Re:Fragmenting might be in their best interests.
on
Sun Eyes PostgreSQL
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· Score: 1
That's because companies will not actively help their competition. The other thing is that they could couple it with some third-party software they have rights to use but not release, in which case they could not release these changes to the community. It's a shame really. I'd rather they did a fork up front than pretend to play along. It's still better fr the mindshare of PostgreSQL. Altough, didn't anyone see that coming when Sun announced in the spring that the database was the piece missing from their offering?
Negative. Mutually Assured Destruction is a sound political and military doctrine that has directly led to a relatively stable and peaceful period in the world, thanks to the deployment of massive nuclear weapon arsenals.
It't like car insurance: you hope you don't have to use it, but you have to have it, otherwise some bozo is going to rear-end you and you'll lose your shirt.
Lets not forget that China is a nuclear power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. They should have undestood the concept by now.
Back to Taiwan and Google: don't name the island on the political map.
In a twisted way, it's sort of like the way I make some money consulting for people who pirated windows and office and are scared shitless that going to msft would land them in jail. So I take their money. And I'm not the only one, I can tell you that.
People don't expect Joe and Jack, recent graduates of some liberal arts school with some degrees in philosophy to build a 1 mile suspended 6 lane bridge for $45,000.
No. The people expect to hire Hecklin & York Architects and General Sea Land Construction Co and pay them $3,400,000,000.
And wait 5 years.
Car and aircraft manufacturers spend billions over several years to develop a new model.
Do we do this in the software industry? No. Programmers and designers are nickeled-and-dimed with impossible deadlines and requirements that would make the Hecklin & York laugh you out of their office.
Half-assed specs and customer requirements might be fine for the doomed-anyway fly-by-night pet project from some VP who's got too much time on his hands, but they are not fine for mission-critical software. Last time I checked, the Linux kernel is mission-critical.
So, if the spec is going to be wrong, the spec is useless, because if the code is wrong, you can tell, but if the spec is wrong, you can't. And if you build the code on a wrong spec, and the spec is signed off by executive VPs, then you poor little programmer are going to scratch your head and write nasty and kludgy workarounds and edge cases that will guarantee that the software will be more bug-ridden than a mattress left out in the swamp for a year. And there's nothing that you poor little programmer is going to be able to do about the spec, even thought you know it's _wrong_wrong_wrong_ because, well, you're just a body in a cube. So you will grow bitter and angry inside, and you will let loose your last ounce of creativity not on your company-provided IDE but in the comment box on/.
Firgive me if it's written all over the internet somewhere: how much does veggie oil for a diesel engine cost per gallon. I'm assuming it's not the same as salad dressing oil at $1.99/12oz at Ralph's.
So what you're saying is that there should have been a 5 or 6 billion dollar fine. And then the company would really change its policies. This is the very reason everybody here says there should be no liability, because the programmer and/or the small company could not afford the cost of litigation/penalties.
If the coffee burns the person, then the person has a rash for a couple of days, or a week, and can't go to work for a week, then they automatically get entitled to receive 2.1 million dollars. Makes sense, no?
Thanks to the courts that allow such ridiculous judgments.
Ah, but that's the only way to change the system, because if you fine a $21B company $4,000, it'll pass as "cost of doing business" and won't even warrant the company doing anything different in the future, like altering the employee training program or modifying the design of the cups. But if you fine the company 2.1 million dollars, a couple times a month, then it really impacts the annual report, and shareholders will go up in arms telling management to get their act together.
So the companies want to do whatever they want, and the people just have to like it.
And this is how it's tied back to software: If the product is crap, and you drink the Kool-Aid, and you get "burned", you deserve the pain. Maybe you'll learn next time.
And the reason why youn can't sue is because the software companies aren't stupid.
Corruption by government officials is _not_ the same as capitalism.
Furthermore, under free-trade capitalism with support of the government, the food will get to the people who can afford it. Governments can restrict free trade capitalism through protectionism, civil instability, and corruption, all things that the government should fix.
People can't afford the food? They should get off their asses and either work, or find guns, get organized, and overthrow their sorry leadership. When societies work well, food will be available.
Children can't work, granted. Mothers and fathers should provide. If their own parents don't want to provide, or can't, maybe that's the problem to begin with. See point above.
You see, there's plenty of reasons why food isn't getting to the people, and your generalization was not only not helping, but also incorrect, as it was incomplete.
translation: The Russians want to boost their space program: The Europeans pay for it, then the Russians have a space program and the Europeans have, well, debt.
Sounds about right!
Then the Russians launch European satellites at a discount (they'll still need cash so it won't be free) and bill the US x3 to go rescue people/expensive equipment.
They might also "accidentally" bring an unofficial US spy satellite back down with them.
I work for one of those dreaded heartless medical insurance companies.
Yet the work I do helps make internal processes more efficient, which means with less money we are able to handle more, which means more people can get the care they need.
There is a vary nice 87 year old lady at our church. Last year she had to get surgery (if you go to my church you'll know who she is) and she told me afterward that she has insurance throught my company and that, I quote: "they took care of everything, I didn't have any worries".
The work is boring and stressful at the same time. But the end result is worthwhile.
People say that between two equally skilled people, the one with the certs and degree will get the job. The reality is that the high-school dropout who crammed on K&C C, reinstalled debian unstable on the same machine 8 times to get the conf just right, and runs apache with multiple virtual hosts with ssl instead of slamming beers and chicks at frat parties has 100 times the experience of the wide-eyed grads, and will get the job every time.
Have you noticed that the truly formidable hackers never complain about not having enough work? If anything, they could use the help!
Give me hackers, not graduates!!!
(By the way my group has had 3 positions open for 1 year, and finally had to take an H1B, but I can tell you we threw away a _lot_ of resumes. We just could not in good conscience bring people on board who would have been a burden. They just leave anyway shortly after we throw them at a very hard project. You complain? We all deal with very hard projects. If you can't hack it, scram.
You want a crash course? Homework: Acquire 3 decent machines: Put Solaris 10 on one, Debian stable on the second, and windows XP/2000 on the third. Colocate the solaris box. Put weblogic on the solaris box. Use spring/hibernate, and build me a screamingly fast web app that takes data entries and outputs drillabe and configurable reports in xhtml, with option to pdf and xls or an open spreadsheet format. Then make a webservice interface and put a service manager on the debian machine, without putting the java interpreter on the debian box (use python, perl, ruby, c, c++, erlang, smalltalk, lisp, whatever) and write a high speed processor on the debian box that interfaces with the web service and sends out the reports via email. The system should be able to handle 100,000 reports per day. Then take the windows box and write a front-end gui in whatever you want except java, that interfaces with the solaris box and has disconnected capability (use msql, ms access, or msde). The solaris box should interface with an oracle, postgresql, mssql, mysql, or DB2 database, hosted wherever you like.
You build this, you email me, and I'll go visit your setup, then I'll get you a job making $80K+. It will take you less time than a college degree. And honestly, I won't care if all you've got is a GED, but I will expect you to explain every configuration file and every design decision.
Some of you think this is far out of reach. Others will realize that this is the sort of things you were doing at home in the basement while your older sister was "out having fun". If you're a real geek, yes go to college, yes learn some social and team skills, but for God's sake don't think you need the degree to get a killer job. And please don't think Google is your dream place, it ain't.
The only ethics companies have is: maximize investor value, and its little sister: maximize share price.
If anything gets in the way of that, it's unethical as far as the company is concerned.
And if breaking the law maximizes investor value short and long term, then the company should break the law (as they do all the fucking time). (example: they only compy with labor law on overtime and salaried-vs-hourly when it is more advantageous to them financially to do so. Every company does this.)
That's the true ethic of a company.
Yes it sucks, but it's better than the alternatives.
As far as I am concerned on the topic of Msft breakup: Only Microsft Windows platform stands a chance. Office is over (OpenOffice is perfect for 99% of users) , and XBox is over (they've burned $4B already).
Windows platform won't have to pay for Office and XBox, and so will be more profitable. They might actually make better products.
They have a real fight coming up with Debian and its derivatives (Knoppix, Ubuntu), and will have to seriously innovate to get people excited. If I was them, I would put out a windows server that went like this: Windows with Apache, Mysql, Php, python, ruby, and asp as mod_asp, and jboss or some other incantation of J2EE -> JEE, and ADO+JET+COM. This might be an irresistible combo, and is not too hard to do with existing products.
Ultimately though, Microsoft is going to be an average-sized company in an industry that won't have any more large companies.
Knoppix on a usb/usb2/firewire400/800 bootable 1 gig flash drive, preconfig'd, _with_OOo, with gfs as file system via google secure vpn.
You know you want it already.
Thin client, but with power!
Oh, and all your configuration, web-based from the desktop.google.com homepage.
Last but not least: an account on the soon-to-arrive google integrated web hosting package, with picasa, blogging, and web pages. Wait, do they need web pages? naw, blogger is fine. All the pieces are in place.
And all software automagically updated, virus-free, and free too. You just pay for the hardware.
I would add that with a good google gfs api, one could have a home server with terabytes of storage (music, movies, pron, the-book-you-ve-been-working-on) automatically accessible from anywhere you are.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because companies will not actively help their competition. The other thing is that they could couple it with some third-party software they have rights to use but not release, in which case they could not release these changes to the community. It's a shame really. I'd rather they did a fork up front than pretend to play along. It's still better fr the mindshare of PostgreSQL. Altough, didn't anyone see that coming when Sun announced in the spring that the database was the piece missing from their offering?
Doh!
Bang!
:)
Corporal Bryant looks around, everybody's ok:
"WTF"
Bang!
Lieutenant Miller falls to the ground, a headshot from a sniper.
Corporal Bryant:
"Sarge, get the robot out, a sniper just popped Miller!"
Sergeant York, fumbling.
"Aw crap, the robot's been shot!"
Bang
Corporal Bryant falls to the ground, half decapitated from a very large bullet from a sniper rifle.
Seargent York screaming:
"Take cover!!!"
These things just write themselves
Negative. Mutually Assured Destruction is a sound political and military doctrine that has directly led to a relatively stable and peaceful period in the world, thanks to the deployment of massive nuclear weapon arsenals.
It't like car insurance: you hope you don't have to use it, but you have to have it, otherwise some bozo is going to rear-end you and you'll lose your shirt.
Lets not forget that China is a nuclear power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. They should have undestood the concept by now.
Back to Taiwan and Google: don't name the island on the political map.
I work on auth systems to approve or deny medical procedures and tests. You tell me.
In a twisted way, it's sort of like the way I make some money consulting for people who pirated windows and office and are scared shitless that going to msft would land them in jail. So I take their money. And I'm not the only one, I can tell you that.
People don't expect Joe and Jack, recent graduates of some liberal arts school with some degrees in philosophy to build a 1 mile suspended 6 lane bridge for $45,000.
/.
No. The people expect to hire Hecklin & York Architects and General Sea Land Construction Co and pay them $3,400,000,000.
And wait 5 years.
Car and aircraft manufacturers spend billions over several years to develop a new model.
Do we do this in the software industry? No. Programmers and designers are nickeled-and-dimed with impossible deadlines and requirements that would make the Hecklin & York laugh you out of their office.
Half-assed specs and customer requirements might be fine for the doomed-anyway fly-by-night pet project from some VP who's got too much time on his hands, but they are not fine for mission-critical software. Last time I checked, the Linux kernel is mission-critical.
So, if the spec is going to be wrong, the spec is useless, because if the code is wrong, you can tell, but if the spec is wrong, you can't. And if you build the code on a wrong spec, and the spec is signed off by executive VPs, then you poor little programmer are going to scratch your head and write nasty and kludgy workarounds and edge cases that will guarantee that the software will be more bug-ridden than a mattress left out in the swamp for a year. And there's nothing that you poor little programmer is going to be able to do about the spec, even thought you know it's _wrong_wrong_wrong_ because, well, you're just a body in a cube. So you will grow bitter and angry inside, and you will let loose your last ounce of creativity not on your company-provided IDE but in the comment box on
Oh wait...
Firgive me if it's written all over the internet somewhere: how much does veggie oil for a diesel engine cost per gallon. I'm assuming it's not the same as salad dressing oil at $1.99/12oz at Ralph's.
So what you're saying is that there should have been a 5 or 6 billion dollar fine. And then the company would really change its policies.
This is the very reason everybody here says there should be no liability, because the programmer and/or the small company could not afford the cost of litigation/penalties.
If the coffee burns the person, then the person has a rash for a couple of days, or a week, and can't go to work for a week, then they automatically get entitled to receive 2.1 million dollars. Makes sense, no?
Thanks to the courts that allow such ridiculous judgments.
Ah, but that's the only way to change the system, because if you fine a $21B company $4,000, it'll pass as "cost of doing business" and won't even warrant the company doing anything different in the future, like altering the employee training program or modifying the design of the cups. But if you fine the company 2.1 million dollars, a couple times a month, then it really impacts the annual report, and shareholders will go up in arms telling management to get their act together.
So the companies want to do whatever they want, and the people just have to like it.
And this is how it's tied back to software: If the product is crap, and you drink the Kool-Aid, and you get "burned", you deserve the pain. Maybe you'll learn next time.
And the reason why youn can't sue is because the software companies aren't stupid.
Like I like wish like I like had like mod like points like, you know?
Corruption by government officials is _not_ the same as capitalism.
Furthermore, under free-trade capitalism with support of the government, the food will get to the people who can afford it. Governments can restrict free trade capitalism through protectionism, civil instability, and corruption, all things that the government should fix.
People can't afford the food? They should get off their asses and either work, or find guns, get organized, and overthrow their sorry leadership. When societies work well, food will be available.
Children can't work, granted. Mothers and fathers should provide. If their own parents don't want to provide, or can't, maybe that's the problem to begin with. See point above.
You see, there's plenty of reasons why food isn't getting to the people, and your generalization was not only not helping, but also incorrect, as it was incomplete.
You mean...
Nawww...
Really?
Dang!!!
Did I just reply to an AC?
So what happens with this little device during various sex acts?
I know, this is slashdot. The only sex acts involve, what... Wives? eheh
translation: The Russians want to boost their space program: The Europeans pay for it, then the Russians have a space program and the Europeans have, well, debt.
Sounds about right!
Then the Russians launch European satellites at a discount (they'll still need cash so it won't be free) and bill the US x3 to go rescue people/expensive equipment.
They might also "accidentally" bring an unofficial US spy satellite back down with them.
Sorry. Having Lotus Notes at work and suffering horribly from it, I say: Stay away from it.
I like IBM as much as the next guy, and Lotus Notes might have started with good intentions, but somethings wend terribly wrong along the way.
Same here.
I work for one of those dreaded heartless medical insurance companies.
Yet the work I do helps make internal processes more efficient, which means with less money we are able to handle more, which means more people can get the care they need.
There is a vary nice 87 year old lady at our church. Last year she had to get surgery (if you go to my church you'll know who she is) and she told me afterward that she has insurance throught my company and that, I quote: "they took care of everything, I didn't have any worries".
The work is boring and stressful at the same time. But the end result is worthwhile.
Another Amen here.
A CS means nothing. Certs means nothing.
People say that between two equally skilled people, the one with the certs and degree will get the job. The reality is that the high-school dropout who crammed on K&C C, reinstalled debian unstable on the same machine 8 times to get the conf just right, and runs apache with multiple virtual hosts with ssl instead of slamming beers and chicks at frat parties has 100 times the experience of the wide-eyed grads, and will get the job every time.
Have you noticed that the truly formidable hackers never complain about not having enough work? If anything, they could use the help!
Give me hackers, not graduates!!!
(By the way my group has had 3 positions open for 1 year, and finally had to take an H1B, but I can tell you we threw away a _lot_ of resumes. We just could not in good conscience bring people on board who would have been a burden. They just leave anyway shortly after we throw them at a very hard project. You complain? We all deal with very hard projects. If you can't hack it, scram.
You want a crash course?
Homework: Acquire 3 decent machines: Put Solaris 10 on one, Debian stable on the second, and windows XP/2000 on the third.
Colocate the solaris box. Put weblogic on the solaris box. Use spring/hibernate, and build me a screamingly fast web app that takes data entries and outputs drillabe and configurable reports in xhtml, with option to pdf and xls or an open spreadsheet format. Then make a webservice interface and put a service manager on the debian machine, without putting the java interpreter on the debian box (use python, perl, ruby, c, c++, erlang, smalltalk, lisp, whatever) and write a high speed processor on the debian box that interfaces with the web service and sends out the reports via email. The system should be able to handle 100,000 reports per day. Then take the windows box and write a front-end gui in whatever you want except java, that interfaces with the solaris box and has disconnected capability (use msql, ms access, or msde).
The solaris box should interface with an oracle, postgresql, mssql, mysql, or DB2 database, hosted wherever you like.
You build this, you email me, and I'll go visit your setup, then I'll get you a job making $80K+. It will take you less time than a college degree. And honestly, I won't care if all you've got is a GED, but I will expect you to explain every configuration file and every design decision.
Some of you think this is far out of reach. Others will realize that this is the sort of things you were doing at home in the basement while your older sister was "out having fun". If you're a real geek, yes go to college, yes learn some social and team skills, but for God's sake don't think you need the degree to get a killer job. And please don't think Google is your dream place, it ain't.
Am I ranting yet? Ok, I'll stop.
Ain't that the truth!
Besides, since when does one need a PhD or even a college degree to be a geek?
I know people with no degree that make killer apps with real-world-solid designs.
I think corporations are looking in the wrong places (I know the fortune 500 I work at is looking in all the wrong places).
Then please explain rdesktop.
I work for a fortune 500, in the 0 x 250 range.
You are sure those are not initialisms?
Amen.
The only ethics companies have is: maximize investor value, and its little sister: maximize share price.
If anything gets in the way of that, it's unethical as far as the company is concerned.
And if breaking the law maximizes investor value short and long term, then the company should break the law (as they do all the fucking time). (example: they only compy with labor law on overtime and salaried-vs-hourly when it is more advantageous to them financially to do so. Every company does this.)
That's the true ethic of a company.
Yes it sucks, but it's better than the alternatives.
As far as I am concerned on the topic of Msft breakup: Only Microsft Windows platform stands a chance. Office is over (OpenOffice is perfect for 99% of users) , and XBox is over (they've burned $4B already).
Windows platform won't have to pay for Office and XBox, and so will be more profitable. They might actually make better products.
They have a real fight coming up with Debian and its derivatives (Knoppix, Ubuntu), and will have to seriously innovate to get people excited. If I was them, I would put out a windows server that went like this: Windows with Apache, Mysql, Php, python, ruby, and asp as mod_asp, and jboss or some other incantation of J2EE -> JEE, and ADO+JET+COM. This might be an irresistible combo, and is not too hard to do with existing products.
Ultimately though, Microsoft is going to be an average-sized company in an industry that won't have any more large companies.
Google OS:
Knoppix on a usb/usb2/firewire400/800 bootable 1 gig flash drive, preconfig'd, _with_OOo, with gfs as file system via google secure vpn.
You know you want it already.
Thin client, but with power!
Oh, and all your configuration, web-based from the desktop.google.com homepage.
Last but not least: an account on the soon-to-arrive google integrated web hosting package, with picasa, blogging, and web pages. Wait, do they need web pages? naw, blogger is fine. All the pieces are in place.
And all software automagically updated, virus-free, and free too. You just pay for the hardware.
I would add that with a good google gfs api, one could have a home server with terabytes of storage (music, movies, pron, the-book-you-ve-been-working-on) automatically accessible from anywhere you are.
Is Sun still in the Unix business now that Solaris is free?
Maybe they are in the Paid-Support business...
SCO is still in business?