I guess this is off topic, but I have to agree with you. I think that people think of Japan as crowded and expensive because they come here as tourists. They go to all the famous sites where people are jammed in like sardines. And they buy stuff at tourist places and get ripped off. Or eat steak at a restaurant.
I've been living here a year (admittedly in the inaka) and I spend *far* less than I did in Canada. Of course, you have to live like a Japanese person (buy the same food, wear the same clothes, enjoy the same entertainment, avoid traveling around, etc), but once you do prices become quite reasonable -- even in Tokyo.
The paper makes reference to electrorheostatic properties of suspensions of spheres. The paper they reference is this one
You can see from the abstract that they are discussing the viscosity of organic compounds like neoprene latex. The idea is that if you pass a suspension of rigid spheres through a magnetic or electric field, the viscosity of the liquid changes. (BTW, I have no idea what that means, just trying to paraphrase from the abstract -- hope I got it right;-) )
Tao et al then published a paper in 2006 showing that passing crude oil through a magnetic field reduced its viscosity temporarily. The paper is here. Then in their latest paper they show that diesel fuel is reduced in viscosity by 9% when passed through an electric field.
They then measured the droplet size of the diesel fuel when put through an atomizer. On average the particles were smaller. So they built a device for an engine and measured the power output using a dynamometer. They found a 20% increase in power using the same fuel consumption. Hence a potential 20% reduction in fuel consumption.
Now, I'm not a physicist. I don't even play one on slashdot. But I've read my share of scientific papers. This one isn't great. it just doesn't have any statistical rigor to back up their claims. They've got pretty pictures and charts, but I don't see any good numbers to tell me exactly what I'm looking at. However, I don't see anything particularly wrong either. Their method is simple and should be easy to reproduce. So maybe we'll get another group confirming their findings.
I'm with the GP here. I'm not going to call "Snake oil" until I see something to reasonably discredit their claims.
Corporatocracy which causes some people to be very worried.
Corporatism which a very large number of people find extremely worrisome.
Fascism which is considered to be a really, really bad idea by a very large number of people.
If you read through all of those links, ask yourself honestly where you feel that your country sits on the scale. The parent expresses concern. After reading these links, do you share their concern?
I've always had a strong suspicion Miguel is a Microsoft mole who has been doing a really awesome job of insuring Linux will never be any good on the desktop by poisoning it from within.
This really does Miguel a disservice. I certainly don't agree with everything he does (possibly not even many things that he does). But before Miguel the best spreadsheet application we had was Oleo. When Miguel wrote Gnumeric it made *huge* strides for free software on the desktop.
At the time I remember people saying, "Free software can never work on the desktop because writing a good spreadsheet application is just too boring". Miguel showed that there *were* people interested in writing decent office applications for free software.
Sometimes it's hard to remember the contribution that people made so long ago. But we need to remember our history and respect those people who brought us here.
Ha ha! I guess we need a -1 Desert Isle moderation. I really never saw that one before. And as you might notice from my subsequent reply, I'm having a bad day of it...
First, I'm not sure why you posted as anonymous coward. It is an interesting story and I have deep sympathy for your plight. But I don't think your blacklist will be successful in saving your business. If it is true that piracy is destroying your business, then refusal to sell to pirates only hurts you more. Pirates can find music anywhere. I'm sure you've heard people here explaining that most of the time you can pirate things even before they are released. And as we all know, one copy might as well be a million copies given the internet.
So, your refusal to sell to someone who wanted to buy an album means that you will go out of business faster. It means that you will have less time to find some other way to make your living.
I'm really sorry, but if what you say is true, you are already on borrowed time. Why not use your favorable position as a respected business operator to springboard you into the next venture? If you alienate those around you, will it not be more difficult to create your new business?
I wish you all the best and hope you reconsider your tactics. Life is rarely fair, but sometimes new opportunities are created when old ones fail. This is the essence of being an entrepreneur.
Ironically, in many places paying (or charging) for sex is not illegal. It is "solicitation" that is illegal. In other words, advertising that you are charging for sex, or advertising that you are willing to pay for sex is illegal.
Which puts the phone book with "escort services" listed on somewhat shaky ground from my perspective.
Yes, in Canada there is an extra levy on blank optical media. This levy is basically a "you-might-be-a-pirate" tax. So you can't be caught for copyright infringement if it's for personal use on discs you paid for.
I know what you mean, but it's really important to be precise when describing the levy since it has a big impact on how the new copyright bill could be drafted. In essence, what you are saying is what the recording industry *wants* you to think. Because they goofed up badly years ago and they want a new law to fix it for them.
The copyright act says, in part, "...the act of reproducing... [a musical work]... for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright"
That's right. The thing they gave up for the levy was that private copying *does not constitute copyright infringement*. It's not a "get out of jail card for pirates". It means, explicitly and clearly, that you are allowed to make private copies of music. It is completely legal. And it should be encouraged!
The very important implication here is that amendments like Bill C61 attempt to make it impossible for us to copy music, when it is, in fact, our right to do so. As I said, the recording industry screwed up extremely badly here. And I know the levy isn't popular. But that 21 cents per CD gives me the right to copy any music I want to. It doesn't sound so bad to me.
Admitedly, there should be provisions for people who use large numbers of blank media for non-music purposes to opt out. This is a weakness of the levy.
Well, nobody except the summary author who calls it "the GNU OS" and doesn't mention Linux until much later on. Which is, you know, what I was responding to in the first place. But yeah, if we exclude the context of this discussion, I'm sure nobody is doing it.
Sorry. In response to your very first question, yes. My interpretation is that GNU OS in the summary refers to the entire GNU OS including the Hurd. It is quite clear that the *entire* OS is *not* 25 years old. It was merely started 25 years ago. There is an entire GNU OS now, but virtually nobody chooses to run the Hurd as a kernel, of course.
I honestly thought you understood this and intended only to inflame people with your rhetoric. The summary is clear at the bottom when it says the he encourages people to use "free GNU/Linux distributions", that this is different from the GNU OS by itself (otherwise he would have said GNU OS distributions). Likewise he says "like gNewSense" implying that there are many distributions that use GNU and Linux.
The system as a whole could be called an HP, just as a Linux distribution can often be called Debian, or Ubuntu, or Red Hat, or Slackware.
But none of that justifies calling the collection of Linux distributions "the GNU operating system".
I agree whole heartedly. I have never, ever heard anyone refer to any of these distributions as Gnu/Linux/Debian, etc. Clearly the distribution is a *distribution* and not a specific piece of software. It distributes a lot of software. I do not believe the summary, or the FSF or anyone else I've heard in this thread intends otherwise. Clearly you *do* believe this, however unfortunate that is.
I regret my choice of words, and you are correct to think that my hostility was childish. I feel frustrated that you can not see beyond your own position to see another point of view. But I should take my own advice. The points have been made over and over again. Those who chose not to believe will likely not be swayed. So continuing to argue is counter productive.
I hope the above will be personally useful to you. But I understand if it isn't.
Nobody (not even RMS) is trying to brand Linux as a GNU project. What they *have* been trying to include is the GNU brand into the entire working system. In fact RMS is very careful to point out that the kernel is *not* part of GNU.
If you are just downloading the kernel, then I don't think *anyone* would suggest that you call it anything other than Linux. But what on earth would you do with it? Do you understand what the kernel does? You'd have absolutely no way of interacting with your computer! Even if you add X, you couldn't bloody run it without a shell.
There are a whole host of other programs that need to run in order for you to do *anything at all*. Now, you don't have to use GNU for these programs. There are many other programs you *could* use. But almost everyone uses GNU (and not just with the Linux kernel). The fact that it is so ubiquitous has kind of led it to be invisible. Which is why they are trying to point out that they exist.
I've thought about it a long time. I'm careful to give GNU and the FSF proper credit for their role. And I'm technical enough to truly understand what that role is. But as your continued posts show exceedingly well, most others have no understanding at all -- even when it is explained to them.
So I think it's not an effective thing to be doing. The FSF should probably understand the huge contribution they have made and resign themselves to the fact that most others won't understand. Whether it is fair or not, I don't think we're going to change this reality.
I agree completely. What RH and SUSE and Canonical, etc, etc now need to do is convince companies that they can do the customization job cheaper than the company's in house staff. Every installation needs planning, modification and execution. Why not choose experts who do it every day?
The problem the big distros face is that they have been used to providing crappy proprietary style hand-holding support rather than giving a true service. If you read what Michael Teimann has written about his experience, you've got to assume he understands this. If Red Hat doesn't listen, well, it's too bad for them...
Somebody will figure it out eventually. There's a lot of money to be made.
I just thought I'd chip in about working in Japan and learning Japanese. If you have a degree, come from an English speaking country and are under 40 years old, there's a good chance you can apply for the JET programme.
http://www.jetprogramme.org/
Essentially it's an English teaching position. Having done it for 1 year, I can recommend it. Salary is about $30K US, no taxes. Housing is often highly subsidized. The work is challenging at times, but rewarding. However there is usually a *lot* of free time for studying (and a considerable amount of encouragement to study Japanese at work). If you do a good job you can stay for up to 5 years.
The job is usually 8am to 4pm with very little over time expected (at least compared to the IT world;-) ) I find that on average I have a couple of hours a day to work on Japanese. And since I get to go home so early every day I've been able to get a lot of coding done on my own.
Very interesting... I swear it was MIT licensed about 3 years ago (when I was using it). I wish I had saved a copy... In fact, I vaguely remember when 1.3 came out there was a division between OpenNETCF and OpenNETCF.com. And I also seem to remember that there were two different licenses at the time.
But if this is what happened, then it is indeed scuzzy beyond words...
Let me turn it around a bit to see if it makes it easier to understand why developers choose the GPL over other, less restrictive licenses.
I have recently started writing a free software game. It will have a 3d isometric view. I will spend several weeks writing a free software graphics engine where there is already perfectly good code in proprietary programs. (Well, actually, there is probably already a free software one I can use, but let's say there isn't)
Why? The proprietary programs use their own licenses. I *might* be able to pay to license it from them, but it would cost me *far* more than I will ever recoup in my game.
Whenever I start a new project I always look for existing solutions to help. All free licenses are fine, but proprietary licenses lock me out altogether. It's just too damn bad that there's so much of it.
I hope this lets you see that I, a free software writer, encounter the same problems that you do due to our license incompatibilities. If I write software and donate it to a proprietary project, I *get nothing in return*. Usually not even a thank you. If you write software and give it to your end users, you *get nothing in return*. Well, you might get a thank you, but you probably won't get paid. Your business model is built on you forcing your users to pay money for the software.
With free software, my business model depends on my users (including other software developers) collaborating with me. That's why I often choose the GPL. If I do not get collaboration, then I don't get "paid". If you take my software and put it in a proprietary product (especially if it competes with mine), I lose. Now the functionality exists in another product, which steals mindshare from mine. Users are blocked from collaborating with me because of the proprietary software. Why should I do something that hurts me?
However, there are many times when it is beneficial to choose a less restrictive license. In fact, in my opinion you should always choose the least restrictive license that leads to your success. That's because, as you rightly point out, less restrictions lead to a lower barrier of entry. And a lower barrier of entry leads to more contribution.
So choosing the correct license is always a matter of strategy. Sometimes you make the right choice and sometimes you make a mistake. The GPL has hit a good balance for many people in many situations. It brings them the return on investment that they are looking for and simultaneously allows others to benefit where they otherwise would not be able to.
I may be overly cynical, but I would suspect that the only time a company contributes to an OSS project is when it wants some form of control over it: benevolence doesn't really come into it, nor does a subscription to Free Software ideals.
I don't think you are over cynical, but I do think you are missing something. Companies contribute to OSS projects when it gives them a return on their investment. Sometime that's control. Most of the time, though, they realize that they can benefit from cooperation if the software is not part of the core service/business that they are selling.
To really understand how free and open source software works in this circumstance, you merely have to look at consortiums. These were popular with businesses long before free software came around. It's a bunch of businesses that agree to cooperate on something that is not what they are selling in order to reduce cost (or sometimes they cooperate on something that they *are* selling in order to make a standard -- take DVD technology for instance). Free software just lowers the barrier to that consortium so that *many* organizations can contribute and benefit.
A really good example of this is the OpenNETCF project. It's an implementation of the.Net framework libraries with a MIT style (I think -- it's been a while since I used it) license. Back when I was doing mobile work with.Net it was indispensable. Microsoft's own implementation just plain didn't work and my company needed code that would operate the same on both desktop and mobile platforms. So we used OpenNETCF. And we fixed bugs in a few places and submitted patches.
The key here isn't control. Hell, on Microsoft platforms (and especially in.NET) Microsoft has control. You aren't going to change that. But we needed working development libraries and MS was a bit slow to deliver (it was not a high priority for them at the time). Many, many others were in the same boat, which is why OpenNETCF got started and flourished. It just doesn't make sense to horde your improvements -- the people who you are working with aren't your competition. You can only benefit from sharing.
So while I'm sure there are still lots of companies (maybe even most companies) out there that will not share no matter what, there are enough companies out there who will share to make it viable. They understand that shared benefit is still benefit.
Having said that, I agree that most companies do not adhere to free software ideals. It is fortunate that such ideals are not necessary for free software ideas to be useful. That's what "open source" is all about -- pragmatic use of free software methods without regard to ideals. IMHO keeping the ideals in mind is also good for business (what's good for your customers can be good for you -- and free software ideals are about protecting the customer), but it's an argument that I don't think needs to be had in this context. It's enough to say that free and open source software development is completely pragmatic in many places in business. To avoid it is to cut off your nose to spite your face.
Cent OS is *not* an OS that Red Hat provides support for. So, in terms of support, you get what you pay for. The bug is fixable by recompiling Perl? Great. Submit the fix to the maintainers. End of story.
But, supposing that you *did* pay for support and you ran into this problem... It's a known bug with low priority. So get them to fix it. You're paying for support. Hold your vendor to their promises.
And if they don't fix it, find another vendor. That's the beauty of open source. If you need support and your current supplier sucks, you can find another.
But it's completely disingenuous to complain that recompiling your Perl binary will void your support contract *when you have no such contract*.
It's not law that's the issue. It's the RFP process. There's an RFP on the books, you try to submit a bid and they say, "I'm sorry you can't bid". And it's not the people you're selling to that tell you this, it's some other group of people on the other side of the department that have no idea what you're selling. Even if the people in the department are actively *trying* to get you to win the bid (which would be wrong;-) ), you can't submit it.
Now, you *could* sue the government saying that the policy was discriminatory, against their other policies and stupid to boot... And well, that's exactly what's happening here...
Open source guys can evangelize all they want, but if they really want to see adoption, they'll need to sell it. Not via cold calls, but at least throw some copy online that the IT staff can use when they're pitching it against whatever half-assed proprietary product that's backed by a sales department.
The problem that you run into (at least in the Canadian government) is that there are often policies that make it impossible to sell open source software. One such policy that I'm aware of is that a vendor must be "the exclusive vendor" for a piece of software. The intent, of course, was to stop idiots from buying MS products through 15 middlemen rather than getting it directly through MS. However, as you can imagine, it makes it impossible for a local firm to sell open source software that they didn't write.
I'm very much in agreement with your general statement, though. I believe that an effective open source software company needs to have an emphasis on sales. Sales drives demand for your services. In proprietary software you build a product and then tell your sales people to find customers. To me, this is the tail wagging the dog. First find customers who want to pay you. Then deliver what they need. But first, you need customers and that's *all* sales.
With respect to TFA, though, we need to level the playing field so that local vendors actually have the ability to submit a bid. Without that, no amount of good salesmanship will help you.
Right now money is being spent on licenses. This money goes out of the province (indeed out of the country) to a company that sells the software. The money is then either reinvested into building the next upgrade, a new products, used for corporate overhead or designated as "profit".
The TFA notes that the amount of money spent on software in the 6 months from February to June was 25 million dollars.
If free software could be used to replace the proprietary software, then the money could be:
1) used for other government programs 2) used for training 3) used for local support 4) used for enhancing the software for new features 5) used for lining the wallets of local entrepreneurs.
But in these cases the money stays local. Since the government almost always spends all the money that it has, in all cases except for #5 the result is that the money ends up as salaries for other employees. And since this is money over and above money that they are already spending on salaries, it means new jobs.
If we work out the numbers, let's say we give the greedy entrepreneurs a million dollars. Then let's say that the other uses result in something close to 20% for equipment and capital costs. This leaves about 20 million dollars. At a loaded labour rate of 100,000 dollars a years (which is generous given that we've already taken out 4 million for equipment and capital costs), this gives us 200 new jobs.
So you are right, "thousands" of new jobs is probably not realistic. But if they can really reduce the outgo of software licensing money to foreign companies, it is not an exaggeration to say that hundreds of jobs would be the result.
As someone above mentioned, good advice on this question really depends on if you are writing software or not. If you are not involved in writing software, and you are not executive level then just stay out of it. Even if it is mission critical and you see something seriously bad, it's not your business. You've explained the issues, your observations have been listened to and acknowledged. Now you have to trust that your management is doing the right thing. If you don't trust that, then you have *much* bigger problems than software...
But if you *are* involved in software and you want to improve the situation, then it *is* your business. But after years of doing software process improvement I'll tell you that it's a long hard road you'll be walking and you need to be patient.
First of all, making it widely known that the people writing the software are doing a bad job is not going to make you friends. You may not have intended to insult everyone who works on software in your company, but by walking up to the CEO and telling them that nobody knows how to write quality software, you've pretty much done that.
Software process improvement is less a technical issue than it is a political issue. You've got to work on your people skills. You've got to make friends. You've got to make people eager to hear what you have to say. So the absolute very first thing you've got to do is "turn that frown upside down". Nobody wants to hear that they suck. You've got to be positive. You've got to smile. You've got to encourage people and sing their praises.
I know, I know... they really all do suck. Been there, done that, got a closet full of t-shirts. But you are where you are. And you aren't going to move anywhere by attacking these people. So sit down, relax, take a deep breath and get used to what you see. Because it's not going to get to great any time soon.
BUT (big, big, big BUT) if you are smart, and skillful, and patient, little by little by little you can improve things. If you are a coder then you can start with yourself. Do one small thing. Be successful with it. Then go to your buddy and say, "Hey... I started doing this one small little thing and my life is better. Wanna try?"
Keep doing that. Ask other people for their opinion on something that would make life better for you. Then say, "Hey, cool idea! Let's try it!". Keep doing that.
If you see something that's good, yell it out to the world. Say, "Wow! That's fantastic! Did you see what so-and-so did? We should all do that!". Keep doing that.
And smile. Every day. All day. Tell people how smart you think they are. Build up their confidence. Look at their code and compliment them. If you see something that could be improved, say "Hey. You know what? I have an idea... what if we did X here? Do you think that would work?" But for every time you do that, make sure to find 10 other things right that they are doing.
It's bloody hard. It's fucking hard. To be so positive every day. To tell people that you think they are good people. That they are good employees. That they work hard. But that's what it takes to make improvements.
Trust me. And in the end your patience will be rewarded. Because in my experience, most people want to succeed. They want to be kick-ass at their job. They just want a nice friendly person to guide them there. And then they'll go. Easily and willingly. And after all that, it turns out (from my experience) that all those nice things you said over all that time -- turns out to be true (9 times out of 10 -- the other time the guy really is a hopeless wanker).
I had difficulty finding the numbers for Canadian cattle, but I believe it is about 15 million based on numbers I've seen of various websites. Probably we don't need to add Mexican cattle since the original range of bison barely entered Mexico (so presumably we should stop farming cattle in Mexico???)
So, we are already very much over saturated with cows. And given that much of the plains have been converted to agriculture -- you can see the original range here:
I think it's pretty clear that in order to justify grass fed cattle production on environmental grounds you are going to have to cut production drastically.
Personally, I'm not against grass fed cattle production even though I have been eating mostly a vegetarian diet for most of my adult life. But I get really frustrated when I read rants like this when the writer does not bother to check the data.
Yes, lets try to improve the ecology of our farming! But lets do so in an informed manner. Both sides of the Veggie-antiVeggie debate need to put their biases behind them in order to make progress.
As some others have pointed out, you probably aren't using the project effectively in your resume and interview. I've looked through your code and it's reasonably good -- definitely enough to get you a leg up.
So there are a few things you need to do. First, you should identify the skill sets you used to develop your project -- gathering requests from users, C programming, math programming, design, etc, etc, etc. Put these on your resume in a "skills" section.
Create a special section in your resume for "Other projects". Describe (in only a small amount of detail) what you did. Cross reference this with the skills section by saying things like "Coordinated with other programmers to apply patches", etc, etc. Make sure to concentrate on activities that are normal in the coding business -- software development life-cycle stuff. Apart from mentioning the super technical stuff in the skills section, don't refer to them in "Other projects" unless your think they are directly applicable to the job you are applying for. (BTW, make sure to specifically modify your resume for *each* application!!! Yes, it takes time and effort, but finding a job is a full time job in itself)
When you get an interview, bring a copy of the code and other artifacts (requirements, design, etc). Be sure to give them a copy on a *well labeled* CD. In addition to the code, you should have some documentation indicating your writing skills (which you seem to have based on your web site). You should also prepare something of a description of the process you used to write your code. Write a short description of things that went well and things that didn't go well. Describe how you intend to improve your process as your go forward. Describe how you think this experience will benefit you in the work world. As I said, all of this should go on a CD, but you should also provide a pointer on your resume to a website where they can download it.
When interviewing, don't wait for people to ask questions. Use the questions you already have to springboard into information that *you* want to present (including your project). If they redirect you, go with the flow. But it's important to understand that the interview is there for you to make yourself look good. Show off your best side and don't wait for them to ask random questions.
Finally, if you want a coding job, go after a coding job. Even if it means you aren't in Dublin. I know that might seem to be really crappy, but especially when you are young (career wise, anyway -- don't know how old you are) you just need to get your foot in the door. After you get your first job or two, things will be easier.
If you *do* apply for sysadmin jobs, don't bother talking about coding. It's not really appropriate and you're just going to tip your hand that you'd rather be writing code. This makes you undesirable. From a sysadmin perspective, your project doesn't really help you because it's too programmer oriented. If you had built sysadmin tools, or showed real prowess in scripting, or whatever, it's a different story.
Anyway, good luck! It took me a long time to figure out how to make a good resume and how to interview well. Once I did, I had no problem getting jobs. You should probably also go to the public library and read a couple of books on these skills. That's what I did years ago and it helped tremendously.
Support is not where the money is for free software IMHO. And actually, although I'm not in the loop for these companies I don't think either of them make most of their money from "commercial" style support.
The big money is either in custom distribution builds or in custom software development (or both). Usually you sell a "support contract" with it too, but it's more of an extended warranty than a real support contract.
I once had an interesting talk with a salesman from Novell (who is a big free software fan). He told me that he doesn't try to sell support contracts for Linux. Instead he's more interested in providing upgrade paths for existing Netware customers. These products run on Linux and to compete against Microsoft's offerings they need a full package deal (office suite, email, etc, etc). In fact, from his description of what they were doing, I got the impression that the support side was still being run as a "loss center" rather than a "profit center".
To make a long story shorter, successful free software companies will make money providing specific solutions to customers. Those that rely on "generic" (IMHO, useless) end user support will die an ugly death. However, I don't believe that any of Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, IBM, Sun, etc, etc are trying to base their business on end user support.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess this is off topic, but I have to agree with you. I think that people think of Japan as crowded and expensive because they come here as tourists. They go to all the famous sites where people are jammed in like sardines. And they buy stuff at tourist places and get ripped off. Or eat steak at a restaurant.
I've been living here a year (admittedly in the inaka) and I spend *far* less than I did in Canada. Of course, you have to live like a Japanese person (buy the same food, wear the same clothes, enjoy the same entertainment, avoid traveling around, etc), but once you do prices become quite reasonable -- even in Tokyo.
The paper makes reference to electrorheostatic properties of suspensions of spheres. The paper they reference is this one
You can see from the abstract that they are discussing the viscosity of organic compounds like neoprene latex. The idea is that if you pass a suspension of rigid spheres through a magnetic or electric field, the viscosity of the liquid changes. (BTW, I have no idea what that means, just trying to paraphrase from the abstract -- hope I got it right ;-) )
Tao et al then published a paper in 2006 showing that passing crude oil through a magnetic field reduced its viscosity temporarily. The paper is here. Then in their latest paper they show that diesel fuel is reduced in viscosity by 9% when passed through an electric field.
They then measured the droplet size of the diesel fuel when put through an atomizer. On average the particles were smaller. So they built a device for an engine and measured the power output using a dynamometer. They found a 20% increase in power using the same fuel consumption. Hence a potential 20% reduction in fuel consumption.
Now, I'm not a physicist. I don't even play one on slashdot. But I've read my share of scientific papers. This one isn't great. it just doesn't have any statistical rigor to back up their claims. They've got pretty pictures and charts, but I don't see any good numbers to tell me exactly what I'm looking at. However, I don't see anything particularly wrong either. Their method is simple and should be easy to reproduce. So maybe we'll get another group confirming their findings.
I'm with the GP here. I'm not going to call "Snake oil" until I see something to reasonably discredit their claims.
Yes, but I Am Not A Lawyer.
Actually, I guess we'll have that in common now as well.
I'm also not the parent, but here are some good links that will explain what many people are concerned about:
Capitalism which many people think is good.
Corporate Capitalism which cause some people to be a bit worried.
Corporatocracy which causes some people to be very worried.
Corporatism which a very large number of people find extremely worrisome.
Fascism which is considered to be a really, really bad idea by a very large number of people.
If you read through all of those links, ask yourself honestly where you feel that your country sits on the scale. The parent expresses concern. After reading these links, do you share their concern?
I've always had a strong suspicion Miguel is a Microsoft mole who has been doing a really awesome job of insuring Linux will never be any good on the desktop by poisoning it from within.
This really does Miguel a disservice. I certainly don't agree with everything he does (possibly not even many things that he does). But before Miguel the best spreadsheet application we had was Oleo. When Miguel wrote Gnumeric it made *huge* strides for free software on the desktop.
At the time I remember people saying, "Free software can never work on the desktop because writing a good spreadsheet application is just too boring". Miguel showed that there *were* people interested in writing decent office applications for free software.
Sometimes it's hard to remember the contribution that people made so long ago. But we need to remember our history and respect those people who brought us here.
Ha ha! I guess we need a -1 Desert Isle moderation. I really never saw that one before. And as you might notice from my subsequent reply, I'm having a bad day of it...
Oh well... Life goes on...
Huh??? Honestly, I was replying to something, but the something is gone now....
Seriously... can that happen, or have I just gone batty????
First, I'm not sure why you posted as anonymous coward. It is an interesting story and I have deep sympathy for your plight. But I don't think your blacklist will be successful in saving your business. If it is true that piracy is destroying your business, then refusal to sell to pirates only hurts you more. Pirates can find music anywhere. I'm sure you've heard people here explaining that most of the time you can pirate things even before they are released. And as we all know, one copy might as well be a million copies given the internet.
So, your refusal to sell to someone who wanted to buy an album means that you will go out of business faster. It means that you will have less time to find some other way to make your living.
I'm really sorry, but if what you say is true, you are already on borrowed time. Why not use your favorable position as a respected business operator to springboard you into the next venture? If you alienate those around you, will it not be more difficult to create your new business?
I wish you all the best and hope you reconsider your tactics. Life is rarely fair, but sometimes new opportunities are created when old ones fail. This is the essence of being an entrepreneur.
Ironically, in many places paying (or charging) for sex is not illegal. It is "solicitation" that is illegal. In other words, advertising that you are charging for sex, or advertising that you are willing to pay for sex is illegal.
Which puts the phone book with "escort services" listed on somewhat shaky ground from my perspective.
Yes, in Canada there is an extra levy on blank optical media. This levy is basically a "you-might-be-a-pirate" tax. So you can't be caught for copyright infringement if it's for personal use on discs you paid for.
I know what you mean, but it's really important to be precise when describing the levy since it has a big impact on how the new copyright bill could be drafted. In essence, what you are saying is what the recording industry *wants* you to think. Because they goofed up badly years ago and they want a new law to fix it for them.
The copyright act says, in part, "...the act of reproducing... [a musical work] ... for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright"
That's right. The thing they gave up for the levy was that private copying *does not constitute copyright infringement*. It's not a "get out of jail card for pirates". It means, explicitly and clearly, that you are allowed to make private copies of music. It is completely legal. And it should be encouraged!
The very important implication here is that amendments like Bill C61 attempt to make it impossible for us to copy music, when it is, in fact, our right to do so. As I said, the recording industry screwed up extremely badly here. And I know the levy isn't popular. But that 21 cents per CD gives me the right to copy any music I want to. It doesn't sound so bad to me.
Admitedly, there should be provisions for people who use large numbers of blank media for non-music purposes to opt out. This is a weakness of the levy.
Well, nobody except the summary author who calls it "the GNU OS" and doesn't mention Linux until much later on. Which is, you know, what I was responding to in the first place. But yeah, if we exclude the context of this discussion, I'm sure nobody is doing it.
Sorry. In response to your very first question, yes. My interpretation is that GNU OS in the summary refers to the entire GNU OS including the Hurd. It is quite clear that the *entire* OS is *not* 25 years old. It was merely started 25 years ago. There is an entire GNU OS now, but virtually nobody chooses to run the Hurd as a kernel, of course.
I honestly thought you understood this and intended only to inflame people with your rhetoric. The summary is clear at the bottom when it says the he encourages people to use "free GNU/Linux distributions", that this is different from the GNU OS by itself (otherwise he would have said GNU OS distributions). Likewise he says "like gNewSense" implying that there are many distributions that use GNU and Linux.
The system as a whole could be called an HP, just as a Linux distribution can often be called Debian, or Ubuntu, or Red Hat, or Slackware.
But none of that justifies calling the collection of Linux distributions "the GNU operating system".
I agree whole heartedly. I have never, ever heard anyone refer to any of these distributions as Gnu/Linux/Debian, etc. Clearly the distribution is a *distribution* and not a specific piece of software. It distributes a lot of software. I do not believe the summary, or the FSF or anyone else I've heard in this thread intends otherwise. Clearly you *do* believe this, however unfortunate that is.
I regret my choice of words, and you are correct to think that my hostility was childish. I feel frustrated that you can not see beyond your own position to see another point of view. But I should take my own advice. The points have been made over and over again. Those who chose not to believe will likely not be swayed. So continuing to argue is counter productive.
I hope the above will be personally useful to you. But I understand if it isn't.
Nobody (not even RMS) is trying to brand Linux as a GNU project. What they *have* been trying to include is the GNU brand into the entire working system. In fact RMS is very careful to point out that the kernel is *not* part of GNU.
If you are just downloading the kernel, then I don't think *anyone* would suggest that you call it anything other than Linux. But what on earth would you do with it? Do you understand what the kernel does? You'd have absolutely no way of interacting with your computer! Even if you add X, you couldn't bloody run it without a shell.
There are a whole host of other programs that need to run in order for you to do *anything at all*. Now, you don't have to use GNU for these programs. There are many other programs you *could* use. But almost everyone uses GNU (and not just with the Linux kernel). The fact that it is so ubiquitous has kind of led it to be invisible. Which is why they are trying to point out that they exist.
I've thought about it a long time. I'm careful to give GNU and the FSF proper credit for their role. And I'm technical enough to truly understand what that role is. But as your continued posts show exceedingly well, most others have no understanding at all -- even when it is explained to them.
So I think it's not an effective thing to be doing. The FSF should probably understand the huge contribution they have made and resign themselves to the fact that most others won't understand. Whether it is fair or not, I don't think we're going to change this reality.
I agree completely. What RH and SUSE and Canonical, etc, etc now need to do is convince companies that they can do the customization job cheaper than the company's in house staff. Every installation needs planning, modification and execution. Why not choose experts who do it every day?
The problem the big distros face is that they have been used to providing crappy proprietary style hand-holding support rather than giving a true service. If you read what Michael Teimann has written about his experience, you've got to assume he understands this. If Red Hat doesn't listen, well, it's too bad for them...
Somebody will figure it out eventually. There's a lot of money to be made.
I just thought I'd chip in about working in Japan and learning Japanese. If you have a degree, come from an English speaking country and are under 40 years old, there's a good chance you can apply for the JET programme.
http://www.jetprogramme.org/
Essentially it's an English teaching position. Having done it for 1 year, I can recommend it. Salary is about $30K US, no taxes. Housing is often highly subsidized. The work is challenging at times, but rewarding. However there is usually a *lot* of free time for studying (and a considerable amount of encouragement to study Japanese at work). If you do a good job you can stay for up to 5 years.
The job is usually 8am to 4pm with very little over time expected (at least compared to the IT world ;-) ) I find that on average I have a couple of hours a day to work on Japanese. And since I get to go home so early every day I've been able to get a lot of coding done on my own.
Very interesting... I swear it was MIT licensed about 3 years ago (when I was using it). I wish I had saved a copy... In fact, I vaguely remember when 1.3 came out there was a division between OpenNETCF and OpenNETCF.com. And I also seem to remember that there were two different licenses at the time.
But if this is what happened, then it is indeed scuzzy beyond words...
Let me turn it around a bit to see if it makes it easier to understand why developers choose the GPL over other, less restrictive licenses.
I have recently started writing a free software game. It will have a 3d isometric view. I will spend several weeks writing a free software graphics engine where there is already perfectly good code in proprietary programs. (Well, actually, there is probably already a free software one I can use, but let's say there isn't)
Why? The proprietary programs use their own licenses. I *might* be able to pay to license it from them, but it would cost me *far* more than I will ever recoup in my game.
Whenever I start a new project I always look for existing solutions to help. All free licenses are fine, but proprietary licenses lock me out altogether. It's just too damn bad that there's so much of it.
I hope this lets you see that I, a free software writer, encounter the same problems that you do due to our license incompatibilities. If I write software and donate it to a proprietary project, I *get nothing in return*. Usually not even a thank you. If you write software and give it to your end users, you *get nothing in return*. Well, you might get a thank you, but you probably won't get paid. Your business model is built on you forcing your users to pay money for the software.
With free software, my business model depends on my users (including other software developers) collaborating with me. That's why I often choose the GPL. If I do not get collaboration, then I don't get "paid". If you take my software and put it in a proprietary product (especially if it competes with mine), I lose. Now the functionality exists in another product, which steals mindshare from mine. Users are blocked from collaborating with me because of the proprietary software. Why should I do something that hurts me?
However, there are many times when it is beneficial to choose a less restrictive license. In fact, in my opinion you should always choose the least restrictive license that leads to your success. That's because, as you rightly point out, less restrictions lead to a lower barrier of entry. And a lower barrier of entry leads to more contribution.
So choosing the correct license is always a matter of strategy. Sometimes you make the right choice and sometimes you make a mistake. The GPL has hit a good balance for many people in many situations. It brings them the return on investment that they are looking for and simultaneously allows others to benefit where they otherwise would not be able to.
I may be overly cynical, but I would suspect that the only time a company contributes to an OSS project is when it wants some form of control over it: benevolence doesn't really come into it, nor does a subscription to Free Software ideals.
I don't think you are over cynical, but I do think you are missing something. Companies contribute to OSS projects when it gives them a return on their investment. Sometime that's control. Most of the time, though, they realize that they can benefit from cooperation if the software is not part of the core service/business that they are selling.
To really understand how free and open source software works in this circumstance, you merely have to look at consortiums. These were popular with businesses long before free software came around. It's a bunch of businesses that agree to cooperate on something that is not what they are selling in order to reduce cost (or sometimes they cooperate on something that they *are* selling in order to make a standard -- take DVD technology for instance). Free software just lowers the barrier to that consortium so that *many* organizations can contribute and benefit.
A really good example of this is the OpenNETCF project. It's an implementation of the .Net framework libraries with a MIT style (I think -- it's been a while since I used it) license. Back when I was doing mobile work with .Net it was indispensable. Microsoft's own implementation just plain didn't work and my company needed code that would operate the same on both desktop and mobile platforms. So we used OpenNETCF. And we fixed bugs in a few places and submitted patches.
The key here isn't control. Hell, on Microsoft platforms (and especially in .NET) Microsoft has control. You aren't going to change that. But we needed working development libraries and MS was a bit slow to deliver (it was not a high priority for them at the time). Many, many others were in the same boat, which is why OpenNETCF got started and flourished. It just doesn't make sense to horde your improvements -- the people who you are working with aren't your competition. You can only benefit from sharing.
So while I'm sure there are still lots of companies (maybe even most companies) out there that will not share no matter what, there are enough companies out there who will share to make it viable. They understand that shared benefit is still benefit.
Having said that, I agree that most companies do not adhere to free software ideals. It is fortunate that such ideals are not necessary for free software ideas to be useful. That's what "open source" is all about -- pragmatic use of free software methods without regard to ideals. IMHO keeping the ideals in mind is also good for business (what's good for your customers can be good for you -- and free software ideals are about protecting the customer), but it's an argument that I don't think needs to be had in this context. It's enough to say that free and open source software development is completely pragmatic in many places in business. To avoid it is to cut off your nose to spite your face.
Cent OS is *not* an OS that Red Hat provides support for. So, in terms of support, you get what you pay for. The bug is fixable by recompiling Perl? Great. Submit the fix to the maintainers. End of story.
But, supposing that you *did* pay for support and you ran into this problem... It's a known bug with low priority. So get them to fix it. You're paying for support. Hold your vendor to their promises.
And if they don't fix it, find another vendor. That's the beauty of open source. If you need support and your current supplier sucks, you can find another.
But it's completely disingenuous to complain that recompiling your Perl binary will void your support contract *when you have no such contract*.
It's not law that's the issue. It's the RFP process. There's an RFP on the books, you try to submit a bid and they say, "I'm sorry you can't bid". And it's not the people you're selling to that tell you this, it's some other group of people on the other side of the department that have no idea what you're selling. Even if the people in the department are actively *trying* to get you to win the bid (which would be wrong ;-) ), you can't submit it.
Now, you *could* sue the government saying that the policy was discriminatory, against their other policies and stupid to boot... And well, that's exactly what's happening here...
Open source guys can evangelize all they want, but if they really want to see adoption, they'll need to sell it. Not via cold calls, but at least throw some copy online that the IT staff can use when they're pitching it against whatever half-assed proprietary product that's backed by a sales department.
The problem that you run into (at least in the Canadian government) is that there are often policies that make it impossible to sell open source software. One such policy that I'm aware of is that a vendor must be "the exclusive vendor" for a piece of software. The intent, of course, was to stop idiots from buying MS products through 15 middlemen rather than getting it directly through MS. However, as you can imagine, it makes it impossible for a local firm to sell open source software that they didn't write.
I'm very much in agreement with your general statement, though. I believe that an effective open source software company needs to have an emphasis on sales. Sales drives demand for your services. In proprietary software you build a product and then tell your sales people to find customers. To me, this is the tail wagging the dog. First find customers who want to pay you. Then deliver what they need. But first, you need customers and that's *all* sales.
With respect to TFA, though, we need to level the playing field so that local vendors actually have the ability to submit a bid. Without that, no amount of good salesmanship will help you.
Right now money is being spent on licenses. This money goes out of the province (indeed out of the country) to a company that sells the software. The money is then either reinvested into building the next upgrade, a new products, used for corporate overhead or designated as "profit".
The TFA notes that the amount of money spent on software in the 6 months from February to June was 25 million dollars.
If free software could be used to replace the proprietary software, then the money could be:
1) used for other government programs
2) used for training
3) used for local support
4) used for enhancing the software for new features
5) used for lining the wallets of local entrepreneurs.
But in these cases the money stays local. Since the government almost always spends all the money that it has, in all cases except for #5 the result is that the money ends up as salaries for other employees. And since this is money over and above money that they are already spending on salaries, it means new jobs.
If we work out the numbers, let's say we give the greedy entrepreneurs a million dollars. Then let's say that the other uses result in something close to 20% for equipment and capital costs.
This leaves about 20 million dollars. At a loaded
labour rate of 100,000 dollars a years (which is generous given that we've already taken out 4 million for equipment and capital costs), this gives us 200 new jobs.
So you are right, "thousands" of new jobs is probably not realistic. But if they can really reduce the outgo of software licensing money to foreign companies, it is not an exaggeration to say that hundreds of jobs would be the result.
As someone above mentioned, good advice on this question really depends on if you are writing software or not. If you are not involved in writing software, and you are not executive level then just stay out of it. Even if it is mission critical and you see something seriously bad, it's not your business. You've explained the issues, your observations have been listened to and acknowledged. Now you have to trust that your management is doing the right thing. If you don't trust that, then you have *much* bigger problems than software...
But if you *are* involved in software and you want to improve the situation, then it *is* your business. But after years of doing software process improvement I'll tell you that it's a long hard road you'll be walking and you need to be patient.
First of all, making it widely known that the people writing the software are doing a bad job is not going to make you friends. You may not have intended to insult everyone who works on software in your company, but by walking up to the CEO and telling them that nobody knows how to write quality software, you've pretty much done that.
Software process improvement is less a technical issue than it is a political issue. You've got to work on your people skills. You've got to make friends. You've got to make people eager to hear what you have to say. So the absolute very first thing you've got to do is "turn that frown upside down". Nobody wants to hear that they suck. You've got to be positive. You've got to smile. You've got to encourage people and sing their praises.
I know, I know... they really all do suck. Been there, done that, got a closet full of t-shirts. But you are where you are. And you aren't going to move anywhere by attacking these people. So sit down, relax, take a deep breath and get used to what you see. Because it's not going to get to great any time soon.
BUT (big, big, big BUT) if you are smart, and skillful, and patient, little by little by little you can improve things. If you are a coder then you can start with yourself. Do one small thing. Be successful with it. Then go to your buddy and say, "Hey... I started doing this one small little thing and my life is better. Wanna try?"
Keep doing that. Ask other people for their opinion on something that would make life better for you. Then say, "Hey, cool idea! Let's try it!". Keep doing that.
If you see something that's good, yell it out to the world. Say, "Wow! That's fantastic! Did you see what so-and-so did? We should all do that!". Keep doing that.
And smile. Every day. All day. Tell people how smart you think they are. Build up their confidence. Look at their code and compliment them. If you see something that could be improved, say "Hey. You know what? I have an idea... what if we did X here? Do you think that would work?" But for every time you do that, make sure to find 10 other things right that they are doing.
It's bloody hard. It's fucking hard. To be so positive every day. To tell people that you think they are good people. That they are good employees. That they work hard. But that's what it takes to make improvements.
Trust me. And in the end your patience will be rewarded. Because in my experience, most people want to succeed. They want to be kick-ass at their job. They just want a nice friendly person to guide them there. And then they'll go. Easily and willingly. And after all that, it turns out (from my experience) that all those nice things you said over all that time -- turns out to be true (9 times out of 10 -- the other time the guy really is a hopeless wanker).
According to the information on this page:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/3.html
The pre-european estimate of bison in all of North America was 30 - 70 million.
The current population of cows in the US alone is 104 million according to the USDA
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/Catt/Catt-07-25-2008.txt
I had difficulty finding the numbers for Canadian cattle, but I believe it is about 15 million based on numbers I've seen of various websites. Probably we don't need to add Mexican cattle since the original range of bison barely entered Mexico (so presumably we should stop farming cattle in Mexico???)
So, we are already very much over saturated with cows. And given that much of the plains have been converted to agriculture -- you can see the original range here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Extermination_of_bison_to_1889.png
I think it's pretty clear that in order to justify grass fed cattle production on environmental grounds you are going to have to cut production drastically.
Personally, I'm not against grass fed cattle production even though I have been eating mostly a vegetarian diet for most of my adult life. But I get really frustrated when I read rants like this when the writer does not bother to check the data.
Yes, lets try to improve the ecology of our farming! But lets do so in an informed manner. Both sides of the Veggie-antiVeggie debate need to put their biases behind them in order to make progress.
As some others have pointed out, you probably aren't using the project effectively in your resume and interview. I've looked through your code and it's reasonably good -- definitely enough to get you a leg up.
So there are a few things you need to do. First, you should identify the skill sets you used to develop your project -- gathering requests from users, C programming, math programming, design, etc, etc, etc. Put these on your resume in a "skills" section.
Create a special section in your resume for "Other projects". Describe (in only a small amount of detail) what you did. Cross reference this with the skills section by saying things like "Coordinated with other programmers to apply patches", etc, etc. Make sure to concentrate on activities that are normal in the coding business -- software development life-cycle stuff. Apart from mentioning the super technical stuff in the skills section, don't refer to them in "Other projects" unless your think they are directly applicable to the job you are applying for. (BTW, make sure to specifically modify your resume for *each* application!!! Yes, it takes time and effort, but finding a job is a full time job in itself)
When you get an interview, bring a copy of the code and other artifacts (requirements, design, etc). Be sure to give them a copy on a *well labeled* CD. In addition to the code, you should have some documentation indicating your writing skills (which you seem to have based on your web site). You should also prepare something of a description of the process you used to write your code. Write a short description of things that went well and things that didn't go well. Describe how you intend to improve your process as your go forward. Describe how you think this experience will benefit you in the work world. As I said, all of this should go on a CD, but you should also provide a pointer on your resume to a website where they can download it.
When interviewing, don't wait for people to ask questions. Use the questions you already have to springboard into information that *you* want to present (including your project). If they redirect you, go with the flow. But it's important to understand that the interview is there for you to make yourself look good. Show off your best side and don't wait for them to ask random questions.
Finally, if you want a coding job, go after a coding job. Even if it means you aren't in Dublin. I know that might seem to be really crappy, but especially when you are young (career wise, anyway -- don't know how old you are) you just need to get your foot in the door. After you get your first job or two, things will be easier.
If you *do* apply for sysadmin jobs, don't bother talking about coding. It's not really appropriate and you're just going to tip your hand that you'd rather be writing code. This makes you undesirable. From a sysadmin perspective, your project doesn't really help you because it's too programmer oriented. If you had built sysadmin tools, or showed real prowess in scripting, or whatever, it's a different story.
Anyway, good luck! It took me a long time to figure out how to make a good resume and how to interview well. Once I did, I had no problem getting jobs. You should probably also go to the public library and read a couple of books on these skills. That's what I did years ago and it helped tremendously.
Support is not where the money is for free software IMHO. And actually, although I'm not in the loop for these companies I don't think either of them make most of their money from "commercial" style support.
The big money is either in custom distribution builds or in custom software development (or both). Usually you sell a "support contract" with it too, but it's more of an extended warranty than a real support contract.
I once had an interesting talk with a salesman from Novell (who is a big free software fan). He told me that he doesn't try to sell support contracts for Linux. Instead he's more interested in providing upgrade paths for existing Netware customers. These products run on Linux and to compete against Microsoft's offerings they need a full package deal (office suite, email, etc, etc). In fact, from his description of what they were doing, I got the impression that the support side was still being run as a "loss center" rather than a "profit center".
To make a long story shorter, successful free software companies will make money providing specific solutions to customers. Those that rely on "generic" (IMHO, useless) end user support will die an ugly death. However, I don't believe that any of Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, IBM, Sun, etc, etc are trying to base their business on end user support.
So we can expect to see more of the same.