Perhaps you could print out this/. article, and show them just how much some techies dislike the thought of moving into management - this could be a shock to many of them; if they're motivated by money and "position" they may well think you are too.
If they insist, you could agree to do it on a trial or temporary basis. Instead of trying to manage for 20% of the time (which will be very difficult), agree to do it for a fixed period - say six months, or for the lifecycle of a particular project. Make them understand you're serious about this being temporary.
This gives you enough time to really get a feel for management, but gives you a way back into techiedom - "I said I'd try it for six months, and I meant it".
Given the current shortage of training^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H IT specialists nowadays, you should be in a good position to get a techie job back without having to leave. Remember, you're senior enough, and sufficiently well thought of to have been offered a move into management in the first place.
This doesn't directly concern me, since I'm not American, but...
Are there things which are particularly nasty about these bills, or is it just government bills in general that bring out this reaction ?
If it's the second, beware of crying wolf. If you complain about everything, then when you have something to really complain about (UCITA, DMCA, etc.) people will say "Ignore them, they're always complaining like this, whatever we try to do".
Mind you, if the US really needs a "Competitiveness in the 21st Century" act, why don't they do something about the fact that every high-tech US company in the 21st century will soon need a vast army of lawyers in order to do business, and big wadges of cash to pay each other's patents - cash that companies in other countries won't need to spend.
Technichally-speaking (well what else is/. for) a Digital Millennium Copyright Act wouldn't come into force for another 115 days...
Re:It's all about intensity ....
on
Lawsuits Suck
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· Score: 1
In response to point (1), many of the things we are against are removing freedoms for people in general, not just for "computer geeks". To get the support of non-techie people, the issues need to be presented in terms of issues they can understand, such as RMS's the right to read.
Another point to make in the US is why new laws are needed to "protect" computer companies when Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and others are widely known as the richest men in America, and 39 of the top 40 richest Americans under 40 are all techies. Where are all the sports stars ? Only Michael Jordan made it at number 40. Will the general public really support laws aimed at making them even more money ?
This article gives a good explanation of how patent laws in the US are being used to stifle innovation.
In particular:
"There are several ways companies can leverage their IP to create a distinct market advantage, Gross said. Companies should not only protect unique parts of their current technologies, but "patent in paths where their technology is headed," he said, thereby creating a competitive advantage."
"Gross also suggested that companies create patents with "an eye on infringement," to make sure that a patent can't be infringed and to make a company aware if one of its patents is being infringed upon. If a company feels it has the best technology or method in its field, it should not only patent that technology or method, but also the second-, third-, and fourth-best methods to ensure a competitive advantage, he said."
Please, America, feel free to screw up your own high-tech industries in the legal equivalent of the "Unix wars", but leave the rest of us out of it (i.e. don't try to push laws on us via WIPO, hoping nobody will notice).
- As well as being able to easily list the contents of a package (e.g. "rpm -ql..."), it would also be useful to be able to list the configuration files which would be changed.
- At the least, when configuration files are edited, the edits should be commented, the comment including the package ID and the date of the changes, and perhaps a closing "end-of-changes" comment. If possible, lines should be commented out, rather than removed, from config files.
- Better than the above, but more complex, would be to store old versions of modified config files in something like RCS-style ",v" files, so that old versions could be restored more easily (and "rcsdiff"s done, etc). I know rpm saves ".rpmsave" files, but to my knowledge multiple previous versions are not saved.
- Programs / systems to make more use of configuration directories (such as "/etc/profile.d" on Linux) so that packages can just add files to this directory, rather than having to append code to existing configuration files.
- Binary and source packages to be closely linked - binary packages could be thought of as something akin to Java byte code, source packages as Java source code.
- Package installation tools to allow an option for installation scripts to be viewed and edited if required (rather than just being blindly executed as root, with the security problems this causes, and the ability to trample over a special user configuration).
- An option for "nested" package installation, so that the installation program can install all packages which a specified package depends on (needing only a directory or URL where additional package files are located). Debian appears to do this pretty well (or so I'm told - I've never used Debian myself).
But how could you ever think up anti-patents to some of the ridiculous patents being applied for, such as this one by HP - applying for a patent for packing a computer in a box ? Apparently using one big box isn't obvious (not to HP, anyway).
Yes, but Bristol's dealings with Microsoft should have taught them that Damages 1.0 isn't worth having, and they need to wait for Damages 2.0 before they can do anything useful with it...
From the FAQ: "The first goal of the Tuneprint project is to develop an audio fingerprinting algorithm, that is to say, a computer program that can take a few seconds of music, calculate some kind of unique 'fingerprint' of that sound clip, and match the fingerprint against a database to determine the title and artist of the music the clip came from, as well as the time offset of the clip into the music"
I used to work for a company which was considering moving to The Great Stockport Lemon Squeezer a few years back. Some-one pointed out that the pyramid shape was great in that the higher level of management you were at, the higher up you would work in the building.
Unfortunately, they'd built it upside-down for the company's management structure.
I've always felt that a good indicator of whether a (commercial) project will succeed or not is the ratio of talented techies to technical also-rans. (Of course, there are many other factors as well, such as realistic goals and timescales, and good management).
A project will usually succeed if there are enough skillful hackers to "carry" the rest of the team. Why are there "also-rans" writing commercial software ? Well, it's a job, and often highly-paid too. Often people's circumstances change - keen hackers can lose the urge if other things take over in their lives - having kids, for example, or other personal issues. And bad management can be a hell of a demotivation. Also, let's face it, there are plenty of bullsh*tters in our industry.
But why is OSS better ? Because there are no (or at least much fewer also-rans). Many (most?) people write OSS software because it's enjoyable. People who enjoy coding are usually good at it. Are they good at it because they enjoy it, or do they enjoy it because they're good at it ? I don't know. But OSS, almost by its very nature, has attracted, and will continue to attract very good technical brains.
I'm not an expert (and I don't believe in the ideology), but I believe a certain Mr. Marx predicted the same thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he also said that people were powerless to stop it, except by starting a revolution.
Sorry - I should point out that the link above gives a particular point of view (one I happen to agree with), so it isn't a completely impartial sources of info.
In the UK, the recent RIP (Regulation of Investigatory Powers) Bill means that all ISPs will be forced to implement similar interception facilities (and to pay most of the cost for them, as well).
And if you encrypt your data, you will have to supply the decryption keys on demand, or face up to two years in jail. If you even tell some-one their internet usage is being (or has been) intercepted, you can face jail too.
One of the best sources of info for those interested is here.
BillG: Hey Steve, I keep getting sent other people's e-mail.
SteveB: Anything interesting ?
BillG: Well, there's a lot of rubbish, but there's also a lot of really great ways people have thought up of making lots of $$$$.
SteveB: Well we could do with a bit of help right now. Hey, why not get everyone to send us their e-mail ?
GillG: Great idea. Get some marketing guys to knock up some lame excuse for a strategy, call it something meaningless like.NET, and let's see if we can make the mug punters pay us money for it.
Disclaimer: The following is not really thought through - I'm really just thinking out loud.
It might be possible to set up something like this with a few hacks.
For anyone running their own nameserver (named, or whatever) this could be patched to use normal DNS in the majority of cases, and a seperate service in special cases (such as names ending in.alt, as one or two people have suggested).
For people who don't run their own nameservers (e.g. most windows users), perhaps simple ones could be written, with the same functionality. These could also be set up to do caching nameserving, which might help to actually speed up normal internet usage (slightly) - thus giving people an advantage to use them (and lessening the load on their ISP's DNS servers).
Then you could have some sort of centralised, napster-like service serving out second-level domain names (the bit before the.alt). Rather than serve MP3s, the central server(s) would serve the IP addresses of "second-level" servers registered to serve the second-level domain names they had "registered". This could be nested as deeply as you like,
Of course, you would need to come up with some sort of rules to stop name registration getting out of hand, but I'm sure this could be done somehow. Perhaps domains could be limited to one per IP address ? Perhaps domain names could be "aged" and then discarded after a time interval if the server set up to serve them is uncontactable for a period of time ?
It would be very useful, especially for Linux newbies, if an admin program such as this documented the changes it was about to make.
It's a long while back (memory's going), but I seem to remember AIX's system admin tool doing something like this (as well as having the excellent running man).
All it would need would be a small window listing the commands it would run to carry out a particular change, and a diff-style list of the changes to be applied to any config files.
This would help beginners find out what was going on "under the hood", and how the things they are configuring actually work - especially if an integrated help system was used, with easy access to context-sensitive help. No more digging around for the correct HOWTOs - learn what you need to learn, as you need it.
Experienced system admins would be able to use this to check that they agreed with the changes being made (perhaps with some sort of "edit" option if they disagree with the proposed changes in some way). It would also be useful for the admin tool writers themselves, as experienced SAs might be able to suggest any better ways of doing what the tool is trying to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you could print out this /. article, and show them just how much some techies dislike the thought of moving into management - this could be a shock to many of them; if they're motivated by money and "position" they may well think you are too.
If they insist, you could agree to do it on a trial or temporary basis. Instead of trying to manage for 20% of the time (which will be very difficult), agree to do it for a fixed period - say six months, or for the lifecycle of a particular project. Make them understand you're serious about this being temporary.
This gives you enough time to really get a feel for management, but gives you a way back into techiedom - "I said I'd try it for six months, and I meant it".
Given the current shortage of training^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H IT specialists nowadays, you should be in a good position to get a techie job back without having to leave. Remember, you're senior enough, and sufficiently well thought of to have been offered a move into management in the first place.
Oops, guess I should have looked down a few posts and checked on the poster names.
This doesn't directly concern me, since I'm not American, but...
Are there things which are particularly nasty about these bills, or is it just government bills in general that bring out this reaction ?
If it's the second, beware of crying wolf. If you complain about everything, then when you have something to really complain about (UCITA, DMCA, etc.) people will say "Ignore them, they're always complaining like this, whatever we try to do".
Mind you, if the US really needs a "Competitiveness in the 21st Century" act, why don't they do something about the fact that every high-tech US company in the 21st century will soon need a vast army of lawyers in order to do business, and big wadges of cash to pay each other's patents - cash that companies in other countries won't need to spend.
Technichally-speaking (well what else is /. for) a Digital Millennium Copyright Act wouldn't come into force for another 115 days...
Another point to make in the US is why new laws are needed to "protect" computer companies when Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and others are widely known as the richest men in America, and 39 of the top 40 richest Americans under 40 are all techies. Where are all the sports stars ? Only Michael Jordan made it at number 40. Will the general public really support laws aimed at making them even more money ?
In particular:
"There are several ways companies can leverage their IP to create a distinct market advantage, Gross said. Companies should not only protect unique parts of their current technologies, but "patent in paths where their technology is headed," he said, thereby creating a competitive advantage."
"Gross also suggested that companies create patents with "an eye on infringement," to make sure that a patent can't be infringed and to make a company aware if one of its patents is being infringed upon. If a company feels it has the best technology or method in its field, it should not only patent that technology or method, but also the second-, third-, and fourth-best methods to ensure a competitive advantage, he said."
Please, America, feel free to screw up your own high-tech industries in the legal equivalent of the "Unix wars", but leave the rest of us out of it (i.e. don't try to push laws on us via WIPO, hoping nobody will notice).
- As well as being able to easily list the contents of a package (e.g. "rpm -ql ..."), it would also be useful to be able to list the configuration files which would be changed.
- At the least, when configuration files are edited, the edits should be commented, the comment including the package ID and the date of the changes, and perhaps a closing "end-of-changes" comment. If possible, lines should be commented out, rather than removed, from config files.
- Better than the above, but more complex, would be to store old versions of modified config files in something like RCS-style ",v" files, so that old versions could be restored more easily (and "rcsdiff"s done, etc). I know rpm saves ".rpmsave" files, but to my knowledge multiple previous versions are not saved.
- Programs / systems to make more use of configuration directories (such as "/etc/profile.d" on Linux) so that packages can just add files to this directory, rather than having to append code to existing configuration files.
- Binary and source packages to be closely linked - binary packages could be thought of as something akin to Java byte code, source packages as Java source code.
- Package installation tools to allow an option for installation scripts to be viewed and edited if required (rather than just being blindly executed as root, with the security problems this causes, and the ability to trample over a special user configuration).
- An option for "nested" package installation, so that the installation program can install all packages which a specified package depends on (needing only a directory or URL where additional package files are located). Debian appears to do this pretty well (or so I'm told - I've never used Debian myself).
Is this much computing power really needed to run the next version of Office ?
And how come YOU pay THEM ?
But how could you ever think up anti-patents to some of the ridiculous patents being applied for, such as this one by HP - applying for a patent for packing a computer in a box ? Apparently using one big box isn't obvious (not to HP, anyway).
Yes, but Bristol's dealings with Microsoft should have taught them that Damages 1.0 isn't worth having, and they need to wait for Damages 2.0 before they can do anything useful with it...
I'll name that tune in seven...
Unfortunately, they'd built it upside-down for the company's management structure.
A project will usually succeed if there are enough skillful hackers to "carry" the rest of the team. Why are there "also-rans" writing commercial software ? Well, it's a job, and often highly-paid too. Often people's circumstances change - keen hackers can lose the urge if other things take over in their lives - having kids, for example, or other personal issues. And bad management can be a hell of a demotivation. Also, let's face it, there are plenty of bullsh*tters in our industry.
But why is OSS better ? Because there are no (or at least much fewer also-rans). Many (most?) people write OSS software because it's enjoyable. People who enjoy coding are usually good at it. Are they good at it because they enjoy it, or do they enjoy it because they're good at it ? I don't know. But OSS, almost by its very nature, has attracted, and will continue to attract very good technical brains.
-
Linux - the Unix defragmentation tool.
...or write English.
I'm not an expert (and I don't believe in the ideology), but I believe a certain Mr. Marx predicted the same thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he also said that people were powerless to stop it, except by starting a revolution.
Oh no, the Hubble telescope's really a mini death-star.
Oh my God, they killed the comet - you bastards.
Did he really think he had the sole world-wide rights to this word ?
Serves him right for using such a pretentious name.
Hey, does this mean I can now CUT-AND-PASTE themes between KDE and GNOME ?
Sorry - I should point out that the link above gives a particular point of view (one I happen to agree with), so it isn't a completely impartial sources of info.
And if you encrypt your data, you will have to supply the decryption keys on demand, or face up to two years in jail. If you even tell some-one their internet usage is being (or has been) intercepted, you can face jail too.
One of the best sources of info for those interested is here.
LinuxToday is good for (mostly) Linux news.
Would installing ReiserFS give you Journalistic Integrity ?
BillG: Hey Steve, I keep getting sent other people's e-mail.
.NET, and let's see if we can make the mug punters pay us money for it.
SteveB: Anything interesting ?
BillG: Well, there's a lot of rubbish, but there's also a lot of really great ways people have thought up of making lots of $$$$.
SteveB: Well we could do with a bit of help right now. Hey, why not get everyone to send us their e-mail ?
GillG: Great idea. Get some marketing guys to knock up some lame excuse for a strategy, call it something meaningless like
Disclaimer: The following is not really thought through - I'm really just thinking out loud.
.alt, as one or two people have suggested).
.alt). Rather than serve MP3s, the central server(s) would serve the IP addresses of "second-level" servers registered to serve the second-level domain names they had "registered". This could be nested as deeply as you like,
It might be possible to set up something like this with a few hacks.
For anyone running their own nameserver (named, or whatever) this could be patched to use normal DNS in the majority of cases, and a seperate service in special cases (such as names ending in
For people who don't run their own nameservers (e.g. most windows users), perhaps simple ones could be written, with the same functionality. These could also be set up to do caching nameserving, which might help to actually speed up normal internet usage (slightly) - thus giving people an advantage to use them (and lessening the load on their ISP's DNS servers).
Then you could have some sort of centralised, napster-like service serving out second-level domain names (the bit before the
Of course, you would need to come up with some sort of rules to stop name registration getting out of hand, but I'm sure this could be done somehow. Perhaps domains could be limited to one per IP address ? Perhaps domain names could be "aged" and then discarded after a time interval if the server set up to serve them is uncontactable for a period of time ?
It would be very useful, especially for Linux newbies, if an admin program such as this documented the changes it was about to make.
It's a long while back (memory's going), but I seem to remember AIX's system admin tool doing something like this (as well as having the excellent running man).
All it would need would be a small window listing the commands it would run to carry out a particular change, and a diff-style list of the changes to be applied to any config files.
This would help beginners find out what was going on "under the hood", and how the things they are configuring actually work - especially if an integrated help system was used, with easy access to context-sensitive help. No more digging around for the correct HOWTOs - learn what you need to learn, as you need it.
Experienced system admins would be able to use this to check that they agreed with the changes being made (perhaps with some sort of "edit" option if they disagree with the proposed changes in some way). It would also be useful for the admin tool writers themselves, as experienced SAs might be able to suggest any better ways of doing what the tool is trying to do.