Isn't it easier to just take a question at face value?
While you might be right about the motivation, if you're correct then perhaps it's something to be taken up with the editing staff? You could add your voice to the other commenters headed in that direction.
(Aside, the market will ruthlessly sort out whether they provide a service worth the prices they're asking. Me? I find watching the futile struggle from a distance can sweeten that bilious taste in your mouth. But be warned - it can backfire if they succeed.)
In the Hadoop space, Microsoft has also worked with Hortonworks to expand the Apache Stinger, Tez, and ORC projects - among others.
Granted, they certainly want to make sure Hadoop runs on Windows servers and Azure; but nobody says that open source has to be an entirely altruistic affair.
I'd suspect that there's plenty of common ground with the CERT set - good practices are good practices.
What I don't see in this discussion is an honest criticism of the SDL practices being published.
I have directly observed (from my position as a corporate developer that works somewhat closely with Microsoft) that the Microsoft's focus on security since 2003 is sincere and pervasive. They take security seriously.
While I'm no friend of ActiveX, the bleating demands that they scrap the.Net framework (or they're not serious about security) are laughable.
Publishing their internal secure development lifecycle process for all to see is an example of the transparency that is so often trumpeted as a feature of open source development. If you can find flaws in the SDL, I suspect that they'd be happy to discuss it with you. (They've been quite open with our company about their SDL for the past 3 years.)
Having a good process doesn't guarantee perfect results - and I don't think Microsoft is promising perfect results. No sane software development group would. I think this demonstrates an ongoing commitment to security - one that started years ago.
Simply pointing and laughing does not reflect well upon you. Criticize the Microsoft SDL - it's out there, with OSS-style transparency. Start a serious discussion - and offer up improvements, if you can.
Here, in a nutshell, is why a lot of normal, non-technical users have trouble with FOSS...
They don't know anything about how and why Flash crashes their browser - or why Chrome handles it better.
They only know that their browser has crashed.
When someone more knowledgeable says "The problem isn't this, it's something else - so FIX YOUR COMPUTER before complaining" - well... the user just wants things to work, and their browser is still crashing.
Even if they had the time to dink around with their configuration until things were better, I don't think they're especially motivated in that direction. Most people don't enjoy messing around with their computers.
On the upside, your normal, non-technical user might not know enough to be offended by the PEBKAC remark.
I stand by my thesis - Bush is trying to gather the Republicans back up, despite fear over the '08 elections, the failure of the immigration bill to clear the Senate, and the debacle in Iraq that no thinking American can see as a success in the "war on terror" - whatever that is.
I think it's illustrative that I had lost sight of just how low the poll numbers are. At some point most Americans (myself included) just give up following it all, throw up their hands, and wait until the next election. And that leaves you with the others - the hardcore folks on either side. Bush doesn't have much to lose by playing to that last 18%, and perhaps getting a few other republicans back in the fold on the way.
18% is a lotta people - so Ann Coulter sells a lot of books. I don't think she believes half the outrageous, hateful crap she writes - she's a smart woman making a buck. You're right though - in election terms, 18%'s a repeat of the '06 midterms, only worse.
Bush isn't going to win any Dem's over by allowing Libby to serve his sentence. They already hate him, and that's not going to change.
He could, however, energize what's left of his base - those hardcore conservative Republicans who still support him (ever wonder just who that last 30% are?) who have been clamoring for a pardon since Libby was convicted.
With Lugar and other Republicans leaving his side on Iraq, this might be a way to shore up his party. And by letting his conviction, fine, and felon status stand, he gets to appear as though he's not too terribly corrupt.
Of all qualifications, the one that a person must have to be successful in this business is a passion for technology. For entry-level people, this could well be the -only- real qualification you need; everything else is learned.
Ask them how they decided on computer technology as a job, or as a career path.
I've found people are surprisingly candid when you ask this - some will tell you straight up that it was a good-paying job they thought they could do.
Others will tell you that they've been tinkering with computers since they were 12, in the computer club at school, etc.
If this is a 9-5 job for the candidate - or they've heard it's an easy way to make good money - keep looking. You want the kids who live and breathe this stuff.
Good hygiene and communications skills count - but you can get a feel for those in the first 5 minutes of the interview
Another good question is asking how they learn new technologies. If they tell you they learn by going to 2-day seminars that their manager approved - keep looking. You want someone who's not afraid to use the O'Reilly or the Google, and keep wrestling with the tech until they get it.
I interview senior-level developers in my job; and I still ask both of these questions in every interview.
Your reasoning is invalid for any job that involves any sort of thinking at all.
My employer pays me to do a job - in my case, write software. They don't pay me to tap code into a computer for 8 hours on the days of their choosing - they pay me to create something useful for them.
The 8 hours I'm scheduled to be there makes for a nice convenient schedule where I'm available to them for meetings, questions, reviews of what I'm doing, etc. - but in no way am I being paid to warm a chair from 8 to 5 with an hour off for lunch. I'm getting paid to build stuff for them.
It's not a subtle distinction.
Me? I consider it a professional duty to build them the best software I am able to, subject to the projects' constraints (delivery date, resources allocated, etc.) My ethics prevent me from non-project-related web surfing or playing games on their computers; which conveniently lands me well on the safe side of their terms-of-use policies. I can do these things at home on my own time.
Those are my ethics though - I think (as do many others here) that spending a moment or two doing something unrelated to work (non-porn, non-gambling surfing, for example) can actually help reduce the daily grinding atmosphere which can ultimately -hurt- the effort to produce useful stuff for the company.
I also believe that the issue of outsourcing is far more complex than your naive assessment that we're all soft slackers at work.
I'd just as soon see the industry grind to a halt until they find a way to nip these miscreants in the bud.
And that's exactly what would happen. Anyone doing any sort of business electronically will cease to do so.
There is no way for software to be written so that it's absolutely safe from people who are determined to break it. Depending on your paranoia level, you can believe (or be reassured by the notion) that certain 3-letter gov't agencies can decrypt any secure transmission you might make over the wire.
And your identity can be easily stolen for reasons that have nothing to do with stupid programmers. Anywhere your information lives, it can be stolen by someone authorized to use it - regardless of how tightly the systems are locked down.
Any system of any complexity at all relies on assessment of risk and assumption of best practices. Any system - from the space shuttle to an operating system to an e-commerce application - cannot guarantee absolute safety.
We'd probably agree that any company who, through gross negligence, exposes sensitive data should face legal exposure. But if every business had to fear that every minute flaw found in whatever computer system they've got running could lead to a lawsuit, it would shut down e-commerce (in all forms) overnight; and would set business and the economy back in a major way as the cost benefits that information systems (used both internally and external to the organization) are turned off under an entirely different sword of damocles.
Suppose we were able to steer a hurricane in a limited way using any of these water temperature techniques.
Suppose also that there is a hurricane headed for a major city - say, Miami or New Orleans. And we employ this steering mechanism.
The result is now that some agency decided that a smaller community - say, Mobile AL or Pensacola - bears the brunt of a hurricane instead of the larger city.
Wouldn't the residents of the affected area have some serious legal recourse against whomever "steered" the storm toward them? Is this steering ethical, given that we're essentially choosing one group of people to sustain hardship and death over another?
What about military use of this technology? Instant economic catastrophe for regimes you happen not to care for, whether you're in a shooting war or not. Or even political - making sure a red state gets the storm rather than a blue state. Given the current polarity of American politics, I could certainly see such a decision being made in a smoky backroom somewhere - buried so deep it'll never see the light of day.
Until these storms can be eradicated completely - the ethical and moral questions related to affecting a storm's path and the potential for misuse of that technology would seem to outweigh its usefulness.
I'd imagine that if they were truly trying to "buyout open source software" by hiring the competition's best/most noteworthy - the initial contact and offer would have been done in a much subtler way than a standard recruiting form letter.
This was a prank... nothing more. And I found his response, while funny, to be rather sad in its egomaniacal and dismissive tone. But then, you'd expect nothing less from ESR.
You can find better targets than public utilities.
Public utilities have very little influence over the consumption of energy by their customers. The customers demand, the utilities supply.
Utilities actually have all sorts of programs to help you reduce consumption. Examples? The utility where I live actually has a program that provides financial incentives for installing a device that turns your air conditioner on and off at 15 minute intervals during the summer, to help conserve - above what you'd save just by using less. They provide financial incentives for businesses and residences that install new, efficient appliances. And in California, there is a major initiative that provides huge price breaks if you reduce your power use by, say, 25% year over year.
Fact is, Americans don't really care what their energy costs - and I define "caring" as actually doing something as a result of it. We'd much rather live in our air-conditioned McMansions and drive our 10 mpg SUV's - even while the cost of energy skyrockets (due largely to political instability - granted, much of our own making - affecting supply; and rapidly rising demand in places like China, whose economy is growing rapidly. Supply, demand. Go figure - the invisible hand again).
No utility company can stop you from putting a solar or wind farm on your property - in fact, they're required by law to buy your excess energy from you at an inflated price.
I don't think anyone - the utilities included - would disagree with you with respect to the wisdom of using more renewable sources and reducing consumption.
The problem, though, isn't some big evil corporate oligarchy secretly plotting to keep you from conserving; rather, it's the fact that most Americans are lazy, consumptive, and just can't be bothered to do anything about becoming more efficient.
Actually, I know plenty of people who eschew living in what people consider "normal" society, and have tendencies in that direction myself. (You wouldn't know that, because you know nothing about me, having made more than a few assumptions of your own.)
I would suggest to you, however, that there is a big difference between "core members who *really* don't care if anyone uses the system," and those who actively discourage others from using it by making pronouncements about "lusers'" unworthiness. Apathy toward end users is one thing, and understandable (even beneficial) in this context; elitist disdain, ignorance, and arrogance is another thing altogether - and does noone any good.
One final thought . . . Anger at people who don't understand you is a terrible thing to carry around - very self-destructive. (the idea comes from ML King.) Why allow people whose opinions carry so little weight with you to have that kind of power over your emotions? I've found that it's better to understand than to be understood. There's no gun to your head forcing you to listen to them, anyway.
You know nothing (nothing!) about me, nor my background.
But your elitist attitude is enormously off-putting to me (and others apparently), and you're *happy* that it is so.
Truth is, I had a pretty good idea of what your response would be - quite predictable given your earlier posts. (I -have- "figure it out yet" (sic)). And you've only confirmed my suspicions - that you're an elitist, arrogant, socially ignorant individual. Whats more, it probably doesn't occur to you to even care.
If the rest of the community is anything like you, you can certainly rest easy knowing that the userbase will remain small.
I'm guessing, however, that they're by and large nothing like you - and that you have no place speaking for "the vast majority of the people who use" the system. Genuine intelligence is seldom so ignorant or arrogant.
You've given me -my- wake up call. I'm offering you one of your own.
If it's useful to a niche market, you're essentially asking the company to give away what could be a competitive advantage - something they developed at great cost. This is probably part of the half-million dollar price tag they're tossing about.
And if it's so wonderful, the market price may be higher than you think. Toss in the source code for the customer, and you may wiggle around your concerns of having to do so much support & customization; and maybe you can even get some of the source code for customer's changes back as part of the negotiations.
Open source software is great for commodity stuff, but in valuable niche markets - it's a tough sell for simply giving away.
It's been some time since Catholic high school, but my recollection is that the Gospel of Mark is considered the oldest, and it was written around 80AD at the earliest. The later gospels were finished up to around 130AD.
Perhaps they believed that Jesus' glorious return was imminent; there's a cryptic phrase somewhere in Acts that suggests that he will return before all of those present have died.
I don't know where your minimum number of generations to develop a mythology comes from (hell, writers come up with them now in a matter of months); but 80 - 100 years seems like plenty of time for the oral tradition to get shaped and bent into whatever form was useful to the early church.
That firsthand witnesses could have been consulted seems like an awfully weak basis to leap to the conclusion that everything mentioned is true, in my opinion. But make your own conclusions, as you say.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't it easier to just take a question at face value?
While you might be right about the motivation, if you're correct then perhaps it's something to be taken up with the editing staff? You could add your voice to the other commenters headed in that direction.
(Aside, the market will ruthlessly sort out whether they provide a service worth the prices they're asking. Me? I find watching the futile struggle from a distance can sweeten that bilious taste in your mouth. But be warned - it can backfire if they succeed.)
I wish you peace.
Because there's no reason to learn programming unless you're going to make a living at it?
Maybe it's a useful set of tools for viewing the world and solving problems.
Or maybe it's just plain fun.
Yeesh.
In the Hadoop space, Microsoft has also worked with Hortonworks to expand the Apache Stinger, Tez, and ORC projects - among others.
Granted, they certainly want to make sure Hadoop runs on Windows servers and Azure; but nobody says that open source has to be an entirely altruistic affair.
Nobody does...
I'd suspect that there's plenty of common ground with the CERT set - good practices are good practices.
What I don't see in this discussion is an honest criticism of the SDL practices being published.
I have directly observed (from my position as a corporate developer that works somewhat closely with Microsoft) that the Microsoft's focus on security since 2003 is sincere and pervasive. They take security seriously.
While I'm no friend of ActiveX, the bleating demands that they scrap the .Net framework (or they're not serious about security) are laughable.
Publishing their internal secure development lifecycle process for all to see is an example of the transparency that is so often trumpeted as a feature of open source development. If you can find flaws in the SDL, I suspect that they'd be happy to discuss it with you. (They've been quite open with our company about their SDL for the past 3 years.)
Having a good process doesn't guarantee perfect results - and I don't think Microsoft is promising perfect results. No sane software development group would. I think this demonstrates an ongoing commitment to security - one that started years ago.
Simply pointing and laughing does not reflect well upon you. Criticize the Microsoft SDL - it's out there, with OSS-style transparency. Start a serious discussion - and offer up improvements, if you can.
Here, in a nutshell, is why a lot of normal, non-technical users have trouble with FOSS...
They don't know anything about how and why Flash crashes their browser - or why Chrome handles it better.
They only know that their browser has crashed.
When someone more knowledgeable says "The problem isn't this, it's something else - so FIX YOUR COMPUTER before complaining" - well... the user just wants things to work, and their browser is still crashing.
Even if they had the time to dink around with their configuration until things were better, I don't think they're especially motivated in that direction. Most people don't enjoy messing around with their computers.
On the upside, your normal, non-technical user might not know enough to be offended by the PEBKAC remark.
"I'm not the thief. I should never be inconvenienced by them. "
..
or analgously .
"I'm not the terrorist. I should never be inconvenienced by them. "
Fact is, we're inconvenienced all the time by the exceptions rather than the rule.
Holy smokes. I was in the DTD house next door.
Well said.
I stand by my thesis - Bush is trying to gather the Republicans back up, despite fear over the '08 elections, the failure of the immigration bill to clear the Senate, and the debacle in Iraq that no thinking American can see as a success in the "war on terror" - whatever that is.
I think it's illustrative that I had lost sight of just how low the poll numbers are. At some point most Americans (myself included) just give up following it all, throw up their hands, and wait until the next election. And that leaves you with the others - the hardcore folks on either side. Bush doesn't have much to lose by playing to that last 18%, and perhaps getting a few other republicans back in the fold on the way.
18% is a lotta people - so Ann Coulter sells a lot of books. I don't think she believes half the outrageous, hateful crap she writes - she's a smart woman making a buck. You're right though - in election terms, 18%'s a repeat of the '06 midterms, only worse.
It actually makes perfect sense...
Bush isn't going to win any Dem's over by allowing Libby to serve his sentence. They already hate him, and that's not going to change.
He could, however, energize what's left of his base - those hardcore conservative Republicans who still support him (ever wonder just who that last 30% are?) who have been clamoring for a pardon since Libby was convicted.
With Lugar and other Republicans leaving his side on Iraq, this might be a way to shore up his party. And by letting his conviction, fine, and felon status stand, he gets to appear as though he's not too terribly corrupt.
It's all political calculus - nothing more.
One-man boat... tierra del fuego... I wish him well.
I made that passage on an aircraft carrier (many years ago), and the weather down there was nasty enough for us to proceed with great caution.
Of all qualifications, the one that a person must have to be successful in this business is a passion for technology. For entry-level people, this could well be the -only- real qualification you need; everything else is learned.
Ask them how they decided on computer technology as a job, or as a career path.
I've found people are surprisingly candid when you ask this - some will tell you straight up that it was a good-paying job they thought they could do.
Others will tell you that they've been tinkering with computers since they were 12, in the computer club at school, etc.
If this is a 9-5 job for the candidate - or they've heard it's an easy way to make good money - keep looking. You want the kids who live and breathe this stuff.
Good hygiene and communications skills count - but you can get a feel for those in the first 5 minutes of the interview
Another good question is asking how they learn new technologies. If they tell you they learn by going to 2-day seminars that their manager approved - keep looking. You want someone who's not afraid to use the O'Reilly or the Google, and keep wrestling with the tech until they get it.
I interview senior-level developers in my job; and I still ask both of these questions in every interview.
The fancy term for this phenomenon is metacognitive miscalibration - which basically means thinking that you know more than you do.
Apropos in an amazing array of situations - this being an outstanding example.
Your reasoning is invalid for any job that involves any sort of thinking at all.
My employer pays me to do a job - in my case, write software. They don't pay me to tap code into a computer for 8 hours on the days of their choosing - they pay me to create something useful for them.
The 8 hours I'm scheduled to be there makes for a nice convenient schedule where I'm available to them for meetings, questions, reviews of what I'm doing, etc. - but in no way am I being paid to warm a chair from 8 to 5 with an hour off for lunch. I'm getting paid to build stuff for them.
It's not a subtle distinction.
Me? I consider it a professional duty to build them the best software I am able to, subject to the projects' constraints (delivery date, resources allocated, etc.) My ethics prevent me from non-project-related web surfing or playing games on their computers; which conveniently lands me well on the safe side of their terms-of-use policies. I can do these things at home on my own time.
Those are my ethics though - I think (as do many others here) that spending a moment or two doing something unrelated to work (non-porn, non-gambling surfing, for example) can actually help reduce the daily grinding atmosphere which can ultimately -hurt- the effort to produce useful stuff for the company.
I also believe that the issue of outsourcing is far more complex than your naive assessment that we're all soft slackers at work.
Umm.. that's more like 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Net effect is the same, though I reckon you'd suffer a little longer in the (relatively) cooler water.
I'd just as soon see the industry grind to a halt until they find a way to nip these miscreants in the bud.
And that's exactly what would happen. Anyone doing any sort of business electronically will cease to do so.
There is no way for software to be written so that it's absolutely safe from people who are determined to break it. Depending on your paranoia level, you can believe (or be reassured by the notion) that certain 3-letter gov't agencies can decrypt any secure transmission you might make over the wire.
And your identity can be easily stolen for reasons that have nothing to do with stupid programmers. Anywhere your information lives, it can be stolen by someone authorized to use it - regardless of how tightly the systems are locked down.
Any system of any complexity at all relies on assessment of risk and assumption of best practices. Any system - from the space shuttle to an operating system to an e-commerce application - cannot guarantee absolute safety.
We'd probably agree that any company who, through gross negligence, exposes sensitive data should face legal exposure. But if every business had to fear that every minute flaw found in whatever computer system they've got running could lead to a lawsuit, it would shut down e-commerce (in all forms) overnight; and would set business and the economy back in a major way as the cost benefits that information systems (used both internally and external to the organization) are turned off under an entirely different sword of damocles.
to be fair, there was tracert info too.
Nothing - nothing! - to see here.
Suppose we were able to steer a hurricane in a limited way using any of these water temperature techniques.
Suppose also that there is a hurricane headed for a major city - say, Miami or New Orleans. And we employ this steering mechanism.
The result is now that some agency decided that a smaller community - say, Mobile AL or Pensacola - bears the brunt of a hurricane instead of the larger city.
Wouldn't the residents of the affected area have some serious legal recourse against whomever "steered" the storm toward them? Is this steering ethical, given that we're essentially choosing one group of people to sustain hardship and death over another?
What about military use of this technology? Instant economic catastrophe for regimes you happen not to care for, whether you're in a shooting war or not. Or even political - making sure a red state gets the storm rather than a blue state. Given the current polarity of American politics, I could certainly see such a decision being made in a smoky backroom somewhere - buried so deep it'll never see the light of day.
Until these storms can be eradicated completely - the ethical and moral questions related to affecting a storm's path and the potential for misuse of that technology would seem to outweigh its usefulness.
I'd imagine that if they were truly trying to "buyout open source software" by hiring the competition's best/most noteworthy - the initial contact and offer would have been done in a much subtler way than a standard recruiting form letter.
This was a prank... nothing more. And I found his response, while funny, to be rather sad in its egomaniacal and dismissive tone. But then, you'd expect nothing less from ESR.
You can find better targets than public utilities.
Public utilities have very little influence over the consumption of energy by their customers. The customers demand, the utilities supply.
Utilities actually have all sorts of programs to help you reduce consumption. Examples? The utility where I live actually has a program that provides financial incentives for installing a device that turns your air conditioner on and off at 15 minute intervals during the summer, to help conserve - above what you'd save just by using less. They provide financial incentives for businesses and residences that install new, efficient appliances. And in California, there is a major initiative that provides huge price breaks if you reduce your power use by, say, 25% year over year.
Fact is, Americans don't really care what their energy costs - and I define "caring" as actually doing something as a result of it. We'd much rather live in our air-conditioned McMansions and drive our 10 mpg SUV's - even while the cost of energy skyrockets (due largely to political instability - granted, much of our own making - affecting supply; and rapidly rising demand in places like China, whose economy is growing rapidly. Supply, demand. Go figure - the invisible hand again).
No utility company can stop you from putting a solar or wind farm on your property - in fact, they're required by law to buy your excess energy from you at an inflated price.
I don't think anyone - the utilities included - would disagree with you with respect to the wisdom of using more renewable sources and reducing consumption.
The problem, though, isn't some big evil corporate oligarchy secretly plotting to keep you from conserving; rather, it's the fact that most Americans are lazy, consumptive, and just can't be bothered to do anything about becoming more efficient.
Actually, I know plenty of people who eschew living in what people consider "normal" society, and have tendencies in that direction myself. (You wouldn't know that, because you know nothing about me, having made more than a few assumptions of your own.)
I would suggest to you, however, that there is a big difference between "core members who *really* don't care if anyone uses the system," and those who actively discourage others from using it by making pronouncements about "lusers'" unworthiness. Apathy toward end users is one thing, and understandable (even beneficial) in this context; elitist disdain, ignorance, and arrogance is another thing altogether - and does noone any good.
One final thought . . . Anger at people who don't understand you is a terrible thing to carry around - very self-destructive. (the idea comes from ML King.) Why allow people whose opinions carry so little weight with you to have that kind of power over your emotions? I've found that it's better to understand than to be understood. There's no gun to your head forcing you to listen to them, anyway.
So let me get this straight.
You know nothing (nothing!) about me, nor my background.
But your elitist attitude is enormously off-putting to me (and others apparently), and you're *happy* that it is so.
Truth is, I had a pretty good idea of what your response would be - quite predictable given your earlier posts. (I -have- "figure it out yet" (sic)). And you've only confirmed my suspicions - that you're an elitist, arrogant, socially ignorant individual. Whats more, it probably doesn't occur to you to even care.
If the rest of the community is anything like you, you can certainly rest easy knowing that the userbase will remain small.
I'm guessing, however, that they're by and large nothing like you - and that you have no place speaking for "the vast majority of the people who use" the system. Genuine intelligence is seldom so ignorant or arrogant.
You've given me -my- wake up call. I'm offering you one of your own.
Wow.
Reading that, I really -really- want to join your (elite) club of "good members of the community."
If it's useful to a niche market, you're essentially asking the company to give away what could be a competitive advantage - something they developed at great cost. This is probably part of the half-million dollar price tag they're tossing about.
And if it's so wonderful, the market price may be higher than you think. Toss in the source code for the customer, and you may wiggle around your concerns of having to do so much support & customization; and maybe you can even get some of the source code for customer's changes back as part of the negotiations.
Open source software is great for commodity stuff, but in valuable niche markets - it's a tough sell for simply giving away.
It's been some time since Catholic high school, but my recollection is that the Gospel of Mark is considered the oldest, and it was written around 80AD at the earliest. The later gospels were finished up to around 130AD.
Perhaps they believed that Jesus' glorious return was imminent; there's a cryptic phrase somewhere in Acts that suggests that he will return before all of those present have died.
I don't know where your minimum number of generations to develop a mythology comes from (hell, writers come up with them now in a matter of months); but 80 - 100 years seems like plenty of time for the oral tradition to get shaped and bent into whatever form was useful to the early church.
That firsthand witnesses could have been consulted seems like an awfully weak basis to leap to the conclusion that everything mentioned is true, in my opinion. But make your own conclusions, as you say.