Just for comparison, I live in Helsinki Finland in northern Europe (Linus Torvalds home town btw!). European laws are bit different which is partly good and partly bad. Some examples:
You can't lay off somebody withhout a RALLY good reason(violence, stealing etc.). Doesn't apply to top management though.
You can lay off people if you have economical reasons, but you can't hire anybody for 9 months to comparable jobs.
Even if you are kicked out, it is not effective immediately, you have 1 to 3 months period before your job ends. This doesn't apply to very grave cases.
It's good that we have these laws, but as you can see it is difficult to get rid of people once you have hired them, so companies think very carefully before hiring somebody permanently. The US way is the other extreme. In my oppinion the optimum would be somewhere between the two.
I totally agree. At some pont Linux is certainly going to have some dominant installation system, so I think it would be wise to actively start working towards it right now. It could contain the best features from both rpm and the Debian system, plus an easy to use graphical installation program. (GnoRPM etc are not easy enough).
And in general linux needs more standards: a single way and place to store the mime settings, a single desktop menu system where programs can install their launch icons. These things (and there are more...) are techically simple but when implemented can have a huge impact on the usability of linux.
In addition the distros could also try to unify some features where there are no technical reasons to differ. (Examples are the Init startup system and the placement and naming of config files).
How about a "Distro Foundation/League" or something where the distros could officially discuss and dicide on these things!
I do not consider my self a geek at all, but I went to a little bit special school that was supposed to have bright kids. As a result my class had a lot of kids that were inteligent, silent, read books etc, just the type that would easily be mocked and assaulted at school. We had also a bunch of guys that were doing physical and verbal assaulting to everybody. I remember always having a general understanding what was right and what was wrond and so at some point I always felt that I had to step in I try to defend the ones being assaulted. Of cause they then tried to target me too. I responded with the normal verbal way and asessed the sevierity of the insults. If they touched me physically or crossed the line with the insults, I got furious and responded with a sudden physical attack. I never caused any serious physical damage to them, never punched them to the face etc. just put them agressively to the ground and strangled for a while for them to learn the lesson. I only had to do this a few times for them to learn to be careful with me.
What is lesson here? We are animals after all, and the ability to physically defeat your opponents does have a huge importace in these kinds of situations. I hate violence in all forms, and my principle is always to turn the other cheek and be very nice to even the peouple who behave badly to me, but I always have a sudden strict line we my patience ends. Since elementary school I havent had these kinds of situations but just a year ago (at the age of 26!) I ended up in a similar situation with a guy I know. It worked out the same way. The problem was solved and I never had to listen to insults from him anymore.
What If you don't have the physical power? Get it. The mental damage can be so excessive that is well worth it. Start training karate, lift weights or what ever it takes. Even if they are not your favorite sports. It can do wonders to your self confidence and overall feeling. After a while you will start feeling much better and more self confident. It will also give you social contacts outside of your school, and you will notice that the people that are your hobby mates treat you much better. As an example I also knew one very silent and weird geeky guy, but with an important feature. He loved all kinds of weird kombat sports. He was quite thin but could thow impressive karate kicks way above peoples heads. Nobody ever laid a hand on him, not once. Not even the worst guys. They respected him.
I know all this is stupid, unnecessary and sad, but this is how the human nature works and we just have to live with it. And when you will get the high paying IT job in the future, you just have to keep in good shape anyway to cope with the huge work loads!
I have understod that Apple's new open source operating system Darwin is also based on the Mach microkenel. They have propably made the necessary changes to it making it usable in a variety of practical applications. Why not make Darwin the base for the new age open source OS?
It seems that Darwin will have a pretty secure future due to Apples deep commitment and there will also be a large number of commercial applications to Mac OS X available in the future, which could be ported to the open source Darwin.
In addition it is pretty compatible with Linux/Unix systems so Linux users would feel at home quickly.
As OS X is practically Darwin added with Apple's proprietary components, why not make open source versions of these components and voila, a Mac OS X compatible free OS, with a superb UI, easy software installation etc. It would probably be easier than developping Wine for Linux!
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You can't lay off somebody withhout a RALLY good reason(violence, stealing etc.). Doesn't apply to top management though.
You can lay off people if you have economical reasons, but you can't hire anybody for 9 months to comparable jobs.
Even if you are kicked out, it is not effective immediately, you have 1 to 3 months period before your job ends. This doesn't apply to very grave cases.
It's good that we have these laws, but as you can see it is difficult to get rid of people once you have hired them, so companies think very carefully before hiring somebody permanently. The US way is the other extreme. In my oppinion the optimum would be somewhere between the two.
And in general linux needs more standards: a single way and place to store the mime settings, a single desktop menu system where programs can install their launch icons. These things (and there are more...) are techically simple but when implemented can have a huge impact on the usability of linux.
In addition the distros could also try to unify some features where there are no technical reasons to differ. (Examples are the Init startup system and the placement and naming of config files).
How about a "Distro Foundation/League" or something where the distros could officially discuss and dicide on these things!
Ideas? Comments?
What is lesson here? We are animals after all, and the ability to physically defeat your opponents does have a huge importace in these kinds of situations. I hate violence in all forms, and my principle is always to turn the other cheek and be very nice to even the peouple who behave badly to me, but I always have a sudden strict line we my patience ends. Since elementary school I havent had these kinds of situations but just a year ago (at the age of 26!) I ended up in a similar situation with a guy I know. It worked out the same way. The problem was solved and I never had to listen to insults from him anymore.
What If you don't have the physical power? Get it. The mental damage can be so excessive that is well worth it. Start training karate, lift weights or what ever it takes. Even if they are not your favorite sports. It can do wonders to your self confidence and overall feeling. After a while you will start feeling much better and more self confident. It will also give you social contacts outside of your school, and you will notice that the people that are your hobby mates treat you much better. As an example I also knew one very silent and weird geeky guy, but with an important feature. He loved all kinds of weird kombat sports. He was quite thin but could thow impressive karate kicks way above peoples heads. Nobody ever laid a hand on him, not once. Not even the worst guys. They respected him.
I know all this is stupid, unnecessary and sad, but this is how the human nature works and we just have to live with it. And when you will get the high paying IT job in the future, you just have to keep in good shape anyway to cope with the huge work loads!
It seems that Darwin will have a pretty secure future due to Apples deep commitment and there will also be a large number of commercial applications to Mac OS X available in the future, which could be ported to the open source Darwin. In addition it is pretty compatible with Linux/Unix systems so Linux users would feel at home quickly.
As OS X is practically Darwin added with Apple's proprietary components, why not make open source versions of these components and voila, a Mac OS X compatible free OS, with a superb UI, easy software installation etc. It would probably be easier than developping Wine for Linux!
Any insights on these ideas?