"Everywhere I've worked (UNIX Systems Admin/Engineering) I've been seen as a remarkably compentent, skilled worker....until I meet the customer face-to-face. Then, suddenly, my decisions are questioned more, people go over my head to ask about things that are my responsibility. "
I don't want to discount your experience, but...
White males don't have life easy either. I've frequently had to fight with people to make it clear that I was right and they were wrong. This is very common within the tech field, and unfortunately the more incompetent the person they more firmly they believe they are correct. One sees this on slashdot all the time, even.
There is also a lot of discrimination based on age, not so much within the tech community, but if you are dealing with people outside.
Unless someone is specifically calling you racial names, I do think you need to step back and evaluate the situation on whether the person is really being racist or just being an ass.
There are a lot of assholes and incompetent jackasses in this world and they don't discriminate based on the color of your skin.:(
I doubt that Redhat is intentionally making the software hard to use now. But the only incentive right now for them to improve the software is that they are in a market losing position and need to leverage marketshare.
If they were in a monopoly position, that incentive would no longer exist. It would instead be their revenue stream dictating how to respond.
I actually rather doubt that the support services, even Consulting Services at Microsoft supply more revenue than their software sales.
Yes, they do make some money off of that support, but it isn't their primary source of income.
I also don't feel it should be any companies source of income. Look at some of the really big boondoogles like SAP, Peoplesoft, etc. They see most of their revenue coming from services.
These are also software packages that end up costing multiple millions to install at a company, and if you've ever had the chance to see them in operation... the quality sucks.
I think it's an exceptionally bad business model, at least from a consumer standpoint.
Look at this from a financial perspective on the part of RedHat.
Your duty to your stock holders is for the company to make money.
You have a choice:
- Make the software easy to use and bug free, thus making customers happy because it requires less support.
- Leverage your software to increase your support services by making it difficult to use, install, and buggy as hell.
There is a contradiction in this mix.
Microsoft has encouragement to improve the quality of their software because support services add to their overhead. They would prefer it if you did not call them asking all kinds of dumb questions.
Long term I would prefer to see a software world which did not require support services. I don't have to purchase a support contract to use my car, my VCR or my microwave. Why should I to use my computer?
I believe that's the vision that Microsoft has, it is obviously not the vision that Redhat has.
RedHat is similar to a Microsoft or Novell Solutions Provider.
They anticipate making money by selling integration and customization services.
The difference is just the amount of overhead. RedHat has choosen to take on all the overhead of developing the software, whereas most VAR's pass this on to a third company.
They could possibly make money, although they'll never be as profitable as a old-world solutions provider/VAR. Unless they can somehow make it up in volume, which again seems unlikely.
Unfortunately the whole market for consulting services and such has gone downhill since Y2K. I don't know if it will recover or not.
I think RedHat is likely doomed, long term.
VA Linux on the other hand is just a computer reseller. That's not a good market right now either, and the only way to succeed is to keep overhead low and volume high.
Bu again, VA Linux has to front the bill for the software development, whereas most companies pass this on to third parties.
3. It has to be something so cool that when you try to pick up chicks in the bar with your line "Hey baby, I hack on Athena." they all go "What the fuck are you talking about?" before slapping you and walking away.
I was simply disagreeing with the original assertion that everybody hated the region-codes. It's not true because most DVD buyers aren't even aware of them.
Consumers don't care about stuff that doesn't bother them. Prevent them from being able to play that same DVD on a friend's player next door and you'll see outrage.
Prevent a computer user from being able to backup files off their computer, and you'll see outrage.
I refuse to buy music off the internet with these silly copy-protection schemes because it keys the music to my machine. If I want to backup the files because I'm getting a new computer... I'm screwed.
But all the protection systems on DVDs don't impact me in any way shape or form.
Hmm... It seems to me that the central point of contact requires less monitoring than multiple points of failure.
That is, all the examples you say... if you are monitoring the Kerberos key server carefully, you will detect these DoS and other problems you suggest near immediately and be able to do something about it.
Ohwell, it doesn't seem to me that your opinion is any less FUD than the article author.
That's not really true. It was a non-issue to 99.5% of DVD buyers.
Now DivX on the other hand created a lot of questions with consumers. It failed in the market place because consumers could see no benefit from all the restrictions.
I don't quite understand this harddrive thing. What possible benefit would I get? What restrictions is this going to impose?
On the surface it doesn't seem to be a particularly good idea, and the consumers will very likely reject it.
What if someone introduces some new utility in the future which makes this job even easier? What if it's in error? Should I redistribute a faulty document?
Apparently, all of the Linuxlookup guides are copyrighted in this fashion.
Interestingly Linuxlookup.com doesn't quite buy into the whole Open Source thing, at least not when it comes to their creations.
The article mentions it contains a 32-bit section which allows it to run older x86 instructions.
What I'm wondering is if the reason for the new versions is just to take advantage of the new 64-bit world, or if you could actually just install say Windows 95 onto it and live crippled?
Just kind of curious how important this OS battle is to the adoption of the processor.
I'm not sure what kind of market demand there will be anyway. I don't see most computers today as being CPU-bound.
You miss out on an important piece of information.
Example 1: I purchased the C-64 because it was superior to the Apple II in the ways that were important to me. Cost, features, software availability and the fact all my friends had one.
Example 2: I spent 5 years of my professional career working with Microsoft products because I found them to be better than the competition.
Example 3: I'm a Democrat because I can't stomach the lousy arguments the Republicans put forth. This election fiasco only cemented my dislike of the party.
Keeping an open mind is fine, but once you've investigated the options and made a choice, you're not arguing to protect your position but rather because you are right.
This isn't GM itself... We're a division in the financial industry.
It's actually a great company. When I first started I'd end up in a room with 10 other people making critical decisions and we'd find out that not one of us was an employee.
It's different now, we don't have as many contrators, but management is willing to get things done.
I can imagine the automobile division is very different, and as I understand it their IT shop is run by EDS and can't get anything done without loads of paperwork.
You're absolutely correct. I work for a divison of GM now, but I entered here as a contractor 3 years ago.
The Microsoft case changed the way this company treated contractors. Used to be you were part of the team, invited to celebrations, company parties, etc.
That's not bad as I was used to it, but it is somewhat disappointing.
Now they make it quite clear who is an employee, who is temp.
It's also resulted in less of a reliance upon contractors.
But there have been other factors which have hit the contracting/consulting world. It's becoming increasingly difficult for these companies to maintain business.
Before Microsoft would ever bother to sell a version of Linux they would first lower the price of the OS they now sell by a large margin, or perhaps even give it away for free.
They might release the source code to the OS.
But sell Linux? Doubtful, they already have a better OS in the way of Windows 2000 that they can do with as they please.
This is a fine example of how stories can spread on the Internet.
The original story was told by Rex Ballard sometime in '95 in comp.os.linux.advocacy, at least according to dejanews.com searches.
His claim was that as part of the agreement to sell all rights to Xenix to SCO, Microsoft agreed to never enter the Unix marketplace.
I asked Rex for proof of this story, where had he heard it, etc. He claimed it was in the SCO Annual report. Asking him to perhaps provide pictures of this on the Internet resulted in a claim that he only does research for others at $100/hour.
I've went and tried to find this in the Annual reports and was unable to locate it. I've also tried to locate the story in news articles, and have come up blank.
Unfortunately every time I went looking for something to corroborate this story in the real world I came up blank. When I went looking for something to corroborate the story on the Internet all leads pointed right back to Rex Ballard.
Whether this story is true or not depends on one question:
Slashdot Mirror
Odd thing though...
Corporations get different versions of the software with their Select agreement that usually don't have these locks in place.
I don't want to discount your experience, but...
White males don't have life easy either. I've frequently had to fight with people to make it clear that I was right and they were wrong. This is very common within the tech field, and unfortunately the more incompetent the person they more firmly they believe they are correct. One sees this on slashdot all the time, even.
There is also a lot of discrimination based on age, not so much within the tech community, but if you are dealing with people outside.
Unless someone is specifically calling you racial names, I do think you need to step back and evaluate the situation on whether the person is really being racist or just being an ass.
There are a lot of assholes and incompetent jackasses in this world and they don't discriminate based on the color of your skin.
Don't listen to slashdot. Go and travel abroad yourself and realize how good you have it here.
THANK GOD WINDOWS IS NOT UNIX!
Sigh, I used to be a Unix admin. After a while you mature and realize that doing everything the hard way isn't cool... it's inefficient.
I doubt that Redhat is intentionally making the software hard to use now. But the only incentive right now for them to improve the software is that they are in a market losing position and need to leverage marketshare.
If they were in a monopoly position, that incentive would no longer exist. It would instead be their revenue stream dictating how to respond.
I actually rather doubt that the support services, even Consulting Services at Microsoft supply more revenue than their software sales.
Yes, they do make some money off of that support, but it isn't their primary source of income.
I also don't feel it should be any companies source of income. Look at some of the really big boondoogles like SAP, Peoplesoft, etc. They see most of their revenue coming from services.
These are also software packages that end up costing multiple millions to install at a company, and if you've ever had the chance to see them in operation... the quality sucks.
I think it's an exceptionally bad business model, at least from a consumer standpoint.
Look at this from a financial perspective on the part of RedHat.
Your duty to your stock holders is for the company to make money.
You have a choice:
- Make the software easy to use and bug free, thus making customers happy because it requires less support.
- Leverage your software to increase your support services by making it difficult to use, install, and buggy as hell.
There is a contradiction in this mix.
Microsoft has encouragement to improve the quality of their software because support services add to their overhead. They would prefer it if you did not call them asking all kinds of dumb questions.
Long term I would prefer to see a software world which did not require support services. I don't have to purchase a support contract to use my car, my VCR or my microwave. Why should I to use my computer?
I believe that's the vision that Microsoft has, it is obviously not the vision that Redhat has.
RedHat is similar to a Microsoft or Novell Solutions Provider.
They anticipate making money by selling integration and customization services.
The difference is just the amount of overhead. RedHat has choosen to take on all the overhead of developing the software, whereas most VAR's pass this on to a third company.
They could possibly make money, although they'll never be as profitable as a old-world solutions provider/VAR. Unless they can somehow make it up in volume, which again seems unlikely.
Unfortunately the whole market for consulting services and such has gone downhill since Y2K. I don't know if it will recover or not.
I think RedHat is likely doomed, long term.
VA Linux on the other hand is just a computer reseller. That's not a good market right now either, and the only way to succeed is to keep overhead low and volume high.
Bu again, VA Linux has to front the bill for the software development, whereas most companies pass this on to third parties.
We'll see.
Hmm. I think Open Source as a business model is a failure, and it has nothing to do with RedHat and VA Linux stocks being in the crapper.
Actually they aren't in the crapper yet, as long as they still have a value above $1 they are listed on NASDAQ.
3. It has to be something so cool that when you try to pick up chicks in the bar with your line "Hey baby, I hack on Athena." they all go "What the fuck are you talking about?" before slapping you and walking away.
This has been a problem since comp.os.linux.misc started becoming overrun back in 1993 or so.
My guess is you were a newbie once yourself.
You could start by being a bit more mature and spelling Windows correctly.
the number of times I have had to hit the power button and restart Windows 2000 because it was completely frozen...
I don't even have to count, because it has not yet happened to me.
I'm glad you enjoy Linux, but there are other options out there to Windows 98, and not all of them mean reinvesting in all new software.
I've actually worked in a Kerberos environment.
:(
Sigh, even your followup is more FUD.
As I said, a non-issue for 99.5% of buyers.
I was simply disagreeing with the original assertion that everybody hated the region-codes. It's not true because most DVD buyers aren't even aware of them.
Consumers don't care about stuff that doesn't bother them. Prevent them from being able to play that same DVD on a friend's player next door and you'll see outrage.
Prevent a computer user from being able to backup files off their computer, and you'll see outrage.
I refuse to buy music off the internet with these silly copy-protection schemes because it keys the music to my machine. If I want to backup the files because I'm getting a new computer... I'm screwed.
But all the protection systems on DVDs don't impact me in any way shape or form.
Hmm... It seems to me that the central point of contact requires less monitoring than multiple points of failure.
That is, all the examples you say... if you are monitoring the Kerberos key server carefully, you will detect these DoS and other problems you suggest near immediately and be able to do something about it.
Ohwell, it doesn't seem to me that your opinion is any less FUD than the article author.
"nobody liked the region coding in DVDs"
That's not really true. It was a non-issue to 99.5% of DVD buyers.
Now DivX on the other hand created a lot of questions with consumers. It failed in the market place because consumers could see no benefit from all the restrictions.
I don't quite understand this harddrive thing. What possible benefit would I get? What restrictions is this going to impose?
On the surface it doesn't seem to be a particularly good idea, and the consumers will very likely reject it.
This guide has a copyright:
"This document is copyright © 2000-2001 by Ray. You are encouraged to redistribute it. However you may not modify this document, if you intend to redistribute it in any manner."
Why can't I modify it?
What if someone introduces some new utility in the future which makes this job even easier? What if it's in error? Should I redistribute a faulty document?
Apparently, all of the Linuxlookup guides are copyrighted in this fashion.
Interestingly Linuxlookup.com doesn't quite buy into the whole Open Source thing, at least not when it comes to their creations.
How backwards compatible is the Itanium?
The article mentions it contains a 32-bit section which allows it to run older x86 instructions.
What I'm wondering is if the reason for the new versions is just to take advantage of the new 64-bit world, or if you could actually just install say Windows 95 onto it and live crippled?
Just kind of curious how important this OS battle is to the adoption of the processor.
I'm not sure what kind of market demand there will be anyway. I don't see most computers today as being CPU-bound.
You miss out on an important piece of information.
Example 1: I purchased the C-64 because it was superior to the Apple II in the ways that were important to me. Cost, features, software availability and the fact all my friends had one.
Example 2: I spent 5 years of my professional career working with Microsoft products because I found them to be better than the competition.
Example 3: I'm a Democrat because I can't stomach the lousy arguments the Republicans put forth. This election fiasco only cemented my dislike of the party.
Keeping an open mind is fine, but once you've investigated the options and made a choice, you're not arguing to protect your position but rather because you are right.
See, now you just proved the original posters point. :(
This isn't GM itself... We're a division in the financial industry.
It's actually a great company. When I first started I'd end up in a room with 10 other people making critical decisions and we'd find out that not one of us was an employee.
It's different now, we don't have as many contrators, but management is willing to get things done.
I can imagine the automobile division is very different, and as I understand it their IT shop is run by EDS and can't get anything done without loads of paperwork.
You're absolutely correct. I work for a divison of GM now, but I entered here as a contractor 3 years ago.
The Microsoft case changed the way this company treated contractors. Used to be you were part of the team, invited to celebrations, company parties, etc.
That's not bad as I was used to it, but it is somewhat disappointing.
Now they make it quite clear who is an employee, who is temp.
It's also resulted in less of a reliance upon contractors.
But there have been other factors which have hit the contracting/consulting world. It's becoming increasingly difficult for these companies to maintain business.
I don't see why Microsoft would do this.
Before Microsoft would ever bother to sell a version of Linux they would first lower the price of the OS they now sell by a large margin, or perhaps even give it away for free.
They might release the source code to the OS.
But sell Linux? Doubtful, they already have a better OS in the way of Windows 2000 that they can do with as they please.
This is a fine example of how stories can spread on the Internet.
The original story was told by Rex Ballard sometime in '95 in comp.os.linux.advocacy, at least according to dejanews.com searches.
His claim was that as part of the agreement to sell all rights to Xenix to SCO, Microsoft agreed to never enter the Unix marketplace.
I asked Rex for proof of this story, where had he heard it, etc. He claimed it was in the SCO Annual report. Asking him to perhaps provide pictures of this on the Internet resulted in a claim that he only does research for others at $100/hour.
I've went and tried to find this in the Annual reports and was unable to locate it. I've also tried to locate the story in news articles, and have come up blank.
Unfortunately every time I went looking for something to corroborate this story in the real world I came up blank. When I went looking for something to corroborate the story on the Internet all leads pointed right back to Rex Ballard.
Whether this story is true or not depends on one question:
Do you Believe Rex Ballard?
You are absolutely correct.
:)
But that's not going to stop me from refusing to see the movie ET!