I started a small company 3 months ago, basically because of the same thing you're experiencing, myself a coworker from the other company started our own, and we're doing great, we work shorter hours and get paid much more, we've grown profits by more than 100% each month, and we're on track to do it again this month. (and no we're not doubling from $0, we're doing quite well thank you.) Mind you, we have only done a very small amount of software consulting (1 job), we focus more on turnkey server solutions, and networking/security... but thats just us.. its definately possible, and its great!
Furthermore here in America there are very very many small computer mfgs. that will sell you a computer with the OS of your choice.. (I sell computers with windows, Linux, or FreeBSD preinstalled at the customer's request). I'll install any OS on the system you ask for.. it only makes sense, any Econ 110 course will teach you that discrimination on any grounds raises costs while reducing profits... of course this raises my support costs (Dell/HP arg. for not pre-installing linux).. oh wait no, any tech worth his beans should be able to support multiple systems.. and all of my techs do, therefore having multiple OS's to support does not require any retraining, or hiring of more people...
my business partner and I are also in the process right now of purchasing macs, for the very reason that we are sick of MS... Well, we've been sick of them for a long time, and I've been running purely linux for a year now... but OS X is beautiful...:) he was about to buy a wintel notebook, but then he looked at the powerbook, and for the same price it is at least equal in performance to any of the other systems he looked at... so thats what he's getting... I am gonna get a new iMac (one with the 17" monitor.. mmm yummy)
Would it not be possible then for a proprietary software company to "steal" GPL'd code, and say "We never accepted the license that says we have to GPL our dirivative work"? If they are not required to see it, and accept it, in a court of law, as I see it, it would be trivial for an MS to convince the court that even though the license was included, they were not required to accept it, and frankly they don't, and therefore, they don't have to GPL the code of their derivative work. "safely presuming" in the courts doesn't generally work. It makes me pretty nervous that our legal front the EFF is making "safe presumptions" about what MS intends, and about how courts will interpret acceptance of license terms.
As a matter of practicality click-through licenses don't make much sense, however, at the current time they have a large amount of legal precedent, which, as with all new technologies is what rules the courts. If intuition says one thing "click through licenses are silly" but the legal precedent says otherwise "click through licenses are legally binding" and a case goes to court, legal precedent will almost always win, barring some new and yet unruled upon technicality. (IANAL but my dad is, so its almost from a professional). For example, MS could very easily steal open source software, and if we tried to take them to court on it (assuming we had the money to do so) they could easily say "We never saw this GPL, we were not required to accept it, and we don't..." And they would be off the hook. This is one case where having click-through licenses would strengthen Open Source Software from being stolen by proprietary companies.
while I agree that the cost of milling is (in dollar terms) small... in percentage terms of the donation, it is rather large, the article states that it costs $25/metric ton to mill, and that it is worth $98/metric ton... so, it would increase the cost of the aid by 25%, which in percentage terms is pretty big. I still think we should do it, but a 25% increase in cost of a gift, just because they don't want the "evil bioengineered corn" does seem a little silly to me.
It places the rights and interests of the state above the rights and interests of the individual, because of a belief that the importance of the state to its citizens supercedes the importance of individual members.
How do you not see that this is exactly what ICANN is doing? They are the state in the analogy, and they have decided that their rights are more important than the public's right to give input, or manage the internet. They are in essence saying "We are more important to you than you are, we will run the internet the way we like because its good for you, so just accept it". Their political philosophy to me seems extremely fascist.
the machine was a dell GX240 with an nVidia TNT 2 card. the only problem with it being IE, or Netscape, or MSN messenger alone, is that running the programs separately never created the problem, furthermore running them in any other combination didn't cause BSOD either (IE: netscape and MSN, or IE and netscape, or IE and MSN) none of these combinations caused BSOD. only running all three. So, to me it really looks like a software issue, it might be related to other programs I had installed, and some DLL confusions... (the machine had 7GB of software installed... ) but no other combination caused BSOD besides running the three aformentioned programs.
I've seen very very many. most of the time its because of hardware, but sometimes software, I used to blue screen a win2k box at work about once a day by having msn messenger, IE and netscape open at the same time.. it didn't like that much and would normally puke after about 10 minutes of the three programs running simultaneously. Also bad RAM, and a few bad CDROMs and sound cards have thrown win2k/winXP into BSOD...
yeah, TS is nice... if you've got a T1 to the internet... (ok so RDP isn't that slow, but on a modem, ssh is still much much faster). and, TS pulls you into paying $1k more for each server... why when you can get the same functionality, more stability, less security risks, faster, just as easy to use (for me), and run it all on older hardware (so you don't have to spend more on hardware either) with linux?
I know you can serve by email in Nevada (its the only state so far that allows it, and only in the state courts) the federal courts do not allow service by email yet...
this might be true of some managers, however lots of small business owners that I associate with who have *lots* of money (just because its a "small" business doesn't mean it doesn't make the owners very rich) do not subscribe to this idea of "more expensive=better" most of them are very cost conscious, and for them its about value not cost. If something costs less and does the same thing or does the same thing better, it has more value, and is therefore a good buy. I really don't think most CEOs and PHBs even subscribe to the idea of "costs less = worse" but then I've only really dealt with 2 of those.. (they were looking for value).
I will have to agree with you on all points there. especially the ease of use issues. I tried to run Win 2k server, its at least as difficult to understand as Linux, and in my opinion more so, because they hide everything behind wizards, so you never *really* know whats going on. Furthermore, I manage and maintain over 50 linux servers spread out from Phoenix, AZ to Salt Lake City, UT. I could never do this type of remote management with windows. Not ever. Well, I could but it would cost my clients a whole lot more, as I'd be flying to Phoenix ever other day... I used to work in an office with 8 win 2k servers, and 100 clients... we had an IT staff of 5 full time plus 5-10 techno-savvy employees from other departments would help us out with supporting their department's IT needs part time... for 108 machines.. now I'm managing 50+ servers, from my house, by myself... I'm quite sure the latter is cheaper. (Not to mention the $50,000 in licensing fees my clients would have had to pay to MS)
do you need some hosting space for a web site? I'm willing to donate! Lets go! and I'm not joking, (I already am boycotting RIAA, I do not purchase CDs anymore, nor will I until something changes).
my former place of employment and many many other businesses that I am aware of use NAT to connect multiple machines through a single IP address. Also, a whole lot of illicit file trading is done inside of these networks. I know for a fact at my former place of employment there was over 100GB of music/movies saved on users machines throughout the office. One employee had over 30GB on a single machine. If RIAA/MPAA attack these connections, with a DoS attack, they will most assuredly cause more than $250 in damage to the business, and furthermore will cause damages to someone other than the file trader. Thus they will not be eligible for the safe harbor. So, everyone go download your mp3's at work behind a NAT so that they have no choice but to block the 1 global IP that is connected, thus disconnecting all of the other systems behind said NAT and causing great economic damages!
It seems to me that the DMCA is going to win on constitutionality... However, what if we the people could sue the US gov't under the DMCA? What if we made some weak encryption, and then passed some copyrighted materials around that happen to be illegal... so the US gov't intercepts our transmission, breaks the encryption and then arrests someone with the "evidence"... and said person countersues under the DMCA saying you can't admit that as evidence, it was discovered by breaking the copy protection mechanism I put on it, and if you admit it it will be available publicly its a copyrighted work. (I don't know what we could encrypt that would be illegal enough to cause all this to happen.. but its a thought.. probably not a good one, so mod it down or whatever..) but the only way I see this law getting overturned at this point is for it to interfere with a gov't investigation/prosecution of terrorism or something. (al quaida should start copyrighting all of their transmission inside the US).
I would see that as a great idea as long as Linux then could live up to the hype. One of the greatest ad campaigns during the last year in my opinion was the AT&T mLife campaign.. cause it just kept leaving you asking "What on earth is mLife!?? And who is this??" cause the adds didn't mention a company at all... Unfortunately, mLife ends up being a huge disappointment, because its nothing new, its a few new cell phone calling plans, and maybe 1 new feature. Now, Linux on the other hand, is new and exciting, and if the community did a good job of supporting this type of campaign, it could work very very well indeed in my opinion.
From reading the site, now that the link to actually purchase online is gone, it does not seem as if this is Swingline's fault as the poster states:
"The company who apparently provides the online shopping service for Swingline appears to be an outfit called SureSource."
Whereas the site clearly states:
" * Please note that you will be purchasing from SureSource, a distributor of Swingline products. To place an order for the Rio Red Stapler (SKU#: S7074740), Please call SureSource at: 1-800-544-3243."
SureSource is simply a distributor, and as such, Swingline would have about as much control over their e-commerce site as I do over the weather.
Of course, basing UI design on something Homer Simpson said is a little questionalbe if you ask me! What music would you suggest all of these buttons play in KDE?
Ok, so if the cops come do a drug bust on my neighbors I'm somehow implicated?? Furthermore, according to your logic, all ISPs are now legally liable for things their subscribers download. Highly doubtful. Granted ISPs have their little acceptable use policies and all that, but as a son of a lawyer, I know that most contracts of that sort hold very little water in decreasing liability. So I say a big WHATEVER to your comment. Furthermore, according to your logic, a hacker could now hack into MS's network download a bunch of illegal music/movies, blame it on MS and take them down, because they provided the access.
I'll have to disagree there. (I am a nerd, but we'll leave that aside for now). Linux is just as "easy" to use as Windows if you ask me. Windows is just what everybody already *knows*, they've already gone through the learning curve enough to get their tasks done that they need done. I've only been using Linux for 8 months, and I can do much more interesting and complex things with it than I could with Windows, and I spent almost 7 years messing/tinkering/toying/learning Windows. Furthermore, MACs to me are a foreign language, I can't get anything done on a Mac, simple web browsing/email maybe.. but anything else, nada.
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I started a small company 3 months ago, basically because of the same thing you're experiencing, myself a coworker from the other company started our own, and we're doing great, we work shorter hours and get paid much more, we've grown profits by more than 100% each month, and we're on track to do it again this month. (and no we're not doubling from $0, we're doing quite well thank you.) Mind you, we have only done a very small amount of software consulting (1 job), we focus more on turnkey server solutions, and networking/security... but thats just us.. its definately possible, and its great!
when I've had problems like this before it has always been bad/cheap RAM that corrupts data on its way to the hard drive... but that might just be me
Furthermore here in America there are very very many small computer mfgs. that will sell you a computer with the OS of your choice.. (I sell computers with windows, Linux, or FreeBSD preinstalled at the customer's request). I'll install any OS on the system you ask for.. it only makes sense, any Econ 110 course will teach you that discrimination on any grounds raises costs while reducing profits... of course this raises my support costs (Dell/HP arg. for not pre-installing linux).. oh wait no, any tech worth his beans should be able to support multiple systems.. and all of my techs do, therefore having multiple OS's to support does not require any retraining, or hiring of more people...
my business partner and I are also in the process right now of purchasing macs, for the very reason that we are sick of MS... Well, we've been sick of them for a long time, and I've been running purely linux for a year now... but OS X is beautiful... :)
he was about to buy a wintel notebook, but then he looked at the powerbook, and for the same price it is at least equal in performance to any of the other systems he looked at... so thats what he's getting... I am gonna get a new iMac (one with the 17" monitor.. mmm yummy)
Would it not be possible then for a proprietary software company to "steal" GPL'd code, and say "We never accepted the license that says we have to GPL our dirivative work"? If they are not required to see it, and accept it, in a court of law, as I see it, it would be trivial for an MS to convince the court that even though the license was included, they were not required to accept it, and frankly they don't, and therefore, they don't have to GPL the code of their derivative work. "safely presuming" in the courts doesn't generally work. It makes me pretty nervous that our legal front the EFF is making "safe presumptions" about what MS intends, and about how courts will interpret acceptance of license terms.
As a matter of practicality click-through licenses don't make much sense, however, at the current time they have a large amount of legal precedent, which, as with all new technologies is what rules the courts. If intuition says one thing "click through licenses are silly" but the legal precedent says otherwise "click through licenses are legally binding" and a case goes to court, legal precedent will almost always win, barring some new and yet unruled upon technicality. (IANAL but my dad is, so its almost from a professional). For example, MS could very easily steal open source software, and if we tried to take them to court on it (assuming we had the money to do so) they could easily say "We never saw this GPL, we were not required to accept it, and we don't..." And they would be off the hook. This is one case where having click-through licenses would strengthen Open Source Software from being stolen by proprietary companies.
while I agree that the cost of milling is (in dollar terms) small... in percentage terms of the donation, it is rather large,
the article states that it costs $25/metric ton to mill, and that it is worth $98/metric ton... so, it would increase the cost of the aid by 25%, which in percentage terms is pretty big. I still think we should do it, but a 25% increase in cost of a gift, just because they don't want the "evil bioengineered corn" does seem a little silly to me.
They must not have been using tabbed browsing!
It places the rights and interests of the state above the rights and interests of the individual, because of a belief that the importance of the state to its citizens supercedes the importance of individual members.
How do you not see that this is exactly what ICANN is doing? They are the state in the analogy, and they have decided that their rights are more important than the public's right to give input, or manage the internet. They are in essence saying "We are more important to you than you are, we will run the internet the way we like because its good for you, so just accept it". Their political philosophy to me seems extremely fascist.
the machine was a dell GX240 with an nVidia TNT 2 card. the only problem with it being IE, or Netscape, or MSN messenger alone, is that running the programs separately never created the problem, furthermore running them in any other combination didn't cause BSOD either (IE: netscape and MSN, or IE and netscape, or IE and MSN) none of these combinations caused BSOD. only running all three. So, to me it really looks like a software issue, it might be related to other programs I had installed, and some DLL confusions... (the machine had 7GB of software installed... ) but no other combination caused BSOD besides running the three aformentioned programs.
I've seen very very many.
most of the time its because of hardware, but sometimes software, I used to blue screen a win2k box at work about once a day by having msn messenger, IE and netscape open at the same time..
it didn't like that much and would normally puke after about 10 minutes of the three programs running simultaneously. Also bad RAM, and a few bad CDROMs and sound cards have thrown win2k/winXP into BSOD...
1024x768? I assume you have an hdtv?
W2K server costs $1k. (well, $900 and some.. but close enought). That is where I get the $1k from, not any special licensing for TS.
yeah, TS is nice... if you've got a T1 to the internet... (ok so RDP isn't that slow, but on a modem, ssh is still much much faster). and, TS pulls you into paying $1k more for each server... why when you can get the same functionality, more stability, less security risks, faster, just as easy to use (for me), and run it all on older hardware (so you don't have to spend more on hardware either) with linux?
I know you can serve by email in Nevada (its the only state so far that allows it, and only in the state courts) the federal courts do not allow service by email yet...
this might be true of some managers, however lots of small business owners that I associate with who have *lots* of money (just because its a "small" business doesn't mean it doesn't make the owners very rich) do not subscribe to this idea of "more expensive=better" most of them are very cost conscious, and for them its about value not cost. If something costs less and does the same thing or does the same thing better, it has more value, and is therefore a good buy. I really don't think most CEOs and PHBs even subscribe to the idea of "costs less = worse" but then I've only really dealt with 2 of those.. (they were looking for value).
I will have to agree with you on all points there.
especially the ease of use issues. I tried to run Win 2k server, its at least as difficult to understand as Linux, and in my opinion more so, because they hide everything behind wizards, so you never *really* know whats going on. Furthermore, I manage and maintain over 50 linux servers spread out from Phoenix, AZ to Salt Lake City, UT. I could never do this type of remote management with windows. Not ever. Well, I could but it would cost my clients a whole lot more, as I'd be flying to Phoenix ever other day... I used to work in an office with 8 win 2k servers, and 100 clients... we had an IT staff of 5 full time plus 5-10 techno-savvy employees from other departments would help us out with supporting their department's IT needs part time... for 108 machines.. now I'm managing 50+ servers, from my house, by myself... I'm quite sure the latter is cheaper. (Not to mention the $50,000 in licensing fees my clients would have had to pay to MS)
do you need some hosting space for a web site?
I'm willing to donate!
Lets go!
and I'm not joking, (I already am boycotting RIAA, I do not purchase CDs anymore, nor will I until something changes).
my former place of employment and many many other businesses that I am aware of use NAT to connect multiple machines through a single IP address. Also, a whole lot of illicit file trading is done inside of these networks. I know for a fact at my former place of employment there was over 100GB of music/movies saved on users machines throughout the office. One employee had over 30GB on a single machine. If RIAA/MPAA attack these connections, with a DoS attack, they will most assuredly cause more than $250 in damage to the business, and furthermore will cause damages to someone other than the file trader. Thus they will not be eligible for the safe harbor. So, everyone go download your mp3's at work behind a NAT so that they have no choice but to block the 1 global IP that is connected, thus disconnecting all of the other systems behind said NAT and causing great economic damages!
It seems to me that the DMCA is going to win on constitutionality... However, what if we the people could sue the US gov't under the DMCA? What if we made some weak encryption, and then passed some copyrighted materials around that happen to be illegal... so the US gov't intercepts our transmission, breaks the encryption and then arrests someone with the "evidence"... and said person countersues under the DMCA saying you can't admit that as evidence, it was discovered by breaking the copy protection mechanism I put on it, and if you admit it it will be available publicly its a copyrighted work. (I don't know what we could encrypt that would be illegal enough to cause all this to happen.. but its a thought.. probably not a good one, so mod it down or whatever..) but the only way I see this law getting overturned at this point is for it to interfere with a gov't investigation/prosecution of terrorism or something. (al quaida should start copyrighting all of their transmission inside the US).
I would see that as a great idea as long as Linux then could live up to the hype. One of the greatest ad campaigns during the last year in my opinion was the AT&T mLife campaign.. cause it just kept leaving you asking "What on earth is mLife!?? And who is this??" cause the adds didn't mention a company at all... Unfortunately, mLife ends up being a huge disappointment, because its nothing new, its a few new cell phone calling plans, and maybe 1 new feature. Now, Linux on the other hand, is new and exciting, and if the community did a good job of supporting this type of campaign, it could work very very well indeed in my opinion.
From reading the site, now that the link to actually purchase online is gone, it does not seem as if this is Swingline's fault as the poster states:
"The company who apparently provides the online shopping service for Swingline appears to be an outfit called SureSource."
Whereas the site clearly states:
" * Please note that you will be purchasing from SureSource, a distributor of Swingline products.
To place an order for the Rio Red Stapler (SKU#: S7074740), Please call SureSource at: 1-800-544-3243."
SureSource is simply a distributor, and as such, Swingline would have about as much control over their e-commerce site as I do over the weather.
Of course, basing UI design on something Homer Simpson said is a little questionalbe if you ask me!
What music would you suggest all of these buttons play in KDE?
Ok, so if the cops come do a drug bust on my neighbors I'm somehow implicated??
Furthermore, according to your logic, all ISPs are now legally liable for things their subscribers download. Highly doubtful. Granted ISPs have their little acceptable use policies and all that, but as a son of a lawyer, I know that most contracts of that sort hold very little water in decreasing liability. So I say a big WHATEVER to your comment. Furthermore, according to your logic, a hacker could now hack into MS's network download a bunch of illegal music/movies, blame it on MS and take them down, because they provided the access.
I'll have to disagree there.
(I am a nerd, but we'll leave that aside for now).
Linux is just as "easy" to use as Windows if you ask me. Windows is just what everybody already *knows*, they've already gone through the learning curve enough to get their tasks done that they need done. I've only been using Linux for 8 months, and I can do much more interesting and complex things with it than I could with Windows, and I spent almost 7 years messing/tinkering/toying/learning Windows. Furthermore, MACs to me are a foreign language, I can't get anything done on a Mac, simple web browsing/email maybe.. but anything else, nada.