Carefully read the article, and you will see that the majority of quotes deal with "expanding your skill set." That's good advice, even in the best of times. But the quotes are coming from persons who directly benefit from unemployed IT workers going back to school or testing for certification, so-called workplace and staffing consultants.
Times are tough all over, and you can't begrudge these people for trying to create business for themselves, but in these tough economic times, it seems irresponsible for the Chicago Tribune to report this as news. The article represents nothing more than opinion which a lot of people currently without work will misinterpret as fact and act upon, waiting for the predicted boom to occur.
Luckily, I am still employed, but I know that if the current economic conditions don't change for the better, I will be looking for work in a few months myself. It seems to me that one of the most irresponsible, even stupid, things that I could do now is to dip into my savngs to "improve my skill set" because a bunch of experts with books to sell have convinced the Chicago Tribune that there is another high tech boom just around the corner!
My mortgage doesn't care how up to date my skill set is. Neither does the grocery bill each week. I sympathize with those who are looking for work. I'll probably be doing the same thing in a few months, and I think the smartest thing any IT worker can do right now is prepare to get through the here and now, and not these boom times that are part of imagined future.
This letter, in my opinion, is simply the calm before the storm. The RIAA and MPAA are really after the home user, specifically the home user with a broadband connection.
But, how do they get at the home user? Instead of targeting them initially, it appears that their strategy is to set the stage with a series of meaningless letters to Fortune 1000 companies.
Why are they meaningless? Simply, most Fortune 1000 companies already have policies in place against downloading files, viewing adult material and even surfing that is not work-related. My company is nowhere close to the Fortune 1000, but we have policies like these in place and have for some time.
What the RIAA and the MPAA are trying to do is to create a climate where it will be viewed as appropriate to target the home user *next*. Once this letter and memo has been distributed to Fortune 1000 companies, the RIAA and MPAA will in effect have created a precedent that logically extends from the workplace into the home.
They are sneaky, and they seem to realize that they need to be careful about targetting home users; after all, the home broadband user is also a key revenue source for both of them. They realize this. I just hope the American public wakes up to the devious nature of these two organizations before the real war against the broadband user begins.
I've got a small, struggling business, and 100% of my customer base is small businesses with less than 20 employees. So I am definitely in the demo that Dell is targeting with this new "white box" initiative.
You know what? It won't help my business at all. Customers who buy white boxes are only looking for one thing: a low price. They don't care about brands. Most don't understand the hardware specifications well enough to discern any differences between a Celeron, PIII, P4 or AMD. As long as it runs Word, Quickbooks and lets them surf the Net, they are more than satisified.
The $499 price is not going to make me nor my customers sit up a take notice because I can still get comparable computers for $100 to $150 less than that. If my customers wanted a Dell, then they'd get one. Brands don't matter to my customers. They are too busy trying to keep the doors open, and a "generic" Dell computer priced at $500 is not what they are looking for.
Sure, HP and Kodak can switch the files formats of their digital cameras to something other than JPEG. As well, Adobe and Macromedia can even eliminate JPEG support from their product lines. They could then avoid paying patent royalties on all future sales of those products.
But, that will not save them from having to deal with all of the revenue generated by previous versions of those products over the years. That could potentially be a boatload of cash that these companies will have to fork over because of Forgent's decision to enforce their patent.
Two things could stand in the way of Forgent and the truckloads of cash they are dreaming of:
The gap between the time the patent was granted and the time of enforcement. We are talking about over a decade of time that Forgent, for all practical purposes, chose not to enforce their patent on JPEG encoding. There is a concept of tacit approval that companies such as Adobe could call into play when this goes to court. And since Forgent has stated on their web site that a "national law firm" is involved, you can bet this will go to court... soon.
Extending the concept of tacit approval, the defendants could claim they would not have used the patented technology in their products if they had known the patent would be enforced. The fact that it was not enforced, during a reasonable period of time after the patent was granted, makes this argument a solid one.
Forgent better hope that the national law firm they hired can claim a plausible reason why it took them so long to enforce this patent. If not, then it will likely be thrown out for all products using the JPEG format up until the date that Forgent decided to enforce it. If that happens, then the flow of money from this will be reduced to a trickle of what it could have been.
The concept seems valid enough, yet once you begin examining the way the open source community really works, you run into trouble. It's clear that many open source projects desparately need to find some ways of generating revenue, other than the assorted pleas for donations that seem to be the current mainstay. But I don't think this generally good idea of advertising on the desktop would work. Here's why...
Almost assuredly, the developers of the project would envoke a policy similar to Slashdot's and other sites. That is, to say, we'll only take this size of ad, this type of ad, and ads only from this select group of advertisers. That's defeatist from the start, and it runs counter to the very reason you choose to run advertising in the first place: to generate revenue. There is no such thing as a "noble advertisement" There is no difference between the dollars generated by an bikini-girl camera ad and a SourceForge ad. But this fact, I think, is lost among the clutter of ideas the open source community has about making money.
To be accepted in the most meager of fashions by the community, the developers would have to limit the types of advertisers they place on the desktop, but by giving way to the political correctness of the community, they cut themselves off from the vast majority of advertising dollars. That missed money would be used to improve the project which would ultimately benefit the entire open source community, yet the community, because of its supposed high-mindedness, would never use the product.
Until the open source community stops associating making money to pay the bills and to improve the product as evil, advertising and any other means of generating revenue for open source projects simply cannot be considered.
The RIAA could kill itself with this scheme!!!
on
RIAA to Sue You Now
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The best thing that could happen would be for the RIAA to pursue this new scheme. Here's why.
1. This action could bring potentially turn the a current ally, the PC industry, against them. Look at it this way. Before, they'd targeted the P2P networks. Once word of the first lawsuits against individuals starts hitting the news, many other individuals who may be considering getting a new, faster PC so they can have access to "free" music, etc. will be discouraged from buying that PC. Simply, the idea of getting "free stuff" on the internet is a very big reason many people get a PC, these days. Many friends of my mother and even my grandparents have asked how they can get things, such as music, if they were to purchase a PC. The RIAA's action against individuals will certainly discourage a portion of new PC sales in an already slumping market. HP-Compaq, Dell and even Microsoft will not be very forgiving or encouraging once they begin to feel this impact.
2. Washington and certainly the Bush administration will be forced into some action once word of "those West Coast fat cats suing the average American" goes mainstream. Bush's approval ratings have already taken a big dent because of the public's perception of his being is bed with big business (Enron, WorldCom, et. al.) Something like the RIAA admitting to trying to "sue the pants off" of Joe Public would be a very good way for him to get back into the public's good graces by thwarting the RIAA's meglomaniacal view of itself. Besides, his conservative supporters would fall all over themselves to send truckload's of cash his way to fight "those pink-o, liberal California record weirdos." I bet Limbaugh is drooling over the possibility even now!
3. It takes something substantial to get the American public's attention. And what the RIAA is proposing is very substantial indeed. It's the kind of action that'll cause the average American to take notice, and once more and more people begin taking notice of the RIAA, who they are, what they do, etc., the more the RIAA is going to be in trouble. Most Americans don't like institutions that which operate with the smug, authoritarian abandon of the RIAA, and will happily go out of their way to spit on them given the chance. Well, my friends, the action that the RIAA is proposing is the definitely going to be the chance for more and more Americans to hawk up a big one and spit it right in the face of the RIAA.
You are giving The Matrix way too much credit, especially in the ways you claim it has affected change in Hollywood.
The connections you claim between The Matrix and both the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Spider-Man are simply not valid. The filming of all three LotR movies at one time was simply done for financial reasons. Peter Jackson has said in numerous interviews that it would not have been possible to make the trilogy one movie at a time. It got green-lighted by the studio because of cost, not because of trust.
As for Spider-Man, I don't think The Matrix had anything to do with who directed it, nor who starred in it. Sam Raimi, regardless of his Evil Dead fame, had a vision for Spider-Man that the studio agreed with and which they believed would make them a ton of money. Raimi has also done much more than Evil Dead, such as movies like For the Love of the Game starring Kevin Costner. Nothing The Matrix did got Raimi the Spider-Man job, he earned it himself.
And as for you comments about Tobey Maguire being more of an art-house actor, you are correct. Tobey does have pretty good range for an actor, but again, how did the producers of The Matrix have anything whatsoever to do with his being cast as Peter Parker? I mean, they cast Keanu Reeves in The Matrix!! If anything, that should have prompted the makers of Spider-Man to pick some stiff and painfully awkward and dull actor!! The makers of Spider-Man may have gone out on a limb, so to speak, in choosing Tobey Maguire for the lead, but they did so of their own accord. Not because of The Matrix.
It was a great flick, but without the special F/X, it would have been pretty hard to watch.
In the county where I live and attended school, when computer science classes where first offered, they were taught by a handful of math teachers. Most of them did not have a background in programming or designing a computer science curriculum, yet they took the classes and taught them the best they could.
Unfortunately, they quickly gravitated to Visual Basic. The reason one stated to me is that it was an easy language for him to pick up, and it allowed the students to see quick results.
Now, the majority of the local school systems are solidly entrenched in Visual Basic as the primary tool that's used in all the high school computer science classes.
I recently ran into one of my old teachers, and I brought up the subject of Linux and open source software. He had no interest in even discussing it. He says there are plenty of VB sites on the Net with source code provided, and that Linux will never be be an option in the school system because he can't run VB on it. End of discussion. He even started to get a little hot-tempered with me when I tried to tell him about Kylix and some Borland products that were available for Linux.
These teachers all have the ear of the school board. And they seem to speak with a united voice in favor of Microsoft, regardless of price.
The reasons for the merger are pretty evident, if one looks closely at the leadership of both Compaq and HP. Both Cappellas and the now-infamous Fiorina would've been gone within a year from their respective positions, with nasty blackmarks on their resumes. No more multi-million dollar bonuses for them. No more being Wall Street darlings. These two who so easily and soullessly talk of tens of thousands of job cuts couldn't stand to possibility of being out on their keisters.
So... two struggling companies with ineffective, clueless CEO's come to the only decision that'll keep them in a position of power for another year or so..
"Hey, Mike... let's combine our companies!" "Great, Carly! What do you think our bonuses will be next year?" "Why, whatever we say they will be, darling! Hahahahah!"
The deal was masqueraded in bunches of buzzwords and double-speak. They claimed it would allow them to leverage all sorts of synergies for their customers. Of course, they never told their customers exactly how the joining of two alike companies would be beneficial. We were just suppose to trust Carly and Mike that it would. They even tried to coax Wall Street's blessing by saying that the merger would allow them to (gasp!) compete with IBM and its Global Services Division! Goodness knows that was so very re-assuring to the thousands of HP customers who were left in the dark for months and who were lied to about the e3000 line of servers.
"Don't worry about them cutting out the 3000 line!" "Why?" "Carly says HP can now compete with IBM!!" "We're saved!"
So now, Compaq and HP shift from the HP Way to something more akin to the Woolworth Way, which goes something like this: let's sell as much crap as we can, as quickly as we can, before we go under!
There have been a lot of Slashdotters comment negatively about David Packard's eulogy for the HP Way. I've seen numerous comments that say it's just a company, not a religion and other such rubbish. But for tens of thousands of HP employees, the HP Way was as much a part of their lives as religion. It gave them a sense of belonging, a sense of security and a sense of honor, all at the same time.
This week, one man and one woman have succeeded in absolutely destroying the lives of tens of thousands of people, all in the name of corporate profits and non-sensical words like "synergy."
Take a minute to respect that and to think about that, because a very unique and wonderful chapter in American business history was just closed.
You can't be all things to all people. There's just no way to grow and retain a customer base, if you don't have a solid plan as to which customers to target.
As a current HP customer, but in almost all certainly not a future one, I can say there's no roadmap, there's no strategy, there's no plan for this new company that seems any different than for the old one. Sure, there may be lots of wonderful ideas, full of "synegry" and other intangible buzzwords, hopping around between Fiorina and her lieutenants in internal e-mail and voice mail. But that doesn't help the customer.
It just seems to me that the general rule of thumb at HP is "throw as much crap as possible against the wall, and let's hope something sticks!" Printers. UNIX. Windows. Linux, et. al. All that Compaq brings them is just more crap to throw and more hands to throw it with.
I think Dell and IBM are going to chew this new company up within a span of three years, maybe even sooner. Both of those companies have real solid business plans and clear cut strategies they openly share with their customers. HP is doomed unless it can identify its customer base, and then keep them happy.
It's unfortunate for HP and its shareholders that such basic common sense as "keep the customer happy" was not a part of this deal.
HP had no choice but to embrace Linux, the company has to go where its customers are going.
This is an admirable assertion; one which companies such as Sun and Oracle seem to be reluctant even to say aloud.
However, there are more than a few 3000 shops who had no plans to go anywhere. They wanted to stay with the 3000 line, regardless of similarities with the 9000 line.
Now, faced with HP's edict to move from the e3000/MPE platform to the 9000/HP-UX platform, there is quite a bit of anxiety among many HP shops. This anxiety stems from the absence of a clearly defined OS strategy.
Here are just a few critical questions that HP clearly needs to answer. Is HP-UX going to stay? Is the PA-RISC architecture one that HP shops can bank on? Or will it soon be cast down the same de-support path as the e3000 line? Is Itanium HP's future? If so, why not cast aside all OS's in favor of Linux?
Most importantly, can we trust that what HP tells we customers today will not change within a week or two?
I've seen a lot of posts giving a positive spin to this merger, simply because HP will now be "the largest Linux" company.
That's an incredibly short-sighted and very callous interpretation of this what this new Golaith means for both its customers and many, many employees and contractors of the old Compaq and HP companies.
Under Carly Fiorina, the old HP never, and I mean never, gave their customers a clear picture of what the company was planning and where the company was headed. That's evidenced by HP's about-face on one of the e3000 platform. One day, HP managers are re-assuring customers that there are long-range plans for the platform. The next day, they are shown as bold faced liars, as HP announces it is cancelling the platform. Then HP announced that the "correct long range plan" for those customers would be to move over to HP-UX and the 9000 series server line. THEN... just a few weeks after that, HP resoundingly embraces Linux for its servers!!
The point is, HP was never able to formulate a lasting and good strategy for its customers to employ with just HP hardware. Now that Compaq and its hardware has joined the fold, who the hell knows what Fiorina and her stooges are going to be pushing from week to week. It ain't Wal-Mart people. Long range plans and sound strategy are needed to win and to retain the enterprise customer, not just weekly buzz words and discount specials.
And as for the unfortunate employees of both cultures, I have yet to come to understand how anyone with a conscience could ever call a deal where 15,000 men and women will lose their jobs a success.
That place is full of dichotomy. It's the same place that had a "well-respected" head football coach whose resume read that he had a Master's degree, yet he didn't. This school has been the focus of so many investigations (such as one documented twice on 60 Minutes) for faculty hazing and discrimination. How can an institution like this ever, EVER be classified as "well-respected?" It's a joke of a place that whores itself out to Philips and to Coca-Cola for money that they use for everything but the advancement of learning and the benefit of the students. They are aptly named "Yellowjackets": just a big pain in the ass.
Unix isn't dead out of necessity
on
Unix Isn't Dead
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· Score: 2
Or should I say FreeBSD is not dead. I work for a medium-sized manufacturing company, and we are making the move from a data center hodge-podge of Windows NT/SQL Server and HP-UX/Oracle to FreeBSD/Postgres. Why? Microsoft, HP and Oracle's license schemes and pricing are completely out of control and unpredictable. FreeBSD affords us the opportunity to move into a very familar and comfortable environment while still maintaining the stability and robustness of a "real" UNIX. Microsoft is not the only priniciple behind this move. While it'll be great to get Windows NT completely off out network, it'll be even more beneficial to our company's bottom line to rid ourselves of Oracle's and HP's constant intrusions and high pricing as well!
The RIAA continues to harp on declining profits and the disasterous effects of Napster and other P2P sites because their agenda, I think, from day one has been to get some sort of legislation that gives them the power of a Federal agency, while maintaining their for-profit status. It may sound strange or conspiracy minded, but look at the way most of their press releases are written. Their releases make liberal use of the words, such as "piracy" and "illegal." The RIAA is not just looking for the courts to shut down any site that they deem a danger to their continued profitability. They are looking for the government to give them to the power to do something about it themselves.
Who has the better lawyers? The MPAA or the computer manufacturers? The MPAA is going to stick to their guns on this because they are convinced that it is vital to their continued profitability. The cornered animal fights fiercest, after all. While the computer manufacturers, such as Gateway, Dell and Compaq, will likely fold, since it is not a perceived do-or-die situation for them. Slim margins be damned when they could be looking at billions of dollars in lawsuits.
Ideally, what will happen is that Microsoft will jump on their white horse and come to the MPAA's rescue by promising to put strict, unbreakable anti-piracy protection in Windows. The MPAA will gleefully accept this settlement, and the Linux world will be left in peace.
Besides that, it'll give Microsoft their very own "Unbreakable" ad campaign -- I can see Gates jumping all over it for that reason alone!
SourceForge is changing it's terms of service not to try to lure IBM, Red Hat or any other buyer. The business model doesn't appeal to for-profit corporations.
The reason that SourceForge has changed the terms of service is to protect their ass against massive litigation from the RIAA.
How many projects hosted by SourceForge have potential applications and uses that the record industry doesn't like? I don't know an exact number, but it looks like there are enough to make SourceForge drastically change their terms of service and the way they will interact with developers from now on.
The scary thing is that the change in the terms of service will make it very easy for SourceForge to turn over whatever documentation (read: evidence) that the RIAA asks for.
How can SourceForge or any site associated with it (such as Slashdot) claim a leadership role in the open source community when these changes in its terms of service compromise the fundamental ideals of open source?
VB has one fundamental use. In an environment where Windows is the prominent desktop OS, it is a good tool for creating quick, easy-to-use client-side programs.
Sometimes we seem to forget that the goal of most development projects is to give the end-user an application that not only does what they need it to do but also does it in a way that is easy for them to use.
Server-side development is an entirely different ballgame, but for client-side applications which end-users are going to be working with and looking at on a daily basis, Visual Basic is a wonderful tool.
My company, apparently, works differently as pertains to upcoming projects. We receive no training whatsoever in the the new technology. Consultants and integrators are brought into do all of the meaty planning and installation work, and usually, our IT director is brought up to speed on the essentials of the new technology (just so he can keep it running long enough for the expensive outside support to get here.)
The IT department, then, has this neat, new technology, but no one knows how to use it. Our skill sets stay static, and we are effectively told "hands off." This is very frustrating, especially when you realize why it works like this.
The last thing Management and our IT director want is for the IT department to have current and highly marketable skillsets. We know what we knew when we were hired, and that is the way they want to keep it. I suppose they think they've stumbled upon a brilliant way to reduce turnover, but the fact of the matter is that the IT department will soon become a hinderance to the growth of the company.
As more and more customers come to us with new ideas that require new technology, but find that Management has kept the IT department from being current in the newer technologies, our business will die.
I just bought a CD-Receiver for my truck that will play MP3's. How does Windows factor into that equation? I'll tell you. If Windows XP impedes my enjoyment of my CD-Receiver (or my DVD player or any other MP3 device I own) by trying to ween me off MP3's, then I will actively ween myself off Windows XP.
Microsoft, and perhaps the entire industry, is being very short-sighted. They seemed locked into the view of an MP3 as something people only listen to on their PC. In fact, I am a person who rarely listens to MP3's on my PC anymore because of the convenience of other devices that allow me to listen to MP3's EVERYWHERE ELSE!
The ONLY thing I need Windows (or any OS) to do for me is to allow me to rip a good sounding MP3. If the operating system is not up to that, then I will be switching entirely to BeOS or MacOS or Linux. I, and I suspect many others, have accumulated a nice collection of devices that will play MP3 files, and if Microsoft or any other company, for that matter, believes I will simply abandon my investment in those devices for the convenience of Windows, then they are sadly mistaken.
I don't think anyone really has a grasp yet on all of the paradigms the MP3 format will shift over the next few years.
The Slashdot tag line(s) is this: "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." That tag encompasses more than just Linux. If all you want is Linux news, there are a multitude of sites for you. And while I admit Slashdot has and always will have decidedly pro-Linux leanings("Debian is Jesus," CmdrTaco once said), there is much more to Slashdot than Linux. Here's just a few of the topics that bring me here many, many times a day. Space news. Movies. Science. Ask Slashdot. And yes, even video game news, such as the Diablo II beta. That's news for nerds. And that is stuff that matters.
There are so many different gaming systems out now and on the horizon, that one can no longer be "just a gamer." The system you buy seems to define you as a certain type of gamer, and whether you like it or not, there are stereotypes that will be cast upon you, no matter which system you choose. Buy a Sega system, and you become part of a rabid Sega underground. Buy a Nintendo, and you get grouped with all of the Pokemon kiddies.
It's gotten to the point where the ideology associated with each game system is more important and more prominent than the actual games.
Slashdot Mirror
Carefully read the article, and you will see that the majority of quotes deal with "expanding your skill set." That's good advice, even in the best of times. But the quotes are coming from persons who directly benefit from unemployed IT workers going back to school or testing for certification, so-called workplace and staffing consultants.
Times are tough all over, and you can't begrudge these people for trying to create business for themselves, but in these tough economic times, it seems irresponsible for the Chicago Tribune to report this as news. The article represents nothing more than opinion which a lot of people currently without work will misinterpret as fact and act upon, waiting for the predicted boom to occur.
Luckily, I am still employed, but I know that if the current economic conditions don't change for the better, I will be looking for work in a few months myself. It seems to me that one of the most irresponsible, even stupid, things that I could do now is to dip into my savngs to "improve my skill set" because a bunch of experts with books to sell have convinced the Chicago Tribune that there is another high tech boom just around the corner!
My mortgage doesn't care how up to date my skill set is. Neither does the grocery bill each week. I sympathize with those who are looking for work. I'll probably be doing the same thing in a few months, and I think the smartest thing any IT worker can do right now is prepare to get through the here and now, and not these boom times that are part of imagined future.
This letter, in my opinion, is simply the calm before the storm. The RIAA and MPAA are really after the home user, specifically the home user with a broadband connection.
But, how do they get at the home user? Instead of targeting them initially, it appears that their strategy is to set the stage with a series of meaningless letters to Fortune 1000 companies.
Why are they meaningless? Simply, most Fortune 1000 companies already have policies in place against downloading files, viewing adult material and even surfing that is not work-related. My company is nowhere close to the Fortune 1000, but we have policies like these in place and have for some time.
What the RIAA and the MPAA are trying to do is to create a climate where it will be viewed as appropriate to target the home user *next*. Once this letter and memo has been distributed to Fortune 1000 companies, the RIAA and MPAA will in effect have created a precedent that logically extends from the workplace into the home.
They are sneaky, and they seem to realize that they need to be careful about targetting home users; after all, the home broadband user is also a key revenue source for both of them. They realize this. I just hope the American public wakes up to the devious nature of these two organizations before the real war against the broadband user begins.
I've got a small, struggling business, and 100% of my customer base is small businesses with less than 20 employees. So I am definitely in the demo that Dell is targeting with this new "white box" initiative.
You know what? It won't help my business at all. Customers who buy white boxes are only looking for one thing: a low price. They don't care about brands. Most don't understand the hardware specifications well enough to discern any differences between a Celeron, PIII, P4 or AMD. As long as it runs Word, Quickbooks and lets them surf the Net, they are more than satisified.
The $499 price is not going to make me nor my customers sit up a take notice because I can still get comparable computers for $100 to $150 less than that. If my customers wanted a Dell, then they'd get one. Brands don't matter to my customers. They are too busy trying to keep the doors open, and a "generic" Dell computer priced at $500 is not what they are looking for.
But, that will not save them from having to deal with all of the revenue generated by previous versions of those products over the years. That could potentially be a boatload of cash that these companies will have to fork over because of Forgent's decision to enforce their patent.
Two things could stand in the way of Forgent and the truckloads of cash they are dreaming of:
The gap between the time the patent was granted and the time of enforcement. We are talking about over a decade of time that Forgent, for all practical purposes, chose not to enforce their patent on JPEG encoding. There is a concept of tacit approval that companies such as Adobe could call into play when this goes to court. And since Forgent has stated on their web site that a "national law firm" is involved, you can bet this will go to court... soon.
Extending the concept of tacit approval, the defendants could claim they would not have used the patented technology in their products if they had known the patent would be enforced. The fact that it was not enforced, during a reasonable period of time after the patent was granted, makes this argument a solid one.
Forgent better hope that the national law firm they hired can claim a plausible reason why it took them so long to enforce this patent. If not, then it will likely be thrown out for all products using the JPEG format up until the date that Forgent decided to enforce it. If that happens, then the flow of money from this will be reduced to a trickle of what it could have been.
The concept seems valid enough, yet once you begin examining the way the open source community really works, you run into trouble. It's clear that many open source projects desparately need to find some ways of generating revenue, other than the assorted pleas for donations that seem to be the current mainstay. But I don't think this generally good idea of advertising on the desktop would work. Here's why...
Almost assuredly, the developers of the project would envoke a policy similar to Slashdot's and other sites. That is, to say, we'll only take this size of ad, this type of ad, and ads only from this select group of advertisers. That's defeatist from the start, and it runs counter to the very reason you choose to run advertising in the first place: to generate revenue. There is no such thing as a "noble advertisement" There is no difference between the dollars generated by an bikini-girl camera ad and a SourceForge ad. But this fact, I think, is lost among the clutter of ideas the open source community has about making money.
To be accepted in the most meager of fashions by the community, the developers would have to limit the types of advertisers they place on the desktop, but by giving way to the political correctness of the community, they cut themselves off from the vast majority of advertising dollars. That missed money would be used to improve the project which would ultimately benefit the entire open source community, yet the community, because of its supposed high-mindedness, would never use the product.
Until the open source community stops associating making money to pay the bills and to improve the product as evil, advertising and any other means of generating revenue for open source projects simply cannot be considered.
The best thing that could happen would be for the RIAA to pursue this new scheme. Here's why.
1. This action could bring potentially turn the a current ally, the PC industry, against them. Look at it this way. Before, they'd targeted the P2P networks. Once word of the first lawsuits against individuals starts hitting the news, many other individuals who may be considering getting a new, faster PC so they can have access to "free" music, etc. will be discouraged from buying that PC. Simply, the idea of getting "free stuff" on the internet is a very big reason many people get a PC, these days. Many friends of my mother and even my grandparents have asked how they can get things, such as music, if they were to purchase a PC. The RIAA's action against individuals will certainly discourage a portion of new PC sales in an already slumping market.
HP-Compaq, Dell and even Microsoft will not be very forgiving or encouraging once they begin to feel this impact.
2. Washington and certainly the Bush administration will be forced into some action once word of "those West Coast fat cats suing the average American" goes mainstream. Bush's approval ratings have already taken a big dent because of the public's perception of his being is bed with big business (Enron, WorldCom, et. al.) Something like the RIAA admitting to trying to "sue the pants off" of Joe Public would be a very good way for him to get back into the public's good graces by thwarting the RIAA's meglomaniacal view of itself. Besides, his conservative supporters would fall all over themselves to send truckload's of cash his way to fight "those pink-o, liberal California record weirdos." I bet Limbaugh is drooling over the possibility even now!
3. It takes something substantial to get the American public's attention. And what the RIAA is proposing is very substantial indeed. It's the kind of action that'll cause the average American to take notice, and once more and more people begin taking notice of the RIAA, who they are, what they do, etc., the more the RIAA is going to be in trouble. Most Americans don't like institutions that which operate with the smug, authoritarian abandon of the RIAA, and will happily go out of their way to spit on them given the chance. Well, my friends, the action that the RIAA is proposing is the definitely going to be the chance for more and more Americans to hawk up a big one and spit it right in the face of the RIAA.
You are giving The Matrix way too much credit, especially in the ways you claim it has affected change in Hollywood.
The connections you claim between The Matrix and both the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Spider-Man are simply not valid. The filming of all three LotR movies at one time was simply done for financial reasons. Peter Jackson has said in numerous interviews that it would not have been possible to make the trilogy one movie at a time. It got green-lighted by the studio because of cost, not because of trust.
As for Spider-Man, I don't think The Matrix had anything to do with who directed it, nor who starred in it. Sam Raimi, regardless of his Evil Dead fame, had a vision for Spider-Man that the studio agreed with and which they believed would make them a ton of money. Raimi has also done much more than Evil Dead, such as movies like For the Love of the Game starring Kevin Costner. Nothing The Matrix did got Raimi the Spider-Man job, he earned it himself.
And as for you comments about Tobey Maguire being more of an art-house actor, you are correct. Tobey does have pretty good range for an actor, but again, how did the producers of The Matrix have anything whatsoever to do with his being cast as Peter Parker? I mean, they cast Keanu Reeves in The Matrix!! If anything, that should have prompted the makers of Spider-Man to pick some stiff and painfully awkward and dull actor!!
The makers of Spider-Man may have gone out on a limb, so to speak, in choosing Tobey Maguire for the lead, but they did so of their own accord. Not because of The Matrix.
It was a great flick, but without the special F/X, it would have been pretty hard to watch.
In the county where I live and attended school, when computer science classes where first offered, they were taught by a handful of math teachers. Most of them did not have a background in programming or designing a computer science curriculum, yet they took the classes and taught them the best they could.
Unfortunately, they quickly gravitated to Visual Basic. The reason one stated to me is that it was an easy language for him to pick up, and it allowed the students to see quick results.
Now, the majority of the local school systems are solidly entrenched in Visual Basic as the primary tool that's used in all the high school computer science classes.
I recently ran into one of my old teachers, and I brought up the subject of Linux and open source software. He had no interest in even discussing it. He says there are plenty of VB sites on the Net with source code provided, and that Linux will never be be an option in the school system because he can't run VB on it. End of discussion. He even started to get a little hot-tempered with me when I tried to tell him about Kylix and some Borland products that were available for Linux.
These teachers all have the ear of the school board. And they seem to speak with a united voice in favor of Microsoft, regardless of price.
So... two struggling companies with ineffective, clueless CEO's come to the only decision that'll keep them in a position of power for another year or so..
The deal was masqueraded in bunches of buzzwords and double-speak. They claimed it would allow them to leverage all sorts of synergies for their customers. Of course, they never told their customers exactly how the joining of two alike companies would be beneficial. We were just suppose to trust Carly and Mike that it would. They even tried to coax Wall Street's blessing by saying that the merger would allow them to (gasp!) compete with IBM and its Global Services Division! Goodness knows that was so very re-assuring to the thousands of HP customers who were left in the dark for months and who were lied to about the e3000 line of servers.
So now, Compaq and HP shift from the HP Way to something more akin to the Woolworth Way, which goes something like this: let's sell as much crap as we can, as quickly as we can, before we go under!
There have been a lot of Slashdotters comment negatively about David Packard's eulogy for the HP Way. I've seen numerous comments that say it's just a company, not a religion and other such rubbish. But for tens of thousands of HP employees, the HP Way was as much a part of their lives as religion. It gave them a sense of belonging, a sense of security and a sense of honor, all at the same time.
This week, one man and one woman have succeeded in absolutely destroying the lives of tens of thousands of people, all in the name of corporate profits and non-sensical words like "synergy."
Take a minute to respect that and to think about that, because a very unique and wonderful chapter in American business history was just closed.
You can't be all things to all people. There's just no way to grow and retain a customer base, if you don't have a solid plan as to which customers to target.
As a current HP customer, but in almost all certainly not a future one, I can say there's no roadmap, there's no strategy, there's no plan for this new company that seems any different than for the old one. Sure, there may be lots of wonderful ideas, full of "synegry" and other intangible buzzwords, hopping around between Fiorina and her lieutenants in internal e-mail and voice mail. But that doesn't help the customer.
It just seems to me that the general rule of thumb at HP is "throw as much crap as possible against the wall, and let's hope something sticks!" Printers. UNIX. Windows. Linux, et. al. All that Compaq brings them is just more crap to throw and more hands to throw it with.
I think Dell and IBM are going to chew this new company up within a span of three years, maybe even sooner. Both of those companies have real solid business plans and clear cut strategies they openly share with their customers. HP is doomed unless it can identify its customer base, and then keep them happy.
It's unfortunate for HP and its shareholders that such basic common sense as "keep the customer happy" was not a part of this deal.
This is an admirable assertion; one which companies such as Sun and Oracle seem to be reluctant even to say aloud.
However, there are more than a few 3000 shops who had no plans to go anywhere. They wanted to stay with the 3000 line, regardless of similarities with the 9000 line.
Now, faced with HP's edict to move from the e3000/MPE platform to the 9000/HP-UX platform, there is quite a bit of anxiety among many HP shops. This anxiety stems from the absence of a clearly defined OS strategy.
Here are just a few critical questions that HP clearly needs to answer. Is HP-UX going to stay? Is the PA-RISC architecture one that HP shops can bank on? Or will it soon be cast down the same de-support path as the e3000 line? Is Itanium HP's future? If so, why not cast aside all OS's in favor of Linux?
Most importantly, can we trust that what HP tells we customers today will not change within a week or two?
I've seen a lot of posts giving a positive spin to this merger, simply because HP will now be "the largest Linux" company.
That's an incredibly short-sighted and very callous interpretation of this what this new Golaith means for both its customers and many, many employees and contractors of the old Compaq and HP companies.
Under Carly Fiorina, the old HP never, and I mean never, gave their customers a clear picture of what the company was planning and where the company was headed. That's evidenced by HP's about-face on one of the e3000 platform. One day, HP managers are re-assuring customers that there are long-range plans for the platform. The next day, they are shown as bold faced liars, as HP announces it is cancelling the platform. Then HP announced that the "correct long range plan" for those customers would be to move over to HP-UX and the 9000 series server line. THEN... just a few weeks after that, HP resoundingly embraces Linux for its servers!!
The point is, HP was never able to formulate a lasting and good strategy for its customers to employ with just HP hardware. Now that Compaq and its hardware has joined the fold, who the hell knows what Fiorina and her stooges are going to be pushing from week to week. It ain't Wal-Mart people. Long range plans and sound strategy are needed to win and to retain the enterprise customer, not just weekly buzz words and discount specials.
And as for the unfortunate employees of both cultures, I have yet to come to understand how anyone with a conscience could ever call a deal where 15,000 men and women will lose their jobs a success.
That place is full of dichotomy. It's the same place that had a "well-respected" head football coach whose resume read that he had a Master's degree, yet he didn't. This school has been the focus of so many investigations (such as one documented twice on 60 Minutes) for faculty hazing and discrimination. How can an institution like this ever, EVER be classified as "well-respected?"
It's a joke of a place that whores itself out to Philips and to Coca-Cola for money that they use for everything but the advancement of learning and the benefit of the students.
They are aptly named "Yellowjackets": just a big pain in the ass.
Or should I say FreeBSD is not dead. I work for a medium-sized manufacturing company, and we are making the move from a data center hodge-podge of Windows NT/SQL Server and HP-UX/Oracle to FreeBSD/Postgres.
Why? Microsoft, HP and Oracle's license schemes and pricing are completely out of control and unpredictable. FreeBSD affords us the opportunity to move into a very familar and comfortable environment while still maintaining the stability and robustness of a "real" UNIX.
Microsoft is not the only priniciple behind this move. While it'll be great to get Windows NT completely off out network, it'll be even more beneficial to our company's bottom line to rid ourselves of Oracle's and HP's constant intrusions and high pricing as well!
The RIAA continues to harp on declining profits and the disasterous effects of Napster and other P2P sites because their agenda, I think, from day one has been to get some sort of legislation that gives them the power of a Federal agency, while maintaining their for-profit status.
It may sound strange or conspiracy minded, but look at the way most of their press releases are written. Their releases make liberal use of the words, such as "piracy" and "illegal."
The RIAA is not just looking for the courts to shut down any site that they deem a danger to their continued profitability. They are looking for the government to give them to the power to do something about it themselves.
Who has the better lawyers? The MPAA or the computer manufacturers? The MPAA is going to stick to their guns on this because they are convinced that it is vital to their continued profitability. The cornered animal fights fiercest, after all. While the computer manufacturers, such as Gateway, Dell and Compaq, will likely fold, since it is not a perceived do-or-die situation for them. Slim margins be damned when they could be looking at billions of dollars in lawsuits.
Ideally, what will happen is that Microsoft will jump on their white horse and come to the MPAA's rescue by promising to put strict, unbreakable anti-piracy protection in Windows. The MPAA will gleefully accept this settlement, and the Linux world will be left in peace.
Besides that, it'll give Microsoft their very own "Unbreakable" ad campaign -- I can see Gates jumping all over it for that reason alone!
Not only do I love Alan's kernel hacking, but I also love Alan's comic book writing, especially The Watchmen ;)
SourceForge is changing it's terms of service not to try to lure IBM, Red Hat or any other buyer. The business model doesn't appeal to for-profit corporations.
The reason that SourceForge has changed the terms of service is to protect their ass against massive litigation from the RIAA.
How many projects hosted by SourceForge have potential applications and uses that the record industry doesn't like? I don't know an exact number, but it looks like there are enough to make SourceForge drastically change their terms of service and the way they will interact with developers from now on.
The scary thing is that the change in the terms of service will make it very easy for SourceForge to turn over whatever documentation (read: evidence) that the RIAA asks for.
How can SourceForge or any site associated with it (such as Slashdot) claim a leadership role in the open source community when these changes in its terms of service compromise the fundamental ideals of open source?
VB has one fundamental use. In an environment where Windows is the prominent desktop OS, it is a good tool for creating quick, easy-to-use client-side programs.
Sometimes we seem to forget that the goal of most development projects is to give the end-user an application that not only does what they need it to do but also does it in a way that is easy for them to use.
Server-side development is an entirely different ballgame, but for client-side applications which end-users are going to be working with and looking at on a daily basis, Visual Basic is a wonderful tool.
My company, apparently, works differently as pertains to upcoming projects. We receive no training whatsoever in the the new technology. Consultants and integrators are brought into do all of the meaty planning and installation work, and usually, our IT director is brought up to speed on the essentials of the new technology (just so he can keep it running long enough for the expensive outside support to get here.) The IT department, then, has this neat, new technology, but no one knows how to use it. Our skill sets stay static, and we are effectively told "hands off." This is very frustrating, especially when you realize why it works like this. The last thing Management and our IT director want is for the IT department to have current and highly marketable skillsets. We know what we knew when we were hired, and that is the way they want to keep it. I suppose they think they've stumbled upon a brilliant way to reduce turnover, but the fact of the matter is that the IT department will soon become a hinderance to the growth of the company. As more and more customers come to us with new ideas that require new technology, but find that Management has kept the IT department from being current in the newer technologies, our business will die.
I just bought a CD-Receiver for my truck that will play MP3's. How does Windows factor into that equation? I'll tell you. If Windows XP impedes my enjoyment of my CD-Receiver (or my DVD player or any other MP3 device I own) by trying to ween me off MP3's, then I will actively ween myself off Windows XP. Microsoft, and perhaps the entire industry, is being very short-sighted. They seemed locked into the view of an MP3 as something people only listen to on their PC. In fact, I am a person who rarely listens to MP3's on my PC anymore because of the convenience of other devices that allow me to listen to MP3's EVERYWHERE ELSE! The ONLY thing I need Windows (or any OS) to do for me is to allow me to rip a good sounding MP3. If the operating system is not up to that, then I will be switching entirely to BeOS or MacOS or Linux. I, and I suspect many others, have accumulated a nice collection of devices that will play MP3 files, and if Microsoft or any other company, for that matter, believes I will simply abandon my investment in those devices for the convenience of Windows, then they are sadly mistaken. I don't think anyone really has a grasp yet on all of the paradigms the MP3 format will shift over the next few years.
The Slashdot tag line(s) is this: "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." That tag encompasses more than just Linux. If all you want is Linux news, there are a multitude of sites for you. And while I admit Slashdot has and always will have decidedly pro-Linux leanings("Debian is Jesus," CmdrTaco once said), there is much more to Slashdot than Linux. Here's just a few of the topics that bring me here many, many times a day. Space news. Movies. Science. Ask Slashdot. And yes, even video game news, such as the Diablo II beta. That's news for nerds. And that is stuff that matters.
There are so many different gaming systems out now and on the horizon, that one can no longer be "just a gamer." The system you buy seems to define you as a certain type of gamer, and whether you like it or not, there are stereotypes that will be cast upon you, no matter which system you choose. Buy a Sega system, and you become part of a rabid Sega underground. Buy a Nintendo, and you get grouped with all of the Pokemon kiddies. It's gotten to the point where the ideology associated with each game system is more important and more prominent than the actual games.