Tyde could not explain why there wasn't more synergy, not less, between Linuxcare, the service company, and Turbolinux, the systems management house, than there was between Linuxcare and Turbolinux, the non-neutral distribution. He said the pair needed "the right mix of products and services and that marketing issues needed to be worked out." He seemed relatively unaware of Turbo's plans to change direction as though that hadn't factored in the decision.
It's sad that business people can't be as forward-looking as those of us in technology. I believe that everyone here can see the truth of the above excerpt from the mentioned article. How management types can miss the sorts of opportunities that will save their companies, merely because they want to remain in control, is unbelievable to me - (ok, maybe not unbelievable, but just pathetic).
People can attempt to patent any technology they see fit. Weather they succeed is based on the expertise of the patent clerks that review the application.
One of the other goals is, of course to get a broadly reaching patent. At any point a judge could rule that the scope of a patent is too broad and infringement would be penalized to a lesser extent. For this reason, it is in the best interest of companies to be careful about how far they reach to get a vary broad patent on a whole class of technology.
Also, I can't relally blame Rambus for trying to take back some of the ground they lost over the past two decades as memory became a commodity. This is just good business.
--CTH --
Re:Now OS's easy to crack
on
Cracking OSX
·
· Score: 1
Trolling was not my intent. I'm merely pointing out that after 20 years of UNIX develpment, I hope the developers of MacOS X took what was learned, into account. It's a grat OK, as far as I've seen. I just wonder about the security considerations that went into it's design, in light of the treditional MAC userbase, which are typically not those, expert in mattars of network security, or who would demand that such consideration be taken when designing the OS.
--CTH --
Now OS's easy to crack
on
Cracking OSX
·
· Score: 3
There's something to be said for running a 20 year old unix with thousnds of patches and fixes.
I'd hope most of the things learned in those 20 years went into the development of MacOS X, but we shall soon see.
Technology companies have had a business strategy of working their employees until the burn out, for years. It doesn't matter if it's a doc com that you have a stake in or a monsterous existing and stable company.
It seems to me that this became a trend after the stabilization of the computer science coriculum at universities. Every industry seems to go through this cycle. An industry like the computer industry gets a tremendour boost by, say, the introduction of the PC, and a half a deckage goes by without there being an academic curiculum availagle to churn out reasonably qualified people, then as soon as that curiculum is in place, companies feel that they have a never ending supply of grist for the mill. The same is true for the rapid growth of the internet. With the advent of an easy interface to information (the web), growth is spurred, and qualified people are difficult to find. The academic community lags about half a decade behind, but as soon as a curiculim is developed - and I saw a TV ad for a trade school advertising "become a certified webmaster" yesterday - companies feel their is a never ending supply of talent out there.
This leads to the companies working people to the bone and relying on the academic world to keep churning them out., not only does this have a negitive impact on the people thrust into these jobs with little or no exxperience, but it affacts the highly qualified personel as well. They are now forced to compete with those less experienced, and less qualified, on equal footing - because of course management doesn't understand what it takes to manage these technologies anyway, so they don't make the distinction between tradeschool graduates and truly experienced personel.
Now lets see if I can reign this in and make it apply to Jason's situation. Well, there are those of us who truly enjoy our jobs and do the work for that reason alone. There are those whodo it because they have a large stake in the company, and there are those who do it to put food on the table. The problem is, the glut of truly unqualified people in the industry now, which are not recognized as un-qualified, allows companies to pressure everyone to do the 80 hour work week thing, just to compete.
Jason was trying to make a business work. Most of us who are doing the same, have seen it get infinately harder to move his company forward in the industry, due in most part to corporate inability to understand that this industry is just like any other. It is now stable. It will always be there, and truly qualified staff are just as hard to come by as in any other industry.
My best wishes to Jason in his new endevours, and congradulations on making a good choice!
I completely agree. Find someone who is qualified to answer this question in the legal sense. As for common business practice; Most companies I've ever worked for in an IS/IT capacity have dolled out 'pager pay' for on-call hours in addition to the full hourly rate paid in the event of a call. Typically the 'pager pay' rate was about 1/2 the hourly rate.
I am not a lawyer so don't take the below as fact unless you confirm it, but I believe it to be accurate
As for switching from hourly to salaried, you probably have more legal standing as an hourly employee, with regard to this issue, than if you were salaried (at least in a right-to-work state anyway).
Several skeptical comments have been made here that SAP is just trying to get the OSS community to clean up it's old code, or perhaps they have elected to dump their DB product and run their framework on 3rd party databases, an this is just a PR stunt to gain favor in the OSS community (or with those less skeptical anyway).
It seems to me that recently, OpenSourcing by large corporations, of old code, or of products neat their end-of-life, has become all too frequent. It has become a currency, and standard business strategy much like 'Corporate Giving' to charities. There are entire business consultancies built around the service of: "Hire us to manage your corporate giving program". These consultancies oparate mych like tax atourneys, coming up with donations to charities that make a company look good in it's chosen market segment; the donations being of a size appropriet to get the tergeted tax writeoff.
This suggests a business opportunity 'Open Sourcing Consultant'. This person could provide the service of developing a strategy for OpenSourcing old application code and making it look all spiffy and new, also developing press releases and planting stories on/. and other places to try to head off the backlash by the OSS comunity, to code dumping, and thus optimizing the PR benefit and tax status of getting rid of old application code.
It was always amazing to me how Realnetworks managed to convince the world that you had to use the PNM(Progressive Networks Media) protocol and their proprietary server to stream audio and video. I deployed some of their version 2 (vintage dark ages) server products - which cost us a fortune - and in the back of one of the technical references it mentions that little fact. "Oh, and if you're not actually streaming LIVE video content, then you can stream it via HTTP and you didn't have to spend XX thousands of dollars to buy our server. All you actually needed was the encoder. Sorry we didn't tell you before you bought".
Now to be perfectly honest, I can't blame (the then named) Progressive Networks for not making this fact known. It was my inexperience with streaming media at that time that led me astray. It does however indicate the underlying business model they were using was based entirely in a fabrication. As I recall, the server, and not the encoder was the expensive part of the package we were sold.
This is a big step forward. Support in Linux for Direct3D, through Wine is the first step in the obvious progression to establishing Linux native support for direct3D. Support through an emulation layer isn't the conclusion of the development effort. This is a basic tenet of Open Source. The work of TransGaming is a great contribution, but if they choose at some point to conclude their efforts, others will pick up where they left off. Eventually there will be native Linux support for direct3D. This I am certain of.
As for following Microsoft, implementing their API rather than promoting the potentially vary competitive OpenGL; well, open source operates with an entirely different market model than treditional corporate development. Some market segments such as enterprise IT equally receptive to open source as to treditional software. This allows open source solutions to thrive in that market space. Other market segments such as computer gaming, target a customer base which is generally less technically inclined, and in pursuit of entertainment rather than productivity solutions - I maintain that development of efficient solutions to productivity issues is one of the driving forces behind open source development -, anyway, the gaming customer base is seeking entertainment rather than technical solutions to technical problems. As such, the gaming market will always be dominated by the easiest to use OS, with the simplest setup, and the most readily (as percieved by novice customers) available commerecial support.
This is why game consoles are still as popular as they are. There was a time when game consoles were themost advanced and highly customized platforms for video game entertainment. With the advent of extremely high quality video cards, sound cards, and control devices for PCs over the past decade, it would be reasonable to assume that customers might choose to purchase a PC (which can now be priced competitively wihth some game consoles - as amazing as that is, in and of itself), which is more flexible, and by every reasonable measure, more useful, but, alas! - game consoles are still extremely popular. I maintain that this is because the gaming customer seeks simplicity and ease of use that (as much as it pains me to say) linux doesn't yet provide at this point, even with the great efforts of Ximian, and the Gnome Project, among others
The point of this rambling diatribe is that computer game designer will always favor the simplest to use platform, which is inherently, where the majority of gaming customers will be. This means, that regardless of the elogance or superiority OpenGL, the Linux community will need to adopt direct3D because, as others have pointed out, no programmer wants to port code from one platform to another especially when that requires a significant API change. TransGaming has done great work so far and their progress is indicative of great things to come.
Big Blue announces a multi-billion dollar program designed to create a world populated with self-managing computer networks that can ensure their own survival and stability.
The support agreement might work like this. Your company provides support for the binary distribution you provide (as part of the sale). If the customer wants support for a version compiled from source, the support is provided with an hourly fee. This way you have not completely elminated the possibility that a user would compile his own version, but you have reduced your liability. The installed version would have to be varified via MD5 checksum or some such mechanism prior to initiation of the support session.
The solution to every problem the user calls for support on is to re-install the binary distribution your company provides. That way it doesn't matter what the customer did to the source.
I've now worked with wireless network equipment from Cisco, Motorola, and Nortel Networks. I've found that none perform particularly well when using the Wired Equivelency Protocol (WEP) for security, although there aren't a whole lot of other options out there at preasant. Many companies rely simply on the uniqueness of the SSID used within their wireless lan. Some restrict access by MAC address. None of these methods are particularly secure. The only one that suggests making an effort at security is use of WEP.
There was a previous discussion on Slashdot about issues with the security of WEP. The articles out there on security holes in WEP are too numerous to list here.
What scares me most is the sheer lack of concern expressed by many network engineers, with regard to wireless. I've heard many times now, variants on "It's a wireless network. It's insecure by definition so why even make an attempt to secure it." Scary.
There's a wonderful essay by Harvey Reid, on business practices in the recording industry, which has shaped my opinion on many of these issues. It is now a bit old and may be slightly out of date at this point, but it's a good read. ASCAP & BMI -- Protectors of Artists or Shadowy Thieves?
Intel shifts to a new manufacturing process around the same time Clawhammer hits the market.
It's interesting to note that AMD is still about 3/4 of a release cycle ahead of Intel with regard to adoption of 0.13-micron manufacturing process. This is presumable a result of the relitive age of each companies manufacturing plants and the cost to retrofit rather than build new plants.
I can see the medical claims rolling in...
on
Surround Lights
·
· Score: 4
There may be patent claims, and other such things which always surround the introduction of a new and innovative product, but I'd actually expect to see medical claims against this company too, as movie studios and others develop 'light tracks' for your favorite movies, and game companies develop the same for your favorite first person shooters.
Epoleptics throughout the world beware poorly written 'light tracks' will send thousands into grand mal seizures. This technology will take time before it's perfected, just like those movie rides with theI-Max style screens and the moving audience seats. If the timing was just a little off, it would cause the viewers to loose their equilibrium and puke their guts out. IF this company isn't careful, the lighting effects they're making possible just might have similar impacts.
At this rate, it's only a matter of time until we see the federated states of Micro$oft. Children born in these states will not get a birth certificate. They'll get a Non-Disclosure Agreement. These states will be more democratic that any state of the United states, because everyone of any age will be able to vote a shareholder meetings.
It will be a peaceful society, because all matters of law and justice will be resolved centrally in King County, Washington.
The vast majority of employment is 'At Will' meaning there is no employment contract. There are still a few states in which employment is not 'at-will' meaning there is an infered contract between employer and employee. This presents all dorts of issues for HR depertments, but in 'Employment at will' states, the one year employment contract(most commonly seen in cases of recently hired college grads) is uninforcable. This is why such things as reimbersement for relocation expenses, etc. are commonly used as incentives to retain employees.
With regard to Intel specifically, there are significant expenses associated with hiring staff, staff turnover, therefor is undesirable, this is what makes it cost effective for Intel to choose to pay recently hired (but pre-start-date) employees, to forget the whole arrangelemt. As such, I expect that many if not all employees who accept the mentioned 'bonus' would in fact be laid off almost imediately, rather than given undesirable jobs, just because they (the new employees) have chosen to show up rather than take the hint.
Whis means I could play play Quake all day at work, and as long as I wasn't moving unconciously with each shot, my boss would never know.
I like it. Although I have reservations about pointing a laser (any laser) at my retina, for any extended period of time. ---
RFC821 obsolete but refer to it anyway...? Amazing
on
New Mail RFCs Released
·
· Score: 1
This issue was touched on earlier, but here's a more blatent example...
More from the abstract:
It obsoletes RFC 821, RFC 974, and updates RFC 1123 (replaces the
mail transport materials of RFC 1123). More from the Abstract:
However, RFC 821 specifies
some features that were not in significant use in the Internet by the
mid-1990s and (in appendices) some additional transport models.
Those sections are omitted here in the interest of clarity and
brevity; readers needing them should refer to RFC 821.
While I understand the reasoning for this, doesn't it defeat the purpose of obsoleting an RFC, if you are specifically instructed to refer to it foe explanations of certain pieces of functionality?
Slashdot Mirror
--
People can attempt to patent any technology they see fit. Weather they succeed is based on the expertise of the patent clerks that review the application.
One of the other goals is, of course to get a broadly reaching patent. At any point a judge could rule that the scope of a patent is too broad and infringement would be penalized to a lesser extent. For this reason, it is in the best interest of companies to be careful about how far they reach to get a vary broad patent on a whole class of technology.
Also, I can't relally blame Rambus for trying to take back some of the ground they lost over the past two decades as memory became a commodity. This is just good business.
--CTH
--
Trolling was not my intent. I'm merely pointing out that after 20 years of UNIX develpment, I hope the developers of MacOS X took what was learned, into account. It's a grat OK, as far as I've seen. I just wonder about the security considerations that went into it's design, in light of the treditional MAC userbase, which are typically not those, expert in mattars of network security, or who would demand that such consideration be taken when designing the OS.
--CTH
--
There's something to be said for running a 20 year old unix with thousnds of patches and fixes.
I'd hope most of the things learned in those 20 years went into the development of MacOS X, but we shall soon see.
--
Technology companies have had a business strategy of working their employees until the burn out, for years. It doesn't matter if it's a doc com that you have a stake in or a monsterous existing and stable company.
It seems to me that this became a trend after the stabilization of the computer science coriculum at universities. Every industry seems to go through this cycle. An industry like the computer industry gets a tremendour boost by, say, the introduction of the PC, and a half a deckage goes by without there being an academic curiculum availagle to churn out reasonably qualified people, then as soon as that curiculum is in place, companies feel that they have a never ending supply of grist for the mill. The same is true for the rapid growth of the internet. With the advent of an easy interface to information (the web), growth is spurred, and qualified people are difficult to find. The academic community lags about half a decade behind, but as soon as a curiculim is developed - and I saw a TV ad for a trade school advertising "become a certified webmaster" yesterday - companies feel their is a never ending supply of talent out there.
This leads to the companies working people to the bone and relying on the academic world to keep churning them out., not only does this have a negitive impact on the people thrust into these jobs with little or no exxperience, but it affacts the highly qualified personel as well. They are now forced to compete with those less experienced, and less qualified, on equal footing - because of course management doesn't understand what it takes to manage these technologies anyway, so they don't make the distinction between tradeschool graduates and truly experienced personel.
Now lets see if I can reign this in and make it apply to Jason's situation. Well, there are those of us who truly enjoy our jobs and do the work for that reason alone. There are those whodo it because they have a large stake in the company, and there are those who do it to put food on the table. The problem is, the glut of truly unqualified people in the industry now, which are not recognized as un-qualified, allows companies to pressure everyone to do the 80 hour work week thing, just to compete.
Jason was trying to make a business work. Most of us who are doing the same, have seen it get infinately harder to move his company forward in the industry, due in most part to corporate inability to understand that this industry is just like any other. It is now stable. It will always be there, and truly qualified staff are just as hard to come by as in any other industry.
My best wishes to Jason in his new endevours, and congradulations on making a good choice!
--CTH
--
I completely agree. Find someone who is qualified to answer this question in the legal sense. As for common business practice; Most companies I've ever worked for in an IS/IT capacity have dolled out 'pager pay' for on-call hours in addition to the full hourly rate paid in the event of a call. Typically the 'pager pay' rate was about 1/2 the hourly rate.
I am not a lawyer so don't take the below as fact unless you confirm it, but I believe it to be accurate
As for switching from hourly to salaried, you probably have more legal standing as an hourly employee, with regard to this issue, than if you were salaried (at least in a right-to-work state anyway).
-- CTH
--
Several skeptical comments have been made here that SAP is just trying to get the OSS community to clean up it's old code, or perhaps they have elected to dump their DB product and run their framework on 3rd party databases, an this is just a PR stunt to gain favor in the OSS community (or with those less skeptical anyway).
/. and other places to try to head off the backlash by the OSS comunity, to code dumping, and thus optimizing the PR benefit and tax status of getting rid of old application code.
It seems to me that recently, OpenSourcing by large corporations, of old code, or of products neat their end-of-life, has become all too frequent. It has become a currency, and standard business strategy much like 'Corporate Giving' to charities. There are entire business consultancies built around the service of: "Hire us to manage your corporate giving program". These consultancies oparate mych like tax atourneys, coming up with donations to charities that make a company look good in it's chosen market segment; the donations being of a size appropriet to get the tergeted tax writeoff.
This suggests a business opportunity 'Open Sourcing Consultant'. This person could provide the service of developing a strategy for OpenSourcing old application code and making it look all spiffy and new, also developing press releases and planting stories on
--CTH
---
It was always amazing to me how Realnetworks managed to convince the world that you had to use the PNM(Progressive Networks Media) protocol and their proprietary server to stream audio and video. I deployed some of their version 2 (vintage dark ages) server products - which cost us a fortune - and in the back of one of the technical references it mentions that little fact. "Oh, and if you're not actually streaming LIVE video content, then you can stream it via HTTP and you didn't have to spend XX thousands of dollars to buy our server. All you actually needed was the encoder. Sorry we didn't tell you before you bought".
Now to be perfectly honest, I can't blame (the then named) Progressive Networks for not making this fact known. It was my inexperience with streaming media at that time that led me astray. It does however indicate the underlying business model they were using was based entirely in a fabrication. As I recall, the server, and not the encoder was the expensive part of the package we were sold.
--CTH
---
This is a big step forward. Support in Linux for Direct3D, through Wine is the first step in the obvious progression to establishing Linux native support for direct3D. Support through an emulation layer isn't the conclusion of the development effort. This is a basic tenet of Open Source. The work of TransGaming is a great contribution, but if they choose at some point to conclude their efforts, others will pick up where they left off. Eventually there will be native Linux support for direct3D. This I am certain of.
As for following Microsoft, implementing their API rather than promoting the potentially vary competitive OpenGL; well, open source operates with an entirely different market model than treditional corporate development. Some market segments such as enterprise IT equally receptive to open source as to treditional software. This allows open source solutions to thrive in that market space. Other market segments such as computer gaming, target a customer base which is generally less technically inclined, and in pursuit of entertainment rather than productivity solutions - I maintain that development of efficient solutions to productivity issues is one of the driving forces behind open source development -, anyway, the gaming customer base is seeking entertainment rather than technical solutions to technical problems. As such, the gaming market will always be dominated by the easiest to use OS, with the simplest setup, and the most readily (as percieved by novice customers) available commerecial support.
This is why game consoles are still as popular as they are. There was a time when game consoles were themost advanced and highly customized platforms for video game entertainment. With the advent of extremely high quality video cards, sound cards, and control devices for PCs over the past decade, it would be reasonable to assume that customers might choose to purchase a PC (which can now be priced competitively wihth some game consoles - as amazing as that is, in and of itself), which is more flexible, and by every reasonable measure, more useful, but, alas! - game consoles are still extremely popular. I maintain that this is because the gaming customer seeks simplicity and ease of use that (as much as it pains me to say) linux doesn't yet provide at this point, even with the great efforts of Ximian, and the Gnome Project, among others
The point of this rambling diatribe is that computer game designer will always favor the simplest to use platform, which is inherently, where the majority of gaming customers will be. This means, that regardless of the elogance or superiority OpenGL, the Linux community will need to adopt direct3D because, as others have pointed out, no programmer wants to port code from one platform to another especially when that requires a significant API change. TransGaming has done great work so far and their progress is indicative of great things to come.
--CTH
---
Wasn't there a movie made about this?
---
The support agreement might work like this. Your company provides support for the binary distribution you provide (as part of the sale). If the customer wants support for a version compiled from source, the support is provided with an hourly fee. This way you have not completely elminated the possibility that a user would compile his own version, but you have reduced your liability. The installed version would have to be varified via MD5 checksum or some such mechanism prior to initiation of the support session.
-- CTH
---
The solution to every problem the user calls for support on is to re-install the binary distribution your company provides. That way it doesn't matter what the customer did to the source.
---
Here's the berkeley study on WEP security:m l
http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/isaac/wep-faq.ht
---
I've now worked with wireless network equipment from Cisco, Motorola, and Nortel Networks. I've found that none perform particularly well when using the Wired Equivelency Protocol (WEP) for security, although there aren't a whole lot of other options out there at preasant. Many companies rely simply on the uniqueness of the SSID used within their wireless lan. Some restrict access by MAC address. None of these methods are particularly secure. The only one that suggests making an effort at security is use of WEP.
There was a previous discussion on Slashdot about issues with the security of WEP. The articles out there on security holes in WEP are too numerous to list here.
What scares me most is the sheer lack of concern expressed by many network engineers, with regard to wireless. I've heard many times now, variants on "It's a wireless network. It's insecure by definition so why even make an attempt to secure it." Scary.
--CTH
---
There's a wonderful essay by Harvey Reid, on business practices in the recording industry, which has shaped my opinion on many of these issues. It is now a bit old and may be slightly out of date at this point, but it's a good read. ASCAP & BMI -- Protectors of Artists or Shadowy Thieves?
-- CTH
---
It's interesting to note that AMD is still about 3/4 of a release cycle ahead of Intel with regard to adoption of 0.13-micron manufacturing process. This is presumable a result of the relitive age of each companies manufacturing plants and the cost to retrofit rather than build new plants.
-- CTH
---
Fore more deep background check out the Nanotube website at: http://www.pa.msu.edu/cmp/csc/nanotube.html
---
There may be patent claims, and other such things which always surround the introduction of a new and innovative product, but I'd actually expect to see medical claims against this company too, as movie studios and others develop 'light tracks' for your favorite movies, and game companies develop the same for your favorite first person shooters.
Epoleptics throughout the world beware poorly written 'light tracks' will send thousands into grand mal seizures. This technology will take time before it's perfected, just like those movie rides with theI-Max style screens and the moving audience seats. If the timing was just a little off, it would cause the viewers to loose their equilibrium and puke their guts out. IF this company isn't careful, the lighting effects they're making possible just might have similar impacts.
---
At this rate, it's only a matter of time until we see the federated states of Micro$oft. Children born in these states will not get a birth certificate. They'll get a Non-Disclosure Agreement. These states will be more democratic that any state of the United states, because everyone of any age will be able to vote a shareholder meetings.
It will be a peaceful society, because all matters of law and justice will be resolved centrally in King County, Washington.
Oh, what joys we have to look forward to!
---
The vast majority of employment is 'At Will' meaning there is no employment contract. There are still a few states in which employment is not 'at-will' meaning there is an infered contract between employer and employee. This presents all dorts of issues for HR depertments, but in 'Employment at will' states, the one year employment contract(most commonly seen in cases of recently hired college grads) is uninforcable. This is why such things as reimbersement for relocation expenses, etc. are commonly used as incentives to retain employees.
With regard to Intel specifically, there are significant expenses associated with hiring staff, staff turnover, therefor is undesirable, this is what makes it cost effective for Intel to choose to pay recently hired (but pre-start-date) employees, to forget the whole arrangelemt. As such, I expect that many if not all employees who accept the mentioned 'bonus' would in fact be laid off almost imediately, rather than given undesirable jobs, just because they (the new employees) have chosen to show up rather than take the hint.
---
Whis means I could play play Quake all day at work, and as long as I wasn't moving unconciously with each shot, my boss would never know.
I like it. Although I have reservations about pointing a laser (any laser) at my retina, for any extended period of time.
---
More from the abstract: While I understand the reasoning for this, doesn't it defeat the purpose of obsoleting an RFC, if you are specifically instructed to refer to it foe explanations of certain pieces of functionality?
---