In my dotcom job (only 4 people), I had recommended a close friend for the 3rd position. Person #1 notified me, person #2, on Friday morning of the company closing down. I assumed he would notify person #3 also on Friday. On Monday morning, I asked person #3 (via ICQ) if he had gotten the news, which he hadn't. Put me in the awkward position of telling him (via ICQ) to expect a phone call.
Person #1 was a total asshole. Not for letting me go, but for putting off person #3 like that and not telling me.
I am a senior indie contractor working for NASA. I just saved 5% of my project budget for this year by using Open Source vs. Micro$oft. Since the division of NASA I do work for is roughly 1/2 PC, 1/2 Mac (OS X), Open Source (well, ok, + Java) was the *only* feasible solution.
So is 5% significant enough? It was for my company -- which runs as a shoestring outfit, and which NASA has repeatedly awarded (and rewarded) for giving good value for the buck.
Open Source has been saving my various employers (AOL, Siemens, Motorola, NASA) big bucks since the early nineties (back then we got a contract to do AIX + Sun work for Motorola, and lacking the funds to buy AIX & Sun boxen, we used Slackware 2.2 (yay Slack) for development, and recompiled (flawlessly) for AIX + Sun.
Obviously, I owe much of my entire 17 year career in software to Open Source and plan to dedicate the rest of it to bringing Open Source to NASA. Bottom line: every dollar NASA spends on proprietary software is IMHO mostly wasted, whereas every dollar NASA spends on me working with Open Source projects benefits NASA, me, and Open Source. Is it an uphill battle? Yes! Many of the Young Turks I work with (believe it or not!) are MS-only and do not use Open Source. But Open Source has benefitted my career so much, I owe it to Open Source to repay the favor.
FYI: Open Source packages used in the current project: Red Hat, Cygwin, Perl, PHP, Apache, Tomcat, OpenSSH, vi (yay vi), and all those other GNU/Linux utils.
Maybe I'm biased since I have degrees in math & physics from a prominent Alabama university specializing in cutting-edge materials science and optics and am currently working on third generation spacecraft... oh, did I mention while living in "Alabamer" and hailing from "Tennduhsee"?
And you critics of "Alabamer" are from where exactly? Perhaps that state where even New Yorkers won't live, New Jersey? Or that bastion of good government, Taxachusettes? What exactly have *you* done to advance the human race lately besides post ill-conceived comments to slashdot and burn your karma getting your ever-witty observations modded up to "funny"?
Special bonus: +2 to your self-assumed intelligent self if you can actually figure out the source of my nick.
Slashdot Mirror
Too bad he lives in London. The citizens have been disarmed there.
In my dotcom job (only 4 people), I had recommended a close friend for the 3rd position. Person #1 notified me, person #2, on Friday morning of the company closing down. I assumed he would notify person #3 also on Friday. On Monday morning, I asked person #3 (via ICQ) if he had gotten the news, which he hadn't. Put me in the awkward position of telling him (via ICQ) to expect a phone call.
Person #1 was a total asshole. Not for letting me go, but for putting off person #3 like that and not telling me.
I am a senior indie contractor working for NASA. I just saved 5% of my project budget for this year by using Open Source vs. Micro$oft. Since the division of NASA I do work for is roughly 1/2 PC, 1/2 Mac (OS X), Open Source (well, ok, + Java) was the *only* feasible solution.
So is 5% significant enough? It was for my company -- which runs as a shoestring outfit, and which NASA has repeatedly awarded (and rewarded) for giving good value for the buck.
Open Source has been saving my various employers (AOL, Siemens, Motorola, NASA) big bucks since the early nineties (back then we got a contract to do AIX + Sun work for Motorola, and lacking the funds to buy AIX & Sun boxen, we used Slackware 2.2 (yay Slack) for development, and recompiled (flawlessly) for AIX + Sun.
Obviously, I owe much of my entire 17 year career in software to Open Source and plan to dedicate the rest of it to bringing Open Source to NASA. Bottom line: every dollar NASA spends on proprietary software is IMHO mostly wasted, whereas every dollar NASA spends on me working with Open Source projects benefits NASA, me, and Open Source. Is it an uphill battle? Yes! Many of the Young Turks I work with (believe it or not!) are MS-only and do not use Open Source. But Open Source has benefitted my career so much, I owe it to Open Source to repay the favor.
FYI: Open Source packages used in the current project: Red Hat, Cygwin, Perl, PHP, Apache, Tomcat, OpenSSH, vi (yay vi), and all those other GNU/Linux utils.
Maybe I'm biased since I have degrees in math & physics from a prominent Alabama university specializing in cutting-edge materials science and optics and am currently working on third generation spacecraft... oh, did I mention while living in "Alabamer" and hailing from "Tennduhsee"? And you critics of "Alabamer" are from where exactly? Perhaps that state where even New Yorkers won't live, New Jersey? Or that bastion of good government, Taxachusettes? What exactly have *you* done to advance the human race lately besides post ill-conceived comments to slashdot and burn your karma getting your ever-witty observations modded up to "funny"? Special bonus: +2 to your self-assumed intelligent self if you can actually figure out the source of my nick.