It is hard for the employee to apply specific knowledge of something like Windows or PhotoShop to another project.
More importantly it's easy for an OSS programmer to apply what he knows about the Linux kernel from one job to his next job where the Linux kernel is the topic of programing work.
Knowledge of how to deal with specific applications (and in some sense O/Ses qualify) is always more limited than knowing how things are really done in a specific environment and being able to both diagnose and fix failure and write new code in said environment.
The former, with limited knowledge can always be outsourced to somewhere where wages are less and increase profit. The latter, cannot.
If you get a job paying $X (gross of taxes, net of pretax allowed benefits) that costs your employer $X+government overhead+company overhead[1], your employer expects in return at least $X+government overhead+company overhead of value from your labor.
[1] Basic cost accounting 101. The government requires matching employer payents on certains taxes. You require space for your work area and resources made available to do your work. None of this grows on trees, though some Presidential candidates in the US may imply they do.
That's a brilliant summary, but you left out one thing - Open Source project leaders also write letters of recommendation on behalf of college n00b^H^H^H^Hformal job history challenged contributors for getting into the workforce.
I did that when I was Mr. XEmacs. I cannot believe I am the only one who does it. My biggest problem with doing letters of recommendation or being a reference was that I wanted to say "This guy is awesome, hire him or else!" but that's neither the most polite or wisest thing to say.
Think of it as karma and the time you spend devoted to supporting Open Source projects will benefit you (and everyone else) manyfold in the future.
Does Feinstein really agree with your POV? Does Liberman? Now you can know.
Di Fi represents only herself and her husband, though no one seems to care. I doubt putting up yet another website will change matters much. California is much changed from the days I grew up with Governor Reagan at the helm.
Senators are pretty much tenured for life, unless they do something really stupid like Larry Craig themselves. Wide Stance's "crime" was being registered Republican not Democrat and NOT just for playing footsie in the bathroom...
This is supposed to be a representative government,...
True, the US is a Republic not a Democracy.
but how long have we been left wondering who, exactly, they were representing?
At least my lifetime, but who's counting?
Following these suggestions would bring about the transparency we need to help eliminate the (perceived) corruption and cronyism in our government.
Nope.
I have one single suggestion that would instantly result in better government:
If a representative wishes to vote AYE on a bill, he/she must pass a test that proves that he/she has read the bill and understands it.
Think about it. We really do not willy-nilly passage of a barrage of laws so much as applying some actually thinking as to how they all fit together.
Does anyone else remember the promised slowdown by a US airline carrier in the 1980s? (I think it was United, but I'm not sure). The airline employees instead of striking, promised to obey every law to the letter, which of course, stopped the system.
He is something like a blind fanatic. He doesn't really understand what he is advocating and makes the rest of us who advocate more or less the same thing[1] look bad, but prefer to coexist peacefully (ie without name calling, etc.) or prefer to coexist without offering blind obedience to Richard Stallman.
In the only personal conversation I ever had with Richard Stallman, he told me that even though XEmacs was faithfully GPL, he must declare war on me (being the absolute dictator of XEmacs at the time) because the copyrights were not all assigned to him.
I do not find this to be useful behavior.
Many others of us do not find this to be useful behavior either.
Please note for the record also, that it was under my watch at XEmacs that official native (ie not Cygwin) Microsoft Windows support was added.
[1] My preferred platform for anything is Unix-based and preferably Linux. I also have great respect for the BSDs and like what Apple has done on top of one of them.
Too bad no one in their right mind is going to leave tried and true LAMP and desktop OS that work. RMS, once again, was right, doubly so in this case, the user surrenders their software freedom and their data when they use Windows 7 in the M$ Vapor.
Of all the reasons to dislike Microsoft, this is not a good one.
It's not like there's going to be any market compulsion as on the desktop where they have to arrange to pay people to use MS Windows (the common argument here is that the fees paid by crapware installed on OEM preinstalls more than covers OS costs charged by Microsoft for the O/S).
Oh, and only an idiot writes stupid things like `M$'.
If you had half a clue, you would realize that the EVUL EVUL EVUL M$ had stolen^H^H^H^H^H^Hreused Richard Stallman's only good idea as regards to an Emaacs style architecture but copied it so faithfully that they had reproduced all the same problems (see my historical posts here on Slashdot and journal entries for further documentation), or just fucking google for it.
How will you flame(stalk) me back, a man who refuses to ever do paid work on Microsoft Windows and whose primary workstation at work runs RHEL "Linux", not "GNU/Linux" or "Linux/GNU", and a man who has never owned a machine with a licensed copy of Microsoft anything (proudly Unix and later Linux at home since 1985).
Oh wait, I bought my wife a Microsoft Windows XP notebook in a fit of madness. She hated it because it crashed so much and I quickly had it replaced with a Macbook (which she loves and which sadly was not available at the time we got the Neo XP notebook).
You're an idiot twitter and if anything, I would suspect _you_ of being a Microsoft shill because to anyone with more than half a braincell (sadly as a blonde guy, that's the hand I was dealt), you just provoke the opposite reaction as to what you seem to be trying to promote.
I apologize to everyone except twitter. Mod this the flamebait that it is and move on.
I, for sure, wouldn't hire anyone who did that, nor would I want to apply for a job where they required such applications. It's a sign of cluelessness.
I have very strong opinions on what kind of work I will accept - I refuse to do Microsoft Windows, but even I do not go that far. I've been in the job market in the US and Japan and there's a term for someone who refuses to make available a resume in.doc format - permanently unemployed.
Sad to say.
Fortunately, monster.com will let you enter a resume into their system and then let you download a copy in.doc format. I have no idea what it looks like in Microsoft Word, nor do I care.
You should have sent a PDF instead and avoid all the problems.
Complete waste of time if you're going through an agency.
Heh. I've actually dealt with a recruiter clueless enough to request a PDF, get one and tell me, oh wait, that's not what I wanted, can you send me a.doc...
I only ever hear bad things about recruitment agents. I really don't know why more companies don't advertise directly.
I have had mixed experiences with recruiters. My last two positions were obtained via recruiter. I suspect the reason that so many use recruiters is that they hire people on contract first and only "promote" to regular employee those who work out.
My karma can take a beating so I don't care, but it irks me that there are so many MSCEs with such low self esteem that they would mod any comment unfavorable to Microsoft, no matter how valid, reasoned, concise, and polite, as "flamebait" and "troll".
So can mine, and you are correct, though I'm not sure about the MSCE part. Most of the downmods ("overrated" usually) take place days after the article was posted when few people are reading.
Step one: US and UK (and probably several other) governments get together and decide this is a good idea. Step two: Both governments go back to their people and say "This is to facilitate entry into $otherCountry."
The police walking up to you on the street and asking, "Papers, please" used to be...
I want a show of hands of everyone who has experienced that (and why).
Bobby Fischer (who was certainly not without issues) was routinely stopped in San Marino and hassled because he did not carry id and the requisite US$20 in his pocket. While I was a Caltech student, I often went jogging through San Marino sans ID, sans money and never had a problem, and I probably looked as ragged as Bobby Fischer in those days.
I was also part of the Fleming cannon restoration team in the early 1980s and a large group of us dragged a war cannon through San Marino in the wee hours (with permission) and were not hassled.
Do you really want to live in a place where there's such a thing as "a perfectly legal stop to verify documentation"?
That wasn't what he was describing.
That's not the America I grew up in.
In the US I grew up in (starting in the 60s), we were always stopped at the CA/AZ border, occasionally asked questions about transporting fruits and other stuff like, but then waved through.
Sounds like it hasn't changed much, in that respect.
How about the fact that the 640K limit was actually a limitation of the hardware.
That is revisionist truth. It is true that the IBM PCs memory mapped their video card memory at 640KB. It is also true that (of the docs I read at the time) PC DOS manuals recommended using DOS calls for I/O instead of applications diddling with memory themselves. DOS, however, was not much of an OS and applications were allowed to diddle with the video card memory directly.
In other words, it was the same sort of situation with regards to installation of programs - they ignored guidelines, but since the guidelines were not enforced (until Microsoft Vista) no one cared.
The 640KB "limitation" was due to misguided programmers poking directly into video card memory. A stupid practice at best, but standard practice at the time and ignored by PC DOS for "performance" reasons, so it flourished.
I laid out memory so the bottom 640K was general purpose RAM and the upper 384 I reserved for video and ROM, and things like that. That is why they talk about the 640K limit. It is actually a limit, not of the software, in any way, shape, or form, it is the limit of the microprocessor.
Only to the dimwitted... Notice also how he takes credit for IBM's system design.
Why did he default in the Berg lawsuit? What is he trying to hide?
If they showed a guy from factcheck.org the real thing, why would they not produce it for a US court?
Just asking. We peasants have to jump through hoops to prove our nationality just to obtain the privilege of paying taxes. Why is this guy Obama so reticent about producing his papers?
My own opinion is that among the papers Berg demanded in court would include documentation that Obama was declared a Muslim in Indonesian government paperwork (I find it inconceivable that he could not have been - there is one word for the religion of a wife and children of a Muslim man, Muslim). Which ought not be a problem, except that he covered it up. Dick Nixon did the same and was booted out of office.
Really?! Because I thought here in the UK, one of the main stated reasons they started introducing RFID passports was to facilitate entry to the United States!
Can you find a link to some reference for that and get back to me? I'll do likewise.
Oh God! I love the smell of astroturf in the morning, especially coming from a brand new user.
Even the (disputed) reports of Ballmer throwing a chair never indicated he threw it at anybody, merely "across the room, hitting a table in his office."
Hmmm, astroturf... "disputed", huh?
Please, attack Microsoft on legitimate issues (e.g. prior extreme anticompetitive behavior, and incomplete reform), not pointless ad hominem attacks.
More astroturf. When are you guys going to stop lying about the patents you're going to sue us for, but will not tell us what they are?
I never used to care much about Microsoft, always considering them a toy system that no one in his or her right mind would ever use, but I kept that opinion to myself. I also went out of my way to support the guys who wanted a native XEmacs on Microsoft Windows NT.
Since you have declared war[1], I will not ignore it. Stop attacking us, ShadowRangerRIT Microsoft dude. We're not a bunch of spineless John McCains and we will fight back. Microsoft is NOT the innocent party here and you have done things well beyond those you listed.
[1] Rigged benchmarks in the 90s, funding SCOs bogus lawsuit, your totally fictional Linux to Microsoft "case studies",...
Oh yeah. Nothing to worry about. One of the main stated reasons they started introducing these things was to facilitate entry to Great Britain. I've never been to Europe, have no planned trips there for maybe the rest of my life. Wonderful.
Another danger is that the tags can be read from as far as 150 feet away in some situations, so criminals could read them without being detected.
s/criminals/kidnappers/ which IS an issue in places I travel. Those RFID thingies shout out, "I'm an American citizen, kidnap me!".
Although the tags don't contain personal information, they could be used to track a person's movements through ongoing surveillance, they said.
See previous comment.
Though there's no reason for panic, "Our hearts should start to beat a little faster," Kohno said.
Bwahahahaha. Can I please have my paper only passport back, please? It's for my safety and think of my children.
Slashdot Mirror
It is hard for the employee to apply specific knowledge of something like Windows or PhotoShop to another project.
More importantly it's easy for an OSS programmer to apply what he knows about the Linux kernel from one job to his next job where the Linux kernel is the topic of programing work.
Knowledge of how to deal with specific applications (and in some sense O/Ses qualify) is always more limited than knowing how things are really done in a specific environment and being able to both diagnose and fix failure and write new code in said environment.
The former, with limited knowledge can always be outsourced to somewhere where wages are less and increase profit. The latter, cannot.
If you get a job paying $X (gross of taxes, net of pretax allowed benefits) that costs your employer $X+government overhead+company overhead[1], your employer expects in return at least $X+government overhead+company overhead of value from your labor.
[1] Basic cost accounting 101. The government requires matching employer payents on certains taxes. You require space for your work area and resources made available to do your work. None of this grows on trees, though some Presidential candidates in the US may imply they do.
That's a brilliant summary, but you left out one thing - Open Source project leaders also write letters of recommendation on behalf of college n00b^H^H^H^Hformal job history challenged contributors for getting into the workforce.
I did that when I was Mr. XEmacs. I cannot believe I am the only one who does it. My biggest problem with doing letters of recommendation or being a reference was that I wanted to say "This guy is awesome, hire him or else!" but that's neither the most polite or wisest thing to say.
Think of it as karma and the time you spend devoted to supporting Open Source projects will benefit you (and everyone else) manyfold in the future.
Does Feinstein really agree with your POV? Does Liberman? Now you can know.
Di Fi represents only herself and her husband, though no one seems to care. I doubt putting up yet another website will change matters much. California is much changed from the days I grew up with Governor Reagan at the helm.
Senators are pretty much tenured for life, unless they do something really stupid like Larry Craig themselves. Wide Stance's "crime" was being registered Republican not Democrat and NOT just for playing footsie in the bathroom ...
This is supposed to be a representative government, ...
True, the US is a Republic not a Democracy.
but how long have we been left wondering who, exactly, they were representing?
At least my lifetime, but who's counting?
Following these suggestions would bring about the transparency we need to help eliminate the (perceived) corruption and cronyism in our government.
Nope.
I have one single suggestion that would instantly result in better government:
If a representative wishes to vote AYE on a bill, he/she must pass a test that proves that he/she has read the bill and understands it.
Think about it. We really do not willy-nilly passage of a barrage of laws so much as applying some actually thinking as to how they all fit together.
Does anyone else remember the promised slowdown by a US airline carrier in the 1980s? (I think it was United, but I'm not sure). The airline employees instead of striking, promised to obey every law to the letter, which of course, stopped the system.
Wanna read something scary? Pick any one of the above.
Am I missing something? Those are all positive things.
Or did I miss your sarcasm tag?
Bonus points will be awarded if they submit the code in Perl, Assembly, or FORTRAN.
Bonus points if the same source works in 3 or more languages, see http://www0.us.ioccc.org/1986/applin.c
Please see my latest Journal entry.
He is something like a blind fanatic. He doesn't really understand what he is advocating and makes the rest of us who advocate more or less the same thing[1] look bad, but prefer to coexist peacefully (ie without name calling, etc.) or prefer to coexist without offering blind obedience to Richard Stallman.
In the only personal conversation I ever had with Richard Stallman, he told me that even though XEmacs was faithfully GPL, he must declare war on me (being the absolute dictator of XEmacs at the time) because the copyrights were not all assigned to him.
I do not find this to be useful behavior.
Many others of us do not find this to be useful behavior either.
Please note for the record also, that it was under my watch at XEmacs that official native (ie not Cygwin) Microsoft Windows support was added.
[1] My preferred platform for anything is Unix-based and preferably Linux. I also have great respect for the BSDs and like what Apple has done on top of one of them.
Word up, the trolltard just added you to his lame ass list.
Heh. I suppose I should be honored.
Thanks for the heads up.
Too bad no one in their right mind is going to leave tried and true LAMP and desktop OS that work. RMS, once again, was right, doubly so in this case, the user surrenders their software freedom and their data when they use Windows 7 in the M$ Vapor.
Of all the reasons to dislike Microsoft, this is not a good one.
It's not like there's going to be any market compulsion as on the desktop where they have to arrange to pay people to use MS Windows (the common argument here is that the fees paid by crapware installed on OEM preinstalls more than covers OS costs charged by Microsoft for the O/S).
Oh, and only an idiot writes stupid things like `M$'.
If you had half a clue, you would realize that the EVUL EVUL EVUL M$ had stolen^H^H^H^H^H^Hreused Richard Stallman's only good idea as regards to an Emaacs style architecture but copied it so faithfully that they had reproduced all the same problems (see my historical posts here on Slashdot and journal entries for further documentation), or just fucking google for it.
How will you flame(stalk) me back, a man who refuses to ever do paid work on Microsoft Windows and whose primary workstation at work runs RHEL "Linux", not "GNU/Linux" or "Linux/GNU", and a man who has never owned a machine with a licensed copy of Microsoft anything (proudly Unix and later Linux at home since 1985).
Oh wait, I bought my wife a Microsoft Windows XP notebook in a fit of madness. She hated it because it crashed so much and I quickly had it replaced with a Macbook (which she loves and which sadly was not available at the time we got the Neo XP notebook).
You're an idiot twitter and if anything, I would suspect _you_ of being a Microsoft shill because to anyone with more than half a braincell (sadly as a blonde guy, that's the hand I was dealt), you just provoke the opposite reaction as to what you seem to be trying to promote.
I apologize to everyone except twitter. Mod this the flamebait that it is and move on.
I, for sure, wouldn't hire anyone who did that, nor would I want to apply for a job where they required such applications. It's a sign of cluelessness.
I have very strong opinions on what kind of work I will accept - I refuse to do Microsoft Windows, but even I do not go that far. I've been in the job market in the US and Japan and there's a term for someone who refuses to make available a resume in .doc format - permanently unemployed.
Sad to say.
Fortunately, monster.com will let you enter a resume into their system and then let you download a copy in .doc format. I have no idea what it looks like in Microsoft Word, nor do I care.
You should have sent a PDF instead and avoid all the problems.
Complete waste of time if you're going through an agency.
Heh. I've actually dealt with a recruiter clueless enough to request a PDF, get one and tell me, oh wait, that's not what I wanted, can you send me a .doc ...
I only ever hear bad things about recruitment agents. I really don't know why more companies don't advertise directly.
I have had mixed experiences with recruiters. My last two positions were obtained via recruiter. I suspect the reason that so many use recruiters is that they hire people on contract first and only "promote" to regular employee those who work out.
In other words: any idiot on your network can gain admin access to any attached Windows-based system with file-sharing enabled.
Most appear to be and have they ever considered the consequences of such a setup in any public area like an airport, hotel, etc.?
My karma can take a beating so I don't care, but it irks me that there are so many MSCEs with such low self esteem that they would mod any comment unfavorable to Microsoft, no matter how valid, reasoned, concise, and polite, as "flamebait" and "troll".
So can mine, and you are correct, though I'm not sure about the MSCE part. Most of the downmods ("overrated" usually) take place days after the article was posted when few people are reading.
I find it amusing that we geeks can be so anal retentive about redundancy, spelling and grammar, then invent words like "boxen"
Boxen is derived from "Vaxen", meaning multiple VAX minicomputers. That's us poking fun of those ignorant of the past.
Google it yourself or take a look at:
http://groups.google.com/group/net.nlang/browse_thread/thread/af64899cb03ec57d/f09204b36c3cb213?lnk=raot&fwc=1&pli=1
and "borked".
That's us making fun of misspellers. Nothing to see here, move along.
Oh and you must be new here.
- your friendly local spelling and grammar nazi
Step one: US and UK (and probably several other) governments get together and decide this is a good idea.
Step two: Both governments go back to their people and say "This is to facilitate entry into $otherCountry."
You appear to be correct. :-(
The police walking up to you on the street and asking, "Papers, please" used to be ...
I want a show of hands of everyone who has experienced that (and why).
Bobby Fischer (who was certainly not without issues) was routinely stopped in San Marino and hassled because he did not carry id and the requisite US$20 in his pocket. While I was a Caltech student, I often went jogging through San Marino sans ID, sans money and never had a problem, and I probably looked as ragged as Bobby Fischer in those days.
I was also part of the Fleming cannon restoration team in the early 1980s and a large group of us dragged a war cannon through San Marino in the wee hours (with permission) and were not hassled.
Citations, please.
Do you really want to live in a place where there's such a thing as "a perfectly legal stop to verify documentation"?
That wasn't what he was describing.
That's not the America I grew up in.
In the US I grew up in (starting in the 60s), we were always stopped at the CA/AZ border, occasionally asked questions about transporting fruits and other stuff like, but then waved through.
Sounds like it hasn't changed much, in that respect.
How about the fact that the 640K limit was actually a limitation of the hardware.
That is revisionist truth. It is true that the IBM PCs memory mapped their video card memory at 640KB. It is also true that (of the docs I read at the time) PC DOS manuals recommended using DOS calls for I/O instead of applications diddling with memory themselves. DOS, however, was not much of an OS and applications were allowed to diddle with the video card memory directly.
In other words, it was the same sort of situation with regards to installation of programs - they ignored guidelines, but since the guidelines were not enforced (until Microsoft Vista) no one cared.
The 640KB "limitation" was due to misguided programmers poking directly into video card memory. A stupid practice at best, but standard practice at the time and ignored by PC DOS for "performance" reasons, so it flourished.
It was NOT a hardware limitation.
I found a quote that was much worse:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/gates.htm
I laid out memory so the bottom 640K was general purpose RAM and the upper 384 I reserved for video and ROM, and things like that. That is why they talk about the 640K limit. It is actually a limit, not of the software, in any way, shape, or form, it is the limit of the microprocessor.
Only to the dimwitted ... Notice also how he takes credit for IBM's system design.
Why did he default in the Berg lawsuit? What is he trying to hide?
If they showed a guy from factcheck.org the real thing, why would they not produce it for a US court?
Just asking. We peasants have to jump through hoops to prove our nationality just to obtain the privilege of paying taxes. Why is this guy Obama so reticent about producing his papers?
My own opinion is that among the papers Berg demanded in court would include documentation that Obama was declared a Muslim in Indonesian government paperwork (I find it inconceivable that he could not have been - there is one word for the religion of a wife and children of a Muslim man, Muslim). Which ought not be a problem, except that he covered it up. Dick Nixon did the same and was booted out of office.
Really?! Because I thought here in the UK, one of the main stated reasons they started introducing RFID passports was to facilitate entry to the United States!
Can you find a link to some reference for that and get back to me? I'll do likewise.
This announces the bloody thing, but isn't complete: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/05-21284.htm
Oh God! I love the smell of astroturf in the morning, especially coming from a brand new user.
Even the (disputed) reports of Ballmer throwing a chair never indicated he threw it at anybody, merely "across the room, hitting a table in his office."
Hmmm, astroturf... "disputed", huh?
Please, attack Microsoft on legitimate issues (e.g. prior extreme anticompetitive behavior, and incomplete reform), not pointless ad hominem attacks.
More astroturf. When are you guys going to stop lying about the patents you're going to sue us for, but will not tell us what they are?
I never used to care much about Microsoft, always considering them a toy system that no one in his or her right mind would ever use, but I kept that opinion to myself. I also went out of my way to support the guys who wanted a native XEmacs on Microsoft Windows NT.
Since you have declared war[1], I will not ignore it. Stop attacking us, ShadowRangerRIT Microsoft dude. We're not a bunch of spineless John McCains and we will fight back. Microsoft is NOT the innocent party here and you have done things well beyond those you listed.
[1] Rigged benchmarks in the 90s, funding SCOs bogus lawsuit, your totally fictional Linux to Microsoft "case studies", ...
Last I checked (at the risk of providing an opening for a moronic joke), MS is not staffed by immature 11 year olds.
Staff or management? See my malware journal entry. Somebody is immature in there.
The question is...what _was_ the purpose?
The main stated reason was to facilitate entry of US citizens into Great Britain. It was also supposed to be "more secure".
Sigh. See my earlier post in this article how kidnapper convenient these things are.
Oh yeah. Nothing to worry about. One of the main stated reasons they started introducing these things was to facilitate entry to Great Britain. I've never been to Europe, have no planned trips there for maybe the rest of my life. Wonderful.
Another danger is that the tags can be read from as far as 150 feet away in some situations, so criminals could read them without being detected.
s/criminals/kidnappers/ which IS an issue in places I travel. Those RFID thingies shout out, "I'm an American citizen, kidnap me!".
Although the tags don't contain personal information, they could be used to track a person's movements through ongoing surveillance, they said.
See previous comment.
Though there's no reason for panic, "Our hearts should start to beat a little faster," Kohno said.
Bwahahahaha. Can I please have my paper only passport back, please? It's for my safety and think of my children.