I studied English, Russian and French literature in college and for the first 10 years of my career worked as an editor. In the early 1990's I fell into programming quite by accident - through a project at my then employer's. I caught the software bug and never looked back. Today, I run my own software development company and work across Windows, UNIX, and Linux. I think that curiosity and intelligence are paramount, followed by a good dollop of old fashioned perseverance. To build a career in a technology-related field requires that you never stop learning. It's the old story: if you enjoy what you do, it won't seem like work.
Well, at least it keeps lawyers employed. Rule one of big business seems to be: if you can't win in the market place, go to court. I seem to recall a bunch of schoolyard bullies (IBM, Sun, Oracle...) crying to the principal in the late 90's about how another schoolyard bully (Microsoft) was being mean to them. Instead of taking their eye off the ball (remember Novell?), Google needs to do a much better job of building relationships and selling its products. Going to court is a pointless diversion and a waste of time and money. Google's goal, as is Microsoft's, is to eliminate the competition and totally control any market they are in. Neither they (nor any of their rivals) are truly interested in fair play. Google would take the same no-bid, no-competition deal Microsoft got in a heartbeat.
There is no such thing as "Libertarianism." It is simply a cover for the extreme right-wing, of which we have aplenty in the U.S. The extreme right wants to do away with government altogether, and replace it with a for-profit corporate state. The absolute nuttiness of this approach to government is reflected in the recent proposals by President Bush and Rudolph Giuliani that the solution to the health care crisis in the U.S. is to have people buy their own health insurance.
There is absolutely no credible evidence that anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the assasination of JFK. None. Zero. Instead of reading pro-conspiracy propaganda, read some factual, historical accounts, like Posner's magesterial "Case Closed." If, after that, you still believe it was a conspiracy, actually read the Warren Commission report. With all due respect to the analysts who did the research cited in Slashdot, their work is in some way flawed or inadvertently misleading.
The most disturbing thing about the SciAm article by Bill Gates is that it becomes, midway through, a corporate sales pitch for MSFT development tools. It's disturbing that a publication with the reputation of SciAm would allow itself to be used this way. It causes one to wonder how many other articles with less obvious sales pitches are "placed" in SciAm for the benefit of their authors or for their author's companies.
For twelve long years stupid reigned in Washington. Anti-science, anti-reason. In 2000, stupid reached its apotheosis in G.W. Bush. Now, let's hope, reason has remounted its throne. Let's hope we get an intelligent president in 2008. The world's too complicated for any more boobs.
Okay, Jonathan. What are we supposed to use? SunRays? Do yourself and your company a favor: find a buyer. RedHat, Oracle, IBM, HP, even MSFT, would be better than the lunatic culture cheered on by Scott McNealy and his flacks.
Can anyone explain these statements? Suits lie? Non-suited people don't? But it's okay for suited liars (Hewlett-Packard is no more exempt than any other huge corporation) to turn around and sell, oh, sorry, "distribute" the non-suited non-liars products? I hope this guy doesn't write code for a living!
Dozens of other languages. Slashdot needs to filter out anti-Microsoft propaganda, particularly via a virtual press release from the paid hack of another would-be monopolist, and instead report on serious science and technology issues.
Among the truly staggering costs left out of Paul's analysis are:
1. Training end-users in an entirely new interface.
2. Retraining staff and hiring experienced Unix sys admins.
3. Migrating user documents from full-featured products like Office to stripped-down freeware like StarOffice.
4. Recoding, from the ground up, many custom apps designed to run on NT using premium-cost Unix developers. Testing, debugging, documenting, and implementing all these apps, and...retraining users (again)!
Rather than take a theological approach to software, we work in a diverse Win32, Solaris, and Linux environment. Many of our staff are cross-trained on various products and platforms. We use Windows where it is the logical choice and Sun and Linux where they make sense. We also use cross-platform products like mySQL and PHP to build web-based apps. This enables our staff to pursue their interests in terms of learning, growth, and development, and it allows us to provide our clients with the best possible solution given their requirements.
Sun should drop StarOffice as soon as possible and avoid going the route Novell disasterously took in the '90s with PerfectOffice. Wedged between Win2K and Linux, Sun is already on rocky fiscal turf. Sun should concentrate on building its core business and growing it in the mid-range server market, as well as continuing its long tradition of tools and languages (Java) that have helped revolutionize the tech world.
Slashdot Mirror
I studied English, Russian and French literature in college and for the first 10 years of my career worked as an editor. In the early 1990's I fell into programming quite by accident - through a project at my then employer's. I caught the software bug and never looked back. Today, I run my own software development company and work across Windows, UNIX, and Linux. I think that curiosity and intelligence are paramount, followed by a good dollop of old fashioned perseverance. To build a career in a technology-related field requires that you never stop learning. It's the old story: if you enjoy what you do, it won't seem like work.
How do you turn them off?
Well, at least it keeps lawyers employed. Rule one of big business seems to be: if you can't win in the market place, go to court. I seem to recall a bunch of schoolyard bullies (IBM, Sun, Oracle...) crying to the principal in the late 90's about how another schoolyard bully (Microsoft) was being mean to them. Instead of taking their eye off the ball (remember Novell?), Google needs to do a much better job of building relationships and selling its products. Going to court is a pointless diversion and a waste of time and money. Google's goal, as is Microsoft's, is to eliminate the competition and totally control any market they are in. Neither they (nor any of their rivals) are truly interested in fair play. Google would take the same no-bid, no-competition deal Microsoft got in a heartbeat.
There is no such thing as "Libertarianism." It is simply a cover for the extreme right-wing, of which we have aplenty in the U.S. The extreme right wants to do away with government altogether, and replace it with a for-profit corporate state. The absolute nuttiness of this approach to government is reflected in the recent proposals by President Bush and Rudolph Giuliani that the solution to the health care crisis in the U.S. is to have people buy their own health insurance.
There is absolutely no credible evidence that anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the assasination of JFK. None. Zero. Instead of reading pro-conspiracy propaganda, read some factual, historical accounts, like Posner's magesterial "Case Closed." If, after that, you still believe it was a conspiracy, actually read the Warren Commission report. With all due respect to the analysts who did the research cited in Slashdot, their work is in some way flawed or inadvertently misleading.
The most disturbing thing about the SciAm article by Bill Gates is that it becomes, midway through, a corporate sales pitch for MSFT development tools. It's disturbing that a publication with the reputation of SciAm would allow itself to be used this way. It causes one to wonder how many other articles with less obvious sales pitches are "placed" in SciAm for the benefit of their authors or for their author's companies.
For twelve long years stupid reigned in Washington. Anti-science, anti-reason. In 2000, stupid reached its apotheosis in G.W. Bush. Now, let's hope, reason has remounted its throne. Let's hope we get an intelligent president in 2008. The world's too complicated for any more boobs.
Um, wild guess here: Larry Ellison?
Zonk,
You need to keep a better handle on the news. That story is months old.
Okay, Jonathan. What are we supposed to use? SunRays? Do yourself and your company a favor: find a buyer. RedHat, Oracle, IBM, HP, even MSFT, would be better than the lunatic culture cheered on by Scott McNealy and his flacks.
Can anyone explain these statements? Suits lie? Non-suited people don't? But it's okay for suited liars (Hewlett-Packard is no more exempt than any other huge corporation) to turn around and sell, oh, sorry, "distribute" the non-suited non-liars products? I hope this guy doesn't write code for a living!
Dozens of other languages. Slashdot needs to filter out anti-Microsoft propaganda, particularly via a virtual press release from the paid hack of another would-be monopolist, and instead report on serious science and technology issues.
Among the truly staggering costs left out of Paul's analysis are:
1. Training end-users in an entirely new interface.
2. Retraining staff and hiring experienced Unix sys admins.
3. Migrating user documents from full-featured products like Office to stripped-down freeware like StarOffice.
4. Recoding, from the ground up, many custom apps designed to run on NT using premium-cost Unix developers. Testing, debugging, documenting, and implementing all these apps, and...retraining users (again)!
I think a recalculation is in order.
Rather than take a theological approach to software, we work in a diverse Win32, Solaris, and Linux environment. Many of our staff are cross-trained on various products and platforms. We use Windows where it is the logical choice and Sun and Linux where they make sense. We also use cross-platform products like mySQL and PHP to build web-based apps. This enables our staff to pursue their interests in terms of learning, growth, and development, and it allows us to provide our clients with the best possible solution given their requirements.
Sun should drop StarOffice as soon as possible and avoid going the route Novell disasterously took in the '90s with PerfectOffice. Wedged between Win2K and Linux, Sun is already on rocky fiscal turf. Sun should concentrate on building its core business and growing it in the mid-range server market, as well as continuing its long tradition of tools and languages (Java) that have helped revolutionize the tech world.