You can throw the CEO in jail if he screws up badly enough, but it's a little tougher when you remember that corporations were created for the sole purpose of distancing corporate decision makers from the consequences of their actions.
I'm glad this is getting some Insightful mods. We can all hate dirty corporate dealings, but think for a moment how much risk-taking you'd do if you could be personally ruined because a business decision went bad. Without risk-taking, the economy stalls. Incorporation, like money, is a great benefit to the economy with relatively small negative consequences.
GEEEAAAARRGGGHH! How many of these asshats are there? The fact that a sound card works under Windows has nothing to do with Windows. The fact that a sound card does not work under a Linux distribution has nothing to do with Linux. The relevant software is the driver, which under Windows is supplied by the hardware manufacturer (who usually gives Linux the middle finger). Try this: plug a brand-new sound card into a Windows box and when Windows asks for drivers, don't supply them. Does the sound card work? No? Wow, Windows must suck!
a "just cause" to quit your job and still claim unemployment
Or, if you live in Minnesota, there is no such thing as an unjust cause. At first I was puzzled by this "dilemma," because in the Socialist Upper Midwest about the only way you can mess up getting unemployment checks is to be working a job on the sly.
This reminds me of Earth, by David Brin. Take one part always-on recording equipment, one part dirt-cheap mass storage, and one part retirees with nothing better to do (i.e., 1/3 of the American population in 2020). The result is that there are no secrets anymore.
The problem with Qt is, that the current license costs basically locks out single developers who dont want to go the GPL route.
I was going to moderate, but this is driving me insane. There are just too many posts like this. How is $1000 "locking out" single developers who intend to sell closed-source licenses? Even for sole proprietorships $1K is nothing special. Besides, you are talking about selling closed-source software, which by definition requires other people to pay you money per license, but somehow you think TrollTech is a fiend for wanting to do the same thing. If you want to be open, TrollTech is right there with you.
but with the current market saturation and soon-to-be-waning interest in this genre I don't think it will see a very warm reception
I disagree. I think there are a lot of people itching to play this game. A read through the FAQ gets me imagining all kinds of spectacular fights. Three hundred different moves!
I recall when the Senate Judiciary Committee was first talking about the flag, they had the same sham public comment forum. The thousands of comments on that forum were one hundred percent opposed to the flag. Oh look, they passed the law anyway.
There is precisely zero chance that a comment this time is going to be any different. You cannot affect this process by posting to a forum.
The Wizard of Earthsea series is one of the most underread fantasy series I know of.
Underread and underrated. If you've read the original series, Tales from Earthsea is a fantastic read. I also recently picked up The Other Wind and thought it was wonderful as well.
I've never taken a close look at GURPS. I wonder if it fixes my two major pet peeves about fantasy combat in every system I've ever seen:
The net benefits of full plate mail outweigh all other armor configurations. That's pure nonsense, but the rules make it so "middle" armors like chainmail (which should be the most useful armor for a fighter) are only for people who can't afford full plate.
The net benefits of the "longsword" outweigh all other weapons. Staves and axes, in particular, which should be fantastically effective, always pale next to the longsword (which isn't even a real weapon).
++ P2P file-sharing software has proven costly and dangerous for many consumers.
+ This is my favorite.
What's really great about it is that P2P software hasn't proven costly at all. It saves its users a bunch of money, actually. OTOH, the RIAA lawsuits have proven extremely costly. Therefore, by this logic, to protect the citizens, the AG has a responsibility to shut down the RIAA.
Perhaps you've never been accused of cheating (when you weren't). It's not simply one person who happens to say, "Cheater". It's repeated rants full of explitives.
You exposed something that's right at the heart of this. I used to be a "casual" Counter-strike player, maybe 5 hours a week, just having fun. Definitely not interested enough to cheat. But some days I would really be ON, and I'd get a lot of headshots in the first 10 minutes, and look here comes the vote to ban me as a cheater. Some of the players are screaming that I'm a "fucking cheater."
Those players who are always screeching about cheating, they are the ones who invest 100% of their waking hours into CS but still are not very good players, and who are pissed off that anyone, anyone could get the better of them. Those are the people who ruin games, not so much the cheaters. The cheaters are just having fun. The ultra-serious nonstop fanatic is the real problem. In fact, if the hyperzealots went away I bet the cheaters would too because there'd be no one left to aggravate.
This is not quite so much funny as insightful (not to detract from the funniness factor, to be sure). There are two fairly-well-proven means to increasing brain power: languages and music. Music especially has been the subject of many studies lately. Both of these disciplines will dramatically augment your ability to reason.
What is this a vorpal +5 or something? $3300 seems a little steep to me unless it's got some special powers. I mean, this
will slice through any material known to man and it's only $17.99.
I know you're being funny, but I want to pipe up anyway with my little conversion story. (Cue ray of light from above and softly signing chorus.) When I installed Mandrake 8.something that is just about what my experience was like. I spent some days trying to make my USB mouse work. When I couldn't get printing to work at all I thought well maybe it's just not there yet. So I kept using my old, reliable Debian.
Just before Christmas 2003 I downloaded Mandrake 9.2 and gave it a try. I think the install took about 15 minutes, and the only thing I had to choose was which brand/model my monitor was. I set up printing to a remote samba printer in about 90 seconds. Even doing the scary upgrade to KDE 3.2 was no big deal (at least from the POV of a guy who upgraded Debian woody to KDE 3.0).
So now Mandrake 9.2 is my regular desktop and I've got my Club membership. There were always "rough edges" to Mandrake that irked me a little, but with 9.2 they are almost completely gone (especially urpmi source quirks, which with Club are pretty much zero now). It's no BS that they are going to overtake MS in the desktop goodness department with 10.0.
I still can't get my Linux box to print on a printer (through Samba).
Yeah this happens sometimes, especially with distros like Debian or Gentoo where you often have to "hand roll" solutions. (Aside: I think setting up a printer, network or otherwise, in Mandrake is about 50% easier than in Windows.)
However, it is utterly wrong to blame the project developers. They are doing their best to make these things work despite the fact that hardware vendors put up obstacles in their way. In MS-land, the hardware vendor does all the heavy lifting -- all the driver writing and all the admin work (via the installer) on the Windows box to make it click. And even then it sometimes doesn't work! In Linux, there is neither [direct] driver help nor admin help. So the fact that you can ever get a printer working under Linux is a miracle of reverse engineering and hard work from sources like the CUPS project.
Also note that hardware successes under Windows are not due to Microsoft. It's due to serious vendor effort to make their products easy to use with Windows. If they put the same effort toward making their hardware easy to use with Linux, this wouldn't be a topic for discussion.
you've got to remember the long term too, and unless you've got alot of faith that this company is going to be around (and keep you around)
This is pretty important. You might feel inclined to sign a lopsided contract just to get work, but that will get you into a lot of trouble down the road. Some years ago I signed a contract with a few ugly clauses (they didn't seem very ugly to me at the time, and I needed the work [p.s. this was not in the at-the-time-booming CS field]). One day my employer terminated me and said in no uncertain terms that they would sue if I ever talked to any of their clients or potential clients. In other words, I built up some good clientele for them and then they canned me and gave those clients to a lower-paid person to manage, then threatened me to stay far away.
Of course, these kinds of overly-broad non-competition clauses don't hold up anymore, especially since that company's definition of "potential client" included every business in existence. At the time it was pretty threatening, though, and they caused me a lot of grief for about six months. The moral of the story is that even though you think those clauses won't bite you, they can and probably will. All it takes is one unscrupulous manager or one unprofitable quarter.
I _agree_ with you that _part_ of Disney's problem _is_ living up to its _previous_ successes. However, _I_ don't think _most_ of the _movies_ you mentioned were very _good_. Storywise, Nemo was _utterly_ _fantastic_ and far _surpasses_ the other _movies_ you named.
You're confusing consulting with pure software sales.
It is you who is confused. This article asks the question: Rather than go on job interviews to work for someone else, should I instead start my own business? In response, many people said "Oh NO! Starting a software business is TOO EXPENSIVE and TOO HARD." As an example of this imagined hardship, superparent talked about the difficulty of funding years of development time while he tried to figure out what his customers wanted to buy. That's not evidence that it's hard to start a software company, it's evidence that with a poor business plan and a lack of understanding of your customers your business will suffer.
What you think makes a good product will in fact be very different from what your customers think is a good product. You can plan on at least a year of post-release development before your software meets the needs of your clients.
No, no, no, no, NO. I guarantee I will get modded as a "troll" but listen -- I am profitably self-employed and I am involved in several new business ventures a year. What you are describing is NOT entrepreneurialship, it's dot-com non-business-model bullshit where you finance yourself for 24 months before you hope to make a sale. Of course that's hard! It's backwards! An entrepreneur finds a market FIRST and makes a product SECOND.
If you want to develop software for a living (and please realize you may need to change fields), then get some CHEAP PLAIN business cards with just your personal contact information on them, and go to local business and see what their software needs are. Target medium- and small-sized businesses. Talk to the owner and ask him or her where the pain is WRT the flow of information. If you are worth a dime as a programmer you will immediately see 10 ways to improve their systems based on what the owner tells you. Ask the owner if it's OK to propose software solutions that can help his/her business. Whether yes or no, leave your card.
Now, if the owner was amenable to a proposal, figure out a SMALL INEXPENSIVE project you could do for that organization. Something with a few weeks to completion. GET SOME HELP writing the proposal if you need it (honestly rate your skill as a writer). This can't be a piece of crap, and it has to be focused on the business needs you talked with the owner about. Then personally deliver this proposal and put some context around it vis-a-vis the business need. Don't expect anything to happen. You will probably not get any work the first time, because doing this takes a little practice. But it is no better or worse than going on endless job interviews, is it?
You must also ask the business owners you talk to whether they know anyone else in the community that may need some outside IT help. Build up names and addresses and continue to stay on friendly terms with department managers and business owners (i.e., call them up once in a while and say "Hi").
I would be surprised if you kept this up for one month and you did not have at least one project by that time. Write a scope document for each project detailing precisely what you will deliver, when, and for what price. This will be your contract, so have them sign it. Then you knock it out of the park and deliver exactly what you proposed, on budget and on time. After that you have a repeat customer. Go get a few more.
Note: Always bill about 10% of a project up front and subtract that amount from the final invoice. This gets the wheels of their accounting department working and shows the person signing the checks that you know what you're doing. Also, net 15 invoices are OK, no matter what anyone says.
We're looking at a future where only the very largest companies will be able to implement software, and it will technically be illegal for other people to do so.
Wrong, thanks for playing. No matter how many times it gets said, few people seem to understand -- even people who should understand, like our Mr. Perens.
Patent infringement, like copyright infringement, is actionable NOT illegal. The police will NOT come and arrest you because you inadvertently developed a homebrew memory allocation routine that is patented by ACME. What MAY happen is that ACME uses its patent portfolio to keep you from effectively bringing your software to market, provided ACME sees any benefit in doing so. So while in the future (now) there may be (are) high barriers to entry in the software marketplace, writing your own well-meaning code will not be (is not) illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad this is getting some Insightful mods. We can all hate dirty corporate dealings, but think for a moment how much risk-taking you'd do if you could be personally ruined because a business decision went bad. Without risk-taking, the economy stalls. Incorporation, like money, is a great benefit to the economy with relatively small negative consequences.
GEEEAAAARRGGGHH! How many of these asshats are there? The fact that a sound card works under Windows has nothing to do with Windows. The fact that a sound card does not work under a Linux distribution has nothing to do with Linux. The relevant software is the driver, which under Windows is supplied by the hardware manufacturer (who usually gives Linux the middle finger). Try this: plug a brand-new sound card into a Windows box and when Windows asks for drivers, don't supply them. Does the sound card work? No? Wow, Windows must suck!
Or, if you live in Minnesota, there is no such thing as an unjust cause. At first I was puzzled by this "dilemma," because in the Socialist Upper Midwest about the only way you can mess up getting unemployment checks is to be working a job on the sly.
Yes, that is what happens.
I was going to moderate, but this is driving me insane. There are just too many posts like this. How is $1000 "locking out" single developers who intend to sell closed-source licenses? Even for sole proprietorships $1K is nothing special. Besides, you are talking about selling closed-source software, which by definition requires other people to pay you money per license, but somehow you think TrollTech is a fiend for wanting to do the same thing. If you want to be open, TrollTech is right there with you.
I disagree. I think there are a lot of people itching to play this game. A read through the FAQ gets me imagining all kinds of spectacular fights. Three hundred different moves!
There is precisely zero chance that a comment this time is going to be any different. You cannot affect this process by posting to a forum.
Underread and underrated. If you've read the original series, Tales from Earthsea is a fantastic read. I also recently picked up The Other Wind and thought it was wonderful as well.
+ This is my favorite.
What's really great about it is that P2P software hasn't proven costly at all. It saves its users a bunch of money, actually. OTOH, the RIAA lawsuits have proven extremely costly. Therefore, by this logic, to protect the citizens, the AG has a responsibility to shut down the RIAA.
*cough* *cough*
No way! Tradewars was the bread and butter of BBS systems, you filthy heretic!
You exposed something that's right at the heart of this. I used to be a "casual" Counter-strike player, maybe 5 hours a week, just having fun. Definitely not interested enough to cheat. But some days I would really be ON, and I'd get a lot of headshots in the first 10 minutes, and look here comes the vote to ban me as a cheater. Some of the players are screaming that I'm a "fucking cheater."
Those players who are always screeching about cheating, they are the ones who invest 100% of their waking hours into CS but still are not very good players, and who are pissed off that anyone, anyone could get the better of them. Those are the people who ruin games, not so much the cheaters. The cheaters are just having fun. The ultra-serious nonstop fanatic is the real problem. In fact, if the hyperzealots went away I bet the cheaters would too because there'd be no one left to aggravate.
Just before Christmas 2003 I downloaded Mandrake 9.2 and gave it a try. I think the install took about 15 minutes, and the only thing I had to choose was which brand/model my monitor was. I set up printing to a remote samba printer in about 90 seconds. Even doing the scary upgrade to KDE 3.2 was no big deal (at least from the POV of a guy who upgraded Debian woody to KDE 3.0).
So now Mandrake 9.2 is my regular desktop and I've got my Club membership. There were always "rough edges" to Mandrake that irked me a little, but with 9.2 they are almost completely gone (especially urpmi source quirks, which with Club are pretty much zero now). It's no BS that they are going to overtake MS in the desktop goodness department with 10.0.
Well that is just great. Now how am I supposed to find my favorite teen shemales fisting watersports sites?
Yeah this happens sometimes, especially with distros like Debian or Gentoo where you often have to "hand roll" solutions. (Aside: I think setting up a printer, network or otherwise, in Mandrake is about 50% easier than in Windows.)
However, it is utterly wrong to blame the project developers. They are doing their best to make these things work despite the fact that hardware vendors put up obstacles in their way. In MS-land, the hardware vendor does all the heavy lifting -- all the driver writing and all the admin work (via the installer) on the Windows box to make it click. And even then it sometimes doesn't work! In Linux, there is neither [direct] driver help nor admin help. So the fact that you can ever get a printer working under Linux is a miracle of reverse engineering and hard work from sources like the CUPS project.
Also note that hardware successes under Windows are not due to Microsoft. It's due to serious vendor effort to make their products easy to use with Windows. If they put the same effort toward making their hardware easy to use with Linux, this wouldn't be a topic for discussion.
This is pretty important. You might feel inclined to sign a lopsided contract just to get work, but that will get you into a lot of trouble down the road. Some years ago I signed a contract with a few ugly clauses (they didn't seem very ugly to me at the time, and I needed the work [p.s. this was not in the at-the-time-booming CS field]). One day my employer terminated me and said in no uncertain terms that they would sue if I ever talked to any of their clients or potential clients. In other words, I built up some good clientele for them and then they canned me and gave those clients to a lower-paid person to manage, then threatened me to stay far away.
Of course, these kinds of overly-broad non-competition clauses don't hold up anymore, especially since that company's definition of "potential client" included every business in existence. At the time it was pretty threatening, though, and they caused me a lot of grief for about six months. The moral of the story is that even though you think those clauses won't bite you, they can and probably will. All it takes is one unscrupulous manager or one unprofitable quarter.
It is you who is confused. This article asks the question: Rather than go on job interviews to work for someone else, should I instead start my own business? In response, many people said "Oh NO! Starting a software business is TOO EXPENSIVE and TOO HARD." As an example of this imagined hardship, superparent talked about the difficulty of funding years of development time while he tried to figure out what his customers wanted to buy. That's not evidence that it's hard to start a software company, it's evidence that with a poor business plan and a lack of understanding of your customers your business will suffer.
No, no, no, no, NO. I guarantee I will get modded as a "troll" but listen -- I am profitably self-employed and I am involved in several new business ventures a year. What you are describing is NOT entrepreneurialship, it's dot-com non-business-model bullshit where you finance yourself for 24 months before you hope to make a sale. Of course that's hard! It's backwards! An entrepreneur finds a market FIRST and makes a product SECOND.
If you want to develop software for a living (and please realize you may need to change fields), then get some CHEAP PLAIN business cards with just your personal contact information on them, and go to local business and see what their software needs are. Target medium- and small-sized businesses. Talk to the owner and ask him or her where the pain is WRT the flow of information. If you are worth a dime as a programmer you will immediately see 10 ways to improve their systems based on what the owner tells you. Ask the owner if it's OK to propose software solutions that can help his/her business. Whether yes or no, leave your card.
Now, if the owner was amenable to a proposal, figure out a SMALL INEXPENSIVE project you could do for that organization. Something with a few weeks to completion. GET SOME HELP writing the proposal if you need it (honestly rate your skill as a writer). This can't be a piece of crap, and it has to be focused on the business needs you talked with the owner about. Then personally deliver this proposal and put some context around it vis-a-vis the business need. Don't expect anything to happen. You will probably not get any work the first time, because doing this takes a little practice. But it is no better or worse than going on endless job interviews, is it?
You must also ask the business owners you talk to whether they know anyone else in the community that may need some outside IT help. Build up names and addresses and continue to stay on friendly terms with department managers and business owners (i.e., call them up once in a while and say "Hi").
I would be surprised if you kept this up for one month and you did not have at least one project by that time. Write a scope document for each project detailing precisely what you will deliver, when, and for what price. This will be your contract, so have them sign it. Then you knock it out of the park and deliver exactly what you proposed, on budget and on time. After that you have a repeat customer. Go get a few more.
Note: Always bill about 10% of a project up front and subtract that amount from the final invoice. This gets the wheels of their accounting department working and shows the person signing the checks that you know what you're doing. Also, net 15 invoices are OK, no matter what anyone says.
Wrong, thanks for playing. No matter how many times it gets said, few people seem to understand -- even people who should understand, like our Mr. Perens.
Patent infringement, like copyright infringement, is actionable NOT illegal. The police will NOT come and arrest you because you inadvertently developed a homebrew memory allocation routine that is patented by ACME. What MAY happen is that ACME uses its patent portfolio to keep you from effectively bringing your software to market, provided ACME sees any benefit in doing so. So while in the future (now) there may be (are) high barriers to entry in the software marketplace, writing your own well-meaning code will not be (is not) illegal.