Very practical advice and insight. Living in Hawaii will make it hard to take legal action in Georgia.
It seems like such a dangerous precedent that I decided to bounce the issue off of the collective slashdot knowledgebase first. Reading the comments leads me to believe that I should have given my permission first.
It is not my intention to gain anything from this. It is my intention to learn what can be done, if anything, to keep it from happening to me or others again. The potential to revise/abuse photographic history is immense.
Fantastic information. Thanks. Your key questions point me in the right direction. My answers:
1. No
2. It's in the owner's office; his mom took the picture
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Georgia and Alabama.
I'll have to see if some of the same provisions exist in Georgia's civil code. Regarding your suggestion of contacting the company: I actually stopped by and visited one of the original founders at their Athens, GA corporate office. He apologized for doing it and gave me two t-shirts. Note: he had very nice knit shirts, but gave me the t-shirts.
I own 3 generations of Apple laptops. The original, orange ibook, an ibook2 600mhz, and a 12" powerbook. My original ibook runs debians ppc distro exclusively. With only 3.2 gb of storage and a 300 mhz processor, OSX is out of the question, even with 192mb of ram. Apps for OS9 are limited. Linux and IceWM give me a ton of applications, including openoffice.org, in a resource friendly environment. After 5 years of performance, I praise it.
Ibooks do have battery issues. Issues that I have learned more about with my dual booting ibook 2. I type on it now with mozilla from debian testing. OSX thinks that the battery only has 30 minutes of life. Because pmud is broken on the ibook2, the chip on the battery is not able to tell pmud that the battery is "low" and consequently snooze it. I have learned that I can use it for hours with 0:00 time left on the battery confirming that the battery is good and that its chip and/or OSX's power monitor are broken. Only Linux could have revealed this to me. Had I trusted apple's gui, I would have bought a second battery for it as I did for the original ibook.
The powerbook also had a logic board issue. I just had it repaired by Apple. Applying pressure to the underside of a 12" g3 powerbook just to the left of the touchpad would freeze the laptop like clockwork. This is a big deal to me because I carry each of these machines around with one hand. Apple repaired it, though, and it works. It just runs OSX, though, and I expect to leave it that way.
Linux and OS whatever co-exist quite nicely on apple's machines. Sometimes Linux does more than Apple's own OS can, and sometimes there is just no need for the change. Open Office has been available longer for linux than osx, and after two Master's Degrees on my original ibook, I can attest that anyone who says the linux desktop is not ready really does not know. It is, in fact, further along in some ways.
We do this. Check out our work at http://www.hosef.org and yes, you would be surprised how many good machines we get because Windows broke and the user figured the machine was broken. These are usuall well-to-do users. Just last month we got a P4 with 512mb because someone's wife got tired of it.
Most of our donations are from the Government. Here in Hawaii, there are a *lot* of bases, and, as you know, you have to spend your budget to get it back. This results in lots of surplus. Mostly PIII's these days with 17" monitors.
Just remember this: the challenge and criteria for success is not giving away computers, this is easy, but rather offering support and training so the user can be self-sustaining.
This is so painfully true. Don't forget entering fake registration information. If I had a dollar for every time I downloaded realplayer and used biteme@here.com....
If I didn't have to scroll so far down to opt out of the emails after wasting so much time looking for the download, I might have offered real information. That said, change is good, and maybe it is happening at Real.
I am the IT Development Director (boring) but we hired my buddy for half a year and named him the Systems Integration and Evolution Director. Barely fit on the card but boy did it sound good.
I maintain a large network, or at least 75 machines feels large, of computers spread across 12 locations. It is a point of sale network using a private WAN and an application hosted on linux servers. I must be able to repair a machine in one visit to be worth my money. I keep the following in a box in my trunk, and if I were you I would bubble wrap and ship two of each to your isolated destination.
60 gb hard drive Cdrom floppy drive Socket/Slot 370 Motherboard (tyan board has both interfaces on one board) Socket 370 cpu fan (coolermaster) Case fan DDR and SDRAM chips. I have a few PC100's and a few PC133's. The DDR is pc2100. Power Supply -sparkle, full size 350w atx and smaller 175w IDE and Floppy Cable Power Supply Cable 50 pin scsi cable 68 pin scsi cable 68 pin lvd-se scsi cable 68 pin scsi terminator Generic ati video card Tekram scsi card Several 10/100 nics 5-port switch USB Switch USB Cable Print Server Power strip DC Adaptor with lots of tips in an altoids tin Lots of tie straps (quick release) Philips Head (not magnetized) Straight Screwdriver Small eyeglass screwdriver Printer Cable Several Cat-V Cables 6-ft to 50-ft Several Phone Cables and line splitter Extra DSL modem (our private wan is dsl-based) DSL filters Cdrom sound cable (fixes the "my cdrom only plays music through the headphone jack" problem Power Cables intentionally redundant Mouse/Keyboard extension cable Mouse and Keyboard AT-ps/2 adaptor for keyboards (I think it is AT) PS/2 to usb adaptor In my software pouch I have copies of: Debian for PowerPC and i386 Redhat 8 (nearly outdated now,:-)) Mandrake 9 for PowerPC and i386 Copies of win98, win2k, winxp, win95 (try to buy one of the recent issues that come with the Service Packs on cd. It is not current, but it is closer.) Copy of Norton Antivirus (cd only, I need to add floppies) Partition Magic (cd and floppy) Partition Commander (I bought it without researching that it couldn't resize xp partitions) Win98 boot floppy A road-runner installation cd because I can install microsoft internet apps from it (sorry) A cdr called stuff with securecrt, secureftp, wsftp, far, tridiavnc, mozilla, and openoffice The most recent edition of Knoppix.(this is a sysutil dream unless the cdrom is bad or unbootable)
The name of the game is eliminating the variable, and if you have the diagnostic tools, working replacements, and enough time and patience you can track down the problem. It is a big box and I obviously have a business level budget, so to speak. I actually keep a ready to go machine that dual boots win98 and rhat8 in case I just want to swap it out and work on it at the house. All of this really would fit in a foot locker (not the spare machine unless a *small* case) that I am sure you can ship there with you next time. I hope others can suggest a comprehensive but generic enough book, I don't have one.
There is no version of windows that a person can boot from and find that it automagically identifies and installs the drivers needed for a user's printer, soundcard, videocard, partitions of other OS's, and cd burning capacity all out of the box. This article is written from an honest perspective but the logic is flawed based on an inaccurate comparison. The fact that Linux does as much as it does out of the box is a remarkable accomplishment. Is it completely ready for my Mom? no. Does my Mom call me for help making programs and peripherals work on her Windows XP installation? yes. Now, if we were to compare MacOS X and Linux, the comparative installation and configuration weakness of Linux would stand out, but that is another story...
The bottom line is this: new users need training. Period. How familiar were you with win95 when you migrated from 3.11 or DOS? How many hours have you spent becoming competent in you current OS of choice? No, the challenge is not with the distribution, it is with the commitment to change. As long as we expect Linux to make this change effortless we will fault Linux for being ineffective.
I too just installed woody. The installer is what it is, an installer. It is not an assistant. It has ALL the tools I need to install a production system. This is, after all, what Debian intends its stable distro to be used for.
I installed woody because I did something stupid to my potato install. I must echo earlier points that Debian's strength is in stability and ease of maintenance. For several years I never turned off the box; it just worked.
Regarding installing woody:
dselect offers the most amazing selection of software I have ever seen available from my terminal. The installer clearly states that tasksel will install the major packages you need from the selected theme. It does not advise the installee to enter dselect, and they are not defaulted to it.
Try the net install iso. It is less than 50mb. It lets you set up a base debian system in no time, and you can then use apt to build the system you need.
my own claim of incompetance: I can be completely clueless. I am a yutz. But, I am persistent. For people like me, there is all the help I need from the greatest asset of Debian- the community.
mdadm. While I must confess that I have not quite figured out how to build my array with it, the tool does exist. Furthermore, if it is in the stable tree of debian, it is good enough for me. It would be nice if there were a gui version. Of course, it would be nice if someone like me actually did something about it instead of wishing for it. Oh wait, I can, this is an open source project.
I decided many years ago that I wanted to learn more about the world of computers. I enrolled in a beginner Comp. Sci. at a regional University. Here the shock/enlightening began.
I wanted to learn about networks, computers, and linux. I got a huge textbook and a course in algorithms and basic C++ programming. I was outraged that all this revolutionary technological change was happening (1998) and my University was "stuck in the past." I wanted to learn about new things, and the school just wanted to teach me to think.
I took action. I visited the head of the CS department, the head of the School of Arts and Sciences, I wrote the President (of the school) and I spoke with a state Regent. I learned that schools are institutions designed to react slowly to the changing external environment. The red tape to add or change a program is monumental. This is good.
I withdrew and began teaching myself what I wanted to learn. I got what I wanted. I may not have gotten what I needed. I missed the chance to be forced to struggle with the difficulties of programming. I missed the chance to be taught how to think better.
Years later I know enough about linux and open source software to enable small businesses to compete in a proprietary world. I know enough about networking to maintain routers and an extensive wan. I know enough about computers to build really sweet and thrifty boxes. I know very little about programming: the heart and soul of the computer world. This is what the CS dept. wanted to teach me. I am weaker.
My moral: don't judge a school on what it doesn't teach. Appreciate the methods used to teach you how to think. Visit and speak with faculty. Understand what their vision is for their department. You may find people endeavoring to teach you what you want to know while couching it in more classic studies. If the website for the school is broken, use this as an opportunity to make a difference. They clearly need you.
Universities offer community outreach classes that don't require Regent's approval for credit. These classes are much more current. Try them out in your spare time. In your main time, enroll and realize that a school is only as strong as its students. You will make a difference if you put yourself in charge.
The film played earlier this year at the Hawaii International Film Festival. Yeh, we have an international film festival. The film was a superior Documentary about the revolutionary qualties of Linux.
It introduced Richard Stallman and the whole concept of GNU. You meet Bruce Perens and learn about Open Source. Both "movements" are very objectively and positively portrayed for their respective contributions to Linux. It is a documentary, not a commentary.
If you possibly can, watch this film. At least talk to your local video store, or maybe have your linux user's group buy a copy. To see these visionaries in "person" is quite impressive and a good reminder that they are only people. (though they are freaks) If you are trying to get someone to understand this whole thing, the movie does a great job for you.
Don't be afraid to go it alone as a Subchapter S corporation. I know that it differs state from state, but it costs me $35 a year to maintain my corporate registration in Georgia. The application for an EIN (employee identification number) and Subchapter S status cost me my time. Register with your state's Department of Revenue. If you will have employees, register with your state's Department of Labor. You will pay unemployment insurance.
If you sell no merchandise, you are pretty much done. You make monthly deposits of the Medicare, SS, and Income Tax you take out of your check. This is what your employer does for you. It is about 15% of your gross pay, plus your federal withholding (there are schedules and software for that.) You deposit your state withholding and unemployment insurance on a monthly basis. You learn that as a paid employee your boss pays you more than your salary because of her matching taxes.
On a quarterly basis you file a 940 with the IRS summarizing your monthly deposits and reconciling your deposits. You also file with your state doing the same thing. If you go as an independent contractor, you must deposit your SS, Medicare, and Income Tax quarterly. If you don't make these deposits, you will be hurt. The SS and Medicare deposits, because they are part of a public trust, are taken seriously.
On an annual basis, you file a 941 for your federal unemployment as well as your federal and state tax returns. Any money the business makes above and beyond your pay and other deductible expenses is taxed at your individual rate.
This is about all it takes to maintain your S corp. Peachtree and Quickbooks are useful products. You will realize that there is some value that your employer offers for the difference between what you make her and what you are paid. You must decide if this value exceeds what you can do for yourself.
Make no mistake: there are plenty of tremendous idiots who do this, poorly, and are still in business. You are thinking before you do. You won't do any worse, I assure you.
Yes, the success of linux depends on the ability of those who "know" to be able to explain its ways to those who do not. Knowing the gui helps because the "newbies" are the masses of people entirely too busy to impress themselves or a select few with command line jockeying. We all know that this is an essential skill set for sysadmins, but the masses we would all like to see adopt linux have no interest in this. It' why they use windows instead of dos. Too often those in the linux community try to impress others or mask insecurities by showing how much they know. What a way to intimidate new users. Real knowledge exists when you can impart it to the less informed. This is the challenge.
The fact of the matter is, for what it is worth, the lid was loose on the elderly lady's coffee. She was burned. She asked McDonalds to pay the doctor bill for her injuries. They refused. She took them to court where a jury awarded her all that money in punitive damages. These are damages designed to make an example of the offense. In this case the jury said it was wrong to burn an old lady with a poorly capped hot cup of coffee and then refuse to pay the medical bills. I wish it wasn't so late and that I could have posted this when someone would read it. Check out http://www.mrcranky.com/movies/universalsoldierthe return/73.html.
The Democratization of Capitalism
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 1
We can grow tired debating the merits and mistakes of our current global economy. The evolution of an even more global economy is inevitable. How can it be better than it has been is the question to answer.
I exist to espouse the values of Democratizing Capitalism. Rather than "flattening" the organizational structure, companies should distribute ownership and accountability to all employees. This means that we differentiate value by offering salaries commensurate with experience and education. We integrate team focus by equally distributing all the shares of the company. The ratios are debatable. Perhaps the financers are allocated a specific percentage as well as the founding figures. The bottom line is that no one has any more ownership than the employees, and every employee shares equally in ownership.
Place this scenario in your work environment. If you know with certainty that you will share in the profits that you can help generate, you will do anything to help with costs. Make no mistake. I am not talking about your paltry share of some profit-sharing pool. I am talking about a collective employee ownerhsip of up to 66% of the company. Knowing that you will see a return for your productivity or frugality will certainly inspire appropriate action.
Impose this scenario on any developing nation. Imagine yourself a manager charged with manufacturing bicycles in a stable Afghanistan. How much easier would it be to motivate your employees if they were partners? How much more inspired would they be if they knew that the majority of the profits generated would be returned to them. How much more trusting of you would they be if they shared in resource allocation and strategic decisions?
Imagine yourself an impoverished "third world" citizen. One of your brethren approaches you to discuss a new opportunity. An English corporation wants to use your labor to manufacture bicycles. They will arrange the marketing, distribution, and supply of raw materials. You and your friends will supply the labor and management of resources. You learn that you and your fellow employees will own 66% of the company. Decisions you make can improve or destroy your job. But, these are decisions that YOU make. You have the power.
You are a CEO. You need new markets. You need new raw materials and labor resources. The best way to penetrate a market is to manufacture in it. Managing risk is your life. Controlling employees in the hypothetical developing nation is pointless. What you need is partners. These partners can be your employees. With training, key locals or expatriates can be instrumental in organizing a workforce. Your risk becomes everyone's risk. If things go bad, you don't bring back your lilly management staff to try somewhere else. Your management staff is home and they have every interest in succeeding. They are building their own house, so to speak, and any shortcuts just weaken their own home.
Capitalism and globalism are not bad. People who abuse the capitalist principles on a global scale are bad. These people need to learn that they can profit while sharing in the power. There is enough to go around.
You all know who knows what's up at work. So often it's the "lower" level emloyees who have the least decision making authority. How much more money could they make for your company if there were improved ways to distribute the decision making? Wouldn't they be motivated to do so if they got something for it? How many of you managers would love for the "lower" level employees to have to understand the collective costs of their decisions? With more efficient means of communication, this perceptual knowledge gap could be filled.
We are America. We should be loved around the world for the freedom we embody. This love becomes so hard when some jerk is making you work harder for that two dollar a day job making sneakers. "What kind of freedom is this that comes from America," you might ask. Until we change what most people around the world see in America, the unchecked greed factor under the guise of capitalism, then the resentment should not surprise us. When our Democratic values pervade our Capitalistic principles, we will see the peace we all seek.
You may not have come to the best place to find OSS criticism. Most of the threads are focusing on support. I have not had much success getting credible support for any windows product I have "experienced." I have not had much success getting support for any of the "proprietary" programs I use for that matter. For microsoft support at work we turn to whoever knows the most. If fruitless, we go to the newsgroups. The same support path is taken for linux issues. We tend to have equal success turning to the respective communities for support. Perhaps better in the open world because more hobbyists are involved.
The shortcoming of OSS in the business world is accountability. Who can be held accountable for the flaws of the program? Cynically speaking, how easy is it to hold any company accountable for the "problems" its software causes? Nonetheless, we like to believe that someone's bottom line is going to be affected by their failure. It is safer to assume that personal greed will compel satisfactory software production than it is to believe that personal integrity will win the day.
Business management is about minimizing the adverse affects of the unpredictable. We feel better predicting behavior driven by the greed we understand than by the integrity we question. This can change. For now, consider the greed factor and lack of accountability as key shortcomings to the evolving OSS alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
Very practical advice and insight. Living in Hawaii will make it hard to take legal action in Georgia.
It seems like such a dangerous precedent that I decided to bounce the issue off of the collective slashdot knowledgebase first. Reading the comments leads me to believe that I should have given my permission first.
It is not my intention to gain anything from this. It is my intention to learn what can be done, if anything, to keep it from happening to me or others again. The potential to revise/abuse photographic history is immense.
Fantastic information. Thanks. Your key questions point me in the right direction. My answers: 1. No 2. It's in the owner's office; his mom took the picture 3. Yes 4. Yes 5. Yes 6. Georgia and Alabama. I'll have to see if some of the same provisions exist in Georgia's civil code. Regarding your suggestion of contacting the company: I actually stopped by and visited one of the original founders at their Athens, GA corporate office. He apologized for doing it and gave me two t-shirts. Note: he had very nice knit shirts, but gave me the t-shirts.
I own 3 generations of Apple laptops. The original, orange ibook, an ibook2 600mhz, and a 12" powerbook. My original ibook runs debians ppc distro exclusively. With only 3.2 gb of storage and a 300 mhz processor, OSX is out of the question, even with 192mb of ram. Apps for OS9 are limited. Linux and IceWM give me a ton of applications, including openoffice.org, in a resource friendly environment. After 5 years of performance, I praise it.
Ibooks do have battery issues. Issues that I have learned more about with my dual booting ibook 2. I type on it now with mozilla from debian testing. OSX thinks that the battery only has 30 minutes of life. Because pmud is broken on the ibook2, the chip on the battery is not able to tell pmud that the battery is "low" and consequently snooze it. I have learned that I can use it for hours with 0:00 time left on the battery confirming that the battery is good and that its chip and/or OSX's power monitor are broken. Only Linux could have revealed this to me. Had I trusted apple's gui, I would have bought a second battery for it as I did for the original ibook.
The powerbook also had a logic board issue. I just had it repaired by Apple. Applying pressure to the underside of a 12" g3 powerbook just to the left of the touchpad would freeze the laptop like clockwork. This is a big deal to me because I carry each of these machines around with one hand. Apple repaired it, though, and it works. It just runs OSX, though, and I expect to leave it that way.
Linux and OS whatever co-exist quite nicely on apple's machines. Sometimes Linux does more than Apple's own OS can, and sometimes there is just no need for the change. Open Office has been available longer for linux than osx, and after two Master's Degrees on my original ibook, I can attest that anyone who says the linux desktop is not ready really does not know. It is, in fact, further along in some ways.
We do this. Check out our work at http://www.hosef.org and yes, you would be surprised how many good machines we get because Windows broke and the user figured the machine was broken. These are usuall well-to-do users. Just last month we got a P4 with 512mb because someone's wife got tired of it.
Most of our donations are from the Government. Here in Hawaii, there are a *lot* of bases, and, as you know, you have to spend your budget to get it back. This results in lots of surplus. Mostly PIII's these days with 17" monitors.
Just remember this: the challenge and criteria for success is not giving away computers, this is easy, but rather offering support and training so the user can be self-sustaining.
This is so painfully true. Don't forget entering fake registration information. If I had a dollar for every time I downloaded realplayer and used biteme@here.com ....
If I didn't have to scroll so far down to opt out of the emails after wasting so much time looking for the download, I might have offered real information. That said, change is good, and maybe it is happening at Real.
I am the IT Development Director (boring) but we hired my buddy for half a year and named him the Systems Integration and Evolution Director. Barely fit on the card but boy did it sound good.
I maintain a large network, or at least 75 machines feels large, of computers spread across 12 locations. It is a point of sale network using a private WAN and an application hosted on linux servers. I must be able to repair a machine in one visit to be worth my money. I keep the following in a box in my trunk, and if I were you I would bubble wrap and ship two of each to your isolated destination.
:-))
60 gb hard drive
Cdrom
floppy drive
Socket/Slot 370 Motherboard (tyan board has both interfaces on one board)
Socket 370 cpu fan (coolermaster)
Case fan
DDR and SDRAM chips. I have a few PC100's and a few PC133's. The DDR is pc2100.
Power Supply -sparkle, full size 350w atx and smaller 175w
IDE and Floppy Cable
Power Supply Cable
50 pin scsi cable
68 pin scsi cable
68 pin lvd-se scsi cable
68 pin scsi terminator
Generic ati video card
Tekram scsi card
Several 10/100 nics
5-port switch
USB Switch
USB Cable
Print Server
Power strip
DC Adaptor with lots of tips in an altoids tin
Lots of tie straps (quick release)
Philips Head (not magnetized)
Straight Screwdriver
Small eyeglass screwdriver
Printer Cable
Several Cat-V Cables 6-ft to 50-ft
Several Phone Cables and line splitter
Extra DSL modem (our private wan is dsl-based)
DSL filters
Cdrom sound cable (fixes the "my cdrom only plays music through the headphone jack" problem
Power Cables intentionally redundant
Mouse/Keyboard extension cable
Mouse and Keyboard
AT-ps/2 adaptor for keyboards (I think it is AT)
PS/2 to usb adaptor
In my software pouch I have copies of:
Debian for PowerPC and i386
Redhat 8 (nearly outdated now,
Mandrake 9 for PowerPC and i386
Copies of win98, win2k, winxp, win95 (try to buy one of the recent issues that come with the Service Packs on cd. It is not current, but it is closer.)
Copy of Norton Antivirus (cd only, I need to add floppies)
Partition Magic (cd and floppy)
Partition Commander (I bought it without researching that it couldn't resize xp partitions)
Win98 boot floppy
A road-runner installation cd because I can install microsoft internet apps from it (sorry)
A cdr called stuff with securecrt, secureftp, wsftp, far, tridiavnc, mozilla, and openoffice
The most recent edition of Knoppix.(this is a sysutil dream unless the cdrom is bad or unbootable)
The name of the game is eliminating the variable, and if you have the diagnostic tools, working replacements, and enough time and patience you can track down the problem. It is a big box and I obviously have a business level budget, so to speak. I actually keep a ready to go machine that dual boots win98 and rhat8 in case I just want to swap it out and work on it at the house. All of this really would fit in a foot locker (not the spare machine unless a *small* case) that I am sure you can ship there with you next time. I hope others can suggest a comprehensive but generic enough book, I don't have one.
There is no version of windows that a person can boot from and find that it automagically identifies and installs the drivers needed for a user's printer, soundcard, videocard, partitions of other OS's, and cd burning capacity all out of the box. This article is written from an honest perspective but the logic is flawed based on an inaccurate comparison. The fact that Linux does as much as it does out of the box is a remarkable accomplishment. Is it completely ready for my Mom? no. Does my Mom call me for help making programs and peripherals work on her Windows XP installation? yes. Now, if we were to compare MacOS X and Linux, the comparative installation and configuration weakness of Linux would stand out, but that is another story ...
The bottom line is this: new users need training. Period. How familiar were you with win95 when you migrated from 3.11 or DOS? How many hours have you spent becoming competent in you current OS of choice? No, the challenge is not with the distribution, it is with the commitment to change. As long as we expect Linux to make this change effortless we will fault Linux for being ineffective.
I too just installed woody. The installer is what it is, an installer. It is not an assistant. It has ALL the tools I need to install a production system. This is, after all, what Debian intends its stable distro to be used for.
I installed woody because I did something stupid to my potato install. I must echo earlier points that Debian's strength is in stability and ease of maintenance. For several years I never turned off the box; it just worked.
Regarding installing woody:
dselect offers the most amazing selection of software I have ever seen available from my terminal. The installer clearly states that tasksel will install the major packages you need from the selected theme. It does not advise the installee to enter dselect, and they are not defaulted to it.
Try the net install iso. It is less than 50mb. It lets you set up a base debian system in no time, and you can then use apt to build the system you need.
my own claim of incompetance: I can be completely clueless. I am a yutz. But, I am persistent. For people like me, there is all the help I need from the greatest asset of Debian- the community.
mdadm. While I must confess that I have not quite figured out how to build my array with it, the tool does exist. Furthermore, if it is in the stable tree of debian, it is good enough for me. It would be nice if there were a gui version. Of course, it would be nice if someone like me actually did something about it instead of wishing for it. Oh wait, I can, this is an open source project.
I wanted to learn about networks, computers, and linux. I got a huge textbook and a course in algorithms and basic C++ programming. I was outraged that all this revolutionary technological change was happening (1998) and my University was "stuck in the past." I wanted to learn about new things, and the school just wanted to teach me to think.
I took action. I visited the head of the CS department, the head of the School of Arts and Sciences, I wrote the President (of the school) and I spoke with a state Regent. I learned that schools are institutions designed to react slowly to the changing external environment. The red tape to add or change a program is monumental. This is good.
I withdrew and began teaching myself what I wanted to learn. I got what I wanted. I may not have gotten what I needed. I missed the chance to be forced to struggle with the difficulties of programming. I missed the chance to be taught how to think better.
Years later I know enough about linux and open source software to enable small businesses to compete in a proprietary world. I know enough about networking to maintain routers and an extensive wan. I know enough about computers to build really sweet and thrifty boxes. I know very little about programming: the heart and soul of the computer world. This is what the CS dept. wanted to teach me. I am weaker.
My moral: don't judge a school on what it doesn't teach. Appreciate the methods used to teach you how to think. Visit and speak with faculty. Understand what their vision is for their department. You may find people endeavoring to teach you what you want to know while couching it in more classic studies. If the website for the school is broken, use this as an opportunity to make a difference. They clearly need you.
Universities offer community outreach classes that don't require Regent's approval for credit. These classes are much more current. Try them out in your spare time. In your main time, enroll and realize that a school is only as strong as its students. You will make a difference if you put yourself in charge.
The film played earlier this year at the Hawaii International Film Festival. Yeh, we have an international film festival. The film was a superior Documentary about the revolutionary qualties of Linux. It introduced Richard Stallman and the whole concept of GNU. You meet Bruce Perens and learn about Open Source. Both "movements" are very objectively and positively portrayed for their respective contributions to Linux. It is a documentary, not a commentary. If you possibly can, watch this film. At least talk to your local video store, or maybe have your linux user's group buy a copy. To see these visionaries in "person" is quite impressive and a good reminder that they are only people. (though they are freaks) If you are trying to get someone to understand this whole thing, the movie does a great job for you.
Don't be afraid to go it alone as a Subchapter S corporation. I know that it differs state from state, but it costs me $35 a year to maintain my corporate registration in Georgia. The application for an EIN (employee identification number) and Subchapter S status cost me my time. Register with your state's Department of Revenue. If you will have employees, register with your state's Department of Labor. You will pay unemployment insurance.
If you sell no merchandise, you are pretty much done. You make monthly deposits of the Medicare, SS, and Income Tax you take out of your check. This is what your employer does for you. It is about 15% of your gross pay, plus your federal withholding (there are schedules and software for that.) You deposit your state withholding and unemployment insurance on a monthly basis. You learn that as a paid employee your boss pays you more than your salary because of her matching taxes.
On a quarterly basis you file a 940 with the IRS summarizing your monthly deposits and reconciling your deposits. You also file with your state doing the same thing. If you go as an independent contractor, you must deposit your SS, Medicare, and Income Tax quarterly. If you don't make these deposits, you will be hurt. The SS and Medicare deposits, because they are part of a public trust, are taken seriously.
On an annual basis, you file a 941 for your federal unemployment as well as your federal and state tax returns. Any money the business makes above and beyond your pay and other deductible expenses is taxed at your individual rate.
This is about all it takes to maintain your S corp. Peachtree and Quickbooks are useful products. You will realize that there is some value that your employer offers for the difference between what you make her and what you are paid. You must decide if this value exceeds what you can do for yourself.
Make no mistake: there are plenty of tremendous idiots who do this, poorly, and are still in business. You are thinking before you do. You won't do any worse, I assure you.
Yes, the success of linux depends on the ability of those who "know" to be able to explain its ways to those who do not. Knowing the gui helps because the "newbies" are the masses of people entirely too busy to impress themselves or a select few with command line jockeying. We all know that this is an essential skill set for sysadmins, but the masses we would all like to see adopt linux have no interest in this. It' why they use windows instead of dos. Too often those in the linux community try to impress others or mask insecurities by showing how much they know. What a way to intimidate new users. Real knowledge exists when you can impart it to the less informed. This is the challenge.
scott
The fact of the matter is, for what it is worth, the lid was loose on the elderly lady's coffee. She was burned. She asked McDonalds to pay the doctor bill for her injuries. They refused. She took them to court where a jury awarded her all that money in punitive damages. These are damages designed to make an example of the offense. In this case the jury said it was wrong to burn an old lady with a poorly capped hot cup of coffee and then refuse to pay the medical bills. I wish it wasn't so late and that I could have posted this when someone would read it. Check out http://www.mrcranky.com/movies/universalsoldierthe return/73.html.
We can grow tired debating the merits and mistakes of our current global economy. The evolution of an even more global economy is inevitable. How can it be better than it has been is the question to answer.
I exist to espouse the values of Democratizing Capitalism. Rather than "flattening" the organizational structure, companies should distribute ownership and accountability to all employees. This means that we differentiate value by offering salaries commensurate with experience and education. We integrate team focus by equally distributing all the shares of the company. The ratios are debatable. Perhaps the financers are allocated a specific percentage as well as the founding figures. The bottom line is that no one has any more ownership than the employees, and every employee shares equally in ownership.
Place this scenario in your work environment. If you know with certainty that you will share in the profits that you can help generate, you will do anything to help with costs. Make no mistake. I am not talking about your paltry share of some profit-sharing pool. I am talking about a collective employee ownerhsip of up to 66% of the company. Knowing that you will see a return for your productivity or frugality will certainly inspire appropriate action.
Impose this scenario on any developing nation. Imagine yourself a manager charged with manufacturing bicycles in a stable Afghanistan. How much easier would it be to motivate your employees if they were partners? How much more inspired would they be if they knew that the majority of the profits generated would be returned to them. How much more trusting of you would they be if they shared in resource allocation and strategic decisions?
Imagine yourself an impoverished "third world" citizen. One of your brethren approaches you to discuss a new opportunity. An English corporation wants to use your labor to manufacture bicycles. They will arrange the marketing, distribution, and supply of raw materials. You and your friends will supply the labor and management of resources. You learn that you and your fellow employees will own 66% of the company. Decisions you make can improve or destroy your job. But, these are decisions that YOU make. You have the power.
You are a CEO. You need new markets. You need new raw materials and labor resources. The best way to penetrate a market is to manufacture in it. Managing risk is your life. Controlling employees in the hypothetical developing nation is pointless. What you need is partners. These partners can be your employees. With training, key locals or expatriates can be instrumental in organizing a workforce. Your risk becomes everyone's risk. If things go bad, you don't bring back your lilly management staff to try somewhere else. Your management staff is home and they have every interest in succeeding. They are building their own house, so to speak, and any shortcuts just weaken their own home.
Capitalism and globalism are not bad. People who abuse the capitalist principles on a global scale are bad. These people need to learn that they can profit while sharing in the power. There is enough to go around.
You all know who knows what's up at work. So often it's the "lower" level emloyees who have the least decision making authority. How much more money could they make for your company if there were improved ways to distribute the decision making? Wouldn't they be motivated to do so if they got something for it? How many of you managers would love for the "lower" level employees to have to understand the collective costs of their decisions? With more efficient means of communication, this perceptual knowledge gap could be filled.
We are America. We should be loved around the world for the freedom we embody. This love becomes so hard when some jerk is making you work harder for that two dollar a day job making sneakers. "What kind of freedom is this that comes from America," you might ask. Until we change what most people around the world see in America, the unchecked greed factor under the guise of capitalism, then the resentment should not surprise us. When our Democratic values pervade our Capitalistic principles, we will see the peace we all seek.
You may not have come to the best place to find OSS criticism. Most of the threads are focusing on support. I have not had much success getting credible support for any windows product I have "experienced." I have not had much success getting support for any of the "proprietary" programs I use for that matter. For microsoft support at work we turn to whoever knows the most. If fruitless, we go to the newsgroups. The same support path is taken for linux issues. We tend to have equal success turning to the respective communities for support. Perhaps better in the open world because more hobbyists are involved.
The shortcoming of OSS in the business world is accountability. Who can be held accountable for the flaws of the program? Cynically speaking, how easy is it to hold any company accountable for the "problems" its software causes? Nonetheless, we like to believe that someone's bottom line is going to be affected by their failure. It is safer to assume that personal greed will compel satisfactory software production than it is to believe that personal integrity will win the day.
Business management is about minimizing the adverse affects of the unpredictable. We feel better predicting behavior driven by the greed we understand than by the integrity we question. This can change. For now, consider the greed factor and lack of accountability as key shortcomings to the evolving OSS alternative.