The truth is I'm a network technician/administrator/programmer, the company I work administrates the networks of hundreds of small buisnesses. If the company I work for, or one our customers needs software, then I may write it, may buy it, or may have it written depending on the case. If I write the software the customer (or my company) will be licensed the software under the gpl. Or I may modify an open source program to suit (probably contributing back changes if relevant).
Or we may hire an outside firm to adapt an open source program and license to us under a BSD style license with source... so we can release to the customer under the gpl.
I forgot this part part in my last reply. That's interesting. None of the companies I worked for (or consulted for) would consider allowing my to GPL "their" intellectual property and instead put me under NDA. Of course, since I'm not the rebellious kind ($80-120k/yr. in income is a good reason to keep me in check) I can't "protest" on moralistic grounds because they will simply hire someone else who isn't such a moral rebel who will be happy to take the pay while I spend another year looking for work.
You, it seems, are in a different boat. I, on the other hand, haven't been so fortunate. Even when I consulted on my own terms, most of my clients were more than willing to allow me to incorporate certain IP into my own derivatives but they wouldn't allow it to GPL because they didn't want thier competitors to leg-up on them from my source that was really, in part, theirs. In the real-world, most companies lock you down with an NDA and don't want their investments to become everyone elses free-for-all.
No private firm is going to debug nearly so well as 10,000 geeks
Depends on what OSS you are talking about. If you are talking about a small minute fraction of OSS, say for example, the kernel, KDE, Apache, maybe you are correct.
But how many of the 50,000 or so OSS projects on sourceforge.net have 10,000 geeks actively contributing or debugging or maintaining? A very high percentage of those projects listed on sourceforge.net are abandoned or slowly chugging along without little progress or have only the originator of the project contributing in his/her free time while they are too busy working full time to pay the bills, making their OSS project second-priority.
Of course, the types of customization I was talking about about in my post is the specialized customization: an organization needs a specialized CRM system and very organization-specific reporting and data analysis features that are hard to find elsewhere with some very specialized sales force GPS tracking capabilities to integrate into a custom real-time system that delegates tasks for the sales force to follow-up on (in real-time).
How many of those types of "highly specialized" custom solutions are on sourceforge with 10,000 geeks actively contributing in their spare time for no profit and actively making sure it is defect free because they are such philanthropists?
I doubt you'll be able to point me to one such project.
Yes, but you won't get custom software from an OSS programmer, so again, the original post your replied to stands. If you want good quality software with least defects that suits your customer's needs (implying customization), then an OSS programmer working from free for no profit isn't likely to produce anything for you unless they don't have bills to pay and can afford to write softwre for you that will make you money but they themselves don't care about being paid. Very unlikely.
Looking out my "window", see can see the same less than ideal world. It isn't easy to persevere in this industry/economy combination. I don't think for one second that I'm irreplaceable. I must constantly be seeking to make this app better, keep my skills ahead of my time, learning the new idealogies (these days its design patterns, something I've long been informally aware of but not quite as aware as I am now (in terms of practicing it)).
I know it is hard to land a job and I also know that the same two resumes one with degree one without, may get biased towards the college grad (all things being equal, in this case, they aren't equal since one lacks somethign the other has) but I think in the interview, the most important thing is how you sell yourself (and whether you are asking for less money than the next -- all things being equal (but not really equal)).
Companies, I've learned, that are in the business of hiring the right person for the job, will be a little more pragmatic and look for the traits in a person that they know works well with the focus of the company.
I have seen a company decide to shift its interviewing away and only take people who have degrees, and I've watched two of those companies fold because the people they hired couldn't pull their wait and it was too late to correct the problem. The people they hired previously were college drop-outs, but more or less people who learned through experience and trial-and-error and yielded incredible results.
I've also learned something from that, having been a developer on those teams. When I now interview, I try to get to know the person and have a feel for their technical ability.
I remember 4 months ago interviewing one guy that had 4 printed pages of work experience, things such as a Sr. Developer for MS (as a contractor judging by the rapid date change of everything), to being a Sr. Developer for IBM, Oracly, Intel, MS, Corel, everywhere else, with 3 Masters degrees, spanning math, CS, and business, and so on but didn't present himself so well, more like he wanted to come in and take over the team and lay it flat (we're a VB/C# house and he wanted to be C# only and convert everything else to C# to suit his "comfortability").
We ended up hiring another guy that was a bit cocky, no college degree, good experience and other traits that I recognize, and thus far (4 months later) has proven to be an excellent choice for the position.
There are more ways than 1 to weed out the BS'ers in an interview and to get into their personality to see if they are a good fit for the team.
If you need a job and are in Southern California, give me a holler. We are more than fair in our determining whether or not you'll be offered a position in one of our teams.
So they get boycotted and all other driver makers get a message, that the market isn't ready for businesses that step out on a limb and still try to retain some semblance of a business model and proprietary software at the same time. If all driver are expected to be open source, then, it'll be a while before manufacturers start to "catch on" and get the *nix bug. What if the "GPL" string in question actually refers to something else? Now they get the message they are wanted and, other manufacturers get a similar "vibe" due to all this. Make one "perceived" mistake and the whole community boycotts you. That's a great way to compell more businesses to support the platform.
In my whole message, this is the only thing that you have any gripes about?
The company has a requirement that all of our users use IE only. That makes it simple. I don't need to worry about browser incompatibilities or differences. Since all of our users pay for licenses the same way they do any other desktop account, then our company is in a posotion to enforce it. If they use something else and it is broken, that's their problem. We only support IE and I'm in no position to say otherwise.
You may not like it, but then again, this is my job, and not yours so you are in a position to not care and avoid it and me, I'm in a position to care and get paid to do as the company desires.
I don't have a degree but I have tons of experience and a proven history of creativity and being able to solve complex problems. I'm currently the Senior Developer at www.xdti.com working on a very sophisticated agency automation solution (C#, ASP.NET-based). I designed and implemented the complete accounting back-end (which was non-existant at the time I started 16 months ago), have driven the Browser (IE) beyond capabilities listed on most websites (I know, I've searched and had to solve them on my own), implemented and designed the industries most open business-to-business communications and information-sharing protocols, fraud detection and prediction analysis programs, and more. I routinely am relied upon by other team members who are having difficulties solving some very pressing and trying technical and implementation issues and have always proven myself to succeed when asked (and not only help them get their deadlines, but still complete mine ahead of schedule) but I've only been late once.
I work 40 hours a week (rarely more unless we are in a production crunch). Started with 5 other developers and now am the most senior of about 47 developers + QA + analyst (that didn't exist when I started). I have been promoted to Senior Developer and they all report to me in certain respects: I mentor, train, help them clean up the code, help them undestand the application and so on. I've reduced about 40k lines of code to about 10k lines in an OOP kind of way. My pay raises tend to be 10% a pop.
Two weeks ago I was offered a position as a Project manager and accepted. They are now going to train me in it for a year while still having some lessor responsibilities in my previous Sr. Developer role so that if I decide it isn't for me, I can stay where I was an no harm, no foul, or I can leave the developer spot and get my own team. I'm currently leading a the Accounting (in part) team which is the largest team and most heavily funded team in the company.
Do I have a college degree? Nope. In fact, I started and left college because of money issues. But I have an impressive employment and record and excellent experience.
I am currently in school now to finish my CS degree. I actually have my sights on transferring into Caltech and am preparing myself for that level of academic excellence. Wherever I end up attending, I will succeed well and am doing well without it. My income? My taxes this year I filed for $138k. It took me a year of unemployment before I landed my first interview but they hired me and here I am. During that unemployment I consulted and made decent money but personally, I prefer being employed (unlike most other people I know, would rather be independent).
So if you are looking solely at college achievement to help you make your decisions, you are only cheating yourself and the company you represent. Anyone with the right attitude, mindset, devotion, knowledge, and creativity can do impressive feats when given the chance (I know these people are rare, I haven't met anyone else like me yet) but the college degree missing, doesn't make them any lessor.
In short, I'm glad I don't work for you, and if I ever come across you in an interview (supposing I make it that far), I can only hope that something in me reveals itself to you and you can see me for who I am, and not what you think I'm not based on not having a degree.
The software that I write (this is my third enterprise application I've started that is sold commercially) has many thousands of users that use it daily (as it is an application) and our database is about 10 terabytes (a very large one considering we are a Microsoft shop).
Anyway, like I said, the attitude you project is only cheating yourself. You are doing yourself no justice by weeding out college grads only, but I can also see your point. I work and have worked with many people that have multiple degrees and even multiple masters degrees and I still out perform them in the critical thinking area and the trouble
It defines spyware as software that transmits personal information or computer usage data without obtaining explicit approval from the user.
Only one problem, the EULA probly would be written in such a way that you "give" permission or "agree" to them practicing the transferrance and collection of personal data. Or, the host that you are actually installing will probly have in their EULA that there are "partner" products that we agree to installing that may collect data to help "improve" your experience yada yada yada.
The best way to do this, would be to require you to approve each transmission on a transmission-by-transmission basis being able to inspect that data before it is sent, the the total collection of data that you have ever approved to be sent. But that'll never happen because this is America that would be violating the spyware vendors rights to "free speech" (in the form of you spoke it on the public Internet by doing what they spied, and they are speeking it by transmitting it)...
In VC6 it was called a "workspace". It VS.NET, it is called a "Solution". In VS6, you could only have other VC6 projects in a workspace. In VS.NET, you can have any.NET project type in the same solution. This means you can have a solution that contains a VC.NET project, and a C# project, and they'll compile just fine. So really, what's the problem? It is only terminology at most, and a better featureset.
It isn't much better in California. Not a rain thing, but an SUV thing. More and more, I've noticed, in the last few months, (I own a Toyata Tacoma PreRunner), will the merge lanes trying to take the space that I am currently occupying and when I honk they ignore me (or flip me off). I've had to swerve off the freeway to avoid them hitting me and twice nearly missed an overpass post. Nowadays, I just speed up and make it clear that they won't be doing this to me. That only pisses them off and gets them wanting to cut me off even more (and they will take the oppurtunity if they can find one). In one case I actually braked really hard to fall behind them so they can make their merge but since people around here routinely tailgate, I almost caused him to slam into me. What to do? Well, now I just stay still and if they clip me (as long as I don't rear-end as in California you are automatically at-fault for rear-ending someone (which is why people are so quick to rage on you because they can get away with it and cause you the insurance hit)) and if he clips me for merging lanes when it is unsafe to do so then it is his fault. I've learned, if you stay still and don't speed up or down or take evasive action then they will 100% of the time back down (unless there is enough space in front of you for them to fill so they can squeeze in and hit their brakes because they were going to fast and don't want to hit the person in front of them). I watched some bloke get run off the freeway in front of me this way and he went head-on into some sort of guard rail for the bridge that he was just beginning to pass. I keep a running camera in my car of all things behind me and in front so when the SUV took off, I submitted it to the law officer as evidence. I never did find out what happened to either the suspect or victim but I did hear from both insurance companies wanting a testimony.
Then there is the SUV or high-performance sports car cut-you-off-gig. You'll be crusing at a speed equal-to or greater-than the general flow of traffic and no one is in front of you for a good 30 car-length distance. Then, the guy in the lane to the left or right of you who is going slower (much slower) decides to wait until you are within 15 feet of him to cut you off and continue his speed and damn near force you to hit him or jeopardise you in other ways. Even if you are well within the speed limit.
I had two road rage instances and have learned to control my speed. The sad thing is, I have significantly more near-misses when I actually do obey as much of the law as I'm cognizant of then when I didn't. But people in California are too easily angered and they use their cars as weapons to "prove their point" or get you back. I'm increasingly not wanting to drive around here.
Tailgating is very common. It is not uncommon to be doing 80 (no, I'm not contradicting my above statement, but sometimes 80 is the flow of traffic on the slow side around here in the LA area -- Orange County) and some SUV will come up behind you at 110 and tailgate within inches to cause you to get out of their way so they can take up the space in front of those of us who aren't tailgating but they won't actually get anywhere because everyone is doing the same speed and there are no oppurtunities to pass people up. But if you aren't tailgating, then they do everything possible to take up the 8 feet you have in front of you.
I don't do this anymore, but I used to just take my foot off the accelerator and slow down or sometimes brake lightly to cause them to realize they are too close. If something happens and I have to emergency stop, they will go plowing right into me. Most of the time, that just pisses them off and I learned to stop it because it's too easy to cause people to throw sanity out the window. These days, I'll just get out of their way if I can but I don't go out of my way to get out of their way. Last time I went out of my way to get out of theirs I ended up blocking them from their exit (not purposesly) and had him
Well, and sharing musing with 10 million of your Internet buddies should be a copyright infringement. The copyright holders should have a right to re-inforce their legal protections. Why copyright it in the first place if it makes no difference? So the Gov't should "correct" the copyright law in this case.
However, as with all things corporate and gov't marital, there will be abuse. What shouldn't be "corrected" is the fact that currently, the CRIA (or whatever they are called) can't enforce the law themselves. Control the gov't. Sue whoever they want because a Word document file is named brittanyspears.mp3.doc or whatever.
The gov't should enforce the copyright based on copyright law and have as little direct or direct-indirect influence from the corporate entities. The relationship should be that the copyright holder file for the copyright and if they suspect it is being violated, come up with the burden of proof. None of this "settle with us for $2000 or we'll sue for 2 million" nonsense that so encombers our current US legal system while other more appropriate legal issues are getting second treatment while the courts are tied up.
But in all, the fact that the current copyright law isn't protecting the copyright holder is indeed a problem that needs to be corrected, just not by the CRIA/*IAA cronies.
This isn't a popular/. point-of-view, but I don't care. It's the truth.
I might suggest that if it comes down to it, even more software will be developed outside the US just to avoid this. Can you imagine what would happen if someone discovered that backdoor and exploited it? You can answer all you want "it was required by the FBI" what they can also deny it all they want to not bring bad press upon themselves.
I had an attorney go over a similar agreement with me a while back.
Basically, the clause that states that whetever inventions take place during my employment (on company time or not) is their is not legally correct.
According to him, if I create something in my garage and it isn't directly or indirectly related to how the company describes itself in the agreement ("software provider") being too general, more specifically, anything I had knowledge of in the company that pertained to the company, then they can't claim it.
So, since I create CRM software for insurance industry, if I create the world best compression algorithm and they want to claim it, they can't.
They would likely claim it is theirs because I was employed while creating this "invention". But unless they want to compensate me for the time, materials, resources, equipment, and endeavors performed *in my own time* then they can't claim it as theirs.
The company may argue that they were paying me (in salary) but they can't force me not to practice and further my own trade, even considering 90% of what I do at work doesn't help me much at home (the other 10% is basically just looking up references and such, but nothing truly creative).
They also wanted me to turn over all patents and copyrights to my name for the price of $200 each, and whatever I did disclaim, if I even touched it while employed, it became theirs (even if it didn't involve company resources whatsoever).
My attorney said they can't do that. They can obviously not hire me if I don't like those terms, but they would likely not win in court (if I had the money to defend myself to the end) if they tried.
Then there was the trade secrets section. It said that I would be exposed to certain trade secrets. My attorney said that that isn't good enough. I would have to be notified in writing each specific trade secret or I have no idea it was a trade secret.
The bottomline is that these employment agreements are rediculous and I signed it (they wouldn't change it) but after 12 months of unemployment I had no choice, and after consulting with my attorney (california about 1.5 years ago) I felt comfortable knowing what my rights *really* were. Just because I signed it, doesn't mean it'll hold up in court. I can't sign away my legal rights.
If MS opened up its source to their kernel and fiel system, and user32 and such, I'll be you, if enough people wanted to implement it differently, it wouldn't take but a week to completely replace all that code, also (supposing enough people were involved that are involved in the Linux kernel development process).
How then is the MS code valuable?
You see, even DirectX, OpenGL, Crystal Space, PostGRE SQL, or OpenOffice can be re-written from scratch or from within if all we are doing is changing specific code for a specific reason.
The point is that all code *is* valuable to its owner. Even everything that Linus wrote can be replaced in a week if it was necessary. Does that make their code non-valuable? Nope.
It just means that once that cat is out of the bag and something needs to be changed, there are enough people that can do so. Whether the code is important or not. But it doesn't prove that the code isn't valuable just because of that. It just proves that someone else knows how to write that piece of code differently and quickly, even if they have never done so before.
If they are free to use their own copyrighted code wherever they please, as is a derivitive of the original, then anyway who makes derivitives of GPL code with their own contributions are free to do the same.
I'm only playing devils advocate here. Not trolling.
I wonder if because all this SCO stuff is being largely unchallenged by the open source community and most companies aren't taking much a stand (not as much as they should) that it is sending the wrong message, the message that "we can trample all over GPL and get away with it."
I'm not an OSS zealot, not in the least. But I'm starting to notice something here. Hopefully, I'm not the only one noticing and hopefully it gets stopped before its too late.
If you truly beleive in America and its principles, you wouldn't support (or turn a blind eye) when you are a part of the machine that turns the country against the people.
Getting fired for standing up for what is right and what you believe in, as a patriot, is par for the course.
If it's more important to keep the paycheck and be part of a system that destroys America, than that person doesn't belong on American soil in the first place.
They do tell you. If the customer doesn't read the agreement, then thats their problem. Usually, it is a prominent warning. I've never had to "look" for it. It was always one of the first things I read.
This fails in respect to inventors who have patents and are profiting but not very well (not even remotely because of the usefullness of the patent or not) because they aren't intending on licensing the patent for money purposes but because its a defense mechanism.
I have an uncle who has a few patents and in the past some of his stuff has been advertised via infomercial. The patents are only there so he can protect himself, not a single person has ever asked about "licensing" his intellectual property nor has he sought such people. But the money he makes in return, after overhead, isn't enough to continue paying exponentially for his "protection". In this case, he may as well not filed for the patent if it does increase costs with time.
I have already puchased VPC 5.2 for win before MS bought them. I use a different guest (or a differencing drive at least) for each of the web browsers so I can test how my web sites look in different browsers (including browsers on Linux). That was the purpose I bought it. It's cheaper than buying a new PC and more convenient than swapping hard disks.
Now, if they don't officially support Linux anymore, I take my chances and would personally rather not take chances in using it in that manner anyway.
What this means for me is a) buy a new PC, b) deal with swapping drives, or c) dump another $349 on VMWare. I purchased VPC over vmware in the first place because during my evaluations, VPC was more reliable, stable, and faster. Many have argued me on those points the in my scenarios, VMWare wasn't up to the task. Of course, now they have version 4 out so that may be different.
I'm dissappointed but once I heard MS bought VPC, I knew this would happen. It is just way too convenient to run Red Hat 9 in a VM and test and make changes to the web site in the host OS without leaving the guest.
I guess VMWare will be getting my money in the futre. Of course, I"m MSDN so now I get VPC as a part of the subscription. So I'm paying twice.
It's amazing. Anytime anything happens in the non-OSS world all of the sudden this is one-more-reason(tm) why all software should be open and free and why no one should have to pay.
I wonder how much software would actually be produced if people weren't being paid to do so.
I really hate to say it, a rather unpopular view on slashdot, but the best software I've ever used is software that requires a fee. It has the best support, best features, *quickest* evolution, better interfaces, more consistant user-interfaces, less chances of the creator abandoning the project and no one else continuing it, and so on.
However, there is a much stronger evil at play here than the software just being "proprietary".
It's the fact that it requires some type of phone-home based unlocking. That's the real evil and danger at play, not it being proprietary.
I have two cases in point.
1) I have purchased e-books in the past and unlocked them on an early WinXP drive. Sooner or later I had to reformat and re-install. Of course, without paying *again* for those ebooks, I couldn't view them. This is primary reason #1 why I don't believe in hardlocking-based unlock mechanism.
2) I have purchased an expensive book that was clearly advertised as having an e-book on the CD-ROM (one of the reasons I bought it -- I have over 300 tech books mostly C++ and assembly and C# and am trying to collect ebooks of those -- yes, I pay).
Time comes to view the ebook and many of its features requires activating it. No problem, I'll activate. Nope. The company that activates is now out of business and the book publihser assumes no responsibility or liability and that is a total 3rd party issue, not theres. So now I'm stuck with a partial ebook that I paid $95.00 for. This is why I don't like phone-home hased protection mechanisms.
--
There are some activation techniques I think are very reasonable. For example, I use libronix for most of my ebooks that are religious literature (about 200+ collections). It's a great ebook reader (blows away most others I've used) (and has no restrictions other than the ones I list below). It does requires hardlocking and phoning home but, once you do, you get a unlock file that allows you to install it as much as you want on your PC's without re-activating. The only catch is that it requires your personal info before you can unlock any works and all works you unlock can only be unlocked against your unlock file (activation). Well, there's not problem since I have no intentions of sharing it on the Internet with 500 million of my global friends. I think it is a more than fair technique. If they go out of business, I still have my permanent activation key.
3) Issues I haven't yet dealt with but I know its coming, is when MS decides to stop supporting activation of WinXP/2k3, Office XP, etc and I still require them. I pay $2000+/yr. for MSDN and all I get for that is 10 activations for WinXP and 2 activations for OfficeXP. Great. Wonderful.
And there's this issue, both hardlocked-based-protection and phone-home-based protection. The deadliest combonation. People got screwd. But the issue here isn't proprietary. It's obvious that the makers of the software didn't want to make their software open-source and appearantly others didn't either nor would they have made it in the first place if they didn't think they'd make money. It's not wrong to want to be paid for your hard work. But requiring your server to be the only say-so in installation is the problem and lying about the source code escrow.
Please don't cry "this is why everything should be open-source" when something happens. I'm an excellent programmer but became excellent because I was paid to do so. That's why I can program 10-16 hours a day and get paid for my training, company paid cert
"maybe we should all start to think about jumping ship"
Why? Are ya'll cowards? Why not just increase the intensity and try to make it better? MS didn't jump ship becasue because a small OSS crowsd started to tread their territory. I hope such remarks doesn't sum up the community.
Give up and Linux has not chance. Band together even tighter and up the intensity and it has a great chance. Try to be a leader, not a follower, the results will be better.
I doubt the courts will rule in Kazaa's favor. Imagine the precedent, provide a way for massive piracy and by means of a "Terms of Services" restrict the legal beneficiaries of the pirated material from having access to see what and who is pirating, and you very quickly our IP system will crumble.
Yeah yeah, I know, File sharing networks have legitimate uses, too. But 90% of them aren't being used "ligitimately".
Slashdot Mirror
The truth is I'm a network technician/administrator/programmer, the company I work administrates the networks of hundreds of small buisnesses. If the company I work for, or one our customers needs software, then I may write it, may buy it, or may have it written depending on the case. If I write the software the customer (or my company) will be licensed the software under the gpl. Or I may modify an open source program to suit (probably contributing back changes if relevant).
Or we may hire an outside firm to adapt an open source program and license to us under a BSD style license with source... so we can release to the customer under the gpl.
I forgot this part part in my last reply. That's interesting. None of the companies I worked for (or consulted for) would consider allowing my to GPL "their" intellectual property and instead put me under NDA. Of course, since I'm not the rebellious kind ($80-120k/yr. in income is a good reason to keep me in check) I can't "protest" on moralistic grounds because they will simply hire someone else who isn't such a moral rebel who will be happy to take the pay while I spend another year looking for work.
You, it seems, are in a different boat. I, on the other hand, haven't been so fortunate. Even when I consulted on my own terms, most of my clients were more than willing to allow me to incorporate certain IP into my own derivatives but they wouldn't allow it to GPL because they didn't want thier competitors to leg-up on them from my source that was really, in part, theirs. In the real-world, most companies lock you down with an NDA and don't want their investments to become everyone elses free-for-all.
I'd like to know how you pull it off.
Thanks,
Leabre
No private firm is going to debug nearly so well as 10,000 geeks
Depends on what OSS you are talking about. If you are talking about a small minute fraction of OSS, say for example, the kernel, KDE, Apache, maybe you are correct.
But how many of the 50,000 or so OSS projects on sourceforge.net have 10,000 geeks actively contributing or debugging or maintaining? A very high percentage of those projects listed on sourceforge.net are abandoned or slowly chugging along without little progress or have only the originator of the project contributing in his/her free time while they are too busy working full time to pay the bills, making their OSS project second-priority.
Of course, the types of customization I was talking about about in my post is the specialized customization: an organization needs a specialized CRM system and very organization-specific reporting and data analysis features that are hard to find elsewhere with some very specialized sales force GPS tracking capabilities to integrate into a custom real-time system that delegates tasks for the sales force to follow-up on (in real-time).
How many of those types of "highly specialized" custom solutions are on sourceforge with 10,000 geeks actively contributing in their spare time for no profit and actively making sure it is defect free because they are such philanthropists?
I doubt you'll be able to point me to one such project.
Thanks,
Leabre
Yes, but you won't get custom software from an OSS programmer, so again, the original post your replied to stands. If you want good quality software with least defects that suits your customer's needs (implying customization), then an OSS programmer working from free for no profit isn't likely to produce anything for you unless they don't have bills to pay and can afford to write softwre for you that will make you money but they themselves don't care about being paid. Very unlikely.
Thanks,
Leabre
Looking out my "window", see can see the same less than ideal world. It isn't easy to persevere in this industry/economy combination. I don't think for one second that I'm irreplaceable. I must constantly be seeking to make this app better, keep my skills ahead of my time, learning the new idealogies (these days its design patterns, something I've long been informally aware of but not quite as aware as I am now (in terms of practicing it)).
I know it is hard to land a job and I also know that the same two resumes one with degree one without, may get biased towards the college grad (all things being equal, in this case, they aren't equal since one lacks somethign the other has) but I think in the interview, the most important thing is how you sell yourself (and whether you are asking for less money than the next -- all things being equal (but not really equal)).
Companies, I've learned, that are in the business of hiring the right person for the job, will be a little more pragmatic and look for the traits in a person that they know works well with the focus of the company.
I have seen a company decide to shift its interviewing away and only take people who have degrees, and I've watched two of those companies fold because the people they hired couldn't pull their wait and it was too late to correct the problem. The people they hired previously were college drop-outs, but more or less people who learned through experience and trial-and-error and yielded incredible results.
I've also learned something from that, having been a developer on those teams. When I now interview, I try to get to know the person and have a feel for their technical ability.
I remember 4 months ago interviewing one guy that had 4 printed pages of work experience, things such as a Sr. Developer for MS (as a contractor judging by the rapid date change of everything), to being a Sr. Developer for IBM, Oracly, Intel, MS, Corel, everywhere else, with 3 Masters degrees, spanning math, CS, and business, and so on but didn't present himself so well, more like he wanted to come in and take over the team and lay it flat (we're a VB/C# house and he wanted to be C# only and convert everything else to C# to suit his "comfortability").
We ended up hiring another guy that was a bit cocky, no college degree, good experience and other traits that I recognize, and thus far (4 months later) has proven to be an excellent choice for the position.
There are more ways than 1 to weed out the BS'ers in an interview and to get into their personality to see if they are a good fit for the team.
If you need a job and are in Southern California, give me a holler. We are more than fair in our determining whether or not you'll be offered a position in one of our teams.
Thanks,
Leabre
So they get boycotted and all other driver makers get a message, that the market isn't ready for businesses that step out on a limb and still try to retain some semblance of a business model and proprietary software at the same time. If all driver are expected to be open source, then, it'll be a while before manufacturers start to "catch on" and get the *nix bug. What if the "GPL" string in question actually refers to something else? Now they get the message they are wanted and, other manufacturers get a similar "vibe" due to all this. Make one "perceived" mistake and the whole community boycotts you. That's a great way to compell more businesses to support the platform.
Thanks,
Leabre
In my whole message, this is the only thing that you have any gripes about?
The company has a requirement that all of our users use IE only. That makes it simple. I don't need to worry about browser incompatibilities or differences. Since all of our users pay for licenses the same way they do any other desktop account, then our company is in a posotion to enforce it. If they use something else and it is broken, that's their problem. We only support IE and I'm in no position to say otherwise.
You may not like it, but then again, this is my job, and not yours so you are in a position to not care and avoid it and me, I'm in a position to care and get paid to do as the company desires.
Thanks,
Leabre
I don't have a degree but I have tons of experience and a proven history of creativity and being able to solve complex problems. I'm currently the Senior Developer at www.xdti.com working on a very sophisticated agency automation solution (C#, ASP.NET-based). I designed and implemented the complete accounting back-end (which was non-existant at the time I started 16 months ago), have driven the Browser (IE) beyond capabilities listed on most websites (I know, I've searched and had to solve them on my own), implemented and designed the industries most open business-to-business communications and information-sharing protocols, fraud detection and prediction analysis programs, and more. I routinely am relied upon by other team members who are having difficulties solving some very pressing and trying technical and implementation issues and have always proven myself to succeed when asked (and not only help them get their deadlines, but still complete mine ahead of schedule) but I've only been late once.
I work 40 hours a week (rarely more unless we are in a production crunch). Started with 5 other developers and now am the most senior of about 47 developers + QA + analyst (that didn't exist when I started). I have been promoted to Senior Developer and they all report to me in certain respects: I mentor, train, help them clean up the code, help them undestand the application and so on. I've reduced about 40k lines of code to about 10k lines in an OOP kind of way. My pay raises tend to be 10% a pop.
Two weeks ago I was offered a position as a Project manager and accepted. They are now going to train me in it for a year while still having some lessor responsibilities in my previous Sr. Developer role so that if I decide it isn't for me, I can stay where I was an no harm, no foul, or I can leave the developer spot and get my own team. I'm currently leading a the Accounting (in part) team which is the largest team and most heavily funded team in the company.
Do I have a college degree? Nope. In fact, I started and left college because of money issues. But I have an impressive employment and record and excellent experience.
I am currently in school now to finish my CS degree. I actually have my sights on transferring into Caltech and am preparing myself for that level of academic excellence. Wherever I end up attending, I will succeed well and am doing well without it. My income? My taxes this year I filed for $138k. It took me a year of unemployment before I landed my first interview but they hired me and here I am. During that unemployment I consulted and made decent money but personally, I prefer being employed (unlike most other people I know, would rather be independent).
So if you are looking solely at college achievement to help you make your decisions, you are only cheating yourself and the company you represent. Anyone with the right attitude, mindset, devotion, knowledge, and creativity can do impressive feats when given the chance (I know these people are rare, I haven't met anyone else like me yet) but the college degree missing, doesn't make them any lessor.
In short, I'm glad I don't work for you, and if I ever come across you in an interview (supposing I make it that far), I can only hope that something in me reveals itself to you and you can see me for who I am, and not what you think I'm not based on not having a degree.
The software that I write (this is my third enterprise application I've started that is sold commercially) has many thousands of users that use it daily (as it is an application) and our database is about 10 terabytes (a very large one considering we are a Microsoft shop).
Anyway, like I said, the attitude you project is only cheating yourself. You are doing yourself no justice by weeding out college grads only, but I can also see your point. I work and have worked with many people that have multiple degrees and even multiple masters degrees and I still out perform them in the critical thinking area and the trouble
It defines spyware as software that transmits personal information or computer usage data without obtaining explicit approval from the user.
Only one problem, the EULA probly would be written in such a way that you "give" permission or "agree" to them practicing the transferrance and collection of personal data. Or, the host that you are actually installing will probly have in their EULA that there are "partner" products that we agree to installing that may collect data to help "improve" your experience yada yada yada.
The best way to do this, would be to require you to approve each transmission on a transmission-by-transmission basis being able to inspect that data before it is sent, the the total collection of data that you have ever approved to be sent. But that'll never happen because this is America that would be violating the spyware vendors rights to "free speech" (in the form of you spoke it on the public Internet by doing what they spied, and they are speeking it by transmitting it)...
Thanks,
Leabre
In VC6 it was called a "workspace". It VS.NET, it is called a "Solution". In VS6, you could only have other VC6 projects in a workspace. In VS.NET, you can have any .NET project type in the same solution. This means you can have a solution that contains a VC.NET project, and a C# project, and they'll compile just fine. So really, what's the problem? It is only terminology at most, and a better featureset.
Thanks,
Leabre
It isn't much better in California. Not a rain thing, but an SUV thing. More and more, I've noticed, in the last few months, (I own a Toyata Tacoma PreRunner), will the merge lanes trying to take the space that I am currently occupying and when I honk they ignore me (or flip me off). I've had to swerve off the freeway to avoid them hitting me and twice nearly missed an overpass post. Nowadays, I just speed up and make it clear that they won't be doing this to me. That only pisses them off and gets them wanting to cut me off even more (and they will take the oppurtunity if they can find one). In one case I actually braked really hard to fall behind them so they can make their merge but since people around here routinely tailgate, I almost caused him to slam into me. What to do? Well, now I just stay still and if they clip me (as long as I don't rear-end as in California you are automatically at-fault for rear-ending someone (which is why people are so quick to rage on you because they can get away with it and cause you the insurance hit)) and if he clips me for merging lanes when it is unsafe to do so then it is his fault. I've learned, if you stay still and don't speed up or down or take evasive action then they will 100% of the time back down (unless there is enough space in front of you for them to fill so they can squeeze in and hit their brakes because they were going to fast and don't want to hit the person in front of them). I watched some bloke get run off the freeway in front of me this way and he went head-on into some sort of guard rail for the bridge that he was just beginning to pass. I keep a running camera in my car of all things behind me and in front so when the SUV took off, I submitted it to the law officer as evidence. I never did find out what happened to either the suspect or victim but I did hear from both insurance companies wanting a testimony.
Then there is the SUV or high-performance sports car cut-you-off-gig. You'll be crusing at a speed equal-to or greater-than the general flow of traffic and no one is in front of you for a good 30 car-length distance. Then, the guy in the lane to the left or right of you who is going slower (much slower) decides to wait until you are within 15 feet of him to cut you off and continue his speed and damn near force you to hit him or jeopardise you in other ways. Even if you are well within the speed limit.
I had two road rage instances and have learned to control my speed. The sad thing is, I have significantly more near-misses when I actually do obey as much of the law as I'm cognizant of then when I didn't. But people in California are too easily angered and they use their cars as weapons to "prove their point" or get you back. I'm increasingly not wanting to drive around here.
Tailgating is very common. It is not uncommon to be doing 80 (no, I'm not contradicting my above statement, but sometimes 80 is the flow of traffic on the slow side around here in the LA area -- Orange County) and some SUV will come up behind you at 110 and tailgate within inches to cause you to get out of their way so they can take up the space in front of those of us who aren't tailgating but they won't actually get anywhere because everyone is doing the same speed and there are no oppurtunities to pass people up. But if you aren't tailgating, then they do everything possible to take up the 8 feet you have in front of you.
I don't do this anymore, but I used to just take my foot off the accelerator and slow down or sometimes brake lightly to cause them to realize they are too close. If something happens and I have to emergency stop, they will go plowing right into me. Most of the time, that just pisses them off and I learned to stop it because it's too easy to cause people to throw sanity out the window. These days, I'll just get out of their way if I can but I don't go out of my way to get out of their way. Last time I went out of my way to get out of theirs I ended up blocking them from their exit (not purposesly) and had him
Well, and sharing musing with 10 million of your Internet buddies should be a copyright infringement. The copyright holders should have a right to re-inforce their legal protections. Why copyright it in the first place if it makes no difference? So the Gov't should "correct" the copyright law in this case.
/. point-of-view, but I don't care. It's the truth.
However, as with all things corporate and gov't marital, there will be abuse. What shouldn't be "corrected" is the fact that currently, the CRIA (or whatever they are called) can't enforce the law themselves. Control the gov't. Sue whoever they want because a Word document file is named brittanyspears.mp3.doc or whatever.
The gov't should enforce the copyright based on copyright law and have as little direct or direct-indirect influence from the corporate entities. The relationship should be that the copyright holder file for the copyright and if they suspect it is being violated, come up with the burden of proof. None of this "settle with us for $2000 or we'll sue for 2 million" nonsense that so encombers our current US legal system while other more appropriate legal issues are getting second treatment while the courts are tied up.
But in all, the fact that the current copyright law isn't protecting the copyright holder is indeed a problem that needs to be corrected, just not by the CRIA/*IAA cronies.
This isn't a popular
Thanks,
Leabre
I might suggest that if it comes down to it, even more software will be developed outside the US just to avoid this. Can you imagine what would happen if someone discovered that backdoor and exploited it? You can answer all you want "it was required by the FBI" what they can also deny it all they want to not bring bad press upon themselves.
Thanks,
Leabre
I had an attorney go over a similar agreement with me a while back.
Basically, the clause that states that whetever inventions take place during my employment (on company time or not) is their is not legally correct.
According to him, if I create something in my garage and it isn't directly or indirectly related to how the company describes itself in the agreement ("software provider") being too general, more specifically, anything I had knowledge of in the company that pertained to the company, then they can't claim it.
So, since I create CRM software for insurance industry, if I create the world best compression algorithm and they want to claim it, they can't.
They would likely claim it is theirs because I was employed while creating this "invention". But unless they want to compensate me for the time, materials, resources, equipment, and endeavors performed *in my own time* then they can't claim it as theirs.
The company may argue that they were paying me (in salary) but they can't force me not to practice and further my own trade, even considering 90% of what I do at work doesn't help me much at home (the other 10% is basically just looking up references and such, but nothing truly creative).
They also wanted me to turn over all patents and copyrights to my name for the price of $200 each, and whatever I did disclaim, if I even touched it while employed, it became theirs (even if it didn't involve company resources whatsoever).
My attorney said they can't do that. They can obviously not hire me if I don't like those terms, but they would likely not win in court (if I had the money to defend myself to the end) if they tried.
Then there was the trade secrets section. It said that I would be exposed to certain trade secrets. My attorney said that that isn't good enough. I would have to be notified in writing each specific trade secret or I have no idea it was a trade secret.
The bottomline is that these employment agreements are rediculous and I signed it (they wouldn't change it) but after 12 months of unemployment I had no choice, and after consulting with my attorney (california about 1.5 years ago) I felt comfortable knowing what my rights *really* were. Just because I signed it, doesn't mean it'll hold up in court. I can't sign away my legal rights.
Thanks,
Me
Any code can be replaced.
If MS opened up its source to their kernel and fiel system, and user32 and such, I'll be you, if enough people wanted to implement it differently, it wouldn't take but a week to completely replace all that code, also (supposing enough people were involved that are involved in the Linux kernel development process).
How then is the MS code valuable?
You see, even DirectX, OpenGL, Crystal Space, PostGRE SQL, or OpenOffice can be re-written from scratch or from within if all we are doing is changing specific code for a specific reason.
The point is that all code *is* valuable to its owner. Even everything that Linus wrote can be replaced in a week if it was necessary. Does that make their code non-valuable? Nope.
It just means that once that cat is out of the bag and something needs to be changed, there are enough people that can do so. Whether the code is important or not. But it doesn't prove that the code isn't valuable just because of that. It just proves that someone else knows how to write that piece of code differently and quickly, even if they have never done so before.
Not trolling. Just playing devils advocate.
Thanks,
Me.
If they are free to use their own copyrighted code wherever they please, as is a derivitive of the original, then anyway who makes derivitives of GPL code with their own contributions are free to do the same.
I'm only playing devils advocate here. Not trolling.
Thanks,
Shawn
Well, in this case, the incentive is great tax breaks for doing so. Where is the incentive to keep the jobs and money flowing in the economy?
Thanks,
Me
I wonder if because all this SCO stuff is being largely unchallenged by the open source community and most companies aren't taking much a stand (not as much as they should) that it is sending the wrong message, the message that "we can trample all over GPL and get away with it."
I'm not an OSS zealot, not in the least. But I'm starting to notice something here. Hopefully, I'm not the only one noticing and hopefully it gets stopped before its too late.
Thanks,
Leabre
If you truly beleive in America and its principles, you wouldn't support (or turn a blind eye) when you are a part of the machine that turns the country against the people.
Getting fired for standing up for what is right and what you believe in, as a patriot, is par for the course.
If it's more important to keep the paycheck and be part of a system that destroys America, than that person doesn't belong on American soil in the first place.
Thanks,
Leabre
Just wait until they manufacture some evidence just to not look stupid.
Thanks,
Leabre
They do tell you. If the customer doesn't read the agreement, then thats their problem. Usually, it is a prominent warning. I've never had to "look" for it. It was always one of the first things I read.
Thanks,
Leabre
This fails in respect to inventors who have patents and are profiting but not very well (not even remotely because of the usefullness of the patent or not) because they aren't intending on licensing the patent for money purposes but because its a defense mechanism.
I have an uncle who has a few patents and in the past some of his stuff has been advertised via infomercial. The patents are only there so he can protect himself, not a single person has ever asked about "licensing" his intellectual property nor has he sought such people. But the money he makes in return, after overhead, isn't enough to continue paying exponentially for his "protection". In this case, he may as well not filed for the patent if it does increase costs with time.
Thanks,
Leabre
I have already puchased VPC 5.2 for win before MS bought them. I use a different guest (or a differencing drive at least) for each of the web browsers so I can test how my web sites look in different browsers (including browsers on Linux). That was the purpose I bought it. It's cheaper than buying a new PC and more convenient than swapping hard disks.
Now, if they don't officially support Linux anymore, I take my chances and would personally rather not take chances in using it in that manner anyway.
What this means for me is a) buy a new PC, b) deal with swapping drives, or c) dump another $349 on VMWare. I purchased VPC over vmware in the first place because during my evaluations, VPC was more reliable, stable, and faster. Many have argued me on those points the in my scenarios, VMWare wasn't up to the task. Of course, now they have version 4 out so that may be different.
I'm dissappointed but once I heard MS bought VPC, I knew this would happen. It is just way too convenient to run Red Hat 9 in a VM and test and make changes to the web site in the host OS without leaving the guest.
I guess VMWare will be getting my money in the futre. Of course, I"m MSDN so now I get VPC as a part of the subscription. So I'm paying twice.
Thanks,
Leabre
It's amazing. Anytime anything happens in the non-OSS world all of the sudden this is one-more-reason(tm) why all software should be open and free and why no one should have to pay.
/yr. for MSDN and all I get for that is 10 activations for WinXP and 2 activations for OfficeXP. Great. Wonderful.
I wonder how much software would actually be produced if people weren't being paid to do so.
I really hate to say it, a rather unpopular view on slashdot, but the best software I've ever used is software that requires a fee. It has the best support, best features, *quickest* evolution, better interfaces, more consistant user-interfaces, less chances of the creator abandoning the project and no one else continuing it, and so on.
However, there is a much stronger evil at play here than the software just being "proprietary".
It's the fact that it requires some type of phone-home based unlocking. That's the real evil and danger at play, not it being proprietary.
I have two cases in point.
1) I have purchased e-books in the past and unlocked them on an early WinXP drive. Sooner or later I had to reformat and re-install. Of course, without paying *again* for those ebooks, I couldn't view them. This is primary reason #1 why I don't believe in hardlocking-based unlock mechanism.
2) I have purchased an expensive book that was clearly advertised as having an e-book on the CD-ROM (one of the reasons I bought it -- I have over 300 tech books mostly C++ and assembly and C# and am trying to collect ebooks of those -- yes, I pay).
Time comes to view the ebook and many of its features requires activating it. No problem, I'll activate. Nope. The company that activates is now out of business and the book publihser assumes no responsibility or liability and that is a total 3rd party issue, not theres. So now I'm stuck with a partial ebook that I paid $95.00 for. This is why I don't like phone-home hased protection mechanisms.
--
There are some activation techniques I think are very reasonable. For example, I use libronix for most of my ebooks that are religious literature (about 200+ collections). It's a great ebook reader (blows away most others I've used) (and has no restrictions other than the ones I list below). It does requires hardlocking and phoning home but, once you do, you get a unlock file that allows you to install it as much as you want on your PC's without re-activating. The only catch is that it requires your personal info before you can unlock any works and all works you unlock can only be unlocked against your unlock file (activation). Well, there's not problem since I have no intentions of sharing it on the Internet with 500 million of my global friends. I think it is a more than fair technique. If they go out of business, I still have my permanent activation key.
3) Issues I haven't yet dealt with but I know its coming, is when MS decides to stop supporting activation of WinXP/2k3, Office XP, etc and I still require them. I pay $2000+
And there's this issue, both hardlocked-based-protection and phone-home-based protection. The deadliest combonation. People got screwd. But the issue here isn't proprietary. It's obvious that the makers of the software didn't want to make their software open-source and appearantly others didn't either nor would they have made it in the first place if they didn't think they'd make money. It's not wrong to want to be paid for your hard work. But requiring your server to be the only say-so in installation is the problem and lying about the source code escrow.
Please don't cry "this is why everything should be open-source" when something happens. I'm an excellent programmer but became excellent because I was paid to do so. That's why I can program 10-16 hours a day and get paid for my training, company paid cert
"maybe we should all start to think about jumping ship"
Why? Are ya'll cowards? Why not just increase the intensity and try to make it better? MS didn't jump ship becasue because a small OSS crowsd started to tread their territory. I hope such remarks doesn't sum up the community.
Give up and Linux has not chance. Band together even tighter and up the intensity and it has a great chance. Try to be a leader, not a follower, the results will be better.
Thanks,
Leabre
I doubt the courts will rule in Kazaa's favor. Imagine the precedent, provide a way for massive piracy and by means of a "Terms of Services" restrict the legal beneficiaries of the pirated material from having access to see what and who is pirating, and you very quickly our IP system will crumble.
Yeah yeah, I know, File sharing networks have legitimate uses, too. But 90% of them aren't being used "ligitimately".
Thanks,
Leabre