I would argue from my experience that many do not end up doing "the same job", at least in terms of what they bring to the table, and the results they generate.
There may be people with similar or more impressive resumes, but work alongside of them for a while and you quickly learn that not all developers are created or grown equally.
That's not to say there are not worthless American developers. Ideally you'd replace THEM with the brightest, best performing offshore people.
At least when hiring American developers (speaking from a US point of view), it's easier to ascertain the ability of an applicant than it is by email or phone overseas (and in some cases, you don't even speak to them).
Lastly, sometimes it's not such a bright idea to outsource a measurably valuable part of a company.
I didn't say it was ok that it didn't work, I merely suggested, by way of weak sarcasm perhaps, that him considering the hardware installation problems of Linux + soundcard (or any other hardware/drivers) are an Achilles' heel is overblown.
To more seriously address his article, I would say that his comparision of Win95 and Linux regarding soundcards is not reasonable, given that either MS or the soundcard manufacturer wrote the driver for Windows, whereas typically (except for more progressive hardware companies) Linux hardware drivers are written by OSS folks (and in some cases reverse engineered since some companies refuse to divulge specs and apis).
I'll stop now, I've already wasted too many characters on an AC.
I know that where I work, having a sound card is critical to operation of the company.
I cannot imagine how someone can function without hearing that Ding! each time a new email arrives. I'd be lost, ever wondering, "do I have another Symantec AV warning about an attempted incoming virus message?"
Linux is doomed if it can't even Ding! when email arrives.
Actually I stated that the data should be represented anonymously (as in, not with your user).
Picture a "registered/. user demographics" graph along either side of the site. It wouldn't associate you with specific demographics (externally). Nobody except Perl would see your demographics.
Anyway, if you were so worried about your demographics being displayed, you shouldn't be offering up your website. Assuming it's yours, then your name is Katherine X. Xxxxx (obscured for your benefit), you graduated from Binghamton University in New York, you're in your mid 20s, you live in Atlantic City (or you've visited there), and you're a heavy social drinker/partier.
If I were going to let anything affect my opinion of your posts, it would likely be your website that you freely give out.
Incidentally, what little I discovered about you was without doing web searches. Perhaps you should reconsider putting your website as part of your/. information.
That's exactly why I usually disagree with many/. moderators. The recent poll on income level really shows too. It would certainly seem that most/. readers/modders are unemployed or are college students.
Both groups historically are liberal. That is why a comment against Bush is modded up, and a comment against any liberal (esp Clinton) is modded down.
I think it's fine for a place like/. to exist and to display opinion, but I think it would serve everyone well if demographics were clearly stated (anonymously).
Each account should have settings for political alignment (liberal, independent, conservative, other), income level, age, and even gender. The breakdown should be in a chart on the side of/.
Then at least people who weren't familiar with/. would know what the natural bias was. This would be useful for any other non-traditional media source as well.
UC Berkeley student modders do your worst, I'm wearing my flamesuit.
Is that it was cobbled together over years, and has thus become this giant, nasty monster.
Having to carry two Meyers books
- Effective C++
- More Effective C++ to avoid shooting yourself in the foot with C++ is a strong indication that something is wrong.
1 - people often aren't taught anything about safe computer use and computer maintenance (much less general use of the OS and software)
2 - the lucky people who do get taught often ignore (intentionally) the education (how many times have stupid (yes, STUPID!) users opened fucking attachments that made no sense, came from someone they had never heard of, and naturally contained a virus?)... all after being told numerous times to NEVER open an attachment you aren't specifically expecting.
So often people want to compare a car to a computer. I think in one respect that's a good idea. One must learn and officially demonstrate (barring people from a certain populous country who get a drivers license with no skills, then magically turn that into a US license) that they know what traffic signs mean, what yellow dashes and lines mean, etc.
People should have to have a license to operate a computer. No this isn't some elitist joke, I'm serious. Then users could be held accountable for asking the same questions over and over. I could lecture for days about this. Suffice to say that if training and testing were not required and enforced, many people will try and fail to correctly use a computer, and that will result in support requests.
At some point in most people's lives they were taught how to tie their shoes. At first it was too difficult, so they needed assistance. Eventually, through practice and effort, they became self-sufficient. Most computer users should be expected to learn over time. Most won't.
I didn't care. That car did what I needed it to do for as long as I needed to do it before I could afford a better one. In other words, it was exactly like a computer to most people
Your analogy is wrong. You've just described a limited-function appliance (your car), and compared it to a computer.
But a computer (at least an MS Windows computer) is not a limited function appliance. And the spyware that increasingly draws CPU cycles, increases disk IO, and sucks up network bandwidth makes the computer less and less usable over time.
By your analogy, each trip to the grocery store your car would have to develop a new problem - one which would lower your top speed, randomly kill the engine, and otherwise make your car less usable each trip.
That is a very interesting possibility. If I were a spammer ^H^H^H^H er RIAA agent ^H^H^H^H er cracker, I would like to find the systems belonging to the most lax (or non-existent) sysadmins. That way I could own their box for potentially much longer.
And if they don't patch, what is the likelihood they do intrusion detection?
It was probably posted so we'll be aware what PHBs are being fed.
It is NO wonder why it was written... from the bottom of the article:
Bill Addington is a software entrepreneur and inventor, operating several application service provider companies. His spinoff technologies have been sold to companies including America Online Inc. and Microsoft Corp. He conducts his security business in conjunction with Dyonyx in Houston.
He does have a point about reverse-engineering, but the solution to that isn't "don't release a patch". His article reads like a Microsoft HOWTO Cover Our Ass document.
One thing that would be interesting (but very difficult) to measure would be the relationship between exploits and fancy features. Fewer features/capabilities must mean fewer potential exploits. And if, as some estimates stated, Word 2000 users on average exercised 10-15% of the features it provided, one must wonder if the other 85-90% of the features were worth the associated exploit and bug potential.
Imagine Internet Explorer minus ActiveX, minus silently-installing "agents", and minus some of the magical integration with the OS. It might look something like Firefox (fast, clean, and comparatively exploit-free).
Talk to your employer. I know in most cases this would be futile or even dangerous to your job, but some employers would probably agree to a 1 day shutdown of internet-related services.
Yes it would be a significant interruption to normal business, but some employers would be able to grasp the significance of legally-forced shutdowns in some patent-nightmare future scenario.
Lastly, many of us are not easily replaceable. Of course, it's only a useful "strike" if a lot of people do it. And convincing everyone to do it would be nigh impossible, since everyone would be fearful that they would be the only ones to take the job-endangering action.
What makes people think that Hotmail, Yahoo, and other free-mail providers don't intentionally or accidentally archive, parse, or otherwise "invade" their users' privacy to some degree?
In any event, as long as people are sending clear text email across the net, it's all being read and stored by _somebody_.
This will fall under the label of civil disobediance perhaps, but a really good way to get attention to the anti-patent cause would be for those with technical power to shut down as much as was safely possible (not power stations, etc.) in protest.
When 2/3 of the net is suddenly gone, that might gain some attention. And then a suitable argument for doing such a drastic thing would be, "imagine if TCP/IP was patented, this is the internet you'd have; or imagine if BT had won its hyperlink coup; or..."
Singly we have little power other than to perhaps get ourselves fired. But collectively we have the ability to put a grinding halt on e-commerce and more.
I remember during some of the analysis of the 2000 Florida election disaster that one of the recount counties gave facts about the number of ballots that had multiple votes. IIRC, dozens had at least 2 votes, many had 3, some had 4, and a couple even had 11. This means some voters are either completely hopelessly confused, or they're screwing around.
Also, remember the election officials in each county have great capacity to screw things up.
As with most problems, the root of the failure is lack of education. There are just a lot of ignorant people out there. This may or may not be their fault. They shouldn't be voting if they can't understand the words "MARK ONLY ONE".
Did you bother reading the somewhat brief article?
The people picked up were in Britain and Canada. It said nothing about them being US Citizens. It did, however, state that the nature of discussions was of terrorist activity (presumably against the US or US interests).
Conveying this to the Canadian and British authorities is a reasonable activity for our National Security Agency. If you want to talk about due process, perhaps you should watch to see what Canada and Britain do with them.
Soon you'll start seeing Message Center popups. You'll get random notices that a new version of Real is available. You'll get spurious requests to register.
Oh yeah, then go "uninstall" it. That will appear to remove it. Then later you'll get Message Center popups.
Then go remove any reference to Real from HLMS\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. You'll still periodically see crap.
I own about 25 CDs, plus another 30 iTunes albums that I previously would have never bought had I not been able to hear them first.
I wouldn't even know how to spell scratch if a buddy hadn't downloaded this guy named Rob Swift a while back. Now I own 2 of his albums and 2 albums of a band (Xecutioners) he's a member of. That's not even counting Qbert and a bunch of other guys in that genre I own CDs of. In fact, that's a whole genre I probably would never have heard of, nor bought CDs of, were it not for Kazaa.
Actually now that I think about it, I wouldn't own 6 Snoop CDs or a host of other rap CDs were it not for Kazaa.
it's strikingly similar to the liberal political bias in "higher education".
students would be served best by an even presentation of the two or three (or more) competing options. unfortunately, many instructors only know what they have read, since they may have little or no real world experience.
explore all options. sometimes Windows does make sense. sometimes Linux does, sometimes Unix does, and sometimes other operating systems do.
Slashdot Mirror
It's an opportunity to do some Bush-bashing, conveniently linked to you thru the front page of /.
What the German said was clearly NOT anti-semetic.
And what McAddress said was clearly not funny.
Naturally McAddress was modded +5 Funny. Moderation here is completely worthless.
No worries.
/.ing
Happy
I would argue from my experience that many do not end up doing "the same job", at least in terms of what they bring to the table, and the results they generate.
There may be people with similar or more impressive resumes, but work alongside of them for a while and you quickly learn that not all developers are created or grown equally.
That's not to say there are not worthless American developers. Ideally you'd replace THEM with the brightest, best performing offshore people.
At least when hiring American developers (speaking from a US point of view), it's easier to ascertain the ability of an applicant than it is by email or phone overseas (and in some cases, you don't even speak to them).
Lastly, sometimes it's not such a bright idea to outsource a measurably valuable part of a company.
I didn't say it was ok that it didn't work, I merely suggested, by way of weak sarcasm perhaps, that him considering the hardware installation problems of Linux + soundcard (or any other hardware/drivers) are an Achilles' heel is overblown.
To more seriously address his article, I would say that his comparision of Win95 and Linux regarding soundcards is not reasonable, given that either MS or the soundcard manufacturer wrote the driver for Windows, whereas typically (except for more progressive hardware companies) Linux hardware drivers are written by OSS folks (and in some cases reverse engineered since some companies refuse to divulge specs and apis).
I'll stop now, I've already wasted too many characters on an AC.
I know that where I work, having a sound card is critical to operation of the company.
I cannot imagine how someone can function without hearing that Ding! each time a new email arrives. I'd be lost, ever wondering, "do I have another Symantec AV warning about an attempted incoming virus message?"
Linux is doomed if it can't even Ding! when email arrives.
Actually I stated that the data should be represented anonymously (as in, not with your user).
/. user demographics" graph along either side of the site. It wouldn't associate you with specific demographics (externally). Nobody except Perl would see your demographics.
/. information.
Picture a "registered
Anyway, if you were so worried about your demographics being displayed, you shouldn't be offering up your website. Assuming it's yours, then your name is Katherine X. Xxxxx (obscured for your benefit), you graduated from Binghamton University in New York, you're in your mid 20s, you live in Atlantic City (or you've visited there), and you're a heavy social drinker/partier.
If I were going to let anything affect my opinion of your posts, it would likely be your website that you freely give out.
Incidentally, what little I discovered about you was without doing web searches. Perhaps you should reconsider putting your website as part of your
That's exactly why I usually disagree with many /. moderators. The recent poll on income level really shows too. It would certainly seem that most /. readers/modders are unemployed or are college students.
/. to exist and to display opinion, but I think it would serve everyone well if demographics were clearly stated (anonymously).
/.
/. would know what the natural bias was. This would be useful for any other non-traditional media source as well.
Both groups historically are liberal. That is why a comment against Bush is modded up, and a comment against any liberal (esp Clinton) is modded down.
I think it's fine for a place like
Each account should have settings for political alignment (liberal, independent, conservative, other), income level, age, and even gender. The breakdown should be in a chart on the side of
Then at least people who weren't familiar with
UC Berkeley student modders do your worst, I'm wearing my flamesuit.
Is that it was cobbled together over years, and has thus become this giant, nasty monster.
Having to carry two Meyers books
- Effective C++
- More Effective C++
to avoid shooting yourself in the foot with C++ is a strong indication that something is wrong.
Remember when automobiles had manual chokes?
I don't think that word means what you think it means...
wetback
If so, then it's completely lost on me.
Two problems:
1 - people often aren't taught anything about safe computer use and computer maintenance (much less general use of the OS and software)
2 - the lucky people who do get taught often ignore (intentionally) the education (how many times have stupid (yes, STUPID!) users opened fucking attachments that made no sense, came from someone they had never heard of, and naturally contained a virus?)... all after being told numerous times to NEVER open an attachment you aren't specifically expecting.
So often people want to compare a car to a computer. I think in one respect that's a good idea. One must learn and officially demonstrate (barring people from a certain populous country who get a drivers license with no skills, then magically turn that into a US license) that they know what traffic signs mean, what yellow dashes and lines mean, etc.
People should have to have a license to operate a computer. No this isn't some elitist joke, I'm serious. Then users could be held accountable for asking the same questions over and over. I could lecture for days about this. Suffice to say that if training and testing were not required and enforced, many people will try and fail to correctly use a computer, and that will result in support requests.
At some point in most people's lives they were taught how to tie their shoes. At first it was too difficult, so they needed assistance. Eventually, through practice and effort, they became self-sufficient. Most computer users should be expected to learn over time. Most won't.
Your analogy is wrong. You've just described a limited-function appliance (your car), and compared it to a computer.
But a computer (at least an MS Windows computer) is not a limited function appliance. And the spyware that increasingly draws CPU cycles, increases disk IO, and sucks up network bandwidth makes the computer less and less usable over time.
By your analogy, each trip to the grocery store your car would have to develop a new problem - one which would lower your top speed, randomly kill the engine, and otherwise make your car less usable each trip.
That is a very interesting possibility. If I were a spammer ^H^H^H^H er RIAA agent ^H^H^H^H er cracker, I would like to find the systems belonging to the most lax (or non-existent) sysadmins. That way I could own their box for potentially much longer.
And if they don't patch, what is the likelihood they do intrusion detection?
It was probably posted so we'll be aware what PHBs are being fed.
It is NO wonder why it was written... from the bottom of the article:
He does have a point about reverse-engineering, but the solution to that isn't "don't release a patch". His article reads like a Microsoft HOWTO Cover Our Ass document.
One thing that would be interesting (but very difficult) to measure would be the relationship between exploits and fancy features. Fewer features/capabilities must mean fewer potential exploits. And if, as some estimates stated, Word 2000 users on average exercised 10-15% of the features it provided, one must wonder if the other 85-90% of the features were worth the associated exploit and bug potential.
Imagine Internet Explorer minus ActiveX, minus silently-installing "agents", and minus some of the magical integration with the OS. It might look something like Firefox (fast, clean, and comparatively exploit-free).
Talk to your employer. I know in most cases this would be futile or even dangerous to your job, but some employers would probably agree to a 1 day shutdown of internet-related services.
Yes it would be a significant interruption to normal business, but some employers would be able to grasp the significance of legally-forced shutdowns in some patent-nightmare future scenario.
Lastly, many of us are not easily replaceable. Of course, it's only a useful "strike" if a lot of people do it. And convincing everyone to do it would be nigh impossible, since everyone would be fearful that they would be the only ones to take the job-endangering action.
What makes people think that Hotmail, Yahoo, and other free-mail providers don't intentionally or accidentally archive, parse, or otherwise "invade" their users' privacy to some degree?
In any event, as long as people are sending clear text email across the net, it's all being read and stored by _somebody_.
This will fall under the label of civil disobediance perhaps, but a really good way to get attention to the anti-patent cause would be for those with technical power to shut down as much as was safely possible (not power stations, etc.) in protest.
..."
When 2/3 of the net is suddenly gone, that might gain some attention. And then a suitable argument for doing such a drastic thing would be, "imagine if TCP/IP was patented, this is the internet you'd have; or imagine if BT had won its hyperlink coup; or
Singly we have little power other than to perhaps get ourselves fired. But collectively we have the ability to put a grinding halt on e-commerce and more.
Those of us who do know what we're doing know how to install GCC and any other tool we might need.
Those who don't know how to install it probably shouldn't be compiling apps. They should be installing binaries using a GUI tool.
A typical user OS doesn't need a C compiler. Strictly speaking it's even a security vulnerability to have development tools on the machine.
Sounds to me like Fedora is a user-targeted OS rather than a techie/developer targeted OS. Seems wise to me.
pick some artists that don't suck.
of my 500+ CDs, only a few of them have just 1 or 2 good tracks. the rest have probably 75% good tracks, and maybe 25% so-so.
but on topic, RIAA are fools if they think raising prices will help sales. it will merely kill the budding online song selling business.
Fill in the blank doesn't even work.
I remember during some of the analysis of the 2000 Florida election disaster that one of the recount counties gave facts about the number of ballots that had multiple votes. IIRC, dozens had at least 2 votes, many had 3, some had 4, and a couple even had 11. This means some voters are either completely hopelessly confused, or they're screwing around.
Also, remember the election officials in each county have great capacity to screw things up.
As with most problems, the root of the failure is lack of education. There are just a lot of ignorant people out there. This may or may not be their fault. They shouldn't be voting if they can't understand the words "MARK ONLY ONE".
Did you bother reading the somewhat brief article?
The people picked up were in Britain and Canada. It said nothing about them being US Citizens. It did, however, state that the nature of discussions was of terrorist activity (presumably against the US or US interests).
Conveying this to the Canadian and British authorities is a reasonable activity for our National Security Agency. If you want to talk about due process, perhaps you should watch to see what Canada and Britain do with them.
Of all public email systems, I'm sure Hotmail would be the most difficult for the NSA to help themselves to the insides of...
Soon you'll start seeing Message Center popups. You'll get random notices that a new version of Real is available. You'll get spurious requests to register.
Oh yeah, then go "uninstall" it. That will appear to remove it. Then later you'll get Message Center popups.
Then go remove any reference to Real from HLMS\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. You'll still periodically see crap.
I own about 25 CDs, plus another 30 iTunes albums that I previously would have never bought had I not been able to hear them first.
I wouldn't even know how to spell scratch if a buddy hadn't downloaded this guy named Rob Swift a while back. Now I own 2 of his albums and 2 albums of a band (Xecutioners) he's a member of. That's not even counting Qbert and a bunch of other guys in that genre I own CDs of. In fact, that's a whole genre I probably would never have heard of, nor bought CDs of, were it not for Kazaa.
Actually now that I think about it, I wouldn't own 6 Snoop CDs or a host of other rap CDs were it not for Kazaa.
Allow me a Snoop-ism for RIAA: "eat a dick".
it's strikingly similar to the liberal political bias in "higher education".
students would be served best by an even presentation of the two or three (or more) competing options. unfortunately, many instructors only know what they have read, since they may have little or no real world experience.
explore all options. sometimes Windows does make sense. sometimes Linux does, sometimes Unix does, and sometimes other operating systems do.