What's so different between what an EE does and what a Software Developer does from a business manager's perspective that they wouldn't offshore that as well.
From what I've seen, there might be more interest in offshoring EE's since they command larger salaries than CS or no major Software Developers. If you want something safe, go into Health Care, sales or politics. Everything that doesn't require your physical presence in the US can and will be offshored without some legislative fix.
Asia has a booming number of Engineers who are doing work that US Engineers used to.
it doesn't cover Free Software developers and volunteers. I think the Free Software Foundation has some prior art. Also, doesn't a patent require a prototype? So where's the IBM prototype so all the out of work developers on here can go try to make some money?
18th Street Lounge rocks!!! Spent New Year's there this year. Excellent music. Ninja Tune is another personal fave.
All the better that these labels are not under the RIAA umbrella. I now direct hordes of geeks who want to have something to talk to girls about, go get a couple of Thievery Corporation albums (18th St. Lounge) and some Ninja Tunes samplers.
I'm still failing to see how it's a "disadvantage". If you have a small desktop it still takes up the space of a small desktop... Besides you can always hide the docking station and use a USB hub or something.
I'm not saying there aren't any valid arguments against "desktop replacement" laptops, I'm just saying that pluging in accessories and space aren't valid arguments.
Which small business is not suceptable to larger business coming in and crushing it a la Walmart?
Think about any small business you can and think of which ones survive corporate counterparts who try to steal their customers. The fact of the matter is, that large corporations get economies of scale that tend to allow them to undercut pricing for locally owned places.
A bar or club is probably one of the few things that tends to be insulated. I may eat at a corporate restaurant every now and then but you won't find me in a corporate club any time soon.
Even semi technical things like auto detailing and customization runs the risk of corporate competitors that can beat you. While there may not be corporate competitors in those industries now, it's a matter of time till there is. Look at what happened to video rental places when Blockbuster and Hollywood video came along.
The problem I'm having is finding a sector that has insulation from these pressures. At the rate we're going, there won't be any middle-class professional self employed jobs left.
If I wasn't already in my career and didn't need to make a white collar transition at this point, if I decided to leave the tech industry, I'd consider something like an electrician or plumbing. Unfortunately, it takes several years of training and apprenticeship to become a professional in those trades.
And even if I could solve the issue personally for myself or other people in my situation, I still wonder where this leaves the US as a whole. What will the US produce? What will we export? Not electricians and plumbers.
While I hold the same preferences as you, this is a dumb argument against laptops. You can plug in a keyboard, mouse and monitor to any laptop available.
Most laptops also have docking station accessories that can maintain the key/mouse/monitor/power connections so you don't have a bunch of cables laying around.
Personally, I'd like a desktop replacement laptop that I could plug into my 22" of crisp CRT goodness and ergo keyboard. I'm more concerned about heat, vid memory and battery life for this particular laptop.
This is the exact model that will kill any remotely technical job in the US. You can move this model to accounting, contract review and numerous other routine professional services that business' of all sizes use.
IBM is currently offshoring 100 lawyers to do this and Indian's are being trained in US accounting. In the future large service organizations like H&R Block will have tons of Indians or Chinese trained in the US laws and practices, you will interface with an American account manager who hands you the reports and answers basic questions. Meanwhile, your data will be input by Americans working for around $12 an hour, the data will be shuttled off to the Indian or Chinese service centers and the product will come back to be given to you by the account manager.
The efficiency gains that these large business' are getting from utilizing this model internally will be scaled and productized to appeal to small business, which will be considered a growth market. Local CPAs and a lot of basic work that local lawyers do will be aquired more cheaply by small business using these large service organizations. Some of the large service orgs will partner with local service providers to gain access to thier clients, the same way Intuit markets it's services to CPAs.
The problem for the average middle class US professional is that there are not really any jobs outside of Health Services (nurses, docters) that don't fall into this model. The problem for the country is that we can't just be people who take care of the old and sick and sell stuff. This country has to produce something and there has to be oppurtunity for the middle class and those who are trying to seek entry into the middle class. Democracy and Capitalism don't function without a strong wealth owning middle class.
Does anyone see a solution to this problem? I haven't found one. I've been looking too. Any new industries that we'll be able to move to?
when this thing starts adding to itself ala Voltron from the debris it picks up. Yes, I think I'm imagining a Beowulf cluster of space junk, siphoning fuel and parts from other dead or rogue satellites. Of course the question then is when will this 'Skynet' cluster achieve self-awareness?
You can't freely redistribute YaST. If you charge, even to cover costs, you have to get explicit permission from Suse. This makes it closed source. There are plenty of "source available" closed source apps. Open Source means that you won't restrict the user's rights to modify and redistribute. This is covered in section 1 of the Open Source Definition.
Looking at sites like linuxiso.org or cheapbytes.com, you'll see RedHat 9 iso's but no Suse iso's other than live evals. Cheapbytes sells "Pink Tie" linux through 9.0 but only resells official Suse disks. YaST has never made it into another distro, unlike other Open Source contributions made by RedHat. RedHat's installer, Anaconda, is now available for Debian.
Another example is RedHat's database product vs. Suse's mail server product. All of the components (including in-house developed admin apps) of RH's db product are Open Source. Suse's mail server product is closed source.
Suse has always had a business model that was half OSS and half proprietary. RedHat has always had a business model based around supporting OSS and services. RedHat has made more contributions to the community than any other distro, with the possible exception of Debian. They have also adherred to the principals of the OSS community better than most.
I've never knocked Suse for their choice of business model. They've obviously done a lot to make Linux popular in Europe and put out a solid product. But I trust and support RedHat more because I believe they have done more for the community. RedHat could have used Suse's business model years ago, it would have probably been easier, but they chose to stick to community ideals instead.
Secondly, you can't distribute unmodified Suse desktop disks due to the fact that they include CodeWeaver in there. CodeWeaver is a closed source version of Wine (BSD lic). Since Suse has included software for which they cannot give redistribution rights for, you may be violating the license by even copying your Suse disks for a friend. Check the specific licenses for this.
This is the reason that RedHat has never included a Java JDK in their distro. It would restrict users' ability to redistribute. I've always wanted a Java JDK with my RedHat, but I blamed Sun/IBM before RedHat.
Argh! How many times is this FUD going to be repeated on slashdot? YaST is NOT CLOSED SOURCE! It simply has the same sort of license agreement as RHEL, i.e. you cannot redistribute it -- FOR MONEY -- with the SuSE branding left in place. So you can still copy any number of disks for your buddies, but you can't sell them.
What? The YaST license is listed on GNU.org as a non-Free license. It's not listed on opensource.org as an OSS license. Including it in another distro would restrict how you could distribute your distro. Read the license for YaST.
Therefore, my point still stands. And your wrong about this being the same as the RHEL license. The YaST license covers the code. The RHEL license covers trademarks. You could still re-distribute RHEL, just not as RHEL. You can also take any piece of software you wanted from RHEL and redistribute it on another distro. You can't do that with Suse who has included non-OSS software many times on their distros. As someone else confirmed for me, RedHat has not distributed non-OSS software on their distro since 4.2. Suse is free to take any of RedHat's contributions and include them (and they have) but RedHat has not always been able to do the same.
As a caveat, RHEL is including the IBM JDK now. This is obviously not OSS. The RHEL covers this specific JDK and enforces hardware and number of machines installed on for support purposes. You could distribute the RHEL disc to anyone you wanted (perhaps minus the IBM JDK, I'm not sure on it's license), and even charge for it. You can't call the work RHEL, and you can't promise the person access to official RedHat errata or support. The bottom line, is that the RHEL license only kicks into effect if you are purchasing RedHat support.
My entire point was how RedHat has stuck much more closely to the spirit of the OSS community. More than Suse and others. You haven't proven that point wrong at all.
I'm pretty sure you don't want to be holding these up as models -- last I checked WebTV (now MSN-TV) had declined to somethting on the order of 50,000 users total (down from a high of something like 2.4% of all internet users in the late 90s). The email terminal/network appliance business NEVER really took off (probably killed as much by falling PC prices as by the device's own liimitations), despite the hype.
I'll agree that the market died shortly after birth, but I think this has more to do with Microsoft feeling threatened in their core markets and not really wanting MSN-TV to take off. I would also say it has more to do with the falling PC prices as well. But, look at those numbers, 2.4% of the internet, was not small in the late 90's. Compare it with Apple's numbers and I think you'll see a market that can sustain itself if the marketing dollars are there.
Remember, Microsoft got into the corporate desktop through consumer desktops. It was all those people who knew Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS lobbying to buy Windows NT boxes. If you look at the majority of Microsoft's rise, it had a lot to do with consumer applications and making it easy for anyone to become a developer. They have always put out developer packages that are relatively cheap and allow people to do things quickly. Even if the end result is an inelegant hack, nobody cares as long as it works.
If Sun is successful, this market could generate the acceptence of Linux desktops in the consumer PC world. This is the traction needed to help propel it into the corporate desktop world. Of course, the real test will be availability of applications.
If Sun doesn't provide an easy way for users to find apps for their PC's that users are interested in, the whole thing will likely fail. The fact that they are putting WebStart on their actually looks like a positive move for this though.
Just remember, people don't care how their tools are built, or what their made of, they care about end results. If you create a PC that people want and it's priced right, it will sell, regardless of the existing market forces like Microsoft.
This is probably the most insightful comment I've seen in this thread. It's very true. We're dealing with a consumer market. It's totally different from the markets where some of these technologies and strategies have failed previously.
Look at phones. Everyone I know is getting phones that can browse the web, email pictures taken with the camera and do messaging. These people have no clue as to the tech behind it. They don't care how it works or why it works and they aren't beholden to Microsoft or Apple. They want to DO THINGS. Any computer that satisfies these use-cases will be compared on price. It's simply a matter of features and price that will get these users to switch. Once a market is created, then we can start pushing into the corporate world with Linux desktops.
I really can't believe the negativity on this thread. Yes, Sun is trying to brand Java and use this brand to push a cheap Linux desktop. Who cares? If Sun puts Linux with Java pre-installed in the hands of consumers and can provide a user experience somewhat on par with Windows XP Home while beating it on price, it will win.
Look at the success of WebTV and those little $99 email terminals. There is a market and Sun is trying to do an end-run around Microsoft. This is a good thing. I would recommend all Open Source app developers that write consumer oriented apps to provide an easy install tailored towards this system. Get these users used to Open Source software and help make this platform viable. It will only help in the long run.
that we must declare war and destroy the Sun immediately.
We must act now before the Moonites coerce the Sun into smashing Earth in order to gain their freedom. We cannot compete with the Moonites' large stockpiles of pr0n and Foreigner paraphernalia, and they are not below using these terrorist asteroids to destroy our way of life.
IBM doesn't need Sun. They could muscle the Java base away if they really wanted to. They probably have some clauses about independence regarding Java in the case that Sun does go away or get bought by someone else.
Sun doesn't have anything that IBM wants to put it frankly. Sun has been quickly making themselves obsolete by not focusing on polished, integrated software products for developers and network infrastructure.
Give it another year and a half and look what IBM will have with Eclipse and the Rational Suite vs. what Sun will have done with all the Netscape server software plus OpenOffice and Netbeans. Sun doesn't do software integration very well at all. I think they're afraid of pissing off all the VAR channels who like to bill that work out now that the margins are gone from hardware.
It doesn't matter that they were Christians. I'm a Christian, but I like my God seperate from my Government, because I honestly don't think Jesus gives a crap about what kind of economic or political system I live under.
The translation of the Treaty of Tripoli ratified unanimously by the Senate and signed by John Adams states explicitly:
Article 11. As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries
Now explain to me how a Senate with many of the Founding Fathers, and one of them as President, passed this text unanimously if the United States had any theocratic bent at all. The United States was a Christian Nation only in the sense that most citizens (discounting all the Native Americans of course) believed in some form of Judeo-Christian tradition personally. However, this country was not founded to promote that, it was founded not to care at all.
Trying to claim that it is otherwise is like those nutcases trying to claim the moon landing was faked. Their opinions don't derserve any attention because they are wholly without merit.
This isn't a debate about the religious preferences of individuals or even populations. It's about the validation of one religious persuasion over another. The difference between the Texas GOP and Democrats is that there aren't such egragarious attempts to change the very fabric of the nations laws from the founding principles soley on that side of the isle (Copyright expansion, IP laws are bi-partisian). Note that I'm also not completely defending the Dems. They've pissed me off on quite a few things, mainly when they stray from progressive ideals and pander to the religious right or corporate interests.
BTW, I watch Fox a lot, as well as CNN and MSNBC. I also listen to NPR daily and read a lot of stuff online. Being a political and historical junkie is a bit of a hobby for me. It's what I do instead of playing games (for the most part).
If you count yourself as a conservative or a GOP member, you might want to take a look at the whackos representing you in public discourse. My dad has voted GOP since Reagan and is quite a libertarian, but he also can't stand Fox or Rush or most of the other "conservative" personalities. He thinks that they are entertainment and doesn't realize that the average GOP member believes the tripe those people spew as truth. Personally, I'm a progressive moderate, I don't want a Leftist Socialist dictatorship any more than I want a Rightwing Theocratic Fascist state, but the wackos on the left aren't running the Democratic Party, the whackos on the right are running the GOP.
Sun bought OpenOffice and OpenSourced it, I'm pretty sure they did the same with NetBeans. IntelliJ is simply a "better" product than NetBeans or Eclipse. I'm willing to shell out of my pocket for IntelliJ because it makes me so much more productive than NetBeans or Eclipse. That's what Sun needs. MS has been making the case, successfully, that their tools make developers more productive. Sun and IBM can't make that case. Borland could maybe make that case, but I've honestly never liked JBuilder for anything other than GUI stuff.
I switched from vi to IntelliJ, and I've been using vi for 20 years, it just helps me be that much more productive.
Seriously, JetBrains can't be much. It's a company with one product that is based in the Czech Republic with offices in Russia and Boston.
IntelliJ is light years better than Eclipse or Netbeans. Why is Sun still putzing around? Buy JetBrains and call IntelliJ NetBeans.
Not to mention that Eclipse has got a hell of a better chance of competing with IntelliJ than NetBeans. They really need to move NetBeans into something more complete. MS is running so many circles around Sun in dev tools it's not funny. The goal of 10 mil Java developers ain't happenin until Sun pulls it's head out of it's ass and makes sure that the Java platform has top notch tools that can compete for novice developers with MS.
Yeah, I guess that'd be true if you listen to the biased media. But if you read a wide spectrum of reports on what he does...more often than not he's reported as being honest and moral. And ABC, CBS, NBC, etc doesn't count...that's redundant...they all have the same bias. Once you've watched on, you know what the others will say too.
Ever consider that maybe your opinion is just plain wrong?
If one person calls you a horse, ignore it. If two people call you a horse, look in a mirror. If three people call you a horse, buy a saddle.
This so-called left wing media bias has never been proven. All research into it shows that mainstream journalism is actually pretty moderate, with the exception of Fox. How about a nice report by the University of Maryland showing that Fox viewers are the most likely to believe untruths about Saddams links with al-Qaeda, WMDs were found, and that the world supported the war in Iraq? PBS and NPR viewers are the least likely to believe any of these untruths.
The Texas Republican Party's Platform includes such things as (these are directly from their site): Page 6 of the Platform: Christian Nation - The Republican Party of Texas reaffirms the United States of America is a Christian nation, which was founded on fundamental Judeo-Christian principles based on the Holy Bible. We also affirm the right of each individual to worship in the religion of his or her choice. Religion - The Party acknowledges that the church is a God-ordained institution with a sphere of authority separate from that of civil government; thus, churches, synagogues and other places of worship, including home Bible study groups, should not be regulated, controlled, or taxed by any level of civil government, including the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. We reclaim freedom of religious expression in public on government property, and freedom from governmental interference. Page 7 of the Platform: Faith Based Opportunities - The Party encourages the Texas Legislature to identify and develop ways to increase the ability of faith-based institutions and community and business organizations to assist individuals and families in need. Page 8 of the Platform: Homosexuality - The Party believes that the practice of sodomy tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country's founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable "alternative" lifestyle in our public education and policy, nor should "family" be redefined to include homosexual "couples." We are opposed to any granting of special legal entitlements, recognition, or privileges including, but not limited to, marriage between persons of the same sex, custody of children by homosexuals, homosexual partner insurance or retirement benefits. We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values. Texas Sodomy Statutes - The Party opposes the decriminalization of sodomy. Page 9 of the Platform: This should wake the Slashdot crowd up Pornography - The Party believes, as do the vast majority of Texans, that pornography is repulsive, addictive and contributes to deviant criminal behavior. It exploits men, women, and children and degrades society as a whole. We call upon our governmental bodies to enforce existing laws regarding all forms of pornography in our music, film, telephone, computer, video, cable, Internet, and print industries. We must have more stringent legislation to prohibit access to and generation of pornography including virtual pornography and operation of sexuall
I thought about Gentoo and Slack, which is why I qualified my statement by balancing contributions with "offenses". Slack has contributed as much $$ or code as RedHat has, as far as I know. RedHat has kept many really good people hired and working on stuff that goes back into the community.
Gentoo was in the same boat as Slack as far as I'm concerned. Their emerge stuff seems to be a very popular contribution, but I don't think the amount of contributions that Gentoo has made is as large as RedHat.
As far as I remember, RedHat has never shipped non-OpenSource software on there core disks. They have included supplemental stuff, which has been clearly marked as such and is never needed to install or use RedHat. RedHat has actually been one of the best contributors for admin tools to the Open Source community. Take a look at their PostgreSQL tools, all Open Source, which ship with their Postgres based DB Server. Unlike Suse, they never used any gimmicks like shipping a closed source admin tool to keep the iso's from being copied. Debian is the only other major distro that has upheld the Open Source community spirit as well as RedHat in my opinion, and Debian is non-profit.
I'm making that statement on the amount of work contributed to the community balanced against "offenses" to the Open Source ethos. RedHat's track record does not deserve such harsh cynicism, I think they've earned the benefit of the doubt.
If RedHat is changing this in their new Enterprise class distro's I'd like to know, but quite frankly I've yet to see RedHat do anything that wasn't friendly to the Open Source community. BTW, you know if any other distro had contributed as much as RedHat has they'd crow a lot more about it.
For the record, I've been using various distros since '95 and though my memory isn't always the best, but you're going to have to dig up some cold hard facts to change my opinion of RedHat.
Surely then his amazing legal understanding must be extended to his own company, in which case SCO could be a veritable GOLDMINE for the BSD Developers.
The BSD license allows this. This is also the reason many OSS developers prefer the LGPL or GPL to BSD and Artistic licenses. The BSD is a free-market radical/libertarian's wet dream, but the GPL and LGPL constitute a steal all you want but give back approach.
The various BSD teams are fully aware of what people can do with their code and only care if someone else claims copyright over code they wrote. If SCO used BSD code, the OSS community gets nothing, if they had used GPL'd code, the copyright owner (possibly the FSF) could demand everything opened or the code removed plus damages. Under the LGPL, there are more possiblities, depending on how the code was used.
Spend more time analyzing OSS licenses than the SCO case and you'll have a better idea of when to get excited and when to not care.
Seriously, slap a CORBA orb on that puppy, embed it in Apache and shuffle the stuff you need exposed via SOAP back and forth over CORBA. Let the C/C++ engine do the nasty work of serializing/deserializing XML and let the Java backend concentrate on business logic.
After you write this piece, we shouldn't ever have to write another bit of SOAP on the server end of things. SOAP requires all the understanding of distributed components while adding all the overhead of XML. Pure genius. Can someone please fill me in on why we don't use CORBA instead?
SOAP isn't any easier, it's more bandwidth and computationally expensive. CORBA has much more mature services and is proven in mission critical apps. There are a ton of Open Source and commercial ORBs for every language and platform. Why are we using SOAP? Send IIOP over TLS over port 80 if you really, really need a hole in your firewall.
Sweet, I've been playing Nethack longer than geek-celeb Wil Wheaton!
I was playing when 300 baud was the only thing available, circa '83. It was called hack then and this was on a Tandy Model 16 running MS-XENIX. My dad helped me make a super character class so I could find the Amulet of Yendor (my intro to C programming), but no one had coded the Amulet level yet. There were also no spells for magic using classes and I don't think explore mode worked.
Nethack is the same addictive game it was when I was in 2nd grade, but now it's even better. Neverwinter Nights was the first D&D clone that approached the greatness of Nethack as far as gameplay and features went. It is also a great example of how graphics don't make the game, gameplay does.
Thats not what I've heard, I've heard plenty of stories about execs at the other news outlets falling in lock step on the Iraq war coverage when it was unpatriotic to question the war.
Yep, your right. It has been said over and over again by liberal and moderate sources that Bush got quite a free ride between 9/11 and the May 1, 2003 when major combat was declared over. This is an issue that the left was complaining about during this time period and was pushed along by GOP operatives such as Roger Ailes by calling dissenters unpatriotic and such. Remember what happened to the Dixie Chicks? This uncivil and dangerous name-calling that the GOP and many FNC commentators engaged in was disguisting and counter to any idea of fair and balanced or objectivity.
I never claimed Fox WASN'T flawed. I claimed there are no sources that aren't.
Your still missing the point here. Fox pushes this down, and other than the instance I addressed above, you don't see this as a defacto procedure in other organizations. There's a huge difference there. Maybe there's a basic misconception here, moderates and liberals think that this type of behavior in a news organization is akin to fraud. We won't tolerate it by default. Bias on the part of an individual reporter is bound to happen, but it shouldn't be contrary to the facts and should be noted as being opinion or analysis. Opinion and analysis must be honest and logical. Someone with Jewish heritage might view the Palastinian/Israeli issues differently than someone with a Palastinian heritage, even if they are trying to be objective, due to where they get their information and inherent cultural bias. That's when it's important to get multiple sources.
What Fox does is get a Bush official and Joe the stoner from the local Green Party and call it a fair and balanced debate. That's an exageration, but you'll see what I mean comparing Crossfire to Hannity and Colmes. Colmes isn't worthy of debating where to go to lunch with Hannity, James Carvelle on the other hand is pretty balanced against Novak.
The idea here is not to throw two people with ideological blinders from two sides into a ring. It's to have two intellectual equals with differing personal biases to honestly debate an issue. They may not agree in the end, but at least I'll be able to make a decision. This behavior by Fox puts ideological blinders on it's entire staff. They are forced to push sides on issues by management. Read the Salon interview linked numerous places in this story, it talks about how middle management at FNC goes overboard to please the ideological goals of top management, Roger Ailes and Co.
I would also like to try to emphasize the importance of at least understanding all sides of an issue, you don't have to agree.
That's what any sane person does, and what anyone who understands the liberal enlightenment foundation this country was founded on does. Understanding all sides of an issue, does not mean that you wind up with the no opinion. It just means that you are willing to change it in light of contrary evidence. Other than the loonies who populate the fringes, this is how most people operate. The problem is that a lot of us who follow politics and media and such think that Bush and the neocons are right-wing fringe lunatics and the GOP has been taken over by them. The term "faith-based" should never, ever show up in government policy. The government does not get to operate on faith, that domain is left to religions. The government must be transparent and it's actions must leave a logic audit trail.
Ideally all sources would provide a balance of viewpoints
Here's where I think Fox and it's supporters do not understand the concepts of fair and balanced or objectivity. Under this idea, and Fox's implementation, Astronomy Journals would publish articles by UFO nuts and have exposes from The Flat Earth Society on how NASA faked the moon landings. We'd have to have the KKK on everytime we wanted to discuss race, e
one of which will be a ghetto for consumers (Win98 and XP home users), while the other will a gated community for corporate users (XP Professional, MS only shops);-)
Slashdot Mirror
What's so different between what an EE does and what a Software Developer does from a business manager's perspective that they wouldn't offshore that as well.
From what I've seen, there might be more interest in offshoring EE's since they command larger salaries than CS or no major Software Developers. If you want something safe, go into Health Care, sales or politics. Everything that doesn't require your physical presence in the US can and will be offshored without some legislative fix.
Asia has a booming number of Engineers who are doing work that US Engineers used to.
it doesn't cover Free Software developers and volunteers. I think the Free Software Foundation has some prior art. Also, doesn't a patent require a prototype? So where's the IBM prototype so all the out of work developers on here can go try to make some money?
18th Street Lounge rocks!!!
;-)
Spent New Year's there this year. Excellent music.
Ninja Tune is another personal fave.
All the better that these labels are not under the RIAA umbrella. I now direct hordes of geeks who want to have something to talk to girls about, go get a couple of Thievery Corporation albums (18th St. Lounge) and some Ninja Tunes samplers.
You can always talk about music
I'm still failing to see how it's a "disadvantage".
If you have a small desktop it still takes up the space of a small desktop...
Besides you can always hide the docking station and use a USB hub or something.
I'm not saying there aren't any valid arguments against "desktop replacement" laptops, I'm just saying that pluging in accessories and space aren't valid arguments.
Which small business is not suceptable to larger business coming in and crushing it a la Walmart?
Think about any small business you can and think of which ones survive corporate counterparts who try to steal their customers. The fact of the matter is, that large corporations get economies of scale that tend to allow them to undercut pricing for locally owned places.
A bar or club is probably one of the few things that tends to be insulated. I may eat at a corporate restaurant every now and then but you won't find me in a corporate club any time soon.
Even semi technical things like auto detailing and customization runs the risk of corporate competitors that can beat you. While there may not be corporate competitors in those industries now, it's a matter of time till there is. Look at what happened to video rental places when Blockbuster and Hollywood video came along.
The problem I'm having is finding a sector that has insulation from these pressures. At the rate we're going, there won't be any middle-class professional self employed jobs left.
If I wasn't already in my career and didn't need to make a white collar transition at this point, if I decided to leave the tech industry, I'd consider something like an electrician or plumbing. Unfortunately, it takes several years of training and apprenticeship to become a professional in those trades.
And even if I could solve the issue personally for myself or other people in my situation, I still wonder where this leaves the US as a whole. What will the US produce? What will we export? Not electricians and plumbers.
While I hold the same preferences as you, this is a dumb argument against laptops.
You can plug in a keyboard, mouse and monitor to any laptop available.
Most laptops also have docking station accessories that can maintain the key/mouse/monitor/power connections so you don't have a bunch of cables laying around.
Personally, I'd like a desktop replacement laptop that I could plug into my 22" of crisp CRT goodness and ergo keyboard. I'm more concerned about heat, vid memory and battery life for this particular laptop.
This is the exact model that will kill any remotely technical job in the US. You can move this model to accounting, contract review and numerous other routine professional services that business' of all sizes use.
IBM is currently offshoring 100 lawyers to do this and Indian's are being trained in US accounting. In the future large service organizations like H&R Block will have tons of Indians or Chinese trained in the US laws and practices, you will interface with an American account manager who hands you the reports and answers basic questions. Meanwhile, your data will be input by Americans working for around $12 an hour, the data will be shuttled off to the Indian or Chinese service centers and the product will come back to be given to you by the account manager.
The efficiency gains that these large business' are getting from utilizing this model internally will be scaled and productized to appeal to small business, which will be considered a growth market. Local CPAs and a lot of basic work that local lawyers do will be aquired more cheaply by small business using these large service organizations. Some of the large service orgs will partner with local service providers to gain access to thier clients, the same way Intuit markets it's services to CPAs.
The problem for the average middle class US professional is that there are not really any jobs outside of Health Services (nurses, docters) that don't fall into this model. The problem for the country is that we can't just be people who take care of the old and sick and sell stuff. This country has to produce something and there has to be oppurtunity for the middle class and those who are trying to seek entry into the middle class. Democracy and Capitalism don't function without a strong wealth owning middle class.
Does anyone see a solution to this problem? I haven't found one. I've been looking too. Any new industries that we'll be able to move to?
when this thing starts adding to itself ala Voltron from the debris it picks up. Yes, I think I'm imagining a Beowulf cluster of space junk, siphoning fuel and parts from other dead or rogue satellites. Of course the question then is when will this 'Skynet' cluster achieve self-awareness?
You can't freely redistribute YaST. If you charge, even to cover costs, you have to get explicit permission from Suse. This makes it closed source. There are plenty of "source available" closed source apps. Open Source means that you won't restrict the user's rights to modify and redistribute. This is covered in section 1 of the Open Source Definition.
Looking at sites like linuxiso.org or cheapbytes.com, you'll see RedHat 9 iso's but no Suse iso's other than live evals. Cheapbytes sells "Pink Tie" linux through 9.0 but only resells official Suse disks. YaST has never made it into another distro, unlike other Open Source contributions made by RedHat. RedHat's installer, Anaconda, is now available for Debian.
Another example is RedHat's database product vs. Suse's mail server product. All of the components (including in-house developed admin apps) of RH's db product are Open Source. Suse's mail server product is closed source.
Suse has always had a business model that was half OSS and half proprietary. RedHat has always had a business model based around supporting OSS and services. RedHat has made more contributions to the community than any other distro, with the possible exception of Debian. They have also adherred to the principals of the OSS community better than most.
I've never knocked Suse for their choice of business model. They've obviously done a lot to make Linux popular in Europe and put out a solid product. But I trust and support RedHat more because I believe they have done more for the community. RedHat could have used Suse's business model years ago, it would have probably been easier, but they chose to stick to community ideals instead.
Secondly, you can't distribute unmodified Suse desktop disks due to the fact that they include CodeWeaver in there. CodeWeaver is a closed source version of Wine (BSD lic). Since Suse has included software for which they cannot give redistribution rights for, you may be violating the license by even copying your Suse disks for a friend. Check the specific licenses for this.
This is the reason that RedHat has never included a Java JDK in their distro. It would restrict users' ability to redistribute. I've always wanted a Java JDK with my RedHat, but I blamed Sun/IBM before RedHat.
Argh! How many times is this FUD going to be repeated on slashdot? YaST is NOT CLOSED SOURCE! It simply has the same sort of license agreement as RHEL, i.e. you cannot redistribute it -- FOR MONEY -- with the SuSE branding left in place. So you can still copy any number of disks for your buddies, but you can't sell them.
What? The YaST license is listed on GNU.org as a non-Free license. It's not listed on opensource.org as an OSS license. Including it in another distro would restrict how you could distribute your distro. Read the license for YaST.
Therefore, my point still stands. And your wrong about this being the same as the RHEL license. The YaST license covers the code. The RHEL license covers trademarks. You could still re-distribute RHEL, just not as RHEL. You can also take any piece of software you wanted from RHEL and redistribute it on another distro. You can't do that with Suse who has included non-OSS software many times on their distros. As someone else confirmed for me, RedHat has not distributed non-OSS software on their distro since 4.2. Suse is free to take any of RedHat's contributions and include them (and they have) but RedHat has not always been able to do the same.
As a caveat, RHEL is including the IBM JDK now. This is obviously not OSS. The RHEL covers this specific JDK and enforces hardware and number of machines installed on for support purposes. You could distribute the RHEL disc to anyone you wanted (perhaps minus the IBM JDK, I'm not sure on it's license), and even charge for it. You can't call the work RHEL, and you can't promise the person access to official RedHat errata or support. The bottom line, is that the RHEL license only kicks into effect if you are purchasing RedHat support.
My entire point was how RedHat has stuck much more closely to the spirit of the OSS community. More than Suse and others. You haven't proven that point wrong at all.
I'm pretty sure you don't want to be holding these up as models -- last I checked WebTV (now MSN-TV) had declined to somethting on the order of 50,000 users total (down from a high of something like 2.4% of all internet users in the late 90s). The email terminal/network appliance business NEVER really took off (probably killed as much by falling PC prices as by the device's own liimitations), despite the hype.
I'll agree that the market died shortly after birth, but I think this has more to do with Microsoft feeling threatened in their core markets and not really wanting MSN-TV to take off. I would also say it has more to do with the falling PC prices as well. But, look at those numbers, 2.4% of the internet, was not small in the late 90's. Compare it with Apple's numbers and I think you'll see a market that can sustain itself if the marketing dollars are there.
Remember, Microsoft got into the corporate desktop through consumer desktops. It was all those people who knew Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS lobbying to buy Windows NT boxes. If you look at the majority of Microsoft's rise, it had a lot to do with consumer applications and making it easy for anyone to become a developer. They have always put out developer packages that are relatively cheap and allow people to do things quickly. Even if the end result is an inelegant hack, nobody cares as long as it works.
If Sun is successful, this market could generate the acceptence of Linux desktops in the consumer PC world. This is the traction needed to help propel it into the corporate desktop world. Of course, the real test will be availability of applications.
If Sun doesn't provide an easy way for users to find apps for their PC's that users are interested in, the whole thing will likely fail. The fact that they are putting WebStart on their actually looks like a positive move for this though.
Just remember, people don't care how their tools are built, or what their made of, they care about end results. If you create a PC that people want and it's priced right, it will sell, regardless of the existing market forces like Microsoft.
This is probably the most insightful comment I've seen in this thread. It's very true. We're dealing with a consumer market. It's totally different from the markets where some of these technologies and strategies have failed previously.
Look at phones. Everyone I know is getting phones that can browse the web, email pictures taken with the camera and do messaging. These people have no clue as to the tech behind it. They don't care how it works or why it works and they aren't beholden to Microsoft or Apple. They want to DO THINGS. Any computer that satisfies these use-cases will be compared on price. It's simply a matter of features and price that will get these users to switch. Once a market is created, then we can start pushing into the corporate world with Linux desktops.
I really can't believe the negativity on this thread. Yes, Sun is trying to brand Java and use this brand to push a cheap Linux desktop. Who cares? If Sun puts Linux with Java pre-installed in the hands of consumers and can provide a user experience somewhat on par with Windows XP Home while beating it on price, it will win.
Look at the success of WebTV and those little $99 email terminals. There is a market and Sun is trying to do an end-run around Microsoft. This is a good thing. I would recommend all Open Source app developers that write consumer oriented apps to provide an easy install tailored towards this system. Get these users used to Open Source software and help make this platform viable. It will only help in the long run.
that we must declare war and destroy the Sun immediately.
We must act now before the Moonites coerce the Sun into smashing Earth in order to gain their freedom. We cannot compete with the Moonites' large stockpiles of pr0n and Foreigner paraphernalia, and they are not below using these terrorist asteroids to destroy our way of life.
Down with the Sun. Long live Terra.
IBM doesn't need Sun. They could muscle the Java base away if they really wanted to. They probably have some clauses about independence regarding Java in the case that Sun does go away or get bought by someone else.
Sun doesn't have anything that IBM wants to put it frankly. Sun has been quickly making themselves obsolete by not focusing on polished, integrated software products for developers and network infrastructure.
Give it another year and a half and look what IBM will have with Eclipse and the Rational Suite vs. what Sun will have done with all the Netscape server software plus OpenOffice and Netbeans. Sun doesn't do software integration very well at all. I think they're afraid of pissing off all the VAR channels who like to bill that work out now that the margins are gone from hardware.
It doesn't matter that they were Christians. I'm a Christian, but I like my God seperate from my Government, because I honestly don't think Jesus gives a crap about what kind of economic or political system I live under.
The translation of the Treaty of Tripoli ratified unanimously by the Senate and signed by John Adams states explicitly:
Article 11. As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries
Now explain to me how a Senate with many of the Founding Fathers, and one of them as President, passed this text unanimously if the United States had any theocratic bent at all. The United States was a Christian Nation only in the sense that most citizens (discounting all the Native Americans of course) believed in some form of Judeo-Christian tradition personally. However, this country was not founded to promote that, it was founded not to care at all.
Trying to claim that it is otherwise is like those nutcases trying to claim the moon landing was faked. Their opinions don't derserve any attention because they are wholly without merit.
This isn't a debate about the religious preferences of individuals or even populations. It's about the validation of one religious persuasion over another. The difference between the Texas GOP and Democrats is that there aren't such egragarious attempts to change the very fabric of the nations laws from the founding principles soley on that side of the isle (Copyright expansion, IP laws are bi-partisian). Note that I'm also not completely defending the Dems. They've pissed me off on quite a few things, mainly when they stray from progressive ideals and pander to the religious right or corporate interests.
BTW, I watch Fox a lot, as well as CNN and MSNBC. I also listen to NPR daily and read a lot of stuff online. Being a political and historical junkie is a bit of a hobby for me. It's what I do instead of playing games (for the most part).
If you count yourself as a conservative or a GOP member, you might want to take a look at the whackos representing you in public discourse. My dad has voted GOP since Reagan and is quite a libertarian, but he also can't stand Fox or Rush or most of the other "conservative" personalities. He thinks that they are entertainment and doesn't realize that the average GOP member believes the tripe those people spew as truth. Personally, I'm a progressive moderate, I don't want a Leftist Socialist dictatorship any more than I want a Rightwing Theocratic Fascist state, but the wackos on the left aren't running the Democratic Party, the whackos on the right are running the GOP.
That argument makes no sense.
Sun bought OpenOffice and OpenSourced it, I'm pretty sure they did the same with NetBeans. IntelliJ is simply a "better" product than NetBeans or Eclipse. I'm willing to shell out of my pocket for IntelliJ because it makes me so much more productive than NetBeans or Eclipse. That's what Sun needs. MS has been making the case, successfully, that their tools make developers more productive. Sun and IBM can't make that case. Borland could maybe make that case, but I've honestly never liked JBuilder for anything other than GUI stuff.
I switched from vi to IntelliJ, and I've been using vi for 20 years, it just helps me be that much more productive.
Seriously, JetBrains can't be much. It's a company with one product that is based in the Czech Republic with offices in Russia and Boston.
IntelliJ is light years better than Eclipse or Netbeans. Why is Sun still putzing around? Buy JetBrains and call IntelliJ NetBeans.
Not to mention that Eclipse has got a hell of a better chance of competing with IntelliJ than NetBeans. They really need to move NetBeans into something more complete. MS is running so many circles around Sun in dev tools it's not funny. The goal of 10 mil Java developers ain't happenin until Sun pulls it's head out of it's ass and makes sure that the Java platform has top notch tools that can compete for novice developers with MS.
Yeah, I guess that'd be true if you listen to the biased media. But if you read a wide spectrum of reports on what he does...more often than not he's reported as being honest and moral. And ABC, CBS, NBC, etc doesn't count...that's redundant...they all have the same bias. Once you've watched on, you know what the others will say too.
Ever consider that maybe your opinion is just plain wrong?
If one person calls you a horse, ignore it.
If two people call you a horse, look in a mirror.
If three people call you a horse, buy a saddle.
This so-called left wing media bias has never been proven. All research into it shows that mainstream journalism is actually pretty moderate, with the exception of Fox. How about a nice report by the University of Maryland showing that Fox viewers are the most likely to believe untruths about Saddams links with al-Qaeda, WMDs were found, and that the world supported the war in Iraq? PBS and NPR viewers are the least likely to believe any of these untruths.
The Texas Republican Party's Platform includes such things as (these are directly from their site):
Page 6 of the Platform:
Christian Nation - The Republican Party of Texas reaffirms the United States of America is a Christian nation,
which was founded on fundamental Judeo-Christian principles based on the Holy Bible. We also affirm the right
of each individual to worship in the religion of his or her choice.
Religion - The Party acknowledges that the church is a God-ordained institution with a sphere of authority
separate from that of civil government; thus, churches, synagogues and other places of worship, including home
Bible study groups, should not be regulated, controlled, or taxed by any level of civil government, including the
Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. We reclaim freedom of religious expression in
public on government property, and freedom from governmental interference.
Page 7 of the Platform:
Faith Based Opportunities - The Party encourages the Texas Legislature to identify and develop ways to
increase the ability of faith-based institutions and community and business organizations to assist individuals
and families in need.
Page 8 of the Platform:
Homosexuality - The Party believes that the practice of sodomy tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the
breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases. Homosexual
behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our
country's founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an
acceptable "alternative" lifestyle in our public education and policy, nor should "family" be redefined to include
homosexual "couples." We are opposed to any granting of special legal entitlements, recognition, or privileges
including, but not limited to, marriage between persons of the same sex, custody of children by homosexuals,
homosexual partner insurance or retirement benefits. We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those
who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.
Texas Sodomy Statutes - The Party opposes the decriminalization of sodomy.
Page 9 of the Platform:
This should wake the Slashdot crowd up
Pornography - The Party believes, as do the vast majority of Texans, that pornography is repulsive, addictive
and contributes to deviant criminal behavior. It exploits men, women, and children and degrades society as a
whole. We call upon our governmental bodies to enforce existing laws regarding all forms of pornography in our
music, film, telephone, computer, video, cable, Internet, and print industries. We must have more stringent
legislation to prohibit access to and generation of pornography including virtual pornography and operation of
sexuall
I thought about Gentoo and Slack, which is why I qualified my statement by balancing contributions with "offenses". Slack has contributed as much $$ or code as RedHat has, as far as I know. RedHat has kept many really good people hired and working on stuff that goes back into the community.
Gentoo was in the same boat as Slack as far as I'm concerned. Their emerge stuff seems to be a very popular contribution, but I don't think the amount of contributions that Gentoo has made is as large as RedHat.
Do you have some proof of this?
As far as I remember, RedHat has never shipped non-OpenSource software on there core disks. They have included supplemental stuff, which has been clearly marked as such and is never needed to install or use RedHat. RedHat has actually been one of the best contributors for admin tools to the Open Source community. Take a look at their PostgreSQL tools, all Open Source, which ship with their Postgres based DB Server. Unlike Suse, they never used any gimmicks like shipping a closed source admin tool to keep the iso's from being copied. Debian is the only other major distro that has upheld the Open Source community spirit as well as RedHat in my opinion, and Debian is non-profit.
I'm making that statement on the amount of work contributed to the community balanced against "offenses" to the Open Source ethos. RedHat's track record does not deserve such harsh cynicism, I think they've earned the benefit of the doubt.
If RedHat is changing this in their new Enterprise class distro's I'd like to know, but quite frankly I've yet to see RedHat do anything that wasn't friendly to the Open Source community. BTW, you know if any other distro had contributed as much as RedHat has they'd crow a lot more about it.
For the record, I've been using various distros since '95 and though my memory isn't always the best, but you're going to have to dig up some cold hard facts to change my opinion of RedHat.
Surely then his amazing legal understanding must be extended to his own company, in which case SCO could be a veritable GOLDMINE for the BSD Developers.
The BSD license allows this. This is also the reason many OSS developers prefer the LGPL or GPL to BSD and Artistic licenses. The BSD is a free-market radical/libertarian's wet dream, but the GPL and LGPL constitute a steal all you want but give back approach.
The various BSD teams are fully aware of what people can do with their code and only care if someone else claims copyright over code they wrote. If SCO used BSD code, the OSS community gets nothing, if they had used GPL'd code, the copyright owner (possibly the FSF) could demand everything opened or the code removed plus damages. Under the LGPL, there are more possiblities, depending on how the code was used.
Spend more time analyzing OSS licenses than the SCO case and you'll have a better idea of when to get excited and when to not care.
Seriously, slap a CORBA orb on that puppy, embed it in Apache and shuffle the stuff you need exposed via SOAP back and forth over CORBA. Let the C/C++ engine do the nasty work of serializing/deserializing XML and let the Java backend concentrate on business logic.
After you write this piece, we shouldn't ever have to write another bit of SOAP on the server end of things. SOAP requires all the understanding of distributed components while adding all the overhead of XML. Pure genius. Can someone please fill me in on why we don't use CORBA instead?
SOAP isn't any easier, it's more bandwidth and computationally expensive. CORBA has much more mature services and is proven in mission critical apps. There are a ton of Open Source and commercial ORBs for every language and platform. Why are we using SOAP? Send IIOP over TLS over port 80 if you really, really need a hole in your firewall.
Sweet, I've been playing Nethack longer than geek-celeb Wil Wheaton!
I was playing when 300 baud was the only thing available, circa '83. It was called hack then and this was on a Tandy Model 16 running MS-XENIX. My dad helped me make a super character class so I could find the Amulet of Yendor (my intro to C programming), but no one had coded the Amulet level yet. There were also no spells for magic using classes and I don't think explore mode worked.
Nethack is the same addictive game it was when I was in 2nd grade, but now it's even better. Neverwinter Nights was the first D&D clone that approached the greatness of Nethack as far as gameplay and features went. It is also a great example of how graphics don't make the game, gameplay does.
Thats not what I've heard, I've heard plenty of stories about execs at the other news outlets falling in lock step on the Iraq war coverage when it was unpatriotic to question the war.
Yep, your right. It has been said over and over again by liberal and moderate sources that Bush got quite a free ride between 9/11 and the May 1, 2003 when major combat was declared over. This is an issue that the left was complaining about during this time period and was pushed along by GOP operatives such as Roger Ailes by calling dissenters unpatriotic and such. Remember what happened to the Dixie Chicks? This uncivil and dangerous name-calling that the GOP and many FNC commentators engaged in was disguisting and counter to any idea of fair and balanced or objectivity.
I never claimed Fox WASN'T flawed. I claimed there are no sources that aren't.
Your still missing the point here. Fox pushes this down, and other than the instance I addressed above, you don't see this as a defacto procedure in other organizations. There's a huge difference there. Maybe there's a basic misconception here, moderates and liberals think that this type of behavior in a news organization is akin to fraud. We won't tolerate it by default. Bias on the part of an individual reporter is bound to happen, but it shouldn't be contrary to the facts and should be noted as being opinion or analysis. Opinion and analysis must be honest and logical. Someone with Jewish heritage might view the Palastinian/Israeli issues differently than someone with a Palastinian heritage, even if they are trying to be objective, due to where they get their information and inherent cultural bias. That's when it's important to get multiple sources.
What Fox does is get a Bush official and Joe the stoner from the local Green Party and call it a fair and balanced debate. That's an exageration, but you'll see what I mean comparing Crossfire to Hannity and Colmes. Colmes isn't worthy of debating where to go to lunch with Hannity, James Carvelle on the other hand is pretty balanced against Novak.
The idea here is not to throw two people with ideological blinders from two sides into a ring. It's to have two intellectual equals with differing personal biases to honestly debate an issue. They may not agree in the end, but at least I'll be able to make a decision. This behavior by Fox puts ideological blinders on it's entire staff. They are forced to push sides on issues by management. Read the Salon interview linked numerous places in this story, it talks about how middle management at FNC goes overboard to please the ideological goals of top management, Roger Ailes and Co.
I would also like to try to emphasize the importance of at least understanding all sides of an issue, you don't have to agree.
That's what any sane person does, and what anyone who understands the liberal enlightenment foundation this country was founded on does. Understanding all sides of an issue, does not mean that you wind up with the no opinion. It just means that you are willing to change it in light of contrary evidence. Other than the loonies who populate the fringes, this is how most people operate. The problem is that a lot of us who follow politics and media and such think that Bush and the neocons are right-wing fringe lunatics and the GOP has been taken over by them. The term "faith-based" should never, ever show up in government policy. The government does not get to operate on faith, that domain is left to religions. The government must be transparent and it's actions must leave a logic audit trail.
Ideally all sources would provide a balance of viewpoints
Here's where I think Fox and it's supporters do not understand the concepts of fair and balanced or objectivity. Under this idea, and Fox's implementation, Astronomy Journals would publish articles by UFO nuts and have exposes from The Flat Earth Society on how NASA faked the moon landings. We'd have to have the KKK on everytime we wanted to discuss race, e
one of which will be a ghetto for consumers (Win98 and XP home users), while the other will a gated community for corporate users (XP Professional, MS only shops) ;-)