The thing you can get from doing GPL'd work is a reputation, and that can be a very valuable commodity. If you go into an interview able to say that you contribute code to the Linux kernel and Apache on a routine basis, you're going to look like somebody who can actually do the job. Not only that, but the employer could even go look at the work you did, which is likely impossible with closed source software you would write for a regular job.
More and more, I suspect these kinds of credentials are going to get you further as a technician than a college degree is. Who would you rather higher:
1) somebody fresh out of college, with a glowing recommendation from his professor?
2) somebody who dropped out of college, but has been an active participant in some open source projects?
Sure, the first one has a degree and a recommendation, but it's unclear how well that translates into actually doing a good job as a developer. On the other hand, with the second one, you could actually go look at what this guy is doing. You can check mailing lists from the project and see how he interacts with his peers. Is he condescending and aloof, or does he do a great job of collaborating? That's probably more effort to research a job candidate than one would want to do at the initial interview, but if they've got it narrowed down to a couple of choices, it can certainly help give a hiring manager confidence in their decision.
I do a lot of coding working mostly with open source products, and sometimes closed source. When I get some bug come up in an open source product, I actually go digging into their code sometimes to figure out what went wrong. If it's closed source I can dig down through my code, but once I hit their code, it's a brick wall.
Frankly this is why I try to stick to open source software when I do development work. Hell of a lot easier to figure out how something works when you've got code and direct access to the developers via a mailing list.
If you want to understand SCO's situation, look at the statements they make and then compare them to the statements North Korea makes. SCO is the corporate equivalent of a starving soviet state, desperate to hold onto its power. The only thing left in its arsenal are threats to use weapons with potentially catastrophic side-effects. Essentially, in both cases it's a plea for economic aid and recognition, and it all demonstrates a tremendous fear that the end is nigh.
SCO would have to prove that they are likely to win on the merits of the case and that the burden of harm is on them if the injunction isn't passed. Neither one of these holds true.
The first one, because even if they do have a case, it's such a technological morass that to prove it for an injunction will be impossible.
The second one for the fact that IBM's sales of AIX do not impact SCO's sales of their own software. It's not like AIX can run on Intel or vice versa, so there's no damage there.
... somebody is willing to pay for it. As it is most people are happy with the speeed they get from current cable modems and DSL. Unless there's an application that the average consumer wants that consumes more bandwidth, there will be no market for these services.
If only software quality DID matter...
on
Ageism in IT?
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· Score: 1
Look folks, as long as nobody cares about software quality, then it's always going to be better to hire a bunch of young hacks than more experienced programmers. Why waste money on people who have learned from experience when nobody buying your product cares. Hire a team of people who will work 60 hours a week for chump change and some options, hire one experienced architect to design, and then let them loose.
Sure, it won't be flawless software, but who will notice?
When I am working at home, Open and StarOffice work just fine for my needs. The problem is when I'm at the office I simply cannot use it. I can get a document from somebody and I'm able to read it is never formatted quite the same. So though I can read the document, there's no way I can then edit and return the document in something resembling its original format.
So, until this problem is resolved I have no choice but to use Office.
This is somewhat of a lottery ticket mentality, that this great insight will come, and then you'll go make a bunch of money on it. Well, you might get lucky, but I'd suggest doing something a little more mundane. Look at the software that's out there, look at the needs of businesses out there and find something that people need that's not being provided. Custom development and systems integration are things that can provide a good solid job even if it's not always the sexiest work in the world.
Also, even if you have this wonderful idea, it doesn't matter if:
1) nobody else in the world wants it 2) you have nobody capable of selling it
Just remember that there are lots of people out there making good livings on pretty mundane ideas. If you can go out and write a software component that is useful to corporate developers, you can make good money on it. You sell the component for like $1000 which is a drop in the bucket to a big company, and give them a rather open license and source code. They help you fix your bugs, they are happy and you are happy. Sell a few hundred or a few thousand copies, and it becomes a rather lucrative business.
This is all a matter of phrasing. Going into detail about their expectations and how you were treated will give them some insight on the matter. If you said, "they wanted me to work 50-60 hour weeks", without further explanation, then yes, I agree with your assessment. You need to hilight the attitude of the company not the actions. Are they telling you to do it, or are they asking you to do it to help them out?
Why not just zip something or tar something and then whip a little PGP on it? Seems like that would be easier and it's a pretty well proven technology.
When I was in second grade back in 81, before computers were really as big a thing as they are now, my mom was concerned about my poor handwriting skills. The 2nd grade teacher told her that I'd just learn to type.
Today, I can print, and I can type, and I can sign my name, but handwriting beyond that can only be done with intense concentration. Overall, I don't need it, so no big loss.
The reason why customer service sucks is because price is a quantitative tangible measurement and customer service is not. Generally speaking, people don't compare customer service when they shop, they compare price. Therefore, in order to be more competitive, companies have tended toward cutting customer service in an effort to reduce costs.
It's been interesting though to see how the overall reduction in customer service standards has given openings to some companies. Here in Chicago, a new cell service came into town trumpeting that they have award winning customer service. Whether there service is actually good or not, I cannot say, but it does suggest that, in a market with consistently bad customer service, it can be used as a competitive differentiator.
Now, as this applies to the local phone market, it looks likely that it will soon become an uncompetitive market. Here in Illinois, they recently passed legislation to allow SBC to change the rates they charge the CLEC's. I expect to be seeing my DSL bills skyrocket as a result.
If Microsoft is smart...
on
Today's SCO News
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Microsoft, will watch this unfold. Ultimately it will take a decade for this suit to conclude, and it's unlikely SCO will stick around that long. However, Microsoft can watch the preliminary legal actions and see where it goes. If the possibility of a win seems decent, then Microsoft can go and buy the Unix property off SCO, make SCO stockholders happy, and try to wipe out the Unix variants.
No, that's not possible, SCO is a good and moral proprietary software company. They don't do such things. Only the dirty communist open source people do that.
The fact of the matter is that sorting out who owns any particular piece of Unix code could take decades in court. You find two pieces of code that are exactly the same in SCO Unix and Linux. This could be any of the following:
- An amazing coincidence - SCO licensed software that was copied into Linux improperly - SCO licensed software that was copied into Linux properly (i.e. by a SCO employee) - Software from a 3rd party, properly incorporated by both SCO and Linux - Software from a 3rd party, improperly incorporated by both SCO and Linux - Software from a 3rd party, that properly/improperly incorporated it into their product which was then incorporated into SCO/Linux
Have you ever taken a look at the Unix family tree? There's no way they are going to be able to sort out the ownership of any individual piece of code. I mean hell, with Novell speaking up, it might be that SCO doesn't own squat (that they are just licensed the copyright that Novell still actually owns). Novell might not even own it either.
It will make some headlines, the world will move on, and in about a decade when this gets settled it will all be irrelevant.
What you indirectly illustrate here is what SCO is going to have a damned tough time prooving. Ultimately all software can be written in a bazillion different ways, and in order for it to be a violation of copyright, it must be clear that the code was actually copied. If I write a bubble sort algorithm, it might look a lot like yours, but may not actually be a copy. So if somebody did in fact copy it, but changed a few variable names, and some formatting it's not necessarily obvious.
If you are talking about a large block of code, you have enough data to work with that you can see how similar the code is/is not. If you are talking about a small block (10-15) lines, though, it's going to breally tough to proove.
In all likelyhood, all three of those drive companies are buying their platters from the same vendor. They may all take those drives and put them together separately, but it's not unusualy for competing vendors to source parts from the same company.
Somebody hacks into the company and flips the kill switch on all the bios's. Thousdands of laptops, most of them not backed up routinely, are wiped. Ouchy.
If the gun industry was like the computer industry all guns would come filled with concrete. Thus, there'd be no risk of you killing somebody and blaming it on the gun manufacturer.
TS. It wasn't a ratified standard. Too bad. I mean seriously, if you implement non-standard systems, this is the price you pay. If you didn't point out to your customers that what you were selling them wasn't a ratified standard, then it's your butt in the sling when they complain.
Tis the beauty of the computer/consumer electronics industry. Moore's law and it's various counterparts insure that capacity will go up, prices will go down, etc. It ought to get quite interesting when these things really get to be comoditized. Soon these things will cost $100, have all the capacity you could reasonably want, and sound good as well.
My thinking on the capacity was that for the most part I don't go for long trips requiring a substantial library of music. When I do, I always bring my laptop which has more hard drive space and I can carry anything extra. Basically the price point is the important part here. 100GB would be nice, but I'd be willing to sacrifice down to 5GB to get the price down.
-The size of today's ipod or smaller -Storage capacity of 5GB+ -FM Radio (I like to get NPR without carrying around a seperate device) -Good sound quality -Formats: MP3, WMA, AAC, and OGG -Price: $250
I think this is easily achievable with today's technology. My money awaits the first company to make one.
Zen almost gets it but too big. IPod almost gets it but no FM tuner.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing you can get from doing GPL'd work is a reputation, and that can be a very valuable commodity. If you go into an interview able to say that you contribute code to the Linux kernel and Apache on a routine basis, you're going to look like somebody who can actually do the job. Not only that, but the employer could even go look at the work you did, which is likely impossible with closed source software you would write for a regular job.
More and more, I suspect these kinds of credentials are going to get you further as a technician than a college degree is. Who would you rather higher:
1) somebody fresh out of college, with a glowing recommendation from his professor?
2) somebody who dropped out of college, but has been an active participant in some open source projects?
Sure, the first one has a degree and a recommendation, but it's unclear how well that translates into actually doing a good job as a developer. On the other hand, with the second one, you could actually go look at what this guy is doing. You can check mailing lists from the project and see how he interacts with his peers. Is he condescending and aloof, or does he do a great job of collaborating? That's probably more effort to research a job candidate than one would want to do at the initial interview, but if they've got it narrowed down to a couple of choices, it can certainly help give a hiring manager confidence in their decision.
I do a lot of coding working mostly with open source products, and sometimes closed source. When I get some bug come up in an open source product, I actually go digging into their code sometimes to figure out what went wrong. If it's closed source I can dig down through my code, but once I hit their code, it's a brick wall.
Frankly this is why I try to stick to open source software when I do development work. Hell of a lot easier to figure out how something works when you've got code and direct access to the developers via a mailing list.
If you want to understand SCO's situation, look at the statements they make and then compare them to the statements North Korea makes. SCO is the corporate equivalent of a starving soviet state, desperate to hold onto its power. The only thing left in its arsenal are threats to use weapons with potentially catastrophic side-effects. Essentially, in both cases it's a plea for economic aid and recognition, and it all demonstrates a tremendous fear that the end is nigh.
SCO would have to prove that they are likely to win on the merits of the case and that the burden of harm is on them if the injunction isn't passed. Neither one of these holds true.
The first one, because even if they do have a case, it's such a technological morass that to prove it for an injunction will be impossible.
The second one for the fact that IBM's sales of AIX do not impact SCO's sales of their own software. It's not like AIX can run on Intel or vice versa, so there's no damage there.
... somebody is willing to pay for it. As it is most people are happy with the speeed they get from current cable modems and DSL. Unless there's an application that the average consumer wants that consumes more bandwidth, there will be no market for these services.
Look folks, as long as nobody cares about software quality, then it's always going to be better to hire a bunch of young hacks than more experienced programmers. Why waste money on people who have learned from experience when nobody buying your product cares. Hire a team of people who will work 60 hours a week for chump change and some options, hire one experienced architect to design, and then let them loose.
Sure, it won't be flawless software, but who will notice?
When I am working at home, Open and StarOffice work just fine for my needs. The problem is when I'm at the office I simply cannot use it. I can get a document from somebody and I'm able to read it is never formatted quite the same. So though I can read the document, there's no way I can then edit and return the document in something resembling its original format.
So, until this problem is resolved I have no choice but to use Office.
This is somewhat of a lottery ticket mentality, that this great insight will come, and then you'll go make a bunch of money on it. Well, you might get lucky, but I'd suggest doing something a little more mundane. Look at the software that's out there, look at the needs of businesses out there and find something that people need that's not being provided. Custom development and systems integration are things that can provide a good solid job even if it's not always the sexiest work in the world.
Also, even if you have this wonderful idea, it doesn't matter if:
1) nobody else in the world wants it
2) you have nobody capable of selling it
Just remember that there are lots of people out there making good livings on pretty mundane ideas. If you can go out and write a software component that is useful to corporate developers, you can make good money on it. You sell the component for like $1000 which is a drop in the bucket to a big company, and give them a rather open license and source code. They help you fix your bugs, they are happy and you are happy. Sell a few hundred or a few thousand copies, and it becomes a rather lucrative business.
This is all a matter of phrasing. Going into detail about their expectations and how you were treated will give them some insight on the matter. If you said, "they wanted me to work 50-60 hour weeks", without further explanation, then yes, I agree with your assessment. You need to hilight the attitude of the company not the actions. Are they telling you to do it, or are they asking you to do it to help them out?
Why not just zip something or tar something and then whip a little PGP on it? Seems like that would be easier and it's a pretty well proven technology.
When I was in second grade back in 81, before computers were really as big a thing as they are now, my mom was concerned about my poor handwriting skills. The 2nd grade teacher told her that I'd just learn to type.
Today, I can print, and I can type, and I can sign my name, but handwriting beyond that can only be done with intense concentration. Overall, I don't need it, so no big loss.
The reason why customer service sucks is because price is a quantitative tangible measurement and customer service is not. Generally speaking, people don't compare customer service when they shop, they compare price. Therefore, in order to be more competitive, companies have tended toward cutting customer service in an effort to reduce costs.
It's been interesting though to see how the overall reduction in customer service standards has given openings to some companies. Here in Chicago, a new cell service came into town trumpeting that they have award winning customer service. Whether there service is actually good or not, I cannot say, but it does suggest that, in a market with consistently bad customer service, it can be used as a competitive differentiator.
Now, as this applies to the local phone market, it looks likely that it will soon become an uncompetitive market. Here in Illinois, they recently passed legislation to allow SBC to change the rates they charge the CLEC's. I expect to be seeing my DSL bills skyrocket as a result.
Microsoft, will watch this unfold. Ultimately it will take a decade for this suit to conclude, and it's unlikely SCO will stick around that long. However, Microsoft can watch the preliminary legal actions and see where it goes. If the possibility of a win seems decent, then Microsoft can go and buy the Unix property off SCO, make SCO stockholders happy, and try to wipe out the Unix variants.
No, that's not possible, SCO is a good and moral proprietary software company. They don't do such things. Only the dirty communist open source people do that.
The fact of the matter is that sorting out who owns any particular piece of Unix code could take decades in court. You find two pieces of code that are exactly the same in SCO Unix and Linux. This could be any of the following:
- An amazing coincidence
- SCO licensed software that was copied into Linux improperly
- SCO licensed software that was copied into Linux properly (i.e. by a SCO employee)
- Software from a 3rd party, properly incorporated by both SCO and Linux
- Software from a 3rd party, improperly incorporated by both SCO and Linux
- Software from a 3rd party, that properly/improperly incorporated it into their product which was then incorporated into SCO/Linux
Have you ever taken a look at the Unix family tree? There's no way they are going to be able to sort out the ownership of any individual piece of code. I mean hell, with Novell speaking up, it might be that SCO doesn't own squat (that they are just licensed the copyright that Novell still actually owns). Novell might not even own it either.
It will make some headlines, the world will move on, and in about a decade when this gets settled it will all be irrelevant.
What you indirectly illustrate here is what SCO is going to have a damned tough time prooving. Ultimately all software can be written in a bazillion different ways, and in order for it to be a violation of copyright, it must be clear that the code was actually copied. If I write a bubble sort algorithm, it might look a lot like yours, but may not actually be a copy. So if somebody did in fact copy it, but changed a few variable names, and some formatting it's not necessarily obvious.
If you are talking about a large block of code, you have enough data to work with that you can see how similar the code is/is not. If you are talking about a small block (10-15) lines, though, it's going to breally tough to proove.
In all likelyhood, all three of those drive companies are buying their platters from the same vendor. They may all take those drives and put them together separately, but it's not unusualy for competing vendors to source parts from the same company.
Somebody hacks into the company and flips the kill switch on all the bios's. Thousdands of laptops, most of them not backed up routinely, are wiped. Ouchy.
If the gun industry was like the computer industry all guns would come filled with concrete. Thus, there'd be no risk of you killing somebody and blaming it on the gun manufacturer.
TS. It wasn't a ratified standard. Too bad. I mean seriously, if you implement non-standard systems, this is the price you pay. If you didn't point out to your customers that what you were selling them wasn't a ratified standard, then it's your butt in the sling when they complain.
The challenge is no longer whether you can store everything, it is whether you'll be able to find it later when you need it.
Did you read that. It's for listening to NPR, the only remaining home of decent radio.
Tis the beauty of the computer/consumer electronics industry. Moore's law and it's various counterparts insure that capacity will go up, prices will go down, etc. It ought to get quite interesting when these things really get to be comoditized. Soon these things will cost $100, have all the capacity you could reasonably want, and sound good as well.
My thinking on the capacity was that for the most part I don't go for long trips requiring a substantial library of music. When I do, I always bring my laptop which has more hard drive space and I can carry anything extra. Basically the price point is the important part here. 100GB would be nice, but I'd be willing to sacrifice down to 5GB to get the price down.
What the ideal MP3 player is:
-The size of today's ipod or smaller
-Storage capacity of 5GB+
-FM Radio (I like to get NPR without carrying around a seperate device)
-Good sound quality
-Formats: MP3, WMA, AAC, and OGG
-Price: $250
I think this is easily achievable with today's technology. My money awaits the first company to make one.
Zen almost gets it but too big. IPod almost gets it but no FM tuner.