I was thinking of starting my own mining business. While I realize I could attend college chemistry courses or just buy pre-made ones, I am a particularly pig-headed self-starter.
On the other hand, I do tend to say things that piss a lot of people off. Particularly intelligent people who don't need the Internet to tell them how to make a bomb. Thus I decide to learn bomb construction techniques in an attempt to recognize the next mailbomb I'm sent. This is a real-world argument, as police bomb disposal learn how to build bombs so that they know the correct way to disarm them. (I have a relative who is on a bomb squad and told me about it after his courses.)
Knowledge isn't dangerous. It's the misuse of the knowledge that's dangerous. Having knowledge of a "bad thing" can help a good person be prepared to handle "bad things" when they come across them.
Software will have ZERO bearing on the cost of hardware (other than open source drivers offsetting the need to hire driver authors), so HP will remain. So to more precise, we will have superior server SOFTWARE which will not step on HP's, IBM's or Sun's toes. And if a superior database system comes out for Linux, and Oracle decides to drop support for Linux... WHO CARES???? We'll have a superior database anyway. On the bright side, it is nice of you to remind us that in the end our superior software will force the improvement or dissappearance of commercial software. (Basically they must evolve or die. Software Darwinism at its finest.) Since approximately 95% of coders get paid to write software not for resale, but instead for internal use, the existance of OSS makes their job easier. If they can give their boss the desired results by fixing a couple of bugs or adding a feature to an already existing piece of OSS instead of having to author an application from scratch (aka: re-invent the wheel), don't you think that's more likely to earn them a raise rather than the bosses ire for not doing all the work themselves? My boss knows my mentality and my methods. I got a great Christmas bonus this year. Know why? Because I got the job done in minimum time and delivered the results ahead of schedule. Know how? By using OSS software. Since they were free, I didn't have to tangle with getting the Financial or Operations Officers to approve it. Since they were GPL, I created as many copies of it as I needed to process the difficult tasks in a shorter amount of time. The results of that labor were viewed very often throughout this Christmas shopping season. And those results remained stable and operational the whole time. It was probably the company's most profitable Christmas yet. Good thing I had OSS available to have it ready to go on time.
> This open source economic "bubble" will surely > burst, and I can't wait to see when it does. For > open source to thrive, you need the deep > pockets of Oracle, Sun, and IBM--the > anti-Microsoft crowd. However, once open source > starts inflicting on their territories--superior > "free" databases and superior low cost servers, > the open source guys won't have a leg to stand > on. So, it's best that they make as much money > now while they can, because it won't last long.
For all the good that Silicon Valley money earns you if you are forced to live in a revamped homeless shelter. I would bet one of ESR's dollars goes much further than a Silicon Valley dollar does. Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
They're selling support for their Linux distro, not the software itself. Red Hat offers a perfectly functional and (objectively speaking) complete install for download from their FTP site and any mirrors. The biggest difference between the free download and the store bought version is what? Support. When you purchase Linux from the store or even from Red Hat itself, it comes with X number of days of support. (My favorite, Mandrake, is no different.)
Listen up, moron boy. Most programmers aren't writing code because their employers pay them for the code. Most programmers get paid to produce a desired result. The fact that many can now do it using OSS and cost the company not-a-dime offsets the time that programmer may devote to fixing a flaw or adding a feature to that code. The employer doesn't care because that coder still gets the job done and does it for less than it would have cost to buy and customize a proprietary product.
That news company would lose all credibility in the public's eyes because every other network out there will pounce all over the opportunity to show just how poor their reporting practices are. Now if we had a news service equivalent to monoposoft, they could get away with it, since no other services would exist for them to worry about competition from. Fortunately, news agencies rely on their viewer's trust to maintain their very livelihood. I don't foresee monoposoft paying for the sudden retirement and pension of an entire news company on an announcement that is so easily disproven. Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
MS didn't have time to get a browser to market, so they contracted with Spyglass. But when MS "bundled" the browser, they screwed Spyglass out of their share of what they expected to be large royalties. Spyglass is so put off by what MS did, they don't even list IE as one of their accomplishments.
I realize that I'm going to moderated down for that, but frankly I think that sums up the feelings of a lot of people concerning this. Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Robert wrote: > note: this isn't to say I agree with the patent Amazon has. It's dicy. If it's dicy, it'll hopefully lose. Valid patents and IP should be defended. Who appointed us judge and jury?
"We the people" did. That's who. And "we the people" need to let the patent office know that they're doing a lousy job. If the patent office's problem is financing needed to do the job right, then maybe they should extend the time it takes to get the patent while they do their homework. Eventually, patenting will take long enough that stupid and silly patents that coders like Amazon's come up won't bother messing with a patent and spend more time advancing and improving their tech rather than worrying about others being able to catch up. Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Just because they spent "thousands of hours" getting the bugs out of a two day project doesn't earn any respect from me. All they're trying to do is make it harder to shop anywhere else. (Just like MS tries to make it hard to use someone else's OS.) Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Your math is skewed. When comparing salary to hourly the standard assumption is yearly/2000, not yearly/1000. Assuming the same hours worked, your math is giving the hourly employees twice as much pay per hour as your salaried. Obviously you'll have to make a small change for your 10 hour workday vice the US's standard 8 hour workday. But that difference certainly won't amount the the doubling you've come up with. Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Chilisoft's interpreter is written to work with big commercial server packages. Hopefully by "for Linux" you mean the Apache web server. Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Funny, I could have sworn my teachers taught me about the 50 states. Commonwealth sounds like a state full of people looking for a reason to look down their nose at you. And I speak from experience since I just moved out of the STATE of Virginia. Maybe the United States aren't so united. Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Ya know, Cyrix's do work a lot better when you remember to put the fan and heat sink on them. As for space heating... hey! Why's there smoke pouring out of your ear?!
I almost feel bad calling my system low-end, but I suppose by todays standards (as opposed to 6 months ago), my system is low-end. I've got the Via Fic-2003 and a Cyrix PR300 (233MHz clock) and I've thoroughly enjoyed using them. I see some of you shuddering at the thought of Cyrix. Well, can it. Cyrix made some great CPU's once they got past their initial problems with the original 6x86 line. I play Quake 2, Unreal (didn't manage to make my system look like a 486/100), Tribes, BG:TSC, Alpha Centauri and various other games of varying CPU requirements without any problems. The only problem I had was the first M2-300 I bought. It was bad when I bought it, so I took it back to the business I bought it from and they replaced it without a problem. Funny thing is, I just saw the same thing happen to a friend of mine who bought an AMD, so it's not just a Cyrix thing. (Which is also why I only buy from local businesses at computer shows.) And the prices for Cyrix's are un-fsck-ing believable. You get a CPU approximately (sometimes faster sometimes slower depending on whether or not Mindcraft wrote your benchmark software ) as fast as the low-end Pentium 2's for only $20-$30. Now if I could just use them in an SMP setup... Oh well, I'll just build a few systems and use Beowulf instead. (Like I have room for more than the 4 I've got now.) So from personal experience, I can say that I like the idea of Via making Cyrix CPU's. I never was crazy about Winchips though. Too pricey for way too little speed.
What you are describing is EXACTLY has MS will do it. People will still be able to chat with each other, but if you don't have MSChatCrap v1.3, you won't have access to all these "extra" features.
All told, this is weird. I don't like AOL, but at least they're playing fair on this one. It's their chat, and they are free to do what they will with it. Too bad that may render my Tik client useless though. Hopefully they release a binary for Linux/BSD/Unix so I can keep in touch with my less fortunate family members caught in the AOHell. Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Gee, it would freaking help if those of us with the beginnings of the knowledge and the desire to learn could afford the courses needed to get those skills. Seems like MOST of the people in the business are children of well-to-do parents who could afford to put their kids through the $8000 courses with the $150 tests. So if people want to stop this shortage of workers in the U.S., stop hiring foreign workers and start funding the education of those who are willing and able. Even my GI Bill won't cover the courses I need to get something like the MCSE. Personally, I'm looking forward to LPI getting the Linux certification ready. I can only pray I can afford the education that'll be required. Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
What? You didn't know about the M$'s efforts to embed Win2K in your digital watch. It only requires the portable backpack drive plug-in system.:) Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
It would be hard to call Intel a monopoly. They are definitely the largest CPU maker, but they do have serious competition from AMD, Cyrix, Rise, IDT (uh... forget IDT), and in the Linux community the PPC and Alpha. 2/3 of my computers use non-Intel CPU's. And the only reason one does is because the mb wouldn't do the 83MHz the Cyrix wanted, so my friend swapped his P200 for a 6x86-PR200. If anyone knows if Cyrix's can be used for SMP, please e-mail me. Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Well, I don't consider myself any kind of serious coder. So I guess any self-respect or lack thereof really doesn't matter. Hand over that remote shutdown code. I'm drooling already. Hey, if NATO is okay with a few civilian casualties who am I to say we can't have a few. Or even better still, we target "strategic" proprietary systems. When those people or companies see what this remote shutdown has subjected them to, they'll get the idea. Anyone got the IP of their local congressperson? I've got a demonstration they weren't expecting.;)
I like that. I've got a stupid NT Workstation CD that my college included as part of my tuition (came with a remedial language I swear I just needed the credits for). I've got ZERO use for that. Anyone else got an NT WS CD they'd like to swap for mine?:) We'll call MS at the same time and get permission. Hell, all we have to do is pair off enough people like this and we can just swap up pairs every now and then. They must have enough people that we won't likely speak to the same poor schmuck twice very often. Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
There are several people I've spoken to who work or recently worked for Micros~1. The most common reason for working there? Who else is left to pay them to program? (And many of them hadn't heard of Linux at the time - circa early 1998.)
I think my favorite phrase I saw on a Micros~1 site... "Many people with the company have never written a line of code." My thoughts... And it shows!
I don't think the DOJ needs to worry about appeasing the employees. The ones who'll truly earn a living would look forward to the end of M$ domination.
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking of starting my own mining business.
While I realize I could attend college chemistry courses or just buy pre-made ones, I am a particularly pig-headed self-starter.
On the other hand, I do tend to say things that piss a lot of people off. Particularly intelligent people who don't need the Internet to tell them how to make a bomb. Thus I decide to learn bomb construction techniques in an attempt to recognize the next mailbomb I'm sent.
This is a real-world argument, as police bomb disposal learn how to build bombs so that they know the correct way to disarm them. (I have a relative who is on a bomb squad and told me about it after his courses.)
Knowledge isn't dangerous. It's the misuse of the knowledge that's dangerous. Having knowledge of a "bad thing" can help a good person be prepared to handle "bad things" when they come across them.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Software will have ZERO bearing on the cost of hardware (other than open source drivers offsetting the need to hire driver authors), so HP will remain. So to more precise, we will have superior server SOFTWARE which will not step on HP's, IBM's or Sun's toes.
And if a superior database system comes out for Linux, and Oracle decides to drop support for Linux... WHO CARES???? We'll have a superior database anyway.
On the bright side, it is nice of you to remind us that in the end our superior software will force the improvement or dissappearance of commercial software. (Basically they must evolve or die. Software Darwinism at its finest.)
Since approximately 95% of coders get paid to write software not for resale, but instead for internal use, the existance of OSS makes their job easier. If they can give their boss the desired results by fixing a couple of bugs or adding a feature to an already existing piece of OSS instead of having to author an application from scratch (aka: re-invent the wheel), don't you think that's more likely to earn them a raise rather than the bosses ire for not doing all the work themselves?
My boss knows my mentality and my methods. I got a great Christmas bonus this year. Know why? Because I got the job done in minimum time and delivered the results ahead of schedule. Know how? By using OSS software. Since they were free, I didn't have to tangle with getting the Financial or Operations Officers to approve it. Since they were GPL, I created as many copies of it as I needed to process the difficult tasks in a shorter amount of time.
The results of that labor were viewed very often throughout this Christmas shopping season. And those results remained stable and operational the whole time. It was probably the company's most profitable Christmas yet. Good thing I had OSS available to have it ready to go on time.
> This open source economic "bubble" will surely
> burst, and I can't wait to see when it does. For
> open source to thrive, you need the deep
> pockets of Oracle, Sun, and IBM--the
> anti-Microsoft crowd. However, once open source
> starts inflicting on their territories--superior
> "free" databases and superior low cost servers,
> the open source guys won't have a leg to stand
> on. So, it's best that they make as much money
> now while they can, because it won't last long.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
For all the good that Silicon Valley money earns you if you are forced to live in a revamped homeless shelter. I would bet one of ESR's dollars goes much further than a Silicon Valley dollar does.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
They're selling support for their Linux distro, not the software itself. Red Hat offers a perfectly functional and (objectively speaking) complete install for download from their FTP site and any mirrors.
The biggest difference between the free download and the store bought version is what? Support. When you purchase Linux from the store or even from Red Hat itself, it comes with X number of days of support. (My favorite, Mandrake, is no different.)
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Listen up, moron boy.
Most programmers aren't writing code because their employers pay them for the code. Most programmers get paid to produce a desired result. The fact that many can now do it using OSS and cost the company not-a-dime offsets the time that programmer may devote to fixing a flaw or adding a feature to that code. The employer doesn't care because that coder still gets the job done and does it for less than it would have cost to buy and customize a proprietary product.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
That news company would lose all credibility in the public's eyes because every other network out there will pounce all over the opportunity to show just how poor their reporting practices are.
Now if we had a news service equivalent to monoposoft, they could get away with it, since no other services would exist for them to worry about competition from.
Fortunately, news agencies rely on their viewer's trust to maintain their very livelihood. I don't foresee monoposoft paying for the sudden retirement and pension of an entire news company on an announcement that is so easily disproven.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
MS didn't have time to get a browser to market, so they contracted with Spyglass. But when MS "bundled" the browser, they screwed Spyglass out of their share of what they expected to be large royalties.
Spyglass is so put off by what MS did, they don't even list IE as one of their accomplishments.
Source: http://www.kmfms.com/
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I realize that I'm going to moderated down for that, but frankly I think that sums up the feelings of a lot of people concerning this.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Have you considered adding .txt to that list? It's certainly static enough for indexing.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Robert wrote:
> note: this isn't to say I agree with the patent Amazon has. It's dicy. If it's dicy, it'll hopefully lose. Valid patents and IP should be defended. Who appointed us judge and jury?
"We the people" did. That's who. And "we the people" need to let the patent office know that they're doing a lousy job. If the patent office's problem is financing needed to do the job right, then maybe they should extend the time it takes to get the patent while they do their homework. Eventually, patenting will take long enough that stupid and silly patents that coders like Amazon's come up won't bother messing with a patent and spend more time advancing and improving their tech rather than worrying about others being able to catch up.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Just because they spent "thousands of hours" getting the bugs out of a two day project doesn't earn any respect from me.
All they're trying to do is make it harder to shop anywhere else. (Just like MS tries to make it hard to use someone else's OS.)
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Your math is skewed. When comparing salary to hourly the standard assumption is yearly/2000, not yearly/1000. Assuming the same hours worked, your math is giving the hourly employees twice as much pay per hour as your salaried.
Obviously you'll have to make a small change for your 10 hour workday vice the US's standard 8 hour workday. But that difference certainly won't amount the the doubling you've come up with.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Nope. Not getting thin at all.
You have no idea how much I wasn't posting this from monoposoft winblows right now.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Chilisoft's interpreter is written to work with big commercial server packages. Hopefully by "for Linux" you mean the Apache web server.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Funny, I could have sworn my teachers taught me about the 50 states. Commonwealth sounds like a state full of people looking for a reason to look down their nose at you. And I speak from experience since I just moved out of the STATE of Virginia.
Maybe the United States aren't so united.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Their loss was my gain. And I recommend Cyrix CPU's to all my friends.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Ya know, Cyrix's do work a lot better when you remember to put the fan and heat sink on them.
As for space heating... hey! Why's there smoke pouring out of your ear?!
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
I almost feel bad calling my system low-end, but I suppose by todays standards (as opposed to 6 months ago), my system is low-end.
I've got the Via Fic-2003 and a Cyrix PR300 (233MHz clock) and I've thoroughly enjoyed using them. I see some of you shuddering at the thought of Cyrix. Well, can it.
Cyrix made some great CPU's once they got past their initial problems with the original 6x86 line.
I play Quake 2, Unreal (didn't manage to make my system look like a 486/100), Tribes, BG:TSC, Alpha Centauri and various other games of varying CPU requirements without any problems.
The only problem I had was the first M2-300 I bought. It was bad when I bought it, so I took it back to the business I bought it from and they replaced it without a problem. Funny thing is, I just saw the same thing happen to a friend of mine who bought an AMD, so it's not just a Cyrix thing. (Which is also why I only buy from local businesses at computer shows.)
And the prices for Cyrix's are un-fsck-ing believable. You get a CPU approximately (sometimes faster sometimes slower depending on whether or not Mindcraft wrote your benchmark software ) as fast as the low-end Pentium 2's for only $20-$30. Now if I could just use them in an SMP setup... Oh well, I'll just build a few systems and use Beowulf instead. (Like I have room for more than the 4 I've got now.)
So from personal experience, I can say that I like the idea of Via making Cyrix CPU's. I never was crazy about Winchips though. Too pricey for way too little speed.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
What you are describing is EXACTLY has MS will do it. People will still be able to chat with each other, but if you don't have MSChatCrap v1.3, you won't have access to all these "extra" features.
All told, this is weird. I don't like AOL, but at least they're playing fair on this one. It's their chat, and they are free to do what they will with it. Too bad that may render my Tik client useless though. Hopefully they release a binary for Linux/BSD/Unix so I can keep in touch with my less fortunate family members caught in the AOHell.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Gee, it would freaking help if those of us with the beginnings of the knowledge and the desire to learn could afford the courses needed to get those skills.
Seems like MOST of the people in the business are children of well-to-do parents who could afford to put their kids through the $8000 courses with the $150 tests.
So if people want to stop this shortage of workers in the U.S., stop hiring foreign workers and start funding the education of those who are willing and able.
Even my GI Bill won't cover the courses I need to get something like the MCSE.
Personally, I'm looking forward to LPI getting the Linux certification ready. I can only pray I can afford the education that'll be required.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
What? You didn't know about the M$'s efforts to embed Win2K in your digital watch. It only requires the portable backpack drive plug-in system. :)
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
It would be hard to call Intel a monopoly. They are definitely the largest CPU maker, but they do have serious competition from AMD, Cyrix, Rise, IDT (uh... forget IDT), and in the Linux community the PPC and Alpha.
2/3 of my computers use non-Intel CPU's. And the only reason one does is because the mb wouldn't do the 83MHz the Cyrix wanted, so my friend swapped his P200 for a 6x86-PR200.
If anyone knows if Cyrix's can be used for SMP, please e-mail me.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
Well, I don't consider myself any kind of serious coder. So I guess any self-respect or lack thereof really doesn't matter. ;)
Hand over that remote shutdown code. I'm drooling already.
Hey, if NATO is okay with a few civilian casualties who am I to say we can't have a few. Or even better still, we target "strategic" proprietary systems. When those people or companies see what this remote shutdown has subjected them to, they'll get the idea.
Anyone got the IP of their local congressperson? I've got a demonstration they weren't expecting.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
I like that. I've got a stupid NT Workstation CD that my college included as part of my tuition (came with a remedial language I swear I just needed the credits for). I've got ZERO use for that. Anyone else got an NT WS CD they'd like to swap for mine? :) We'll call MS at the same time and get permission. Hell, all we have to do is pair off enough people like this and we can just swap up pairs every now and then. They must have enough people that we won't likely speak to the same poor schmuck twice very often.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
There are several people I've spoken to who work or recently worked for Micros~1. The most common reason for working there? Who else is left to pay them to program? (And many of them hadn't heard of Linux at the time - circa early 1998.)
I think my favorite phrase I saw on a Micros~1 site... "Many people with the company have never written a line of code." My thoughts... And it shows!
I don't think the DOJ needs to worry about appeasing the employees. The ones who'll truly earn a living would look forward to the end of M$ domination.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age