in order to become an American citizen. It makes me crazy listening to the bleeding hearts complain about the horrible treatment being afforded people in this country ILLEGALLY!!!!!!!!!! Give me a break already!!!
Like Tiger???? ... I just couldn't resist
I usually avoid the Mac versus PC discussions with a passion. I'm a game player and a developer. I run a high resolution dual monitor system with a couple of terrabytes of disk, 8 GB of memory and an Intel Quad core processor. The whole shebang cost me less than a Mac. As an Empower ISV I get thousands of dollars worth of development tools for $ 395 a year. But according to every Apple afficianado a Mac is better than my system. So would someone please step up and tell me where I went wrong? I have Expression Studio and can run Adobe stuff if I want. Exactly what is it that makes a Mac better than my system running Windows 7 x64? You can email me at bud@dotnetchecks.com to let me know.
This whole objection thing pi$$es me off! I have about 20 old books that I wrote years ago. This deal is worth anywhere from $ 1200 to $ 2000 that I could sure use but now everyone is weighing in to prevent that. I WANT my books included!
Ermmm - the world is going thin client folks. This means cloud computing. Can you run Azure apps from a Linux browser? If you can't today I bet you can very soon. Microsoft could likely have Linux for lunch but why eat what you can use?
I don't often make comments but don't write Microsoft off to early LOL. What sometimes amuses and enthralls me is that most give Bill Gates all the credit for Microsoft's success. The real man behind Microsoft is firmly in control at this point. When Bill first hired Steve Balmer Steve observed that Microsoft needed more people. Bill said NO but Steve went out and hired more people anyway. He's been a major force behind Microsoft's success from the day he was hired. He may throw chairs but he's a force to reckon with. There is no question that a great part of the world in 10 years will be thin client but that takes servers... MS will likely be around making money for a lot of years.
Not this child - I watch Paul Potts and Susan Boyle but I sure as hell wouldn't pay to watch them. I have a million other things to pay for but not YouTube...
I go by GGBlogger on geekswithblogs.com - that's Geriatric Geek. At 81 I'm a self taught programmer. Started with mainframe COBOL and punched cards. I'm not likely to get hired but I completed an 86 thousand dollar project last year for the State of Ohio and have new bids in the works. So the work is there and no one asks my age when I quote programming jobs.
I spent the better part of a 17 year Navy career testing and working with atomic weapons and follow on technology. In 1941 the notion of an atomic bomb was science fiction. It took a war to make the thing work. I can't to this day discuss many of the things I know but when I left the service in 1963 I was inspecting little light 1 kiloton tank killers and rumors had an atomic rifle grenade... Lord only knows how far things have come in 40 plus years. My experience has been that is you can envision something it has a basis in fact. Can you even imagine how devastating cold fusion would be to the oil industry? I wouldn't be a bit surprised to discover that cold fusion is already a reality. It - like many other related things - never see the light of day for many reasons. Developing Fat Man and Little Boy took a war. So folks - don't write it off as a pipe dream/
When I went through electronics school in the late 40s there were resistors, capacitors and inductors. The real news here is that we have a totally new circuit element and heaven only knows where that can take us.
Check out Microsoft's Small Basic. It's like a cut down Visual Basic complete with intellisense! http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx It was concieved and designed specifically to get people started in programming.
I read and scanned through this thread. My life started teaching COBOL and assembly language for Control Data Corporation's line of computers. I learned C, C++ and a slew of other languages through the years. I now make a substantial living writing in Visual Basic 2008 for Windows and thank god every day for Intellisense. My real question is a very, very honest one. How does one earn an income writing open source? At this point I know how to earn a living in Microsoft technologies but haven't a clue how to earn in the Linux and other open source venues.
I usually try hard to avoid discussions like this. Seems to me Ubuntu / Linux users are constantly trying to convince themselves of the value proposition of "free" software. Granted Linux is free but at some point someone needs to expend time and effort (with no compensation) to get the job done. It's my understanding that many OpenSource developers are beginning to rethink how they can make money in the current climate. Let's face it folks - EVERYTHING has a cost somewhere along the line. That said - I have absolutely NO problem with you choosing any platform you like but I would respectfully ask that you don't bad mouth MY choice. I spent a day at the PDC. I walked past one gentleman sitting at a table working on his laptop. I said to him "You using a Mac and the PDC?" and chuckled. He said "Yup." My take was simply whatever works for you is fine with me. Well folks Windows Vista Ultimate works beautifully for me. I won't bore you with the details of my day or why I love the OS so much but at 81 I deserve a little respect I think. I still spend most of my day developing MICR check printing software for my company dotnetchecks. Can Ubuntu provide me with an environment where I can write and sell my software? So folks PLEASE extol the virtues of Ubuntu for you but stop calling my choice crap.