Sure, if you've got the person. Whoever it is, they need to be conversant with both the client's business and the design business.
I've sat in more than enough unhappy meetings between client and software firms for this lifetime. Far too often, the customer is ticked off because they didn't get what they thought they asked for. When the techies respond, "That's the requirements said.", I know that they sent someone over to the client's office for half-a-day to ask questions and write requirements. The specs were massaged and passed to the developers, but the client didn't have a clue what they said or meant. Why? Because the software firm forgot how to run a business.
As someone who's spent a good chunk of his career working the strange and murky waters between IT and their corporate customers, take my advice: This guy's advice is right on target. Pay attention to it.
Remember, a web development business is not a place for you to geek out. It is a business. If you can't run a business, your coding skills are irrelevant.
Absolutely. But it is your responsibility to make sure the client understands what will be delivered when you meet the requirements. Part of your job is translating requirements-speak into client-speak.
After being burned (as the client) I learned to schedule a session whose only purpose is to have the client outline for the designers what he thinks the requirements mean. Tends to clear up a lot of confusion before the real work begins.
Perhaps you just found out what your client wants. Unless your client asked for features that require dynamic content, web forms, and the like, maybe you've been gilding an unnecessary lily.
Even if you think the client is ordering mediocre design, your job is to provide the best mediocre design you can.
Lest anyone harbor visions of floating to orbit, you can't achieve orbit without accelerating to orbital velocity. Don't have orbital velocity? Down you come.
Employee misuse of the data is the point that really concerned me. Widespread abuse by the company would draw attention, but a single employee could maneuver under the radar.
On a related topic: You know when companies say "this phone call may be recorded for quality purposes..."? Ask them sometime if you are allowed access to recordings of your phone calls (without a lawyer and a subpoena, that is...). The tapes are used for dispute resolution, as well, but you'll have to take the firm's word about what they say is on the tape.
His point is that you need to be able to document that no one else owned the code before it was merged into the kernel. If someone did own it, you need to document that they legally passed rights to the code to your project.
What the GPL says is not pertinent to that issue. Put the SCO hysteria aside momentarily. This guy is speaking from his own experience in a very similar environment: When someone gets a lawyer and says they owned some of the code in your project, you'd better come up with documentation that proves them wrong. If you can't, it is your word against theirs.
I said "Fedora-based" not "Fedora". A name is just a name, anyway. Fedora is obviously a testbed project supervised by RedHat, so I think it is safe assumption that they plan to make some money out of it sooner or later.
I shrugged off mp3's because I don't care about mp3's. I also said lots of other people do. If similar license and IP issues are the reason Fedora doesn't install the usual plugins, so be it. I stand corrected. I support RedHat's stance on these issues, for the record.
>> So since when did "I have another way of doing that, so screw you guys, I've got mine." become a valid reason to tell people to complain about lack of functionality?
Give it a break, OK? I didn't say or imply that. However, the review's author certainly stated that Fedora lacked basic functionality for everyone because it doesn't include mp3 capability and a few other programs.
Well, the fact is I don't consider the ability to play mp3's as a "basic" function of my PC. And, I said that. I also said a lot of other people do.
What's your problem anyway? Too much ego identity with your Linux distribution du jour?
Hey, as I said elsewhere, nobody seems to be posting mp3's of the music I like. So, since I've got a chunk of change invested in CD's, why bother converting tracks into mp3's? I don't run spreadsheets on my stereo, so why should I listen to music on my computer?
>>"We downlaod "backup" copies of the sngs from CDs that we've, um misplaced."
Yeah, I know. Not enough "backup" copies of music I like are available to make it worth my time.
Your Functionality Is My Puffery
on
Fedora Core 2 Review
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
My impression of Core 2 is that it is a lot like Core 1, only better. I like it.
The review criticizes Fedora for lacking mplayer, xcdroast, dvd ability, concluding it lacks basic "functionality". Now, in addition to RedHat's well-known stance on mp3's and other IP issues, I think it is safe to say that a lot of Linux users -- myself included -- don't count listening to mp3's and playing DVD's as part of basic functionality. Not that it isn't for a lor of other folks, but it isn't for me and, presumably, it isn't for the market any future Fedora-based commercial release is intended for. (Besides, my sound system is within arms reach, it cost more than my PC, and it sounds a lot better. I've never seen why I should bother to copy tracks from my CD's to my PC and put up with degraded quality.)
That said, I updated with up2date immediately after installation with no delays or stalling. Yum, on the other hand, is much slower and can appear to stall out. (My FC1 experience was just the opposite.) In addition, Yum offered to install packages that up2date did not. That should not happen. The Fedora user should have only one choice of updating his system, it needs to be fast and foolproof, and the user should never be expected to edit the list of sources used by the update tool. This is a problem RedHat will need to solve if it ever wants to make money from a Fedora-based release.
I also agree that commonly used plugins ought to be installed by default. At the very least, add their installation to the post-install routines. Point the user at the right repositories and then lead him through the installation.
Others will have suggested using yum or apt. RPM is not, as in n-o-t, intended to resolve dependency issues. Your toaster doesn't make ice cream, Do you whine about that?
Folks need to remember that dependencies always exist in every distribution. Different packaging schemes have different ways to tell you something's missing, but they're all telling you the same thing.
If you think someone needs to be blamed for dependency hell, go blame the developers.
If the Linux vendor told Langa everything would work with his hardware and it didn't, then either the vendor was wrong or lied.
If a download some free ISO's, then I expect to get what I paid for. But if I choose to spend, say, $89 for a Linux distro instead of Windows, I also expect to get what I paid for. That includes having every piece of hardware, every peripheral, detected and properly configured during the installation. I want the printer to work: I want the scanner to work; I want the sound card to work (and don't mute the thing; that's lame: I found your sound card, and now I'll turn it off); etc., etc.
People do not buy computers and operating systems so they can waste time getting the damn things to work right.
>>...users who value ease of use over and in place of technical merit, and users who themselves lack the technical prowess to develop more effectivve and efficient computing practices but still wish to identify themselves with an elitist technical community.
First of all, no conflict exists between ease of use and technical merit. Deleting a file using "rm" or with a mouse get you to the same place and do the same thing.
Second, the technical community, if there is one, is no more elite than the marketing community, or the realtor community, or the barber community. The elitism in the tech community is bogus, and primarily finds expression in the arrogance many of its members express toward anyone else. It's rather like someone prancing around arguing that people who drive cars with autotmatic transmissions are trying to "leverage" a little glory from the "elite auto mechanic community".
>>...they are rightly the target of ridicule in the legitimate FOSS technocrat community
For using the same damn software that's in every other bleeding Linux distribution? Fedora drops a couple mp3 players, uses a Gnome theme that doesn't glow in the dark, and gets beat up for it. By some nonexistent "legitimate FOSS technocrat community".
>> The Redhat: Fedora Core product is for users who: # Would prefer to use the tools prescribed for them by others or by default in their corporate environment.
Well, like I said, it's the same damn software. And, if your boss owns the hardware, your boss gets to "prescribe" the software that's on it.
# Value a shiny, flashy system initialization screen where essential details are hidden by a pretty picture.
It's not shiny or flashy. It's rather dark and blue and it just sits there and does nothing. ANd those intitialization details are not essential to a user, who won't understand them anyway. They get paid to work, not understand Linux messages.
You did, indeed, say "I doubt they make any big profits" but then you added "their goals are to make a living not a profit."
The first clause says that it's your opinion that these businesses do not make big profits. In other words, they make small profits. The second clause says their goals are not to make a profit at all, but only to make a living.
I found the second clause contradictory. Many people start their own small businesses, but forget that they need to make enough profit to pay themselves a salary. So, even if the business is able to meet its expenses, they still have no money because they forgot to include themselves as an expense. As you say, profit needs to be the goal of everyone trying to make a living from a business.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, if you've got the person. Whoever it is, they need to be conversant with both the client's business and the design business.
I've sat in more than enough unhappy meetings between client and software firms for this lifetime. Far too often, the customer is ticked off because they didn't get what they thought they asked for. When the techies respond, "That's the requirements said.", I know that they sent someone over to the client's office for half-a-day to ask questions and write requirements. The specs were massaged and passed to the developers, but the client didn't have a clue what they said or meant. Why? Because the software firm forgot how to run a business.
As someone who's spent a good chunk of his career working the strange and murky waters between IT and their corporate customers, take my advice: This guy's advice is right on target. Pay attention to it.
Remember, a web development business is not a place for you to geek out. It is a business. If you can't run a business, your coding skills are irrelevant.
>> LIVE BY THE REQUIREMENTS.
Absolutely. But it is your responsibility to make sure the client understands what will be delivered when you meet the requirements. Part of your job is translating requirements-speak into client-speak.
After being burned (as the client) I learned to schedule a session whose only purpose is to have the client outline for the designers what he thinks the requirements mean. Tends to clear up a lot of confusion before the real work begins.
Perhaps you just found out what your client wants. Unless your client asked for features that require dynamic content, web forms, and the like, maybe you've been gilding an unnecessary lily.
Even if you think the client is ordering mediocre design, your job is to provide the best mediocre design you can.
Lest anyone harbor visions of floating to orbit, you can't achieve orbit without accelerating to orbital velocity. Don't have orbital velocity? Down you come.
Employee misuse of the data is the point that really concerned me. Widespread abuse by the company would draw attention, but a single employee could maneuver under the radar.
On a related topic: You know when companies say "this phone call may be recorded for quality purposes..."? Ask them sometime if you are allowed access to recordings of your phone calls (without a lawyer and a subpoena, that is...). The tapes are used for dispute resolution, as well, but you'll have to take the firm's word about what they say is on the tape.
His point is that you need to be able to document that no one else owned the code before it was merged into the kernel. If someone did own it, you need to document that they legally passed rights to the code to your project.
What the GPL says is not pertinent to that issue. Put the SCO hysteria aside momentarily. This guy is speaking from his own experience in a very similar environment: When someone gets a lawyer and says they owned some of the code in your project, you'd better come up with documentation that proves them wrong. If you can't, it is your word against theirs.
Them, too.
It's adherence to an ideology that's the problem, not the ideology.
...They're the people who want to tell me what to do.
Canon was invented by obsessive Trekkie fans, not by writers and directors. It ain't real, you know.
As someone has said, get a life.
...confronting Linux usability that /. conflates the term with "art" in a headline.
I said "Fedora-based" not "Fedora". A name is just a name, anyway. Fedora is obviously a testbed project supervised by RedHat, so I think it is safe assumption that they plan to make some money out of it sooner or later.
I shrugged off mp3's because I don't care about mp3's. I also said lots of other people do. If similar license and IP issues are the reason Fedora doesn't install the usual plugins, so be it. I stand corrected. I support RedHat's stance on these issues, for the record.
>> So since when did "I have another way of doing that, so screw you guys, I've got mine." become a valid reason to tell people to complain about lack of functionality?
Give it a break, OK? I didn't say or imply that. However, the review's author certainly stated that Fedora lacked basic functionality for everyone because it doesn't include mp3 capability and a few other programs.
Well, the fact is I don't consider the ability to play mp3's as a "basic" function of my PC. And, I said that. I also said a lot of other people do.
What's your problem anyway? Too much ego identity with your Linux distribution du jour?
Hey, as I said elsewhere, nobody seems to be posting mp3's of the music I like. So, since I've got a chunk of change invested in CD's, why bother converting tracks into mp3's? I don't run spreadsheets on my stereo, so why should I listen to music on my computer?
ANd, no, I don't recall being frozen.
>>"We downlaod "backup" copies of the sngs from CDs that we've, um misplaced."
Yeah, I know. Not enough "backup" copies of music I like are available to make it worth my time.
My impression of Core 2 is that it is a lot like Core 1, only better. I like it.
The review criticizes Fedora for lacking mplayer, xcdroast, dvd ability, concluding it lacks basic "functionality". Now, in addition to RedHat's well-known stance on mp3's and other IP issues, I think it is safe to say that a lot of Linux users -- myself included -- don't count listening to mp3's and playing DVD's as part of basic functionality. Not that it isn't for a lor of other folks, but it isn't for me and, presumably, it isn't for the market any future Fedora-based commercial release is intended for. (Besides, my sound system is within arms reach, it cost more than my PC, and it sounds a lot better. I've never seen why I should bother to copy tracks from my CD's to my PC and put up with degraded quality.)
That said, I updated with up2date immediately after installation with no delays or stalling. Yum, on the other hand, is much slower and can appear to stall out. (My FC1 experience was just the opposite.) In addition, Yum offered to install packages that up2date did not. That should not happen. The Fedora user should have only one choice of updating his system, it needs to be fast and foolproof, and the user should never be expected to edit the list of sources used by the update tool. This is a problem RedHat will need to solve if it ever wants to make money from a Fedora-based release.
I also agree that commonly used plugins ought to be installed by default. At the very least, add their installation to the post-install routines. Point the user at the right repositories and then lead him through the installation.
...for this decade's release?
Others will have suggested using yum or apt. RPM is not, as in n-o-t, intended to resolve dependency issues. Your toaster doesn't make ice cream, Do you whine about that?
Folks need to remember that dependencies always exist in every distribution. Different packaging schemes have different ways to tell you something's missing, but they're all telling you the same thing.
If you think someone needs to be blamed for dependency hell, go blame the developers.
If the Linux vendor told Langa everything would work with his hardware and it didn't, then either the vendor was wrong or lied.
If a download some free ISO's, then I expect to get what I paid for. But if I choose to spend, say, $89 for a Linux distro instead of Windows, I also expect to get what I paid for. That includes having every piece of hardware, every peripheral, detected and properly configured during the installation. I want the printer to work: I want the scanner to work; I want the sound card to work (and don't mute the thing; that's lame: I found your sound card, and now I'll turn it off); etc., etc.
People do not buy computers and operating systems so they can waste time getting the damn things to work right.
Of course not, silly boy.
...users who value ease of use over and in place of technical merit, and users who themselves lack the technical prowess to develop more effectivve and efficient computing practices but still wish to identify themselves with an elitist technical community.
>>
First of all, no conflict exists between ease of use and technical merit. Deleting a file using "rm" or with a mouse get you to the same place and do the same thing.
Second, the technical community, if there is one, is no more elite than the marketing community, or the realtor community, or the barber community. The elitism in the tech community is bogus, and primarily finds expression in the arrogance many of its members express toward anyone else. It's rather like someone prancing around arguing that people who drive cars with autotmatic transmissions are trying to "leverage" a little glory from the "elite auto mechanic community".
>>...they are rightly the target of ridicule in the legitimate FOSS technocrat community
For using the same damn software that's in every other bleeding Linux distribution? Fedora drops a couple mp3 players, uses a Gnome theme that doesn't glow in the dark, and gets beat up for it. By some nonexistent "legitimate FOSS technocrat community".
>> The Redhat: Fedora Core product is for users who:
# Would prefer to use the tools prescribed for them by others or by default in their corporate environment.
Well, like I said, it's the same damn software. And, if your boss owns the hardware, your boss gets to "prescribe" the software that's on it.
# Value a shiny, flashy system initialization screen where essential details are hidden by a pretty picture.
It's not shiny or flashy. It's rather dark and blue and it just sits there and does nothing. ANd those intitialization details are not essential to a user, who won't understand them anyway. They get paid to work, not understand Linux messages.
I've been running a Test3 that was updated just after their 7 May freeze. Pretty slick.
If you're after a noisy, flashy Linux with umpteen ways to play music and videos, Fedora is not for you.
I you're after a professional piece of work that seems to have been built by adults for adults, look at Fedora.
Soundblaster rrom Dell? God knows where it came from. Whatever was cheaper on the day they built your machine.
I hte to reply to myself, but it is an indication of /.'s readership that someone poor mindless sod moderated that post as "funny".
...especially if you happen to live where the outsourced jobs are located. It isn't outsourcing then.
Let things happen. Protectionaism just leads to a workforce stuck making buggy whips.
You did, indeed, say "I doubt they make any big profits" but then you added "their goals are to make a living not a profit."
The first clause says that it's your opinion that these businesses do not make big profits. In other words, they make small profits. The second clause says their goals are not to make a profit at all, but only to make a living.
I found the second clause contradictory. Many people start their own small businesses, but forget that they need to make enough profit to pay themselves a salary. So, even if the business is able to meet its expenses, they still have no money because they forgot to include themselves as an expense. As you say, profit needs to be the goal of everyone trying to make a living from a business.