Comparing Debian to Android is actually very interesting. Debian has something like 32,000 packages that can be installed, but it's taken something like 15 years to get there. Android blasted to over 100,000 in something like 2 to 3 years. Debian is all about community contribution, while Android is all about selling closed-source apps, with no sharing of code between. In theory, it should be easier to publish an app in Debian than Android, but this is not the case at all. In Debian, you have to find a sponsor, do a complicated job of packaging, pray your package gets uploaded to Unstable, and then wait a few years while it migrates to Stable before other programmers will generally have access to your work. I call this the Debian Red Tape. It's suffocating innovation in the open-source community, and it's the reason Android is kicking Debian butt.
I believe there is a solution, but it requires a completely new packaging system. Let's compare Android and Debian packaging:
- Android ships every dependent binary in the.apk app file. This eliminates the nightmare of having your app crash because some library you use gets updated. - Debian is all about resusing.so files across applications. This made sense in the '90s when disk space was scarce, but now days, it's just dumb. The reason it takes years to get a packaged library into Debian Stable is that it takes years before we believe you library wont cause other apps to crash.
A new packaging system could share identical binaries between apps to save both disk and memory space, but it should not ever change a binary used by an app. Also, publishing new packages should be as easy as creating a repo on github.net. You simply declare that it's available, and everyone can use it. Whether a developer decides to depend on your code should be a matter of trust, which could be scored based on developer reputation, code stability and what other packages use it.
Without a major upgrade to our packaging system, Debian will continue to fall further and further behind. Why do so many people feel they have to build a custom Debian based distro? Because Debian incapable of addressing the needs of modern users. Frankly, even with the total lack of libraries available for Android, and with Google having their heads up there arse with respect to accepting contributions from the community, I am able to contribute more to Android than I can to Debian. Check out my library that I've made available to both at dev.vinux-project.org/sonic. I'm basically done for Android, while I'm still waiting for a Debian sponsor over in Debian land.
I know a couple of people who will be disappointed by the lack of GPS. No turn-by-turn navigation like the Xoom, no geo-caching apps. Seems kind of goofy, but the only person I've met who returned his iPad said he returned because he wanted GPS nav.
True. I do it all the time, and my wife makes fun of me for it.
And why so much focus on the girls?
Because I'm a guy, and a big geek? I still have to laugh at myself every time I remember trying to find that girls dress under the couch. I remember her exasperated expression when I couldn't figure out what she wanted. Besides, it may just be me, but I thought that in general Romanian girls were very pretty. It seems a shame not to mention the girls in any discussion of Romania.
I went and Googled about Romania's economy and how much they pay programmers. It looks like programmers there can expect more like $600 in take-home pay per month now days. It sounds like they're doing better, and that makes me happy.
As I've just thrown out a bit of a nasty story about Zvi above, I'd like to explain a bit more here. First, Zvi considers himself a man of high ethical standards. I'm no moral relativist, but Zvi is from the Middle East, where I suspect lying to the patent office and Romanian employees is considered wise, rather than unethical. At AMI, I dealt mostly with very ethical Christians and Mormons, and I figured it'd be hard to be screwed by the likes of these people. However, I discovered that a company with weak leadership is capable of acting like the worst individual that could be made from the worst aspects of all of it's leaders. One John Stone provided much of those worst aspects, but others provided irrational fear, NIH, kingdom building, genuine stupidity, etc. The individual made from these traits is not someone you can actually deal with.
I loved the trip to Romania Zvi sent me on in 1999. I often wish I could go back there for a while. I'm sure Romanians on this list could properly describe Romania, but I'd like to say how it was for an American geek. First, I was not allowed to carry any significant amount of cash, and there was no such thing as credit cards. Instead, I had a person assigned to make sure I was well taken care of all the time. This is probably a very good thing. The first day, my guide and friend stepped between me and a poor child on the street who was reading a newspaper while walking past me. My guide explained that it was likely that the kid had a knife behind it to cut the laptop shoulder strap while another kid stole it. The poverty on the streets in Bucharest was quite sad, but the city was in many ways like all international cities, vibrant with activities, great food, and culture. We drove to a city which I believe is Iasi, though Zvi called it Yas or something similar, so I remained confused as to where I actually was.
Iai for me was a place of great contradictions. The beauty of some architecture was breathtaking, old and magnificent, while much of where people actually lived was dull and uninspired, built under communist rule. I stayed at a hotel considered very nice for the area, and have no complaints. The bed was very small, more like a cot, but it was fine. One night a very beautiful tall slender girl knocked at my door, and opened her over-coat, revealing barely legal clothing underneath. She said "Speak, and I there", and pointed to the floor. Now, I am a huge geek, and I was married, but you'd think I'd figure out what she meant. I thought she was saying she had lost her dress under the couch, but there was nothing there. It took about five minute for her to get me to understand what she was suggesting, and then I was quite embarrased and turned her down as nicely as I could, which frankly was hard for me to do. I think fear was what kept me honest to my wife that night, fear of catching some disease, fear that my room was being taped and I'd be black-mailed, fear that she would somehow wind up taking my laptop (the only valuable thing I had).
The software team was a group of around 10 employees, mostly in their 20's, who had degrees from the University. They worked in one room, on stools, with the worst PC hardware available on the market. Zvi had a Jewish buddy living here, who was running the whole thing, and one thing Zvi may not have realised is that he paid for Dell computers or equivalent, but the team got much cheaper hardware. His buddy pocketed the difference. A major problem was that the network barely worked at all, because the wiring was sub-standard. Their eithernet cables were super thin, and many just didn't work. I'd never seen eithernet cables like that, but someone was making money by skimping a penney per foot, and the software team was hard pressed to collaborate at all. It was litterally a sweat shop, where the heat from the machines and our bodies made the room quite uncomfortable.
But, the team love to write code, some of them were pretty good, and the others seemed to learn quickly. There was an ex
I've worked for a bunch of startups, though no Google or such that I no longer need to work. There are all kinds of people out there, and you need to be very careful not to get screwed. It's amazing still to me how rational likable people can turn into true horrors when money is involved.
So, here's what I recommend based on the very small amount of data presented. First, tell your employees that you have been asked to ask if they will work 10-11 hours per day until profitable without any stock or additional compensation. Be sure to mention the words stock and additional compensation. They will naturally, unless they are seriously whipped employees, say they would like to have either stock or more cash, but they're probably happy to work their hearts out if treated fairly. If you and your employees believe the company has a decent chance at a good future, go back to your boss and tell him the employees want stock, and that you feel it might be a good idea, and that you think you could run the team hard for a while if they all thought it was in their best interest. Also mention that if they own stock, they'll all want to work harder, even after they are profitable.
Unless your boss is a complete dick (which is actually quite common), he'll find a way to get your guys stock. Be sure to ask how many outstanding shares there are, and be prepared for the possibility that he lies about the answer. Don't be a sucker. Try to double check the number by mentioning it to another investor, board member, the CFO, or someone else who knows the truth, and judge their reaction. Do a quick estimate of the current value of the company, and figure out how many shares per hour you could by with the cash that those hours are worth. Maybe be nice and work for a discount, but don't get totally screwed.
Unfortunately, I see way too much of two kinds of people in startups. There are way too many dishonest owners and bosses who will take advantage of trusting geeks. After all, our skills are all engineering and software, not negotiation and conflict. On the other hand, there are way too many gullible geeks, and geeks who like so many beaten house wives are simply unable to grow a pair and stand up for themselves. Assuming you care about your employees, it's probably up to you to stand up for them.
Then, there's the standard compromise, which I hope you will avoid. It is very common in these situations for your boss to offer you personally a fair stock deal, so long as you can sell a crap deal to your employees. The standard way this is done is for you to be asked to claim each share is worth X, when in reality it's worth less than X/10. The way to help your employees in this case is to somehow leak how much stock is outstanding. If your employees are too dumb to guess what the stock is actually worth once they have this information, they may not deserve extra compensation. The fact that you're posting here may mean you actually care about your employees. I hope you do, and can stick up for them.
Finally, if your boss is one of those fairly common jerks who will absolutely refuse to get you stock now, but goes on and on about how much money he's going to pay you once their profitable, then consider moving to a new company. I have never in all my years in industry seen any such promise fulfilled.
I'll end with a story where I got screwed for not growing a pair. Back in 1999, I was doing some consulting for Zvi OrBach, founder of eASIC. He'd promised me 2% of his stock for access to all my source code, and he promised to keep the code confidential, etc. I delivered the code, and the next day he sent it to Romania, where of course nothing is confidential. I asked for stock certificates, and he gave all sorts of BS reasons he couldn't do it right away, but if I'd wait a reasonable period of time, he'd make it happen. He sent me to Romania to train the team to use my software, and you know what he asked me to do? He asked me to tell them to work extra hours without pay, and he told me
Actually, it's probably just the opposite. After the BSD backdoor story and after the Wikileaks cables, maybe Russia is concerned about using Microsoft Windows. Of course, Microsoft would *never* work with the NSA/FBI/CIA/Control/Chaos on back-doors that undermine the security of Russia... I can't imaging why they would want their own operating system...
There are so many potential Dilbert strips here...
I know the guy who presented this convertible tablet originally. I've had conversations about the tablet market with him for two years. To summarise it went something like this:
Me: Dude, have you checked out the Tegra processor, and the iPhone touch screen technology? Dell could make a real splash here. You could probably get Canonicle to write a whole new touch interface for this thing for free. The killer app is an e-book reader that also does color Internet browsing. If you use a Pixel Qi display, you'll dominate. If you built it, I'll buy one for every member of my family. Dell dude: But wouldn't you rather pay just a little more and have a device that is just as good or better, and also runs all your favourite Windows apps? Me: If it runs Windows, it will fail horribly. We need a whole new interface to support touch interface, and Microsoft hasn't done anything innovative in about a decade. Dell Dude: What you're talking about is something completely new. Dell doesn't create new markets. Instead, we wait for others to prove the market, and then we crush them with our manufacturing prowess. Me: But... but... but... my last three Dell machines have sucked, and Dell's support is a bunch of Indians paid to piss me off!
I kid you not. True story. Marketing at it's best.
There is something useful in that bloat. For example, Firefox is accessible by screen readers while Google Chrome leaves the blind with nothing, at least in Linux.
Radiation that can upset bits in an electronic circuit don't come from your cell phone, TV/radio stations or microwave oven. You may get enough EMI to interfere with your radio, but flipping individual bits in a chip pretty much requires an ion - basically a nucleus or neutron stripped of it's electrons flying through your chip. These come from two main sources. First, there's the Sun. Even with the magnetic shielding of the Earth, many fly through us all the time. Most common are single protons, but we occasionally are struck with gold nuclei, or even heavier. Older larger geometry chips were immune to single-event-upsets (SEUs) due to protons, but heavier elements could cause trouble. Newer, more advanced electronics are even sensitive to individual protons and neutrons. The other common source for radiation is neutrons from decays in lead used in electronic packaging. Ever hear of RohS compliance? Basically, a bunch of electronics companies around the world suddenly decided to "go green" and save us from lead poisoning by removing lead from their packaging. Ever wonder why? Do you really think they suddenly cared if they were killing our babies with lead poisoning? Uh... I'm afraid not. They removed the lead because of neutron radiation from lead decay.
I'm guessing that studying radiation effects isn't very popular in Japan, possibly because we nuked them twice. However, they should get a clue and start learning about how to deal with rogue ions and neutrons.
Radiation that can upset bits in an electronic circuit don't come from your cell phone, TV/radio stations or microwave oven. You may get enough EMI to interfere with your radio, but flipping individual bits in a chip pretty much requires an ion - basically a nucleus or neutron stripped of it's electrons flying through your chip. These come from two main sources. First, there's the Sun. Even with the magnetic shielding of the Earth, many fly through us all the time. Most common are single protons, but we occasionally are struck with gold nuclei, or even heavier. Older larger geometry chips were immune to single-event-upsets (SEUs) due to protons, but heavier elements could cause trouble. Newer, more advanced electronics are even sensitive to individual protons and neutrons. The other common source for radiation is neutrons from decays in lead used in electronic packaging. Ever hear of RohS compliance? Basically, a bunch of electronics companies around the world suddenly decided to "go green" and save us from lead poisoning by removing lead from their packaging. Ever wonder why? Do you really think they suddenly cared if they were killing our babies with lead poisoning? Uh... I'm afraid not. They removed the lead because of neutron radiation from lead decay.
I'm guessing that studying radiation effects isn't very popular in Japan, possibly because we nuked them twice. However, they should get a clue and start learning about how to deal with rogue ions and neutrons.
Exactly. I want a Kindle that also lets me browse the web. That's why I was so disappointed with the iPad announcement.
Kindles and other e-ink based e-book readers make sense. I bought two as presents for Xmas. They need to be cheap and have multi-day battery life, and they need to be sunlight readable. Now, let me browse the web, and make the screen larger and multi-touch, without increasing the price, and I'm sold!
Check out Pixel Qi on youtube. Better sunlight readability than e-ink, cheaper, larger displays, and with the backlight on, you can watch video in color. With backlight off (e-ink mode), you battery can last days, not hours. Still, not weeks like some e-ink products, but getting there. So, I 100% agree with you. I don't want an iPad. I want something like the Notion Ink Adam.
I'm with you on the $200, ARM-based, 10" touchscreen slate. However, we're very tech-minded geeks here. To quote a marketing guy at Dell, "Wouldn't you rather pay $300 for a device that can also run all the applications you love?" Of course, I happen to love Linux apps, but I get his point. We're not Dell's target customer base. Tell Joe Sixpack that it's just an e-book reader, and $300 for a black and white 7" display seems reasonable. Tell him that for $200 he can get color, better sunlight readability, 10" display in the same form-factor, multi-day battery life in e-book mode, and a real OS with web browsing, e-mail and more, and suddenly it's a device for pot-head geeks with no real market. Go figure.
You make a decent point. The Nvidia Tegra processor, QualCom Snapdragon, and TI something-or-other, are all fine ARM processors for multi-touch slates, yet no respectable manufacturer (I'm not including Apple as "respectable"), has even announced a device based on this.
My brother-in-law works at Dell, and while he may take issue with how I paraphrase him, what I heard was "Dell doesn't innovate. Instead, we wait for others to prove the market first, and then crush them with our manufacturing capabilities." The big players, like Dell and HP, are waiting for the equivalent of the Asus EEE PC in the ARM based tablet/slate space. Once an off-brand has dominated the market, they'll follow like lemmings. In the meantime, early adopters will need to buy products like "Notion Ink Atom" from some random group of entrepreneurial Indians, or this Marvell thingy. Honestly, I think the big players look to Apple for innovation. MacBook Air? How about a nice Dell netbook for 1/4 the price? iPad? How about a Dell slate for $150? At least we have that great A-hole Steve Jobs to help our corporations find their way...
The main problem is that you either have to provide students with power outlets, or the batteries have to be able to perform in the real world for around 8-12 hours.
Done. I wish I could grant other wishes so easily. These new devices will have battery life measured in days, not hours, because in e-book mode we get to turn off the back-light and read the display using ambient light, just like a book. They'll also have power-saving ARM processors that only drain significant energy when you turn the page. But, if you want to see that you-tube video your friend just texted you, you can turn on the back-light, and enjoy it.
Wow... a slashdot geek should really read about technology y before commenting, but hey, few of us RTFA, right? Check out the Pixel Qi display. Also check out the Nvidia Tegra processor. This is the year of the tablet/slate, or whatever you want to call them. They're a new class of $100 - $200 ebook readers that blow away anything we've seen to date, assuming you like to read. They are easier on the eyes than Kindles, yet able to run real OSes, even Ubuntu UNR. With their ARM processors, and awesome integrated graphics, they use a small fraction of the power of any Intel based system, and at a fraction of the cost. The killer application will be e-book readers, in a "convergence" device that also let's us watch color youtube videos, run Firefox, write e-mails, and all of that on a nice 10" multi-touch display that blows doors on any phone or e-ink display. We'll buy them because they're cheaper and better than a Kindle for reading e-books, yet nearly as useful as a netbook for getting work done. Many of these devices will ship with detachable keyboards, making them true netbooks when used that way. Battery life in e-book mode will be in days, not hours.
So, feel free to enjoy your technology x. I'm really looking forward to y.
You have been reading carefully... Speakup integration insures the blind can hear anything printed on the console. It's almost as good as seeing the boot screen. For example, if a blind sys-admin has a server with a failing hard-disk, he needs to know what messages get printed, even if boot fails. Further, speakup has become the tool of choice for blind sys-admins, so even if they are just trying to read a console, they'll miss speakup if it's not there.
I'm not familiar with CDE, which probably means the blind aren't either. It's probably not very accessible, unless it's based on gnome. KDE, for example, is not accessible at all.
I agree that any large Linux company should hire Willie. It's a mystery to me why Canonical doesn't snap him up, or RedHat, or even Novell. A lot of us are aghast at the lack of interest in accessibility from the big distros. It's like they keep waiting to see if someone else will solve the problem. Of any distro, SunOS has the best excuse for laying off accessibility guys, but the other distros are growing, and should be hiring.
The Solaris kernel guys are certainly an excellent team, but unless they decide to start hacking python scripts in user space, and 30 ancient C programs with no documentation and support, accessiblity in Gnome for SunOS will only progress due to the generosity of programers in the community. Most of us are in Linux land, and with Willie jumping ship, I would not count on SunOS accessibility in the future.
This is old ground, but I'll go over it again. The blind mostly are willing to do things for themselves in open-source land. If you were a good hacker who went blind, what would you do? Add some low-level code to the Linux kernel to drive a speech-synthesizer or Braille device, and you're off coding. That project is called speakup, and it's great for the blind. What if you were an emacs hacker? Would you write an entire desktop environment in emacs based on speech? That project is called emacspeak, and it's considered by many to be the most productive programing environment for the blind who can hear well.
What if you want to use Firefox, OpenOffice, or any of that cool new-fangled software? You'd have to edit 100 packages to begin to make that work, and you'd need cooperation from the big distros. It's too big a job for the blind, especially given how much of has to be done without working speech or Braille. Willie Walker is both the Orca and Gnome accessibility lead, and for good reason. He's the only guy I know with the clout with all the major distros to get anything done. Without him, it's going to be very difficult just keeping accessibility strong in Gnome/Linux, much less SunOS.
If Oracle were a bit more informative about what they're doing, we wouldn't be forming ill-informed collective opinions. This stuff is pretty important to a lot of people, and the complete silence from Oracle is a problem.
Blind sys-admins are able to slap speech synthesizers on the serial ports of Linux servers, and hear boot messages. If a server fully boots, is on the internet, running sshd, then it's not a problem. However, to hear the blind sys-admins describe it, if the machine boots that far, the problem is probably already solved.
True, SunOS would be accessible if I log in through an ssh shell in Linux. Over on the speakup list, there are many blind system-admins who own hardware voice synthesizers. They attach these to the server's serial port, which allows them to hear bootup messages. For servers that don't get all the way to bringing up internet services, this is pretty useful.
I agree with you, though. I prefer to run Debian servers now because I use Ubuntu on my desktop. It's nice when they have so much in common. I'm just PO-ed that the Oracle/Sun merger is causing so much turmoil in accessibility land. SunOS was probably going to die anyway, and as that happens, clearly they are going to layoff people. I hope Oracle doesn't bring a big axe to MySQL, Java, and OpenOffice. It's also not clear how these projects make money.
It's nice to hear an informed opinion on slashdot. I'm also glad to hear the rumors about Willie being fired over pay aren't true. I guess SunOS accessibility, and it's entire bid for the desktop is toast, but it might make a decent non-accessible server OS. Linux servers are accessible through the speakup kernel modules, but as a non-main-stream server OS, SunOS can't expect to have such features, can it? Certainly not if they fire the person many believe to be the world's foremost FOSS accessibility expert.
Let's just say I will fight vigorously against any deployment of non-accessible software in our enterprise, and I see no future for SunOS in companies like mine.
They're ripping out all the accessibility already in place?
No, but gnome is switching from bonobo to dbus, from gecko to webkit, and from Gnome Speech Services to speech-dispatcher. There's no one left who cares enough to make all this work in Gnome 3.0 for SunOS. Want to make any bets as to whether screen readers work when SunOS switches to Gnome 3.0?
This was already discussed in length on slashdot. As for the firing of lot's of the top-paid programmers, I can point to multiple e-mails on the accessibility lists that claim it's true, but that's not much proof. In theory, Willie was fired along with a large number of the most highly paid programmers, across Sun.
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Comparing Debian to Android is actually very interesting. Debian has something like 32,000 packages that can be installed, but it's taken something like 15 years to get there. Android blasted to over 100,000 in something like 2 to 3 years. Debian is all about community contribution, while Android is all about selling closed-source apps, with no sharing of code between. In theory, it should be easier to publish an app in Debian than Android, but this is not the case at all. In Debian, you have to find a sponsor, do a complicated job of packaging, pray your package gets uploaded to Unstable, and then wait a few years while it migrates to Stable before other programmers will generally have access to your work. I call this the Debian Red Tape. It's suffocating innovation in the open-source community, and it's the reason Android is kicking Debian butt.
I believe there is a solution, but it requires a completely new packaging system. Let's compare Android and Debian packaging:
- Android ships every dependent binary in the .apk app file. This eliminates the nightmare of having your app crash because some library you use gets updated. .so files across applications. This made sense in the '90s when disk space was scarce, but now days, it's just dumb. The reason it takes years to get a packaged library into Debian Stable is that it takes years before we believe you library wont cause other apps to crash.
- Debian is all about resusing
A new packaging system could share identical binaries between apps to save both disk and memory space, but it should not ever change a binary used by an app. Also, publishing new packages should be as easy as creating a repo on github.net. You simply declare that it's available, and everyone can use it. Whether a developer decides to depend on your code should be a matter of trust, which could be scored based on developer reputation, code stability and what other packages use it.
Without a major upgrade to our packaging system, Debian will continue to fall further and further behind. Why do so many people feel they have to build a custom Debian based distro? Because Debian incapable of addressing the needs of modern users. Frankly, even with the total lack of libraries available for Android, and with Google having their heads up there arse with respect to accepting contributions from the community, I am able to contribute more to Android than I can to Debian. Check out my library that I've made available to both at dev.vinux-project.org/sonic. I'm basically done for Android, while I'm still waiting for a Debian sponsor over in Debian land.
I know a couple of people who will be disappointed by the lack of GPS. No turn-by-turn navigation like the Xoom, no geo-caching apps. Seems kind of goofy, but the only person I've met who returned his iPad said he returned because he wanted GPS nav.
True. I do it all the time, and my wife makes fun of me for it.
Because I'm a guy, and a big geek? I still have to laugh at myself every time I remember trying to find that girls dress under the couch. I remember her exasperated expression when I couldn't figure out what she wanted. Besides, it may just be me, but I thought that in general Romanian girls were very pretty. It seems a shame not to mention the girls in any discussion of Romania.
I went and Googled about Romania's economy and how much they pay programmers. It looks like programmers there can expect more like $600 in take-home pay per month now days. It sounds like they're doing better, and that makes me happy.
As I've just thrown out a bit of a nasty story about Zvi above, I'd like to explain a bit more here. First, Zvi considers himself a man of high ethical standards. I'm no moral relativist, but Zvi is from the Middle East, where I suspect lying to the patent office and Romanian employees is considered wise, rather than unethical. At AMI, I dealt mostly with very ethical Christians and Mormons, and I figured it'd be hard to be screwed by the likes of these people. However, I discovered that a company with weak leadership is capable of acting like the worst individual that could be made from the worst aspects of all of it's leaders. One John Stone provided much of those worst aspects, but others provided irrational fear, NIH, kingdom building, genuine stupidity, etc. The individual made from these traits is not someone you can actually deal with.
I loved the trip to Romania Zvi sent me on in 1999. I often wish I could go back there for a while. I'm sure Romanians on this list could properly describe Romania, but I'd like to say how it was for an American geek. First, I was not allowed to carry any significant amount of cash, and there was no such thing as credit cards. Instead, I had a person assigned to make sure I was well taken care of all the time. This is probably a very good thing. The first day, my guide and friend stepped between me and a poor child on the street who was reading a newspaper while walking past me. My guide explained that it was likely that the kid had a knife behind it to cut the laptop shoulder strap while another kid stole it. The poverty on the streets in Bucharest was quite sad, but the city was in many ways like all international cities, vibrant with activities, great food, and culture. We drove to a city which I believe is Iasi, though Zvi called it Yas or something similar, so I remained confused as to where I actually was.
Iai for me was a place of great contradictions. The beauty of some architecture was breathtaking, old and magnificent, while much of where people actually lived was dull and uninspired, built under communist rule. I stayed at a hotel considered very nice for the area, and have no complaints. The bed was very small, more like a cot, but it was fine. One night a very beautiful tall slender girl knocked at my door, and opened her over-coat, revealing barely legal clothing underneath. She said "Speak, and I there", and pointed to the floor. Now, I am a huge geek, and I was married, but you'd think I'd figure out what she meant. I thought she was saying she had lost her dress under the couch, but there was nothing there. It took about five minute for her to get me to understand what she was suggesting, and then I was quite embarrased and turned her down as nicely as I could, which frankly was hard for me to do. I think fear was what kept me honest to my wife that night, fear of catching some disease, fear that my room was being taped and I'd be black-mailed, fear that she would somehow wind up taking my laptop (the only valuable thing I had).
The software team was a group of around 10 employees, mostly in their 20's, who had degrees from the University. They worked in one room, on stools, with the worst PC hardware available on the market. Zvi had a Jewish buddy living here, who was running the whole thing, and one thing Zvi may not have realised is that he paid for Dell computers or equivalent, but the team got much cheaper hardware. His buddy pocketed the difference. A major problem was that the network barely worked at all, because the wiring was sub-standard. Their eithernet cables were super thin, and many just didn't work. I'd never seen eithernet cables like that, but someone was making money by skimping a penney per foot, and the software team was hard pressed to collaborate at all. It was litterally a sweat shop, where the heat from the machines and our bodies made the room quite uncomfortable.
But, the team love to write code, some of them were pretty good, and the others seemed to learn quickly. There was an ex
I've worked for a bunch of startups, though no Google or such that I no longer need to work. There are all kinds of people out there, and you need to be very careful not to get screwed. It's amazing still to me how rational likable people can turn into true horrors when money is involved.
So, here's what I recommend based on the very small amount of data presented. First, tell your employees that you have been asked to ask if they will work 10-11 hours per day until profitable without any stock or additional compensation. Be sure to mention the words stock and additional compensation. They will naturally, unless they are seriously whipped employees, say they would like to have either stock or more cash, but they're probably happy to work their hearts out if treated fairly. If you and your employees believe the company has a decent chance at a good future, go back to your boss and tell him the employees want stock, and that you feel it might be a good idea, and that you think you could run the team hard for a while if they all thought it was in their best interest. Also mention that if they own stock, they'll all want to work harder, even after they are profitable.
Unless your boss is a complete dick (which is actually quite common), he'll find a way to get your guys stock. Be sure to ask how many outstanding shares there are, and be prepared for the possibility that he lies about the answer. Don't be a sucker. Try to double check the number by mentioning it to another investor, board member, the CFO, or someone else who knows the truth, and judge their reaction. Do a quick estimate of the current value of the company, and figure out how many shares per hour you could by with the cash that those hours are worth. Maybe be nice and work for a discount, but don't get totally screwed.
Unfortunately, I see way too much of two kinds of people in startups. There are way too many dishonest owners and bosses who will take advantage of trusting geeks. After all, our skills are all engineering and software, not negotiation and conflict. On the other hand, there are way too many gullible geeks, and geeks who like so many beaten house wives are simply unable to grow a pair and stand up for themselves. Assuming you care about your employees, it's probably up to you to stand up for them.
Then, there's the standard compromise, which I hope you will avoid. It is very common in these situations for your boss to offer you personally a fair stock deal, so long as you can sell a crap deal to your employees. The standard way this is done is for you to be asked to claim each share is worth X, when in reality it's worth less than X/10. The way to help your employees in this case is to somehow leak how much stock is outstanding. If your employees are too dumb to guess what the stock is actually worth once they have this information, they may not deserve extra compensation. The fact that you're posting here may mean you actually care about your employees. I hope you do, and can stick up for them.
Finally, if your boss is one of those fairly common jerks who will absolutely refuse to get you stock now, but goes on and on about how much money he's going to pay you once their profitable, then consider moving to a new company. I have never in all my years in industry seen any such promise fulfilled.
I'll end with a story where I got screwed for not growing a pair. Back in 1999, I was doing some consulting for Zvi OrBach, founder of eASIC. He'd promised me 2% of his stock for access to all my source code, and he promised to keep the code confidential, etc. I delivered the code, and the next day he sent it to Romania, where of course nothing is confidential. I asked for stock certificates, and he gave all sorts of BS reasons he couldn't do it right away, but if I'd wait a reasonable period of time, he'd make it happen. He sent me to Romania to train the team to use my software, and you know what he asked me to do? He asked me to tell them to work extra hours without pay, and he told me
I tend to find people more credible when they're willing to put their own money on the line. 2010 looks like the warmest year on record.
Actually, it's probably just the opposite. After the BSD backdoor story and after the Wikileaks cables, maybe Russia is concerned about using Microsoft Windows. Of course, Microsoft would *never* work with the NSA/FBI/CIA/Control/Chaos on back-doors that undermine the security of Russia... I can't imaging why they would want their own operating system...
There are so many potential Dilbert strips here...
I know the guy who presented this convertible tablet originally. I've had conversations about the tablet market with him for two years. To summarise it went something like this:
Me: Dude, have you checked out the Tegra processor, and the iPhone touch screen technology? Dell could make a real splash here. You could probably get Canonicle to write a whole new touch interface for this thing for free. The killer app is an e-book reader that also does color Internet browsing. If you use a Pixel Qi display, you'll dominate. If you built it, I'll buy one for every member of my family.
Dell dude: But wouldn't you rather pay just a little more and have a device that is just as good or better, and also runs all your favourite Windows apps?
Me: If it runs Windows, it will fail horribly. We need a whole new interface to support touch interface, and Microsoft hasn't done anything innovative in about a decade.
Dell Dude: What you're talking about is something completely new. Dell doesn't create new markets. Instead, we wait for others to prove the market, and then we crush them with our manufacturing prowess.
Me: But... but... but... my last three Dell machines have sucked, and Dell's support is a bunch of Indians paid to piss me off!
I kid you not. True story. Marketing at it's best.
There is something useful in that bloat. For example, Firefox is accessible by screen readers while Google Chrome leaves the blind with nothing, at least in Linux.
Radiation that can upset bits in an electronic circuit don't come from your cell phone, TV/radio stations or microwave oven. You may get enough EMI to interfere with your radio, but flipping individual bits in a chip pretty much requires an ion - basically a nucleus or neutron stripped of it's electrons flying through your chip. These come from two main sources. First, there's the Sun. Even with the magnetic shielding of the Earth, many fly through us all the time. Most common are single protons, but we occasionally are struck with gold nuclei, or even heavier. Older larger geometry chips were immune to single-event-upsets (SEUs) due to protons, but heavier elements could cause trouble. Newer, more advanced electronics are even sensitive to individual protons and neutrons. The other common source for radiation is neutrons from decays in lead used in electronic packaging. Ever hear of RohS compliance? Basically, a bunch of electronics companies around the world suddenly decided to "go green" and save us from lead poisoning by removing lead from their packaging. Ever wonder why? Do you really think they suddenly cared if they were killing our babies with lead poisoning? Uh... I'm afraid not. They removed the lead because of neutron radiation from lead decay.
I'm guessing that studying radiation effects isn't very popular in Japan, possibly because we nuked them twice. However, they should get a clue and start learning about how to deal with rogue ions and neutrons.
Radiation that can upset bits in an electronic circuit don't come from your cell phone, TV/radio stations or microwave oven. You may get enough EMI to interfere with your radio, but flipping individual bits in a chip pretty much requires an ion - basically a nucleus or neutron stripped of it's electrons flying through your chip. These come from two main sources. First, there's the Sun. Even with the magnetic shielding of the Earth, many fly through us all the time. Most common are single protons, but we occasionally are struck with gold nuclei, or even heavier. Older larger geometry chips were immune to single-event-upsets (SEUs) due to protons, but heavier elements could cause trouble. Newer, more advanced electronics are even sensitive to individual protons and neutrons. The other common source for radiation is neutrons from decays in lead used in electronic packaging. Ever hear of RohS compliance? Basically, a bunch of electronics companies around the world suddenly decided to "go green" and save us from lead poisoning by removing lead from their packaging. Ever wonder why? Do you really think they suddenly cared if they were killing our babies with lead poisoning? Uh... I'm afraid not. They removed the lead because of neutron radiation from lead decay.
I'm guessing that studying radiation effects isn't very popular in Japan, possibly because we nuked them twice. However, they should get a clue and start learning about how to deal with rogue ions and neutrons.
Exactly. I want a Kindle that also lets me browse the web. That's why I was so disappointed with the iPad announcement.
Kindles and other e-ink based e-book readers make sense. I bought two as presents for Xmas. They need to be cheap and have multi-day battery life, and they need to be sunlight readable. Now, let me browse the web, and make the screen larger and multi-touch, without increasing the price, and I'm sold!
Check out Pixel Qi on youtube. Better sunlight readability than e-ink, cheaper, larger displays, and with the backlight on, you can watch video in color. With backlight off (e-ink mode), you battery can last days, not hours. Still, not weeks like some e-ink products, but getting there. So, I 100% agree with you. I don't want an iPad. I want something like the Notion Ink Adam.
I'm with you on the $200, ARM-based, 10" touchscreen slate. However, we're very tech-minded geeks here. To quote a marketing guy at Dell, "Wouldn't you rather pay $300 for a device that can also run all the applications you love?" Of course, I happen to love Linux apps, but I get his point. We're not Dell's target customer base. Tell Joe Sixpack that it's just an e-book reader, and $300 for a black and white 7" display seems reasonable. Tell him that for $200 he can get color, better sunlight readability, 10" display in the same form-factor, multi-day battery life in e-book mode, and a real OS with web browsing, e-mail and more, and suddenly it's a device for pot-head geeks with no real market. Go figure.
You make a decent point. The Nvidia Tegra processor, QualCom Snapdragon, and TI something-or-other, are all fine ARM processors for multi-touch slates, yet no respectable manufacturer (I'm not including Apple as "respectable"), has even announced a device based on this.
My brother-in-law works at Dell, and while he may take issue with how I paraphrase him, what I heard was "Dell doesn't innovate. Instead, we wait for others to prove the market first, and then crush them with our manufacturing capabilities." The big players, like Dell and HP, are waiting for the equivalent of the Asus EEE PC in the ARM based tablet/slate space. Once an off-brand has dominated the market, they'll follow like lemmings. In the meantime, early adopters will need to buy products like "Notion Ink Atom" from some random group of entrepreneurial Indians, or this Marvell thingy. Honestly, I think the big players look to Apple for innovation. MacBook Air? How about a nice Dell netbook for 1/4 the price? iPad? How about a Dell slate for $150? At least we have that great A-hole Steve Jobs to help our corporations find their way...
Done. I wish I could grant other wishes so easily. These new devices will have battery life measured in days, not hours, because in e-book mode we get to turn off the back-light and read the display using ambient light, just like a book. They'll also have power-saving ARM processors that only drain significant energy when you turn the page. But, if you want to see that you-tube video your friend just texted you, you can turn on the back-light, and enjoy it.
Wow... a slashdot geek should really read about technology y before commenting, but hey, few of us RTFA, right? Check out the Pixel Qi display. Also check out the Nvidia Tegra processor. This is the year of the tablet/slate, or whatever you want to call them. They're a new class of $100 - $200 ebook readers that blow away anything we've seen to date, assuming you like to read. They are easier on the eyes than Kindles, yet able to run real OSes, even Ubuntu UNR. With their ARM processors, and awesome integrated graphics, they use a small fraction of the power of any Intel based system, and at a fraction of the cost. The killer application will be e-book readers, in a "convergence" device that also let's us watch color youtube videos, run Firefox, write e-mails, and all of that on a nice 10" multi-touch display that blows doors on any phone or e-ink display. We'll buy them because they're cheaper and better than a Kindle for reading e-books, yet nearly as useful as a netbook for getting work done. Many of these devices will ship with detachable keyboards, making them true netbooks when used that way. Battery life in e-book mode will be in days, not hours.
So, feel free to enjoy your technology x. I'm really looking forward to y.
You have been reading carefully... Speakup integration insures the blind can hear anything printed on the console. It's almost as good as seeing the boot screen. For example, if a blind sys-admin has a server with a failing hard-disk, he needs to know what messages get printed, even if boot fails. Further, speakup has become the tool of choice for blind sys-admins, so even if they are just trying to read a console, they'll miss speakup if it's not there.
I'm not familiar with CDE, which probably means the blind aren't either. It's probably not very accessible, unless it's based on gnome. KDE, for example, is not accessible at all.
I agree that any large Linux company should hire Willie. It's a mystery to me why Canonical doesn't snap him up, or RedHat, or even Novell. A lot of us are aghast at the lack of interest in accessibility from the big distros. It's like they keep waiting to see if someone else will solve the problem. Of any distro, SunOS has the best excuse for laying off accessibility guys, but the other distros are growing, and should be hiring.
The Solaris kernel guys are certainly an excellent team, but unless they decide to start hacking python scripts in user space, and 30 ancient C programs with no documentation and support, accessiblity in Gnome for SunOS will only progress due to the generosity of programers in the community. Most of us are in Linux land, and with Willie jumping ship, I would not count on SunOS accessibility in the future.
This is old ground, but I'll go over it again. The blind mostly are willing to do things for themselves in open-source land. If you were a good hacker who went blind, what would you do? Add some low-level code to the Linux kernel to drive a speech-synthesizer or Braille device, and you're off coding. That project is called speakup, and it's great for the blind. What if you were an emacs hacker? Would you write an entire desktop environment in emacs based on speech? That project is called emacspeak, and it's considered by many to be the most productive programing environment for the blind who can hear well.
What if you want to use Firefox, OpenOffice, or any of that cool new-fangled software? You'd have to edit 100 packages to begin to make that work, and you'd need cooperation from the big distros. It's too big a job for the blind, especially given how much of has to be done without working speech or Braille. Willie Walker is both the Orca and Gnome accessibility lead, and for good reason. He's the only guy I know with the clout with all the major distros to get anything done. Without him, it's going to be very difficult just keeping accessibility strong in Gnome/Linux, much less SunOS.
Many attempts have been made to contact Oracle over Orca and accessibility. It was even slashdotted. This effects a lot of people, not just the Sun employee.
The speakup driver in the Linux kernel is required to use the speech-synthesis devices. SunOS doesn't work with them.
If Oracle were a bit more informative about what they're doing, we wouldn't be forming ill-informed collective opinions. This stuff is pretty important to a lot of people, and the complete silence from Oracle is a problem.
Blind sys-admins are able to slap speech synthesizers on the serial ports of Linux servers, and hear boot messages. If a server fully boots, is on the internet, running sshd, then it's not a problem. However, to hear the blind sys-admins describe it, if the machine boots that far, the problem is probably already solved.
True, SunOS would be accessible if I log in through an ssh shell in Linux. Over on the speakup list, there are many blind system-admins who own hardware voice synthesizers. They attach these to the server's serial port, which allows them to hear bootup messages. For servers that don't get all the way to bringing up internet services, this is pretty useful.
I agree with you, though. I prefer to run Debian servers now because I use Ubuntu on my desktop. It's nice when they have so much in common. I'm just PO-ed that the Oracle/Sun merger is causing so much turmoil in accessibility land. SunOS was probably going to die anyway, and as that happens, clearly they are going to layoff people. I hope Oracle doesn't bring a big axe to MySQL, Java, and OpenOffice. It's also not clear how these projects make money.
It's nice to hear an informed opinion on slashdot. I'm also glad to hear the rumors about Willie being fired over pay aren't true. I guess SunOS accessibility, and it's entire bid for the desktop is toast, but it might make a decent non-accessible server OS. Linux servers are accessible through the speakup kernel modules, but as a non-main-stream server OS, SunOS can't expect to have such features, can it? Certainly not if they fire the person many believe to be the world's foremost FOSS accessibility expert.
Let's just say I will fight vigorously against any deployment of non-accessible software in our enterprise, and I see no future for SunOS in companies like mine.
No, but gnome is switching from bonobo to dbus, from gecko to webkit, and from Gnome Speech Services to speech-dispatcher. There's no one left who cares enough to make all this work in Gnome 3.0 for SunOS. Want to make any bets as to whether screen readers work when SunOS switches to Gnome 3.0?
I've got plenty as regards Willie Walker:
http://blog.grain-of-salt.com/index.php?itemid=394
This was already discussed in length on slashdot. As for the firing of lot's of the top-paid programmers, I can point to multiple e-mails on the accessibility lists that claim it's true, but that's not much proof. In theory, Willie was fired along with a large number of the most highly paid programmers, across Sun.