Although it's certainly true that many open source projects lack any direction/organization, plenty of big name commercial products have the same issues.
Just from semi-recent personal experience I can vouch for Matrix One and Blue Martini. Both of them cater to huge corporations, and both of them are absolutely horrible (in my humble opinoin, of course). Incomplete documentation coupled with extremely poor design and preformance more than overshadow any mythical support you might expect to get from a commercial product purchase.
At least when you find out you've got nothng to work with using an open source solution you don't have to fight against the business people who invested millions in the purchase of a lackluster commercial product.
If you can get what you pay for, then commercial solutions can be the right way to go, but there is no clear line between commercial and open source as far as quality is concerned.
I believe what disturbs people such as yourself is not actually the amount of violence, but the setting. It is more shocking to see violence in a so-called 1st-world environment than it is in the 3rd-world. You expect there to have been some progression away from violence. Well, I do not believe there will ever be a progression away from violence. Violence is a choice on our genetically inherited decision tree. Some people lean away from the violent side of the tree, and some people teeter ever on the virge of explosive behavior. I don't believe it's exposure to depictions of violence that pushes them off the edge. A depiction has no action. It does not push or pull. It is a descriptive aspect of a larger event. It is not the image of violence that drives me to explode. The frustration of defeat makes me angry. The denial of fruition pushes me off the edge. The 1st-world setting only fuels this reaction. When you come to expect getting what you want, acceptance of denial becomes difficult.
When I go looking for a new game, I find myself always thinking "I want a strategy game just like StarCraft, a FPS just like Tribes 2, a turn-based game just like MOO2, a multiplayer turn-based game just like Trade Wars, and an MMO like EverQuest (tons of caveats on the EQ statement, but it's still true).
Most of my friends are the same way. They want to take their favorite game from the past and just have it different enough to be fresh. They want things like better graphics and less bugs, but they usually don't want big differences in gameplay. The gameplay is what made the games great to them in the first place.
The best sci-fi series ever was clearly Doctor Who. There is no comparison in longevity or creativity. The amount of content achieved with, quite possibly, the lowest budget is astounding.
I have a hard enough time keeping the rail-thin business people from turning the thermostat up to 85 every chance they get without a study telling them it's more productive. I'm somewhat irritated this was even posted simply for the chance it might spread via Slashdot readers mentioning it.
Perhaps if those people who "can't" get jobs would switch careers, those people who "can" could stop reading this "sky is falling" thread every month.
On the topic of cost differential between off-shoring and domestic hiring, eventually all markets equalize. So, in the real "long run", it will be no cheaper to hire people off-shore than it will be to hire them locally.
In response to the person who said the language barrier wasn't a real problem, I hope you were being sarcastic. Cultural differences are the #1 problem in communication with off-shore "talent", and that includes the language barrier. You can't properly communicate in a language unless you know the quirks and subtle cultural innuendos.
There is no inherent "good" or "evil". There is no all encompassing "right" or "wrong". There is no statement of truth that contains "is [not] ethical".
If society does not want a behavior to continue, it becomes a crime. It does not become unethical. It does not become wrong. It does not become evil. It is simply either legal or illegal.
He (the subject of the article) is not evil. He is not wrong. He is not unethical. He is either guilty or innocent of a crime. Discuss his guilt/innocense. Discuss whether it is/should [not] be a crime. Discussion concerning ethics, right, wrong, good, or evil is superfluous.
People need to stop turning every discussion into a religious war.
If you feel the need to respond to any post because it is "insensitive", you are simply looking for something to be indignant about. Does your viewpoint of the situation change because you read an "insensitive" post? Does the post have any tangible effect on your personal situation or the situation of others? If the answer to either of those questions is "yes", perhaps you should instead spend some time in introspection examining why your will is so malleable.
There is nothing "wrong" with "insensitivity". It is of no consequence. It is no excuse for hostility. Fight against it if you must, but never believe your actions are justified by any inherent "right" or "wrong" regarding insensitivity. Determining why you feel the need to respond may be far more productive than posting your unearned indignation.
...he just comes out and explains he wanted all of his movies to be absolutely horrible. That way it makes perfect sense that he would go back and make them worse.
If Kurosawa were brought back from the dead and it was explained to him that The Phantom Menace was at least in some way derived from The Hidden Fortress, he'd promptly fall over dead again.
I learned Java 1.0* because I wanted to write a GUI app with no prior knowledge of such in any language. I read Sun's Java tutorial and wrote my first GUI with no books or training of any kind. I know that's no big deal, but I thought I'd explain why I learned Java. I much perfer Perl. When I write Perl, I feel like Cartman rolling in a pile of money. It makes me feel good just to write something in Perl, rather than some other language. That's not because I want to push Perl, it's because I just like writing Perl more than anything else. However, I write Java for a living. I do this because programming skill is language independent, and when I go looking for work I'm far more likely to find Java jobs than Perl jobs. I set out to learn Python just for the hell of it. I didn't have any visions of it ever being in widespread use. I just did it for fun, but I could not like the language. I don't like block-follows-indentation. I don't like 'else' statements on loops that get executed when you don't break out of the loop. So, when I saw these things (and others, but it's been years since then), I decided I should make a decision on whether to continue learning the language. I couldn't come up with a reason to use Python over Perl, Java, C, C++, or even PHP. So I stopped exploring Python. Nothing has happened since then to change my mind. This article certainly does not have that effect.
If paper isn't working, and computers aren't working, then you've still got that last solution: weapons. That doesn't look likely now, but one lesson that's been learned repeatedly in history is that people will only allow themselves to be screwed so many times.
I say we vote with the tea. Everybody, get your tea, and head to Boston. Maybe the second time's the charm.
I've never had any trouble getting jobs, even during the "downturn". My ability to get hired is more from who I've worked with than what I've done. A lot of people have "impressive" resumes. There are generally more than a few that actually live up to the resume, so even if you're truthful, you'll still have a lot of competition when you go the direct route to applying for a job. The three keys to avoiding this competition are 1) the lead, 2) the inside push, and 3) the references. You don't need all three to get a job, but the more you have the better you'll do.
The "lead" is how you learn about the opening. A good lead gets you the news before it hits the normal channels (consulting agencies, newspapers...etc). This gives you a jump on the application process.
The "inside push" is when you're lucky enough to know someone working at the same place. The more valued the person is at his/her job, the more likely their push will benefit you. When a company has someone they know is good, they are more likely to take their advice, and they are also more likely to want to please them (the better to keep them there). It's also important how close the person is to the position you wish to fill. If you're really lucky, you know a good manager, team lead, or technical lead on or near the project/unit hiring.
Everybody knows about references, but the relative quality of your references can make a big difference. When you can put down executive or upper technical level references, it can make a huge difference. Having people equal to yourself isn't bad. It shows you are liked/respected by your teammates. However, when VPs and Directors will take the time to vouch for you, it can impress upon your new company how valuable you were to your former employer.
If you've never had a professional job, take the best that you can get and live with it until you're able to move on. If you do well, and make yourself valuable to your employer and teammates, you'll be able to leave sometime relatively soon (2-3 years) if you like. I've been able to avoid unemployment because I have good people pulling for me. In my opinion, there's no better asset in getting jobs than the support of respectable people.
One last piece of advice, regardless of how much you hate your job, never quit voluntarily unless you have an accepted offer with a start date somewhere else.
From a sales standpoint, though, if a customer is saying they won't buy your product because of IIS, you'd much rather let that slide and keep hope alive than let them go completely off Windows. MS is in the business of making money, and I doubt they'll turn down a possible sale of product A just because they can't swing a sale of product B. As long as they have that foot in the door, they can push product B again later.
I'm a bit surprised that ESR would point out the Apche vs. IIS differences when Microsoft could come back by pointing out you can always run Apache on Windows if you want to.
I'm sure MS would prefer you use IIS, but this seems an easily deflected statement. I'm positive that MS prefers you using Apache on Windows to you using Apache on Linux.
This is too public to be the real bill. This bill is probably meant to fail so that another bill, that would look almost as bad as this one, will look good by comparison.
The state of California has also ruled that SBC has an unfair adventage versus competition in the accidental severing of network backbones. The government of California has ordered SBC to let passers by operate their equipment so that all unskilled people who wish accidentally sever buried lines have an equal chance.
If they determine that something isn't going to work, I'd prefer they not do it, rather than spending tax dollars on what they believe to be a failed attempt. My stance does consider whether they are correct in their belief. It is irrelevant to them taking action on a belief. The first question that would be asked, if it did not work, would be "Why did you spend money on this if you KNEW/BELIEVED it wasn't going to work?!". If they're just being stupid in their belief, that's another issue.
There were many posts about the GPL under that article. That constitutes a discussion, regardless of whether I responded directly to one or to the article. I assumed since you took the time to reply that you had moderated the post. Either way, if you want to get technical, your responses are as off topic as anything could be, since they only relate to a post you already branded off topic.
Slashdot Mirror
Although it's certainly true that many open source projects lack any direction/organization, plenty of big name commercial products have the same issues.
Just from semi-recent personal experience I can vouch for Matrix One and Blue Martini. Both of them cater to huge corporations, and both of them are absolutely horrible (in my humble opinoin, of course). Incomplete documentation coupled with extremely poor design and preformance more than overshadow any mythical support you might expect to get from a commercial product purchase.
At least when you find out you've got nothng to work with using an open source solution you don't have to fight against the business people who invested millions in the purchase of a lackluster commercial product.
If you can get what you pay for, then commercial solutions can be the right way to go, but there is no clear line between commercial and open source as far as quality is concerned.
I believe what disturbs people such as yourself is not actually the amount of violence, but the setting. It is more shocking to see violence in a so-called 1st-world environment than it is in the 3rd-world. You expect there to have been some progression away from violence. Well, I do not believe there will ever be a progression away from violence. Violence is a choice on our genetically inherited decision tree. Some people lean away from the violent side of the tree, and some people teeter ever on the virge of explosive behavior. I don't believe it's exposure to depictions of violence that pushes them off the edge. A depiction has no action. It does not push or pull. It is a descriptive aspect of a larger event. It is not the image of violence that drives me to explode. The frustration of defeat makes me angry. The denial of fruition pushes me off the edge. The 1st-world setting only fuels this reaction. When you come to expect getting what you want, acceptance of denial becomes difficult.
When I go looking for a new game, I find myself always thinking "I want a strategy game just like StarCraft, a FPS just like Tribes 2, a turn-based game just like MOO2, a multiplayer turn-based game just like Trade Wars, and an MMO like EverQuest (tons of caveats on the EQ statement, but it's still true).
Most of my friends are the same way. They want to take their favorite game from the past and just have it different enough to be fresh. They want things like better graphics and less bugs, but they usually don't want big differences in gameplay. The gameplay is what made the games great to them in the first place.
Whether or not JBoss is set apart by it's use of JMX is irrelevant to whether or not the author "attributes responsibility" to JBoss for JMX.
Your quotation doesn't imply that JBoss has any responsibility for JMX. It simply says their "microkernel" is based on JMX.
The best sci-fi series ever was clearly Doctor Who. There is no comparison in longevity or creativity. The amount of content achieved with, quite possibly, the lowest budget is astounding.
I have a hard enough time keeping the rail-thin business people from turning the thermostat up to 85 every chance they get without a study telling them it's more productive. I'm somewhat irritated this was even posted simply for the chance it might spread via Slashdot readers mentioning it.
Perhaps if those people who "can't" get jobs would switch careers, those people who "can" could stop reading this "sky is falling" thread every month.
On the topic of cost differential between off-shoring and domestic hiring, eventually all markets equalize. So, in the real "long run", it will be no cheaper to hire people off-shore than it will be to hire them locally.
In response to the person who said the language barrier wasn't a real problem, I hope you were being sarcastic. Cultural differences are the #1 problem in communication with off-shore "talent", and that includes the language barrier. You can't properly communicate in a language unless you know the quirks and subtle cultural innuendos.
There is no inherent "good" or "evil". There is no all encompassing "right" or "wrong". There is no statement of truth that contains "is [not] ethical".
If society does not want a behavior to continue, it becomes a crime. It does not become unethical. It does not become wrong. It does not become evil. It is simply either legal or illegal.
He (the subject of the article) is not evil. He is not wrong. He is not unethical. He is either guilty or innocent of a crime. Discuss his guilt/innocense. Discuss whether it is/should [not] be a crime. Discussion concerning ethics, right, wrong, good, or evil is superfluous.
People need to stop turning every discussion into a religious war.
...but this IBM audio cassette I listened to said it was "the way of the future". We have to keep the future in the kernel...for the children.
If you feel the need to respond to any post because it is "insensitive", you are simply looking for something to be indignant about. Does your viewpoint of the situation change because you read an "insensitive" post? Does the post have any tangible effect on your personal situation or the situation of others? If the answer to either of those questions is "yes", perhaps you should instead spend some time in introspection examining why your will is so malleable.
There is nothing "wrong" with "insensitivity". It is of no consequence. It is no excuse for hostility. Fight against it if you must, but never believe your actions are justified by any inherent "right" or "wrong" regarding insensitivity. Determining why you feel the need to respond may be far more productive than posting your unearned indignation.
...he just comes out and explains he wanted all of his movies to be absolutely horrible. That way it makes perfect sense that he would go back and make them worse.
If Kurosawa were brought back from the dead and it was explained to him that The Phantom Menace was at least in some way derived from The Hidden Fortress, he'd promptly fall over dead again.
I learned Java 1.0* because I wanted to write a GUI app with no prior knowledge of such in any language. I read Sun's Java tutorial and wrote my first GUI with no books or training of any kind. I know that's no big deal, but I thought I'd explain why I learned Java. I much perfer Perl. When I write Perl, I feel like Cartman rolling in a pile of money. It makes me feel good just to write something in Perl, rather than some other language. That's not because I want to push Perl, it's because I just like writing Perl more than anything else. However, I write Java for a living. I do this because programming skill is language independent, and when I go looking for work I'm far more likely to find Java jobs than Perl jobs. I set out to learn Python just for the hell of it. I didn't have any visions of it ever being in widespread use. I just did it for fun, but I could not like the language. I don't like block-follows-indentation. I don't like 'else' statements on loops that get executed when you don't break out of the loop. So, when I saw these things (and others, but it's been years since then), I decided I should make a decision on whether to continue learning the language. I couldn't come up with a reason to use Python over Perl, Java, C, C++, or even PHP. So I stopped exploring Python. Nothing has happened since then to change my mind. This article certainly does not have that effect.
If paper isn't working, and computers aren't working, then you've still got that last solution: weapons. That doesn't look likely now, but one lesson that's been learned repeatedly in history is that people will only allow themselves to be screwed so many times.
I say we vote with the tea. Everybody, get your tea, and head to Boston. Maybe the second time's the charm.
I've never had any trouble getting jobs, even during the "downturn". My ability to get hired is more from who I've worked with than what I've done. A lot of people have "impressive" resumes. There are generally more than a few that actually live up to the resume, so even if you're truthful, you'll still have a lot of competition when you go the direct route to applying for a job. The three keys to avoiding this competition are 1) the lead, 2) the inside push, and 3) the references. You don't need all three to get a job, but the more you have the better you'll do.
The "lead" is how you learn about the opening. A good lead gets you the news before it hits the normal channels (consulting agencies, newspapers...etc). This gives you a jump on the application process.
The "inside push" is when you're lucky enough to know someone working at the same place. The more valued the person is at his/her job, the more likely their push will benefit you. When a company has someone they know is good, they are more likely to take their advice, and they are also more likely to want to please them (the better to keep them there). It's also important how close the person is to the position you wish to fill. If you're really lucky, you know a good manager, team lead, or technical lead on or near the project/unit hiring.
Everybody knows about references, but the relative quality of your references can make a big difference. When you can put down executive or upper technical level references, it can make a huge difference. Having people equal to yourself isn't bad. It shows you are liked/respected by your teammates. However, when VPs and Directors will take the time to vouch for you, it can impress upon your new company how valuable you were to your former employer.
If you've never had a professional job, take the best that you can get and live with it until you're able to move on. If you do well, and make yourself valuable to your employer and teammates, you'll be able to leave sometime relatively soon (2-3 years) if you like. I've been able to avoid unemployment because I have good people pulling for me. In my opinion, there's no better asset in getting jobs than the support of respectable people.
One last piece of advice, regardless of how much you hate your job, never quit voluntarily unless you have an accepted offer with a start date somewhere else.
From a sales standpoint, though, if a customer is saying they won't buy your product because of IIS, you'd much rather let that slide and keep hope alive than let them go completely off Windows. MS is in the business of making money, and I doubt they'll turn down a possible sale of product A just because they can't swing a sale of product B. As long as they have that foot in the door, they can push product B again later.
I'm a bit surprised that ESR would point out the Apche vs. IIS differences when Microsoft could come back by pointing out you can always run Apache on Windows if you want to.
I'm sure MS would prefer you use IIS, but this seems an easily deflected statement. I'm positive that MS prefers you using Apache on Windows to you using Apache on Linux.
This is too public to be the real bill. This bill is probably meant to fail so that another bill, that would look almost as bad as this one, will look good by comparison.
The state of California has also ruled that SBC has an unfair adventage versus competition in the accidental severing of network backbones. The government of California has ordered SBC to let passers by operate their equipment so that all unskilled people who wish accidentally sever buried lines have an equal chance.
That's "stance does NOT consider". Sorry.
If they determine that something isn't going to work, I'd prefer they not do it, rather than spending tax dollars on what they believe to be a failed attempt. My stance does consider whether they are correct in their belief. It is irrelevant to them taking action on a belief. The first question that would be asked, if it did not work, would be "Why did you spend money on this if you KNEW/BELIEVED it wasn't going to work?!". If they're just being stupid in their belief, that's another issue.
That's a good point.
There were many posts about the GPL under that article. That constitutes a discussion, regardless of whether I responded directly to one or to the article. I assumed since you took the time to reply that you had moderated the post. Either way, if you want to get technical, your responses are as off topic as anything could be, since they only relate to a post you already branded off topic.
I've been waiting a long time to try OpenBSD on my SMP boxes. Time to see what happens.
That was hysterical.