Then hire three uberdevelopers instead of 10 mediocre developers. The salary cost will be about the same, the project will be completed faster, and the resulting product will be better designed and less error-prone.
Part of my job is to help management make decisions about technologies that they don't generally understand. If I don't attempt to get involved when my input is required, then I'm not doing my job.
If I see a poor decision being made, I will politely give my opinion on it whether they ask for it or not. Often, but not always, the decision is reevaluated. A lot of times people make bad decisions simply because they don't know what their true options are.
This may sound like a small thing, but I've recently seen examples where a document has a different number of pages than it did when viewed in MS Word. Something that is on page 50 in Word might be on page 54 in OpenOffice.
Anyone have any insight into why this is and how to fix it?
I think you've got the right idea, but I wanted to make it clearer.
The entity that distributes the software gets to choose which license uses to distribute under.
The recipient doesn't have to abide by anything unless they decide to distribute the software to someone else. In that case, they get to choose what license to distribute under (and their decision is independent of the decision made by the entity that gave them the software).
I'm cool with that. Let Ubuntu take 90% of the linux desktop market.
My only concern is hardware support and since we all run the same kernel, I can buy a Ubuntu installed machine and put my preferred distro on it with no worries.
And I was under the impression it was at 7%. See? I can make up statistics too.
I apologize for not giving references. Since we're talking desktops, and since most desktops are used for browsing (among other things), here are a couple sources that will help give some ballpark estimations of Linux penetration on the desktop.
W3 schools, a developer site shows 3.4% of their traffic comes from Linux machines. Since this is a site aimed at developers, this is probably higher than the actual desktop percentage. See http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp if you're interested.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 5 doesn't have a column for Linux, but the "other os" column shows 3.54%. It aggregates stats from thousands of websites, so is probably more representative of the typical desktop than W3 schools and can probably be safely used as an upper limit.
I'd love to see stats from other sources if anyone cares to post links to them.
The demand for linux drivers needs to reach the point at which a given manufacturer perceives that whatever IP they might expose by releasing Linux drivers is less of an impact than losing out on those sales. We are almost certainly at that point already, but most manufacturers don't realize it.
I was under the impression that Linux had less than 2% of the desktop market. Is that really enough computers to sway the decision making of hardware manufacturers?
If I had a large number of machines running XP and I knew that Vista's successor was 3 years away, it might be tempting to skip upgrading to Vista and simply wait for its successor. If Vista++ will be coming out before MS stops supporting XP, why would I go through an expensive upgrade (time, money, training, etc) when XP meets my current needs and Vista++ will be around before I'm forced to quit XP?
It is a bit of an oversimplification, with Sony shooting themselves in their own foot with the disaster the PS3 has become.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The PS3 is actually selling quite well if you treat the Wii as an outlier. It's selling better than I expected it to, given the price point.
It always takes a year or so before a new console gets its first generation of games that actually know how to use the hardware. So why don't we give it another year before we write the PS3 off as a disaster.
I agree completely. The successful projects I've been on recently were all successful because of things that I and other team members learned on previous projects (successful or otherwise).
Linking a GPL library makes your code a derivative of the GPL code. Therefore, in order to not break the law if you try to distribute your code (as a derivative of the GPL'd code), you must meet the criteria of the GPL.
The Mysql business model is dependent on businesses wanting to distribute software, but not be required to satisfy the GPL requirements. Businesses that strictly use Mysql internally have no need to send any money to Mysql (unless they want to purchase support, but that a different business model).
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Any idea why OSX doesn't support ext2/3?
Surely Apple isn't afraid of being displaced by Linux.
Is it because ext2/3 is GPL'd?
Then hire three uberdevelopers instead of 10 mediocre developers. The salary cost will be about the same, the project will be completed faster, and the resulting product will be better designed and less error-prone.
Even better if they release the hardware specs and let the community write the drivers for them!
Wouldn't it make more sense to simply build data centers in cooler climes?
I believe that netcraft is counting sites, not servers. As such, consolidating servers would not explain netcraft's numbers.
Part of my job is to help management make decisions about technologies that they don't generally understand. If I don't attempt to get involved when my input is required, then I'm not doing my job.
If I see a poor decision being made, I will politely give my opinion on it whether they ask for it or not. Often, but not always, the decision is reevaluated. A lot of times people make bad decisions simply because they don't know what their true options are.
Not completely seamless.
This may sound like a small thing, but I've recently seen examples where a document has a different number of pages than it did when viewed in MS Word. Something that is on page 50 in Word might be on page 54 in OpenOffice.
Anyone have any insight into why this is and how to fix it?
Have you done anything clever to coexist with those around you that use Windows that you'd like to share with us?
I think you've got the right idea, but I wanted to make it clearer.
The entity that distributes the software gets to choose which license uses to distribute under.
The recipient doesn't have to abide by anything unless they decide to distribute the software to someone else. In that case, they get to choose what license to distribute under (and their decision is independent of the decision made by the entity that gave them the software).
I'm cool with that. Let Ubuntu take 90% of the linux desktop market.
My only concern is hardware support and since we all run the same kernel, I can buy a Ubuntu installed machine and put my preferred distro on it with no worries.
It's been ready for a while.
Now it's actually positioned to move on to the lay person's desktop.
First off, we are only getting say 30-40% of the sunlight using our best solar panels (available in the near future).
Space is big. 30-40% of huge is still huge.
Secondly, we are probably not going to get a lot of efficiency by beaming the power down to Earth. I would guess we only get like 10-20%.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectenna 85% conversion is currently possible.
The article said battery life was somewhere around 7 hours.
It's only a minor point until governments and big businesses start requiring support for standard formats before they award contracts.
And I was under the impression it was at 7%. See? I can make up statistics too.
= 5 doesn't have a column for Linux, but the "other os" column shows 3.54%. It aggregates stats from thousands of websites, so is probably more representative of the typical desktop than W3 schools and can probably be safely used as an upper limit.
I apologize for not giving references. Since we're talking desktops, and since most desktops are used for browsing (among other things), here are a couple sources that will help give some ballpark estimations of Linux penetration on the desktop.
W3 schools, a developer site shows 3.4% of their traffic comes from Linux machines. Since this is a site aimed at developers, this is probably higher than the actual desktop percentage. See http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp if you're interested.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid
I'd love to see stats from other sources if anyone cares to post links to them.
The demand for linux drivers needs to reach the point at which a given manufacturer perceives that whatever IP they might expose by releasing Linux drivers is less of an impact than losing out on those sales. We are almost certainly at that point already, but most manufacturers don't realize it.
I was under the impression that Linux had less than 2% of the desktop market. Is that really enough computers to sway the decision making of hardware manufacturers?
Who has more clout, insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies?
A cure would save the insurance companies lots of money.
If I had a large number of machines running XP and I knew that Vista's successor was 3 years away, it might be tempting to skip upgrading to Vista and simply wait for its successor. If Vista++ will be coming out before MS stops supporting XP, why would I go through an expensive upgrade (time, money, training, etc) when XP meets my current needs and Vista++ will be around before I'm forced to quit XP?
And leaving a notebook plugged in all the time kills the battery.
WTF???
How is running plugged in hard on the battery?
It is a bit of an oversimplification, with Sony shooting themselves in their own foot with the disaster the PS3 has become.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The PS3 is actually selling quite well if you treat the Wii as an outlier. It's selling better than I expected it to, given the price point.
It always takes a year or so before a new console gets its first generation of games that actually know how to use the hardware. So why don't we give it another year before we write the PS3 off as a disaster.
I see mostly Gentoo among the developers around here. Lots of non-developers experimenting with Ubuntu and a few long time unix users running Fedora.
Most production servers I'm aware of run RedHat. The rest are Solaris or Gentoo.
Marry a doctor. I really do like what I do, but I also like the fact that what I do is OPTIONAL.
I agree completely. The successful projects I've been on recently were all successful because of things that I and other team members learned on previous projects (successful or otherwise).
I wish I hadn't wasted my mod points this morning.
That was one of the most insightful posts I've ever seen on Slashdot.
Linking a GPL library makes your code a derivative of the GPL code. Therefore, in order to not break the law if you try to distribute your code (as a derivative of the GPL'd code), you must meet the criteria of the GPL.
The Mysql business model is dependent on businesses wanting to distribute software, but not be required to satisfy the GPL requirements. Businesses that strictly use Mysql internally have no need to send any money to Mysql (unless they want to purchase support, but that a different business model).