The only problem is that this guy doesn't want new, more intuitive, software, he wants his old software back. What's more, chances are good that he would be happiest if they gave him back the DOS version of WordPerfect 5.1.
So don't give me your HCI spiel. This was simply a rant about a user that was tired of learning to use software packages only to find that the whole thing changes with the next version.
Then he is left in the unenviable position of having to explain his bad credit to his new employers. If the poster is not simply ridiculously irresponsible this shouldn't be too hard. He did get the job, after all, the employers must be at least somewhat impressed with him.
The problem with this is that you are competing for that job with people like me that are happy to undergo a credit check. I am likely to be responsible for company property, and I may even have a company credit card. I can certainly see why the business might want to know about my own personal financial history. Of course, I happen to have good credit, so that's probably why I feel that way.
Just wait, if Microsoft pushes the idea of the XBox too far then Dell will get into the business anyhow (and you can bet that they won't use Windows). Microsoft wants to make the XBox into a PC replacement, but Dell isn't about to let that happen.
The funny thing about this is that Linux is probably a better fit for this sort of thing than Windows. After all, once you throw out the need for Windows compatibility Linux has a lot of positive aspects (most importantly it is free). It is already used as the basis for the Tivo, and creating a box that would play games as well probably wouldn't be that hard.
I have nearly switched 100% to reading on my Sony Clie, and I prefer my trusty PDA for most reading tasks. For one thing you can fit a pile of books onto a 128M Media Stick. I also like being able to read in the dark, and I really like the fact that as long as I have my PDA I always have a book to read. I am convinced that for casual reading there is no better way to go than a PDA.
Computer documentation, on the other hand, is somewhat more difficult. I have several computer textbooks on my PDA including: "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs," "The Emacs Lisp Manual," and "The Zope Book" to name a few. In fact, most everything available at the Linux Documentation Project is available in Plucker format. However, with computer text you generally have to be at least somewhat careful with line wrapping. A lisp function that looks fine formatted at 80 chars a line probably doesn't look so hot when you only have 40 characters per line, and if the book includes pictures then you are even worse off. PDA screens (at least Palm-based PDA screens) are still too narrow and offer too poor of a resolution for books with pictures or source code listings (IMHO).
Go to Baen's web site and download David Drake and Eric Flint's Belisaurius series and read that instead.
If Microsoft were to start competing with the hardware OEMs (like Dell) in the hardware business then Linux would become the standard desktop operating system within a year's time.
In the long run Microsoft needs Dell a lot more than Dell needs Microsoft. A couple of years ago that wasn't the case, but Linux is a pretty credible replacement for Windows nowadays. With the little bit of extra spit and polish that the big hardware OEMs could give it my guess is that customers might even prefer Linux (especially if it saved them $150 and came bundled with a full array of software).
Yes, I realize that my numbers on XBoxes losses are somewhat fuzzy, but it still doesn't change the fact that Microsoft is losing a lot more per XBox than their competitors. Even worse this is likely to remain the case for the life of the XBox. For more details read this article from MSNBC.
Here's the critical paragraph:
One problem for Microsoft is that it projects that its costs for the Xbox will decline slowly. The cost of the box may come down over five years from $325 to $225, according to the source. By contrast, Sony and Nintendo are expected to bring their costs down more steeply over time, largely because their machines don't have an expensive hard drive.
That's the real crux of Microsoft's problem. While Sony and Nintendo are hard at work integrating the chips they use and cutting the price that it costs to manufacture their consoles, Microsoft is stuck with a pile of commodity parts that can't be integrated (try getting NVidia and their competitors at Intel to work together:). Microsoft's parts were already very near their rock bottom price when Microsoft picked them. So yes, my example doesn't take into account medium or long term average pricing, but I think it is quite likely that Sony and Nintendo will keep the heat on Microsoft price-wise until they come out with new consoles in 2005.
So far they have lost nearly a billion dollars on the XBox, their losses are accelerating, and they have only sold 8 million XBoxes! I have yet to see a single scenario that doesn't include significant losses well into 2004, and in 2005 the game is over for the current generation of the XBox. When Sony and Nintendo come out with their new consoles Microsoft is going to have no choice but to go back into the hardware business. By 2005 the vaunted XBox hardware is going to look ridiculous when compared with anything (including sub $200 PCs).
Realistically speaking when is Microsoft going to start turning a profit?
The reality is that the "smart folks" at Microsoft aren't concerned about turning a profit on the XBox. They can lose billions on the XBox and hardly notice. They know that their price/earnings ratio is still ridiculously high, and that if they don't at least pretend that the XBox is poised to make billions that the folks on Wall Street will start wondering how Microsoft is going to come up with the growth that would justify their high stock price. Continuing with the XBox simply loses Microsoft money (and it has a pile). Giving up on the XBox hurts Microsoft's stock price, and the folks working on the XBox have piles of stock options. They don't care if the XBox is a good business. As long as the XBox appears to be a good business then they can get rid of their options while they are still worth something.
Yes, and I am sure that they make money off the gumball machine out in their front lobby too. That doesn't mean that the proceeds from said gumball machine have any great effect on Microsoft's bottom line.
Last quarter Microsoft generated an operating income of $1.97 billion on revenues of $2.44 billion. MS Office had similarly ridiculous profit margins with an operating income of $1.88 billion on revenue of $2.41 billion. There are plenty of companies with those kinds of revenues, but only Microsoft has the combination of high revenues and ridiculously high profit margins. Even Microsoft's server software margins are only about half of the Windows and Office profit margins. I can guarantee you that, compared to Windows and Office, the profits on keyboards and mice are insignificant. What's more, there is no possible way that Microsoft could ever be even a tenth as profitable selling hardware.
Thanks to Windows and Office Microsoft is the software powerhouse, without the huge profit margins from these two products they probably wouldn't even be competitive.
A) Volume production was to mimimize the loss but the volume is just not there partially due to less-than-expected consumers with the disposable income to plunge into a "next-gen" console like the GC and the XBox.
This hasn't kept Sony from outselling the XBox by a considerable amount. That's Microsoft's real problem. Not only are they pouring money down a rathole, but they aren't even catching up to their main competitor. Even Nintendo has managed to match sales with Microsoft, and they don't have to lose $150 per console to do so.
B) Due to slowing sales in the PC hardware sector, commodity hardware is not lowering in price as quickly as anticipated.
Microsoft absolutely thrives on commodity Intel-based hardware. That's their lifeblood. A slow-down in PC hardware is bad for Microsoft in a thousand ways. However, one of the major competitors to the XBox is PC hardware. This is especially true now that Windows XP gives gamers a mostly stable platform. If PC technology was any less expensive then more people would simply buy PCs and game with them. Microsoft is pretty darn competitive when it comes to software, but when it comes to commodity hardware Dell would absolutely destroy them.
C) Obviously, PS2 has the edge as far as momentum, but this was properly calculated by MS.
Microsoft is going to lose money as far as the eye can see on XBox hardware. Because they can't integrate the chips they will likely lose money for the entire lifecycle of the XBox. Add in the losses that Microsoft has admitted that it expects from XBox Live ($40-$50 per customer) and things get even worse. Despite the massive subsidies that Microsoft has offered Sony is still outselling them, and even Nintendo is keeping pace. Sony has the edge in momentum, in marketshare, and in sales. XBox has the edge in hardware, but Sony still has better games.
Perhaps something will happen in the next couple of years that will drastically increase the profitability of XBox, but I don't see what it might be. Even if XBox does turn a profit, it's not likely to be the type of profit that is going to actually effect Microsoft's bottom line in a substantial way. Microsoft would be far better off investing their money in their divisions that already have massive ROI.
Yes, as an XBox gamer I have to admit that the XBox is a neat system, and it should be with the amount of money that Microsoft is spending per customer. When you plunk down your $200 for an Xbox you are actually getting hardware worth quite a bit more than what you pay. However, as a Microsoft investor, I happen to think that the XBox is the stupidest thing Microsoft has ever done.
Microsoft simply loses too much money per customer to be able to turn a profit before Sony and Nintendo come out with their next gen consoles. The only reason that Microsoft hasn't pulled the plug is that they know how important the Wall Street analysts think XBox is for Microsoft's future. Microsoft has to come up with a new growth market if they want to justify their high Price/Earnings ratio, and right now the only real possibility is the XBox. If Microsoft dropped the XBox, then their stock price would drop. Since all of Microsoft's management are heavily invested in MSFT they would much rather have Microsoft waste money on the XBox then have the stock price drop.
Essentially that is the case, and crying won't make it any better. You are in the same position as the weaver at the advent of the mechanical loom. You are now faced with competition that is able to do the same amount of work as you are but who is willing to work for half your salary. The folks "at the top of the food chain" would be foolish to do anything but hire the other guy. If you were running your own business (try it sometime) you would do the same thing. If you didn't do this, then you can bet that your competition would, and they would use this advantage to drive you out of business.
In short, the folks at the "the top of the food chain" don't really have a choice. They have to deal with competition just like you do. If they can't compete then they go out of business and lots of people lose their jobs. My advice, either find another career, or learn to live with less.
That's ridiculous. That's like saying that Californians shouldn't purchase Idaho potatoes, or that folks in Missouri shouldn't purchase Washington apples. The Big Cheeses don't owe you a job any more than the owe the guy in India a job. They are simply looking for the most value for their buck. The trick is to provide enough value so that you are worth the additional price. Granted, that's a difficult thing to do in some economies, which is basically why I live in Idaho and not California.
Ethics...smethics. The best thing about Debian is that they take a good hard look at the legal aspects of each software package so that you don't have to. If something is in Debian main then you can be pretty sure that someone with a clue has taken a gander at the license, and that is a big deal.
Folks can pretend that technical issues are more important than legal issues, but that's just not true. The software packages that don't pay attention to the legal issues eventually get tripped up by them. For example, think of all of the pain and agony that KDE could have saved if they had been careful about the licensing issues right from the start.
Those "business types" simply had a different set of goals than your management. It was pretty clear to anyone with even an inkling of economic sense that the.com bubble was nothing more than a replay of the Tulip Bulb Craze or the stock build-up that lead to the Great Depression. Heck, the vestiges of that bubble are even still with us today. Take a look at Microsoft's P/E or P/S ratio and then tell me where that kind of growth is going to come from. The market still clearly has pockets of "irrational exuberance."
The professional managers of these companies almost certainly understood that the bubble would burst someday, but they also knew that before the bubble popped there would be plenty of time to make out like bandits. Their goal was simply to get as many stock options as they could and get out before the market crashed. Those that were successful in their goal made plenty of money. The VCs had an even easier time of it. All they had to do was hype up their tech companies and make it to a successful IPO.
Yes, that's no way to run a business, but these folks weren't trying to run a business, they were trying to create enough of a shell of a business so that they could trick investors into bidding the stock price into the stratosphere. The VCs and their "professional managers" did just fine during the Internet boom (even the massive flameouts almost certainly made money), it's the chumps that bought into their "New Economy" spiel that paid the piper.
Even cooler, you can download quite a few of these books for free at Baen's website. I would particularly recommend the Belisarius series and the stuff by David Weber.
Assuming you are on a Linux box with Emacs (and info) properly installed you might be able to simply type 'info viper'. The info file included with viper is pretty darn good.
Or you can just start up Emacs and type M-x viper-mode. viper-mode has a start-up message that is pretty handy, it should get you started without too much trouble. If you set the viper-expert-level variable low enough Emacs will act just like vi.
If you are really interested in using Emacs, however, I would suggest learning to use Emacs' built in info browser. There is a ton of functionality built into Emacs that is not immediately apparent. I have been using Emacs for years now, and I still find amazing new functionality on a regular basis. Time spent reading the documentation will pay for itself quickly.
It's actually pretty easy to migrate your email to another client because Emacs will happily create mbox files. Fire up info on GNUS and read the bit about "Incorporating Old Mail" and simply do it in reverse.
The short but sweet synopsis is that you enter the group that you want to export, type 'M P b' to process mark all article, and then type 'B r' to respool those articles. When it asks for the backend to use choose 'nnmbox'.
Don't forget to make backups of your email first (I have had problems with really large groups).
As a side note have you tried some of the Vi-emulation modes in Emacs. Vim is pretty good stuff, but it doesn't do everything that Emacs does. Vi-style keystrokes on top of Emacs is the best of both worlds (IMHO).
I've been using Linux for about 3 years now, but home experience is irrelevant to business. They want real experience.
Yes, people that are currently using Mainframes will want serious support when and if they decide to use Linux. So you will have to move down the food chain a bit. I have Linux boxes that I admin on the side scattered all around town. There are all sorts of small businesses that need reliable, mission-critical servers on a tight budget. Small businesses are much less concerned about how much experience you have, and they have absolutely no idea that there is a difference between a mainframe and a PC running Linux.
I would like to help out on Free Software projects but my C and Java skills haven't progressed much beyond writing text editors yet.
Heck, that's more experience than you need for some types of projects:). I am not saying that you should try and help Tom Lane with PostgreSQL internals. Start on something simpler. For example, create (and share) your own Zope Product (they are pretty easy to write, plus you'll learn Python).
My rather convoluted point, as well as asking for help, was that I can't just go get another job in IT like so many of the posters seem to think you can.
No, I got your point, and I feel your pain. I have had to scramble a bit myself recently.
I'm in a vicious circle. Limited skills in new stuff, no experience, and no way out but to start again in something else. What a waste of 13 years.
The worst part is that things are likely to get worse before they get better. Fortunately for you most of the Indian shops aren't targeting the mainframe, or COBOL for that matter. Your advantage is that you have 13 years of experience in big iron computing. You know what those bad boys get used for, and you know how to write software that runs the business. That's a huge advantage over most of the rest of us. The trick now is to move those skills to a more vibrant platform.
As someone who has lived outside the states I would certainly consider reputable non-U.S. doctors for non-emergency treatments. India, however, is quite a ways to go. Canada and Mexico would seem like much better choices.
My advice. If you really want to sling code then you are going to have to update your skills. My belief is that the least expensive way to do that is to pick a Free Software project that looks interesting and which you think might solve a real problem and pitch in. Not only does Free Software give you all of the software development tools that you could possibly need, but it also offers something even more important, source code.
You almost certainly have learned some stuff writing COBOL that you could apply to a Free Software project. At the very least you probably have some industry specific information that would be invaluable to somebody.
The fact of the matter is that you should move to UNIX/Windows, at the very least you should check out Linux, because IBM is pushing Linux on the mainframe pretty hard. The good news is that learning Linux doesn't require thousands of dollars worth of software investments.
They can't ship doctor jobs to India for the same reason they can't pick up my local McDonald's and ship it to India and expect to get the same clientelle. As much as I like McDonald's french fries I am not going to Bangalore to get them. Most of the really expensive medical stuff is stuff you do in an emergency, and flying me to India when I need a triple bypass (due to massive french fry consumption, do doubt) is not likely to solve the problem for anyone but the insurance company. I will almost certainly die in transit and then the insurance company can save themselves the cost of the operation.
On the other hand, I already know plenty of people that have gone to Canada for their laser eye surgery. However, with a little searching my wife was able to find a nearby U.S. doctor that had even better prices than were available in Canada.
Slackware turns a profit the old-fashioned way, they keep their overhead extremely low. If Slackware has more than a handful of employees I would be shocked.
No, that is not correct. The Supreme Court's basic job is to strike down laws that are unconstitutional. They aren't supposed to create law, but merely interpret it.
Now, I would be the first to admit that the power to interpret law sometimes leaves the court with a great deal of wiggle room, but that is something else entirely.
My point is that the place to change laws is the legislature. If you don't like existing laws then talk to your congress-folk.
The court did not rule on the "correctness" of the latest copyright extension. Basically they concluded that they lacked the power to change it.
As much as I would like to see the length of copyright shortened I am glad that the court ruled the way that they did. As you said, the constitutional grounds for changing this law were tenuous. I am always skeptical of the idea of "legislating from the bench."
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The only problem is that this guy doesn't want new, more intuitive, software, he wants his old software back. What's more, chances are good that he would be happiest if they gave him back the DOS version of WordPerfect 5.1.
So don't give me your HCI spiel. This was simply a rant about a user that was tired of learning to use software packages only to find that the whole thing changes with the next version.
Then he is left in the unenviable position of having to explain his bad credit to his new employers. If the poster is not simply ridiculously irresponsible this shouldn't be too hard. He did get the job, after all, the employers must be at least somewhat impressed with him.
The problem with this is that you are competing for that job with people like me that are happy to undergo a credit check. I am likely to be responsible for company property, and I may even have a company credit card. I can certainly see why the business might want to know about my own personal financial history. Of course, I happen to have good credit, so that's probably why I feel that way.
Just wait, if Microsoft pushes the idea of the XBox too far then Dell will get into the business anyhow (and you can bet that they won't use Windows). Microsoft wants to make the XBox into a PC replacement, but Dell isn't about to let that happen.
The funny thing about this is that Linux is probably a better fit for this sort of thing than Windows. After all, once you throw out the need for Windows compatibility Linux has a lot of positive aspects (most importantly it is free). It is already used as the basis for the Tivo, and creating a box that would play games as well probably wouldn't be that hard.
I have nearly switched 100% to reading on my Sony Clie, and I prefer my trusty PDA for most reading tasks. For one thing you can fit a pile of books onto a 128M Media Stick. I also like being able to read in the dark, and I really like the fact that as long as I have my PDA I always have a book to read. I am convinced that for casual reading there is no better way to go than a PDA.
Computer documentation, on the other hand, is somewhat more difficult. I have several computer textbooks on my PDA including: "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs," "The Emacs Lisp Manual," and "The Zope Book" to name a few. In fact, most everything available at the Linux Documentation Project is available in Plucker format. However, with computer text you generally have to be at least somewhat careful with line wrapping. A lisp function that looks fine formatted at 80 chars a line probably doesn't look so hot when you only have 40 characters per line, and if the book includes pictures then you are even worse off. PDA screens (at least Palm-based PDA screens) are still too narrow and offer too poor of a resolution for books with pictures or source code listings (IMHO).
Go to Baen's web site and download David Drake and Eric Flint's Belisaurius series and read that instead.
If Microsoft were to start competing with the hardware OEMs (like Dell) in the hardware business then Linux would become the standard desktop operating system within a year's time.
In the long run Microsoft needs Dell a lot more than Dell needs Microsoft. A couple of years ago that wasn't the case, but Linux is a pretty credible replacement for Windows nowadays. With the little bit of extra spit and polish that the big hardware OEMs could give it my guess is that customers might even prefer Linux (especially if it saved them $150 and came bundled with a full array of software).
Yes, I realize that my numbers on XBoxes losses are somewhat fuzzy, but it still doesn't change the fact that Microsoft is losing a lot more per XBox than their competitors. Even worse this is likely to remain the case for the life of the XBox. For more details read this article from MSNBC.
Here's the critical paragraph:
That's the real crux of Microsoft's problem. While Sony and Nintendo are hard at work integrating the chips they use and cutting the price that it costs to manufacture their consoles, Microsoft is stuck with a pile of commodity parts that can't be integrated (try getting NVidia and their competitors at Intel to work together :). Microsoft's parts were already very near their rock bottom price when Microsoft picked them. So yes, my example doesn't take into account medium or long term average pricing, but I think it is quite likely that Sony and Nintendo will keep the heat on Microsoft price-wise until they come out with new consoles in 2005.
So far they have lost nearly a billion dollars on the XBox, their losses are accelerating, and they have only sold 8 million XBoxes! I have yet to see a single scenario that doesn't include significant losses well into 2004, and in 2005 the game is over for the current generation of the XBox. When Sony and Nintendo come out with their new consoles Microsoft is going to have no choice but to go back into the hardware business. By 2005 the vaunted XBox hardware is going to look ridiculous when compared with anything (including sub $200 PCs).
Realistically speaking when is Microsoft going to start turning a profit?
The reality is that the "smart folks" at Microsoft aren't concerned about turning a profit on the XBox. They can lose billions on the XBox and hardly notice. They know that their price/earnings ratio is still ridiculously high, and that if they don't at least pretend that the XBox is poised to make billions that the folks on Wall Street will start wondering how Microsoft is going to come up with the growth that would justify their high stock price. Continuing with the XBox simply loses Microsoft money (and it has a pile). Giving up on the XBox hurts Microsoft's stock price, and the folks working on the XBox have piles of stock options. They don't care if the XBox is a good business. As long as the XBox appears to be a good business then they can get rid of their options while they are still worth something.
Yes, and I am sure that they make money off the gumball machine out in their front lobby too. That doesn't mean that the proceeds from said gumball machine have any great effect on Microsoft's bottom line. Last quarter Microsoft generated an operating income of $1.97 billion on revenues of $2.44 billion. MS Office had similarly ridiculous profit margins with an operating income of $1.88 billion on revenue of $2.41 billion. There are plenty of companies with those kinds of revenues, but only Microsoft has the combination of high revenues and ridiculously high profit margins. Even Microsoft's server software margins are only about half of the Windows and Office profit margins. I can guarantee you that, compared to Windows and Office, the profits on keyboards and mice are insignificant. What's more, there is no possible way that Microsoft could ever be even a tenth as profitable selling hardware.
Thanks to Windows and Office Microsoft is the software powerhouse, without the huge profit margins from these two products they probably wouldn't even be competitive.
This hasn't kept Sony from outselling the XBox by a considerable amount. That's Microsoft's real problem. Not only are they pouring money down a rathole, but they aren't even catching up to their main competitor. Even Nintendo has managed to match sales with Microsoft, and they don't have to lose $150 per console to do so.
Microsoft absolutely thrives on commodity Intel-based hardware. That's their lifeblood. A slow-down in PC hardware is bad for Microsoft in a thousand ways. However, one of the major competitors to the XBox is PC hardware. This is especially true now that Windows XP gives gamers a mostly stable platform. If PC technology was any less expensive then more people would simply buy PCs and game with them. Microsoft is pretty darn competitive when it comes to software, but when it comes to commodity hardware Dell would absolutely destroy them.
Microsoft is going to lose money as far as the eye can see on XBox hardware. Because they can't integrate the chips they will likely lose money for the entire lifecycle of the XBox. Add in the losses that Microsoft has admitted that it expects from XBox Live ($40-$50 per customer) and things get even worse. Despite the massive subsidies that Microsoft has offered Sony is still outselling them, and even Nintendo is keeping pace. Sony has the edge in momentum, in marketshare, and in sales. XBox has the edge in hardware, but Sony still has better games.
Perhaps something will happen in the next couple of years that will drastically increase the profitability of XBox, but I don't see what it might be. Even if XBox does turn a profit, it's not likely to be the type of profit that is going to actually effect Microsoft's bottom line in a substantial way. Microsoft would be far better off investing their money in their divisions that already have massive ROI.
Yes, as an XBox gamer I have to admit that the XBox is a neat system, and it should be with the amount of money that Microsoft is spending per customer. When you plunk down your $200 for an Xbox you are actually getting hardware worth quite a bit more than what you pay. However, as a Microsoft investor, I happen to think that the XBox is the stupidest thing Microsoft has ever done.
Microsoft simply loses too much money per customer to be able to turn a profit before Sony and Nintendo come out with their next gen consoles. The only reason that Microsoft hasn't pulled the plug is that they know how important the Wall Street analysts think XBox is for Microsoft's future. Microsoft has to come up with a new growth market if they want to justify their high Price/Earnings ratio, and right now the only real possibility is the XBox. If Microsoft dropped the XBox, then their stock price would drop. Since all of Microsoft's management are heavily invested in MSFT they would much rather have Microsoft waste money on the XBox then have the stock price drop.
Essentially that is the case, and crying won't make it any better. You are in the same position as the weaver at the advent of the mechanical loom. You are now faced with competition that is able to do the same amount of work as you are but who is willing to work for half your salary. The folks "at the top of the food chain" would be foolish to do anything but hire the other guy. If you were running your own business (try it sometime) you would do the same thing. If you didn't do this, then you can bet that your competition would, and they would use this advantage to drive you out of business.
In short, the folks at the "the top of the food chain" don't really have a choice. They have to deal with competition just like you do. If they can't compete then they go out of business and lots of people lose their jobs. My advice, either find another career, or learn to live with less.
That's ridiculous. That's like saying that Californians shouldn't purchase Idaho potatoes, or that folks in Missouri shouldn't purchase Washington apples. The Big Cheeses don't owe you a job any more than the owe the guy in India a job. They are simply looking for the most value for their buck. The trick is to provide enough value so that you are worth the additional price. Granted, that's a difficult thing to do in some economies, which is basically why I live in Idaho and not California.
Ethics...smethics. The best thing about Debian is that they take a good hard look at the legal aspects of each software package so that you don't have to. If something is in Debian main then you can be pretty sure that someone with a clue has taken a gander at the license, and that is a big deal.
Folks can pretend that technical issues are more important than legal issues, but that's just not true. The software packages that don't pay attention to the legal issues eventually get tripped up by them. For example, think of all of the pain and agony that KDE could have saved if they had been careful about the licensing issues right from the start.
Those "business types" simply had a different set of goals than your management. It was pretty clear to anyone with even an inkling of economic sense that the .com bubble was nothing more than a replay of the Tulip Bulb Craze or the stock build-up that lead to the Great Depression. Heck, the vestiges of that bubble are even still with us today. Take a look at Microsoft's P/E or P/S ratio and then tell me where that kind of growth is going to come from. The market still clearly has pockets of "irrational exuberance."
The professional managers of these companies almost certainly understood that the bubble would burst someday, but they also knew that before the bubble popped there would be plenty of time to make out like bandits. Their goal was simply to get as many stock options as they could and get out before the market crashed. Those that were successful in their goal made plenty of money. The VCs had an even easier time of it. All they had to do was hype up their tech companies and make it to a successful IPO.
Yes, that's no way to run a business, but these folks weren't trying to run a business, they were trying to create enough of a shell of a business so that they could trick investors into bidding the stock price into the stratosphere. The VCs and their "professional managers" did just fine during the Internet boom (even the massive flameouts almost certainly made money), it's the chumps that bought into their "New Economy" spiel that paid the piper.
Even cooler, you can download quite a few of these books for free at Baen's website. I would particularly recommend the Belisarius series and the stuff by David Weber.
Assuming you are on a Linux box with Emacs (and info) properly installed you might be able to simply type 'info viper'. The info file included with viper is pretty darn good.
Or you can just start up Emacs and type M-x viper-mode. viper-mode has a start-up message that is pretty handy, it should get you started without too much trouble. If you set the viper-expert-level variable low enough Emacs will act just like vi.
If you are really interested in using Emacs, however, I would suggest learning to use Emacs' built in info browser. There is a ton of functionality built into Emacs that is not immediately apparent. I have been using Emacs for years now, and I still find amazing new functionality on a regular basis. Time spent reading the documentation will pay for itself quickly.
It's actually pretty easy to migrate your email to another client because Emacs will happily create mbox files. Fire up info on GNUS and read the bit about "Incorporating Old Mail" and simply do it in reverse.
The short but sweet synopsis is that you enter the group that you want to export, type 'M P b' to process mark all article, and then type 'B r' to respool those articles. When it asks for the backend to use choose 'nnmbox'.
Don't forget to make backups of your email first (I have had problems with really large groups).
As a side note have you tried some of the Vi-emulation modes in Emacs. Vim is pretty good stuff, but it doesn't do everything that Emacs does. Vi-style keystrokes on top of Emacs is the best of both worlds (IMHO).
Yes, people that are currently using Mainframes will want serious support when and if they decide to use Linux. So you will have to move down the food chain a bit. I have Linux boxes that I admin on the side scattered all around town. There are all sorts of small businesses that need reliable, mission-critical servers on a tight budget. Small businesses are much less concerned about how much experience you have, and they have absolutely no idea that there is a difference between a mainframe and a PC running Linux.
Heck, that's more experience than you need for some types of projects :). I am not saying that you should try and help Tom Lane with PostgreSQL internals. Start on something simpler. For example, create (and share) your own Zope Product (they are pretty easy to write, plus you'll learn Python).
No, I got your point, and I feel your pain. I have had to scramble a bit myself recently.
The worst part is that things are likely to get worse before they get better. Fortunately for you most of the Indian shops aren't targeting the mainframe, or COBOL for that matter. Your advantage is that you have 13 years of experience in big iron computing. You know what those bad boys get used for, and you know how to write software that runs the business. That's a huge advantage over most of the rest of us. The trick now is to move those skills to a more vibrant platform.
As someone who has lived outside the states I would certainly consider reputable non-U.S. doctors for non-emergency treatments. India, however, is quite a ways to go. Canada and Mexico would seem like much better choices.
My advice. If you really want to sling code then you are going to have to update your skills. My belief is that the least expensive way to do that is to pick a Free Software project that looks interesting and which you think might solve a real problem and pitch in. Not only does Free Software give you all of the software development tools that you could possibly need, but it also offers something even more important, source code.
You almost certainly have learned some stuff writing COBOL that you could apply to a Free Software project. At the very least you probably have some industry specific information that would be invaluable to somebody.
The fact of the matter is that you should move to UNIX/Windows, at the very least you should check out Linux, because IBM is pushing Linux on the mainframe pretty hard. The good news is that learning Linux doesn't require thousands of dollars worth of software investments.
They can't ship doctor jobs to India for the same reason they can't pick up my local McDonald's and ship it to India and expect to get the same clientelle. As much as I like McDonald's french fries I am not going to Bangalore to get them. Most of the really expensive medical stuff is stuff you do in an emergency, and flying me to India when I need a triple bypass (due to massive french fry consumption, do doubt) is not likely to solve the problem for anyone but the insurance company. I will almost certainly die in transit and then the insurance company can save themselves the cost of the operation.
On the other hand, I already know plenty of people that have gone to Canada for their laser eye surgery. However, with a little searching my wife was able to find a nearby U.S. doctor that had even better prices than were available in Canada.
I wouldn't even think about bribing a rottweiler with a steak that didn't weigh more than I do.
Slackware turns a profit the old-fashioned way, they keep their overhead extremely low. If Slackware has more than a handful of employees I would be shocked.
No, that is not correct. The Supreme Court's basic job is to strike down laws that are unconstitutional. They aren't supposed to create law, but merely interpret it.
Now, I would be the first to admit that the power to interpret law sometimes leaves the court with a great deal of wiggle room, but that is something else entirely.
My point is that the place to change laws is the legislature. If you don't like existing laws then talk to your congress-folk.
As much as I would like to see the length of copyright shortened I am glad that the court ruled the way that they did. As you said, the constitutional grounds for changing this law were tenuous. I am always skeptical of the idea of "legislating from the bench."