Way back when, say, 5 or 7 years ago, the guy who busted his butt to perform was generally the guy who got recognized as an achiever. Right now, that's not necessarily so, but I'm thinking that the new mode of performance assessment is changing back to the old mode.
The idea of working illness-provoking hours to demonstrate your loyalty to the company is slowly becoming passe as small, high tech firms are dying.
All of the people who decided to sacrifice their social lives, their families and their health for some nebulous pot of gold at the end of the dot-com rainbow are now realizing what people like my dad (at age 70) learned a few decades back: There's more to life than making a bucket load of cash.
While money is a great tool that lets you do the things that you want to do, work can also be a horrible way to keep you from enjoying the parts of life that make existence worthwhile.
It seems to me that the moral of the story is that working a brutal schedule and producing a lot of product isn't always the winning combination for a successful life. I guess my dad wasn't such a dummy after all.
BTW, I've figured out my own secret of success. I'm an engineer at a big electronics company. I work 40 hours a week. And that's it. And I go home, forget about work, mow my lawn, go for a walk, watch the sunset and enjoy my life. And still make enough money to do everything that I want to do.
Without conceding the point to Dvorak, my question would be this:
If skipping the commercials is equivalent to stealing the broadcast, from whom was it stolen? Was it stolen from the advertiser who paid for the commercial time? Was it stolen from the broadcaster who based the advertising rates on the number of viewers watching the show? Who gets the money?
Let me pose another question. There are a few Tivo-type devices on the market that only record from DirecTV broadcasts. Consider this (admittedly narrowly focused) situation:
I've paid DirecTV an extra amount so that I can watch my local channels on the satellite dish. In other words, I'm paying a premium for a service that others get for free. Should I then be allowed to skip the commercials because I'm already paying extra?
Let me also suggest that Dvorak is making a mountain out of a molehill...or maybe even out of nothing. Tivo is a dying company, as far as I can tell, and the number of people who use the systems are very small and growing at a very sluggish rate. I suspect that given the slow rate of growth and the cost (while less than Dvorak's quoted $500, still a little spendy), other technologies will overtake Tivo before enough of them are purchased to really worry anybody.
I suppose that this is going to turn out to be a flame on John Dvorak. I apologize in advance.
John Dvorak typically writes his pieces for people who think that they're "digerati" when, in fact, they're really just the same sort of folks who, a few years ago, would buy a component stereo system from Radio Shack and call themselves "audiophiles".
Nothing against those people, though, but I think that Dvorak does them a disservice by trying to make news instead of commenting on it.
I don't see much of a difference between using a Tivo device to eliminate commercials and using a VCR to do the same thing. Both involve some sort of time shifting. In order to miss the commercials, you give up some degree of timliness in your viewing habits.
Perhaps in the long run that's how we'll justify skipping commercials...if we want to see the show "as it is being broadcast", then the price we pay is commercials. If we choose to wait some period of time, then we get to skip them.
I think, though, that Dvorak's claims of theft fall apart when you realize that a Tivo fits the idea of "personal use" even better than a video tape...you can always give a video tape of a program to somebody else, thus potentially opening a can of copyright worms, but who's going to record a few episodes of Survivor and then turn over their (much less than $500) Tivo? That's what I thought.
I'd say that it's not likely at all that a flurry of lawsuits will kill Microsoft. Inconvenience them, maybe. Cost them a little cash, maybe. But Microsoft isn't going to go away because of lawsuits.
Look, Dow Chemical got socked with a staggering judgement...they simply declared bankruptcy and continued on. The tobacco industry got hammered, but they're still around. This will do nothing to Microsoft.
In fact, it seems to me that the very basis of the class action suit in Minnesota is a loser from the start. The claim is that people were overcharged for their operating system. When I worked for a major PC manufacturer, I know that they bought their licenses of Windows 95 and 98 for about $45 per computer. NT licenses were about $10 more. Nobody can convince me that that's overcharging.
I don't always like the business tactics that Microsoft employs, and they use corporate doublespeak terribly well, but in the end, the software generally works, is integrated well and is pretty much easier to use than other alternatives.
Microsoft won't last forever...even Bill Gates admits that. But they aren't going to be sued out of existence.
When I used to write for ComputorEdge Magazine, we had an agreement that my payment was for first publication rights. Any additional publication, no matter what the medium, required both my permission and an additional payment. And they scrupulously adhered to that agreement. They are the good guys.
I actually didn't negotiate the deal...it was their standard policy, but it seems to me that as a freelance writer, it's not too terribly unseemly to consider including that kind of language in the contract.
Oh yeah...contract. You ought to have something in writing. If you can't negotiate what you want, at least make sure that you understand what they are offering.
I think that a lot of people have the wrong idea about "fair use". I'm not a lawyer and neither are most of the people who spout off their own "legal" opinions, but the way I see it is that fair use says that I can make a copy of my CD or video or whatever for my own personal use.
It doesn't imply that the people producing it HAVE to make the product copyable...only that if the product is copyable, I can copy it, under certain circumstances.
It's not new that silicon can be made into LED's. At Rochester Institute of Technology (for one), they've been doing it with porous silicon. While it's an expensive and difficult way to get a blue LED, it does work.
Considering the trend of companies having absolute power in the US, i wouldnt be surprised if the FBI made a raid on members of this project for participating in activities that could hurt the phone companies.
What? Insightful? Hmm...how about Score:2, Out of Touch With Reality.
There is no trend of companies having absolute power in the US. All the anecdotal evidence in the world can't change that. You're speaking from pure paranoia.
Yeah, I can see it now..."Hello, FBI? Hi, this is AT&T. Listen, we need you to trot on over to those free VOIP guys and raid them because they have a better idea than we do. Oh, and while you're at it, Microsoft wants you to raid RedHat because they're giving away operating systems, too. You might as well hit Mandrake and SuSE, too. Oh, and whichever flavor of Gnutella is hot today...get them."
I might also add that the "trend" of which you speak was first waltzed out over 150 years ago against Crocker, Stanford and their gang...so if it's a trend, it's about as slow as continental drift!
Without getting lost in the details, here is the deal on the dead kid in the midwest:
On August 15, 1979, James Dallas Egbert disappeared from the campus of Michigan State University. A gazillion rumors churned up, most of them centered around the idea that he was a D&D player who got so involved with the game that he ended up in the steam tunnels under the university and died. In fact, that wasn't the case...he committed suicide in his apartment almost exactly a year later.
The astute reader will notice that I didn't say that Dungeons and Dragons killed him. In fact, Egbert had a whole lot of other problems that were much more serious that a role playing game. But an awful lot of other people, including the major news services latched onto the evils of the game and that's all that it took for the players to find themselves on the outside of societal norms.
When I went to college, it was Dungeons and Dragons. Remember? A few people went to extremes and somebody got killed at a midwestern college, then suddenly everybody who played the game was some kind of mentally deranged lunatic.
What is the problem? I think that it's a combination of hysteria and lack of communication. Take a look at the clan's web site. Looks scary, doesn't it. But in the context of the game, it's just in character. But since we're (I mean the collective "we're") gripped in a panic over the possibility of another Columbine, sites like these get special scrutiny. Do these guys deserve their treatment? Of course not. And in the end, the police will give back their stuff, the administration will issue some sort of press release praising the police for protecting the rest of the student body, implicitly suggest that the members of the clan are some kind of social deviants and then give a great sigh of relief that a potential disaster was averted.
Can we stop it? Probably not. Social inertia is a powerful force. This kind of thing has been going on for about as long as there have been universities.
On the other hand, over time, what was perceived as revolutionary becomes commonplace...it's just that the revolutionaries eventually forget just what is revolutionary.
Computer voting is fine, I suppose, as long as the security and anonymity is guaranteed (as much as can be), but I wonder how such an undertaking would be financed?
Riverside County's electronic system cost tens of thousands of dollars to implement. Apparently the county could afford to do it, but what about Los Angeles County? Or other very populous counties? What about sparsely populated, poor counties?
The reason that we punch a piece of paper is for the same reason that we still use pencils and paper. By and large, the system works, and works well. I believe that no matter what system is in place, irregularities will occur. That's just the way things go with a project of the scope of a national election. But the beauty of the system as it is now is that it's quite inexpensive and quite accurate. Bear in mind that the number of ballots in dispute are a small fraction of the total of number of ballots cast. Given the closeness of the election, any small problem ends up appearing quite large...but I still do not see a strong case for making a change, other than, perhaps, the gee-whiz factor.
The numbers tell me that there a lot of people who can't follow simple directions and poke a hole next to the arrow that points to it.
Come on...look at the ballot. It isn't confusing at all. Not at all. The only people who are responsible for the problem are the people who couldn't follow simple instructions and take the time to look at what they were doing.
Every time the election seems to be close, pundits start talking about abolishing the electoral college. Now that it's truely close, they're out in full force again. But the electoral college still serves an important purpose, one that was anticipated over 200 years ago.
Originally, of course, the main purpose of the college was to overcome the communications problems of the 18th and 19th centuries. It just took too long to tabulate ballots and get all the results to the federal government. Instead, each state, based upon its representation in Congress, sent electors to vote on their behalf.
And that brings up the second purpose of the electoral college.
It serves to provide a voice for states with smaller populations. You see, with simply a popular vote election, the candidates could just move up and down the east and west coast and completely ignore the central United States. The founding fathers were very concerned that each state in the Union have a voice in the election and the electoral college serves that purpose.
What's been lost, primarily since the early 1900's is that our government was designed to give as much power to the states as possible, limiting the power of the federal government. The electoral college is an example of the states' power.
As for the Palm Beach "fraud", I've seen the ballots. Bear in mind that they were published both in newspapers and in direct mailings to the residents, weeks before the election. They were designed and approved by the local officials, who happen to be Democrats. They are very clearly labeled as to where to punch the right spot. I mean VERY clearly labeled.
Quite frankly, if you aren't capable of reading simple instructions and following an arrow to the right hole, and if you won't ask for help if you're confused, then you deserver what you get.
It wasn't fraud that was committed in Palm Beach...it was stupidity.
I'm not trying to be a bastard or a flamer. That being said, this shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone, especially not the holders of the H1B visas.
The deal at the outset was for six years. That would suggest to me that whoever holds an H1B should either plan on leaving the country after six years or should start the wheels churning to either gain citizenship or permanent residency status.
The whole H1B issue is a bitter pill for all sides, except possibly the employers. The companies hiring the visa holders got well-trained professionals for a fraction of the price of a non-H1B individual. While that probably didn't leave any programmers or engineers without a job, it certainly had some effect on their salaries.
The whole H1B issue is a concoction of high tech companies anyway. "They" complained bitterly about the tech "shortage", when in fact, there is no shortage, but rather full employment. Product is shipping, code is being written...but without the safety valve of the H1B workers, salaries could be much higher. The real victims, by the way, are the H1B'ers in that they end up working for a pittance (relatively speaking), then have to leave.
And they do have to leave. That was the deal from the beginning. So don't feel sorry for them because they have to live up to the deal they agreed to, feel sorry for them because they are really just pawns in a game.
...and neither are most of the people who post here. This is an interesting question to provoke discussion, but for heaven's sake, don't take any of it until you talk to a lawyer who:
a. has experience in the field
b. is licensed in your state
c. isn't working for your company
If you're really that worried, then what you see here will give you some questions to ask your lawyer, but that's it...don't do anything until you see a lawyer!
Richard Stallman used to be a lone voice in the wilderness when a strident one was needed. He did a singular piece of work to get the world to understand just what the philosophy behind free software was.
But now I honestly think that RMS does more harm than good. By right of seniority, he certainly holds a prominent position within the hierarchy of the free software world, but his still strident and often extremist positions do little to advance the cause and buttress his credibility.
His latest editorial shows that he is not above using his political power to advance a personal cause. The GNOME vs KDE acrimony ended a while back, but RMS refuses to give up. It's too bad that a man who was the general in our battle to be recognized as a legitimate force in the computing world is now reduced to being perceived by many as a bitter, misguided cynic who has stooped to promoting a schism between the very people he should be bringing together.
The UNIX-looking billboard is in the Netherlands, not California.
The Windows "bug" doesn't have a thing to do with Window. It's been around for years and resurfaces every now and then when somebody "discovers" the web page. It's a hardware alarm generated by the BIOS when voltages go awry in the computer.
I'll stay away from the usual rant about spewing out "news" on/.
We've been doing something like this at The NOSPIN Group for several years. The company is a non-profit corporation. Sometimes the service is free, sometimes it's not, based upon the needs and type of customer.
We also host mailing lists, provide CGI and other scripting access, as well as the usual gamut of services.
Probably the hardest part of doing something like this is maintaining the right kind of hardware on a shoestring budget. Fortunately, hardware prices are going the right direction and almost all of the software we use is GPL'd.
The work is a labor of love, more than anything else. Those of us involved in the company tend to donate more than just time...when a hard drive dies, or we need a new motherboard, we'll often fund the purchase from our own pockets. About the only thing that actually is covered is the Internet access, via a 1024Kbps DSL connection. And all of the hardware sits in my spare bedroom. But it all works and we're able to put every dollar we receive directly into the company, something that most non-profits have a hard time doing.
Thanks, Jamie, for sharing your philosophy with us.
I choose to be an omnivore because evolution (or God, whichever makes you happy) made me that way. I also happen to think that animals are quite tasty, so I generally tend to eat bits of one every day.
Seriously, I don't think that this piece of editorial tripe belongs in this story. Sure, animal suffering is a bad thing, but if you want to highlight the plight of animals, don't be sneaky about it...stand up and write an editorial and give it its own title!
The problem with online voting, as I see it, is the potential for the loss of anonymity. When I go to the polls (and I always vote), I know that my paper ballot is completely anonymous. I give them my name, sign in, punch my card and drop it in a box with a bunch of other identical ballots. The only thing that the state knows is that I voted.
While the convenience of voting online seems kind of interesting, the potential for losing the anonymity that is a hallmark of our political process is scary. Obviously I would have to provide evidence of my identity, but I have to do that now. But voting by computer doesn't detach the identification process from the balloting process. I'm still using the very same connection that I authorized myself with to cast my vote. Now, those running the show would certainly take steps to keep the two processes separate, but clearly the potential for tracking votes by individuals is available, and if it's available, somebody at some point is going to try to take advantage of it.
Current "manual" polling decouples the process of identification from the process of voting. In fact, the next time you hit the polls, look at just how decoupled it is...you get your blank ballot and once it hits your hands, nobody at the polling place touches it again. You vote at a booth that is completely detached from the identification and registration tables. You place your sealed, anonymous ballot in a locked box along with hundreds of others.
What we have is a good system. It's truely anonymous. Yes, it's a little unweildy, but not only does it work, it works quite well. Now, I'm not paranoid, but I am very happy with the way our balloting system works, and I'd just as soon leave it alone.
I guess I liked the idea of a non-locked processor when I first saw the review, although I'm not sure why. But I also didn't believe that AMD would really produce the new chips without locking the multiplier. Obviously they are concerned about remarking...we've seen plenty of evidence that it happens.
But what about a less sinister reason? It doesn't make much economic sense for AMD to sell a 500MHz processor that any old Joe can overclock to 700 or 800MHz just by changing the multiplier. And what happens when somebody really juices the chip and it fries? Is AMD supposed to replace it under warranty? Obviously not, but how are they to know?
Of course, the determined hacker is going to overcome this, I'm sure. You hear about all sorts of tweaks, from add-in interfaces to a soldering glob job to conductive ink on the traces. And that's OK...because it's pretty apparent when the chip fails what caused it.
I'd sure like to have a non-locked processor, but I think that they are a thing of the past...and given that chip prices tend to fall rapidly, I think that overclocking is less of a way to get a faster chip cheaper and more of a way to get bragging rights.
It's scalability gone wild. Parallel computing has been a popular way to get large things done (relatively) cheaply. But using the Internet is a bargain, if you can make a good enough case to the people out there.
Obviously SETI@home is the best case for distributed Internet computing, but I think that they could have done a little more. Beyond the novelty of what it does, there is some real science and engineering behind projects like this. Why not leverage it? I wouldn't be offended to see an ad or two in the client program if I knew that the proceeds were going to support the program that I was supporting by running the software.
Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, I'd also like to point out that this is one case where closed source development makes very good sense. I know that we'd all like to live in a utopian society where everyone is honest about what they do, but when things like SETI@home and RC5 turn into contests, a few bad people can screw the data up in their misguided quest to "win". By keeping the source closed, it becomes harder to hack the program, thus ruining the data.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea of working illness-provoking hours to demonstrate your loyalty to the company is slowly becoming passe as small, high tech firms are dying.
All of the people who decided to sacrifice their social lives, their families and their health for some nebulous pot of gold at the end of the dot-com rainbow are now realizing what people like my dad (at age 70) learned a few decades back: There's more to life than making a bucket load of cash.
While money is a great tool that lets you do the things that you want to do, work can also be a horrible way to keep you from enjoying the parts of life that make existence worthwhile.
It seems to me that the moral of the story is that working a brutal schedule and producing a lot of product isn't always the winning combination for a successful life. I guess my dad wasn't such a dummy after all.
BTW, I've figured out my own secret of success. I'm an engineer at a big electronics company. I work 40 hours a week. And that's it. And I go home, forget about work, mow my lawn, go for a walk, watch the sunset and enjoy my life. And still make enough money to do everything that I want to do.
-h-
If skipping the commercials is equivalent to stealing the broadcast, from whom was it stolen? Was it stolen from the advertiser who paid for the commercial time? Was it stolen from the broadcaster who based the advertising rates on the number of viewers watching the show? Who gets the money?
Let me pose another question. There are a few Tivo-type devices on the market that only record from DirecTV broadcasts. Consider this (admittedly narrowly focused) situation:
I've paid DirecTV an extra amount so that I can watch my local channels on the satellite dish. In other words, I'm paying a premium for a service that others get for free. Should I then be allowed to skip the commercials because I'm already paying extra?
Let me also suggest that Dvorak is making a mountain out of a molehill...or maybe even out of nothing. Tivo is a dying company, as far as I can tell, and the number of people who use the systems are very small and growing at a very sluggish rate. I suspect that given the slow rate of growth and the cost (while less than Dvorak's quoted $500, still a little spendy), other technologies will overtake Tivo before enough of them are purchased to really worry anybody.
-h-
John Dvorak typically writes his pieces for people who think that they're "digerati" when, in fact, they're really just the same sort of folks who, a few years ago, would buy a component stereo system from Radio Shack and call themselves "audiophiles".
Nothing against those people, though, but I think that Dvorak does them a disservice by trying to make news instead of commenting on it.
I don't see much of a difference between using a Tivo device to eliminate commercials and using a VCR to do the same thing. Both involve some sort of time shifting. In order to miss the commercials, you give up some degree of timliness in your viewing habits.
Perhaps in the long run that's how we'll justify skipping commercials...if we want to see the show "as it is being broadcast", then the price we pay is commercials. If we choose to wait some period of time, then we get to skip them.
I think, though, that Dvorak's claims of theft fall apart when you realize that a Tivo fits the idea of "personal use" even better than a video tape...you can always give a video tape of a program to somebody else, thus potentially opening a can of copyright worms, but who's going to record a few episodes of Survivor and then turn over their (much less than $500) Tivo? That's what I thought.
-h-
Look, Dow Chemical got socked with a staggering judgement...they simply declared bankruptcy and continued on. The tobacco industry got hammered, but they're still around. This will do nothing to Microsoft.
In fact, it seems to me that the very basis of the class action suit in Minnesota is a loser from the start. The claim is that people were overcharged for their operating system. When I worked for a major PC manufacturer, I know that they bought their licenses of Windows 95 and 98 for about $45 per computer. NT licenses were about $10 more. Nobody can convince me that that's overcharging.
I don't always like the business tactics that Microsoft employs, and they use corporate doublespeak terribly well, but in the end, the software generally works, is integrated well and is pretty much easier to use than other alternatives.
Microsoft won't last forever...even Bill Gates admits that. But they aren't going to be sued out of existence.
-h-
I actually didn't negotiate the deal...it was their standard policy, but it seems to me that as a freelance writer, it's not too terribly unseemly to consider including that kind of language in the contract.
Oh yeah...contract. You ought to have something in writing. If you can't negotiate what you want, at least make sure that you understand what they are offering.
-h-
It doesn't imply that the people producing it HAVE to make the product copyable...only that if the product is copyable, I can copy it, under certain circumstances.
-h-
-h-
Talk to a lawyer!!
What? Insightful? Hmm...how about Score:2, Out of Touch With Reality.
There is no trend of companies having absolute power in the US. All the anecdotal evidence in the world can't change that. You're speaking from pure paranoia.
Yeah, I can see it now..."Hello, FBI? Hi, this is AT&T. Listen, we need you to trot on over to those free VOIP guys and raid them because they have a better idea than we do. Oh, and while you're at it, Microsoft wants you to raid RedHat because they're giving away operating systems, too. You might as well hit Mandrake and SuSE, too. Oh, and whichever flavor of Gnutella is hot today...get them."
I might also add that the "trend" of which you speak was first waltzed out over 150 years ago against Crocker, Stanford and their gang...so if it's a trend, it's about as slow as continental drift!
-h-
Without getting lost in the details, here is the deal on the dead kid in the midwest:
On August 15, 1979, James Dallas Egbert disappeared from the campus of Michigan State University. A gazillion rumors churned up, most of them centered around the idea that he was a D&D player who got so involved with the game that he ended up in the steam tunnels under the university and died. In fact, that wasn't the case...he committed suicide in his apartment almost exactly a year later.
The astute reader will notice that I didn't say that Dungeons and Dragons killed him. In fact, Egbert had a whole lot of other problems that were much more serious that a role playing game. But an awful lot of other people, including the major news services latched onto the evils of the game and that's all that it took for the players to find themselves on the outside of societal norms.
-h-
What is the problem? I think that it's a combination of hysteria and lack of communication. Take a look at the clan's web site. Looks scary, doesn't it. But in the context of the game, it's just in character. But since we're (I mean the collective "we're") gripped in a panic over the possibility of another Columbine, sites like these get special scrutiny. Do these guys deserve their treatment? Of course not. And in the end, the police will give back their stuff, the administration will issue some sort of press release praising the police for protecting the rest of the student body, implicitly suggest that the members of the clan are some kind of social deviants and then give a great sigh of relief that a potential disaster was averted.
Can we stop it? Probably not. Social inertia is a powerful force. This kind of thing has been going on for about as long as there have been universities.
On the other hand, over time, what was perceived as revolutionary becomes commonplace...it's just that the revolutionaries eventually forget just what is revolutionary.
=h=
Ummm...waaaaah?
Riverside County's electronic system cost tens of thousands of dollars to implement. Apparently the county could afford to do it, but what about Los Angeles County? Or other very populous counties? What about sparsely populated, poor counties?
The reason that we punch a piece of paper is for the same reason that we still use pencils and paper. By and large, the system works, and works well. I believe that no matter what system is in place, irregularities will occur. That's just the way things go with a project of the scope of a national election. But the beauty of the system as it is now is that it's quite inexpensive and quite accurate. Bear in mind that the number of ballots in dispute are a small fraction of the total of number of ballots cast. Given the closeness of the election, any small problem ends up appearing quite large...but I still do not see a strong case for making a change, other than, perhaps, the gee-whiz factor.
-h-
Come on...look at the ballot. It isn't confusing at all. Not at all. The only people who are responsible for the problem are the people who couldn't follow simple instructions and take the time to look at what they were doing.
Originally, of course, the main purpose of the college was to overcome the communications problems of the 18th and 19th centuries. It just took too long to tabulate ballots and get all the results to the federal government. Instead, each state, based upon its representation in Congress, sent electors to vote on their behalf. And that brings up the second purpose of the electoral college.
It serves to provide a voice for states with smaller populations. You see, with simply a popular vote election, the candidates could just move up and down the east and west coast and completely ignore the central United States. The founding fathers were very concerned that each state in the Union have a voice in the election and the electoral college serves that purpose.
What's been lost, primarily since the early 1900's is that our government was designed to give as much power to the states as possible, limiting the power of the federal government. The electoral college is an example of the states' power.
As for the Palm Beach "fraud", I've seen the ballots. Bear in mind that they were published both in newspapers and in direct mailings to the residents, weeks before the election. They were designed and approved by the local officials, who happen to be Democrats. They are very clearly labeled as to where to punch the right spot. I mean VERY clearly labeled.
Quite frankly, if you aren't capable of reading simple instructions and following an arrow to the right hole, and if you won't ask for help if you're confused, then you deserver what you get.
It wasn't fraud that was committed in Palm Beach...it was stupidity.
-h-
The deal at the outset was for six years. That would suggest to me that whoever holds an H1B should either plan on leaving the country after six years or should start the wheels churning to either gain citizenship or permanent residency status.
The whole H1B issue is a bitter pill for all sides, except possibly the employers. The companies hiring the visa holders got well-trained professionals for a fraction of the price of a non-H1B individual. While that probably didn't leave any programmers or engineers without a job, it certainly had some effect on their salaries.
The whole H1B issue is a concoction of high tech companies anyway. "They" complained bitterly about the tech "shortage", when in fact, there is no shortage, but rather full employment. Product is shipping, code is being written...but without the safety valve of the H1B workers, salaries could be much higher. The real victims, by the way, are the H1B'ers in that they end up working for a pittance (relatively speaking), then have to leave.
And they do have to leave. That was the deal from the beginning. So don't feel sorry for them because they have to live up to the deal they agreed to, feel sorry for them because they are really just pawns in a game.
=h=
a. has experience in the field
b. is licensed in your state
c. isn't working for your company
If you're really that worried, then what you see here will give you some questions to ask your lawyer, but that's it...don't do anything until you see a lawyer!
=h=
But now I honestly think that RMS does more harm than good. By right of seniority, he certainly holds a prominent position within the hierarchy of the free software world, but his still strident and often extremist positions do little to advance the cause and buttress his credibility.
His latest editorial shows that he is not above using his political power to advance a personal cause. The GNOME vs KDE acrimony ended a while back, but RMS refuses to give up. It's too bad that a man who was the general in our battle to be recognized as a legitimate force in the computing world is now reduced to being perceived by many as a bitter, misguided cynic who has stooped to promoting a schism between the very people he should be bringing together.
RMS simply isn't the voice of Linux anymore.
-h-
The Windows "bug" doesn't have a thing to do with Window. It's been around for years and resurfaces every now and then when somebody "discovers" the web page. It's a hardware alarm generated by the BIOS when voltages go awry in the computer.
I'll stay away from the usual rant about spewing out "news" on /.
=h=
Hey, and since Daikatana started the naming genre, I propose: Jon Katz's Hellmouth
We also host mailing lists, provide CGI and other scripting access, as well as the usual gamut of services.
Probably the hardest part of doing something like this is maintaining the right kind of hardware on a shoestring budget. Fortunately, hardware prices are going the right direction and almost all of the software we use is GPL'd.
The work is a labor of love, more than anything else. Those of us involved in the company tend to donate more than just time...when a hard drive dies, or we need a new motherboard, we'll often fund the purchase from our own pockets. About the only thing that actually is covered is the Internet access, via a 1024Kbps DSL connection. And all of the hardware sits in my spare bedroom. But it all works and we're able to put every dollar we receive directly into the company, something that most non-profits have a hard time doing.
=h=
I choose to be an omnivore because evolution (or God, whichever makes you happy) made me that way. I also happen to think that animals are quite tasty, so I generally tend to eat bits of one every day.
Seriously, I don't think that this piece of editorial tripe belongs in this story. Sure, animal suffering is a bad thing, but if you want to highlight the plight of animals, don't be sneaky about it...stand up and write an editorial and give it its own title!
=h=
While the convenience of voting online seems kind of interesting, the potential for losing the anonymity that is a hallmark of our political process is scary. Obviously I would have to provide evidence of my identity, but I have to do that now. But voting by computer doesn't detach the identification process from the balloting process. I'm still using the very same connection that I authorized myself with to cast my vote. Now, those running the show would certainly take steps to keep the two processes separate, but clearly the potential for tracking votes by individuals is available, and if it's available, somebody at some point is going to try to take advantage of it.
Current "manual" polling decouples the process of identification from the process of voting. In fact, the next time you hit the polls, look at just how decoupled it is...you get your blank ballot and once it hits your hands, nobody at the polling place touches it again. You vote at a booth that is completely detached from the identification and registration tables. You place your sealed, anonymous ballot in a locked box along with hundreds of others.
What we have is a good system. It's truely anonymous. Yes, it's a little unweildy, but not only does it work, it works quite well. Now, I'm not paranoid, but I am very happy with the way our balloting system works, and I'd just as soon leave it alone.
=h=
But what about a less sinister reason? It doesn't make much economic sense for AMD to sell a 500MHz processor that any old Joe can overclock to 700 or 800MHz just by changing the multiplier. And what happens when somebody really juices the chip and it fries? Is AMD supposed to replace it under warranty? Obviously not, but how are they to know?
Of course, the determined hacker is going to overcome this, I'm sure. You hear about all sorts of tweaks, from add-in interfaces to a soldering glob job to conductive ink on the traces. And that's OK...because it's pretty apparent when the chip fails what caused it.
I'd sure like to have a non-locked processor, but I think that they are a thing of the past...and given that chip prices tend to fall rapidly, I think that overclocking is less of a way to get a faster chip cheaper and more of a way to get bragging rights.
My take? It's a non-issue.
=h=
Obviously SETI@home is the best case for distributed Internet computing, but I think that they could have done a little more. Beyond the novelty of what it does, there is some real science and engineering behind projects like this. Why not leverage it? I wouldn't be offended to see an ad or two in the client program if I knew that the proceeds were going to support the program that I was supporting by running the software.
Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, I'd also like to point out that this is one case where closed source development makes very good sense. I know that we'd all like to live in a utopian society where everyone is honest about what they do, but when things like SETI@home and RC5 turn into contests, a few bad people can screw the data up in their misguided quest to "win". By keeping the source closed, it becomes harder to hack the program, thus ruining the data.
My 2 cents' worth.
=h=