I've always had respect for the Canadians, for doing a complete job. No half-way job for them...
We had a mail server shipped to an office location in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This was a fair sized HP server, fully configured. All that needed to be done was taken to the server room, unpacked, plugged in and turned on. Should be finished Friday evening, with plenty of time to relax over the weekend.
The server was miss-handled at the loading dock, and fell from the truck to the ground. A good four foot drop, but there was still a chance that the system might be functional.
Then the crate was backed into by the shipping truck as it was maneuvering to get out... Still, there may have been undamaged equipment in the box...
But when a fork-lift tine was pushed through the crate, we knew. A complete job was done, with no more questions needed to be asked. Time to ship a new server. <grin>
I can't really agree with this. The fact is that there always needs to be someone who can actually implement. The fact is that two or four immigrant laborers that get paid my total salary probably don't have the skills yet to do what I'm delivering. If they had the skills, they'd be getting the rate I'm getting.
I believe that consulting services are less susceptible to the destruction of a career after the age of 35. And though the H-1B visa recipients do push salaries down, delivery skills that I have will continue to provide me with a good living.
Of course, I'm not getting $225/hour in my check. That's what the company receives. My cut is much smaller than that...
From what I've seen from my last six years working in local and nationwide consulting companies is that age can be a desired attribute. The fact is that very few companies are comfortable paying $225 an hour for a baby faced engineer. (Finally, a receding hairline is taking care of this for me. )
In consulting, companies want to see people who have seen their problems before, and are able to get to work immediately on solving them. It does take a slightly different mindset to bounce from client to client, but I find it results in more interesting work for me.
Consulting firms are also able to continue promotions and pay increases even if you don't want to enter the management track. Training is also important to a company that needs to maintain/increase the value of their primary resource: consultants.
I've been very happy working as a consultant. Even as a UNIX Systems Integrater/SysAdmin, I find my skills in very strong demand. In fact, my compensation has out-paced almost all of the programmers I took CS classes with at the UofMN. Not bad for a kid from northern Minnesota, eh?
It is unlikely that Secure Computing will contribute the final code that they deliver to the NSA to the public, but the additional eyes on the kernel source can only be a good thing. As a bonus, any tools they need developed by other opensource companies like Cygnus would be released by Cygnus to the community.
I don't necesarily think that this is a case of Red Hat starting something that already being better handled by others. This looks to be set up to as a research group to find new applications of the Open Source Community method to other areas.
Whether this is useful or not I couldn't say. Perhaps this is just what happens when you are community minded with too much cash in your pockets. <grin>
I'd like to check Ted's paper, supposedly at http://odin.bio.sunysb.edu/~tshieh/soft ware but it looks like he may have graduated... At least no sign of his work is on odin, and he's not mentioned on the SUNY sites.
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But, my second was What is the count of UNIX to Windows servers?
I suspect that the number of total Windows server installed allows a greater numerical loss while suffering a much lesser market share loss...
I've always had respect for the Canadians, for doing a complete job. No half-way job for them...
We had a mail server shipped to an office location in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This was a fair sized HP server, fully configured. All that needed to be done was taken to the server room, unpacked, plugged in and turned on. Should be finished Friday evening, with plenty of time to relax over the weekend.
The server was miss-handled at the loading dock, and fell from the truck to the ground. A good four foot drop, but there was still a chance that the system might be functional.
Then the crate was backed into by the shipping truck as it was maneuvering to get out... Still, there may have been undamaged equipment in the box...
But when a fork-lift tine was pushed through the crate, we knew. A complete job was done, with no more questions needed to be asked. Time to ship a new server. <grin>
I can't really agree with this. The fact is that there always needs to be someone who can actually implement. The fact is that two or four immigrant laborers that get paid my total salary probably don't have the skills yet to do what I'm delivering. If they had the skills, they'd be getting the rate I'm getting.
I believe that consulting services are less susceptible to the destruction of a career after the age of 35. And though the H-1B visa recipients do push salaries down, delivery skills that I have will continue to provide me with a good living.
Of course, I'm not getting $225/hour in my check. That's what the company receives. My cut is much smaller than that...
From what I've seen from my last six years working in local and nationwide consulting companies is that age can be a desired attribute. The fact is that very few companies are comfortable paying $225 an hour for a baby faced engineer. (Finally, a receding hairline is taking care of this for me. )
In consulting, companies want to see people who have seen their problems before, and are able to get to work immediately on solving them. It does take a slightly different mindset to bounce from client to client, but I find it results in more interesting work for me.
Consulting firms are also able to continue promotions and pay increases even if you don't want to enter the management track. Training is also important to a company that needs to maintain/increase the value of their primary resource: consultants.
I've been very happy working as a consultant. Even as a UNIX Systems Integrater/SysAdmin, I find my skills in very strong demand. In fact, my compensation has out-paced almost all of the programmers I took CS classes with at the UofMN. Not bad for a kid from northern Minnesota, eh?
Secure Computing had done a lot of work with BSDI. They also contributed fixes and modifications back to the BSD tree.
In fact, they have an employee credited in The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System book.
It is unlikely that Secure Computing will contribute the final code that they deliver to the NSA to the public, but the additional eyes on the kernel source can only be a good thing. As a bonus, any tools they need developed by other opensource companies like Cygnus would be released by Cygnus to the community.
Welcome the folks new to the "bandwagon"...
Ron
Whether this is useful or not I couldn't say. Perhaps this is just what happens when you are community minded with too much cash in your pockets. <grin>
I'd like to check Ted's paper, supposedly at http://odin.bio.sunysb.edu/~tshieh/soft ware but it looks like he may have graduated... At least no sign of his work is on odin, and he's not mentioned on the SUNY sites.
Any ideas on where to find his work?