I have enjoyed using the VM module for Emacs. It allows sorting your entire Inbox into separate categorized mail boxes via regular expressions. Basically with one shift-A keystroke, my entire day's worth of mailing list stuff gets whisked away into a half-dozen different files. After this, I feel really sorry for people trapped in the Outlook dungeons!
(I don't like the idea of companies as entities comparable to individuals -- it removes responsibility and encourages unethical behavior)
In the U.S., my incentive to incorporate my business is to insulate myself and my assets from my business and its assets. This is an important legal protection. I'm not really convinced it encourages unethical behavior; rather, it encourages people to take on greater risks, which are very important in growing innovative businesses.
Some people may try to use this mechanism to mask accountability, but it really doesn't work in the long run. Healthy businesses have to maintain accountability to stay strong, since a business is fundamentally a group of people working together.
Well, I'll admit it: I am not a zealot. I'll defer the moron issue for now.
I judge companies, people, and things at face value. With respect to Microsoft, it's a matter of their attitude towards their customers. If Sun starts treating me like slime, then I won't hesitate in finding another company to cite in my arguments.
I value greatly the relationships between businesses and their customers. Businesses should never feel they are in a position to dictate their customers' terms. Instead, businesses should feel they are at the mercy of their customers' trust. It's pretty simple, and businesses that succeed at establishing healthy relationships with their customers will last a long time and be successful. Successful is a vague term, since it really doesn't require being #1 or even in the top ten.
This is why Microsoft is in a dangerous position. There are many people who look upon Microsoft with suspicion, now, who didn't five or ten years ago. Microsoft is losing the trust of their customer base. If they don't start behaving better, soon, then they will just become another case of "the bigger they are, the harder they fall."
As far as the auto industry goes (as well as the aviation industry), the massive barriers to entry are largely due to massive government regulation and the huge investment in safe factories. Could I start a small business, now, and expect to build a fully DOT/OSHA/ISO9000/whatever-compliant factory and compete with Toyota or General Motors? Probably not. Can I start a small software business with $1,000? Absolutely (myself + one used workstation + Free Software).
...from MS to Redhat to Sun, everyone bundles, is forced to, or goes out of business because that's what the customer wants.
However, the manner in which companies do the bundling varies widely. Take Solaris, for example.
Sun hides nothing when it bundles software and gives credit where it is due. They do this with Apache, Perl, Java, X Windows, and the Berkeley UNIX compatibility tools, for example. The user is never forced to use these tools, but they certainly may choose to. The only component of Solaris a person is really forced to use is the kernel. Otherwise, Solaris is very modular allowing the user to pick and choose pretty much everything else.
The same is true for Linux and the free BSDs, as well. This is not true of Windows.
The difference between Microsoft and everyone else is that Microsoft is arrogant, imposing, and rude towards its customers. Microsoft has lost the notion of working for the customers, which is why more and more people are turning away from Microsoft every day.
Companies should be bending over backwards to satisfy their customers, and they should be honest about it, too. Meanwhile, Microsoft has been steadily dropping in rank on my list of companies that have earned my business. I think it will be very soon before Microsoft drops off that list entirely.
It's a pretty smart tactic on M$'s part when you think about it.
Financially, yes, but it really looks bad from the public's point of view. The headlines will be, "Microsoft Takes $1 Million from Public School XYZ," not "Microsoft aids schools with software compliance."
Quite honestly, I think a large percentage of the audited government agencies will be angry enough to search hard for alternatives. It may take them a while, but they will certainly be looking for "a way out" of the M$ regime. The audits may ease the fines against M$, but M$ is really hurting themselves in the long run.
When I was hired by my current employer, my contract basically stated that anything I do on their time is theirs.
Things get even more complex, when my time is spent representing my company as a subcontractor to another company. During this time, who owns my work is spelled out in the contract between those companies.
Thus, the only real answer to your question is: you have to convince the people who set up your business contracts to include a clause spelling out your rights to submit patches to Open Source projects. However, none of the parties in that contract want to pay a lot of money for you to work up such patches, so it will probably be an up-hill battle for you.
Mainly, I have learned that large bureaucracies, such as those in large companies and governments, tend to stifle such initiatives. Also, you will find that no one in that bureaucracy will be willing to take on any risk for your sake.
Sometimes these bureaucracies are so mind-numbingly stupid that sometimes I just want to go live in the woods for a while and play chess with my squirrel friends. Yes, that would be much better.
I think it would be very nice if Sun offered both Solaris and Linux on its new lines of low-end servers.
Solaris shops can purchase these servers knowing they will work very well in their workplace, and Linux shops can purchase these servers knowing they will work very well in their workplace.
Solaris can also help Sun differentiate their Intel-based products from those offered by other companies, such as Compaq and IBM. I know the Sun Intel servers will be better (with the familiar RAS features, etc.), but it might be hard to convince the PHBs that this is the case (since they are too used to bending over for M$ and cheap PCs).
The Asus boards I've bought offer a number of bus speeds and multipliers that really span a wide range. For example, my older Pentium Asus board will easily handle 75MHz through 550MHz Pentiums/K6s. I recently bought an Athlon Asus board that will handle from 800MHz to 1470MHz.
My point is to buy the Athlon Asus board, for example, with one of the slower CPUs in its range. This saves money up front, and saves money later when the 1.4GHz CPUs come down in price. To get the 1.4GHz CPU initially, buy a newer model of motherboard that handles 2GHz+.
It is also important to fill less than half of the memory slots initially to leave room for more RAM later on.
To take advantage of major jumps in hard disk sizes, Asus often releases BIOS updates that follow such increases. For example, my older Pentium motherboard has a 40GB drive connected to it.
Any of the UDMA speeds are mostly hype, since the disk platter itself has a bandwidth of only 20 to 25 MB/sec. High bandwidth disk busses really shine only when a proper SCSI disk array is configured. Unfortunately, UDMA IDE doesn't support SCSI disk arrays.
Following the scheme above will make for a computer that is good for at least six years allowing for one major CPU upgrade, one major memory upgrade, and one major disk upgrade.
Granted, this plan doesn't build ultimate gaming machines, but it works well for getting the biggest "bang for the buck".
It really depends on how you obtain your computer.
If you buy a pre-built one from Compaq, HP, Dell, Gateway, etc., then you have to accept the limitations they build into their computers. They want you to keep coming back for certain upgrades, but they really want you to come back for a whole new computer.
If you build your own computer, you can choose a motherboard that guarantees a way up. I generally view the motherboard as the most important component to spend money on, and, then, I skimp on the other stuff, such as expensive CPUs, knowing I can upgrade cheaply later on. With the right motherboard, you will have many years of cost-effective upgrades and not be bound to Dell's or Gateway's business schedule.
This will be the end of the U.S. federal government as we know it, and the Terrorists will have had nothing to do with it!
How can they be so naive?!? What did their mothers tell them about strangers in dark alleys?!? Do these people send money to every telemarketing scam they encounter?!?
This idea is so damn stupid that, if it goes through, I'll seriously have to reconsider the value of my citizenship! I really, really do not want to have to do that! I don't want to have to give up the Constitution and everything it stands for! Not over this!!!
What this means is that the PC market is clearly maturing. Humans really are capable of doing only so much at any given time, and PCs have been capable of satisfying us for many years, now.
This is also apparent in the maturation of office productivity applications. It has gotten to the point where added features, such as the automatic-MS-Office-knows-better-than-I-do crap, really detract from a product.
There will always be science, engineering, and games to want for more CPU power and bandwidth, but, in general, the industry has reached a critical mass for most of us.
Honestly, for my work, any computer made since 1994 is just fine. Pentium 200 PC--just fine for OpenBSD. 75MHz SPARCstation--perfect without any frustration.
Yes, absolutely. Running computers really is expensive over a long period of time.
300 watts is more than the typical computer really uses. 60 to 100 watts continuous is more realistic judging from my UPS data output. Even then, $84/year is not trivial (this is the cost of a good component upgrade, these days).
There are reasons why initiatives like Energy Star exist. World-wide, I would bet the equivalent of an entire power plant output is devoted just to keeping our computers idle. It is easily argued that this is lots of money and other resources going straight down the commode.
What portion of California's recent energy crisis was due to tens of thousands of computers running unused?
Starting salary of $60K? Right. Starting salaries like that mainly exist in cities, such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, where the cost of living is oppressive. Make sure you put such data into its proper context before interpreting it.
FYI. Logicon, now known as Northrop Grumman Information Technology, is a sector of Northrop Grumman Corporation. Northrop Grumman Information Technology is the second-largest supplier of information technology products to the federal government.
I care a great deal that IE not come out on top. There is much too much at stake, here, for Microsoft to be given any chance at making the Internet proprietary. In fact, Microsoft taking over the Internet is one of the biggest threats to the future of global society. Microsoft taking over the Internet is equivalent, in principle, to Nazi Germany winning World War 2. Imagine the hordes of software projects that will simply be crushed. How many businesses will simply go out of business? How will anyone succeed in truly exercising their right to free speech? Will computer scientists and engineers be given academic freedom? Would we ever be able to trust anything we see on the WWW again? Microsoft will not be a benevolent dictator. In fact, they could end up being the most horrendous dictator the world has ever known (just think about what is at stake, here).
If most people will choose free over inexpensive, then why do the major Linux distributors, such as RedHat, make the money they do (looking at gross revenues)? This isn't pocket change, here.
For example, I have decided that I don't want to pay $600/year for a broadband connection and that my 33.6kbs modem is mostly just fine. However, I also found that the time involved in downloading software packages is prohibitive. I, then, quickly decided that time saved is worth some money, which is why I have purchased CD distributions of Linux and OpenBSD without any regrets. Also, I like the idea of providing some money in support of free software.
If the music industry can achieve something similar--providing high quality downloads & CDs for the market value of the time saved by not using peer-to-peer priateware--then they just got for themselves a guranteed revenue stream, since time will always equal money in the minds of many people for as long as people exist.
The Author's Guild had their chance when the first-ever used bookstore opened however many decades/centuries/millenia ago. Just because Amazon.com can sell used books on a much larger scale than Mom&Pop Used Book Store doesn't change the fundamental issues about selling used books.
I say to the authors, "Too bad." This whole supposed scandal just reeks of the same Napster fiasco odors, where the proposed solutions just don't fix the underlying issues. Publishers, authors, record labels, musicians, etc., just need to think harder about how to live in this modern world. If they can't deal with it, they should just become Amish or find some 3rd world country that is stuck in 1400AD and move there.
It struck me that the Internet is somewhat like the U.S. Interstate highway system. The infrastructure is owned and maintained by the People (via the federal, state, and local governments), and the auto manufacturers compete on their "client" implementations (a.k.a. cars and trucks). Where the cost of the infrastructure is especially high, there are tolls, but the highway system is mostly freely usable by everyone.
In general, this has worked pretty well, except, now, there is a great deal of resistance to change, such as newer and possibly better transit technologies.
I run a modern version of UNIX (Solaris 8) on my workstation and haven't ever rebooted it except when we apply kernel patches or when a harddrive failure occurred.
While persistent RAM might be nice, there still is no substitute for mature software that manages its memory properly. Corrupt persistent RAM is still corrupt.
Yes, COBOL is definitely in some demand. I went to a job fair a couple of years ago, handed a man a resume, and he asked, "Do you have experience with COBOL?" When I said, "No," I could see the disappointment in his face. I can imagine his frustration trying to find someone qualified for the position, when COBOL hasn't been stressed in academia or even the mainstream marketplace for years, yet there is a very large installed base of running COBOL software.
Even if Java loses popularity, the current popularity will most certainly live on.
I'm not sure there is a "pure OO", since there are so many variations of OO over such a long history. There are general information-modeling languages, such as EXPRESS, middle-of-the-road programming languages, such as C++, limited but useful programming languages, such as Java, and very limited languages, such as C, Pascal, etc. All of these languages exhibit OO-ness, but there isn't a clear time when OO suddenly sprang into being.
There may be a paper somewhere that began the OO buzz, but OO really started when philosophers began classifying reality (this may even have occurred before the 1970s!).
Without oxygen, anaerobic bacteria, such as those that cause botulism, can still grow. Chemicals will still be needed, unless the food can be guaranteed sterile when packaged.
Slashdot Mirror
I have enjoyed using the VM module for Emacs. It allows sorting your entire Inbox into separate categorized mail boxes via regular expressions. Basically with one shift-A keystroke, my entire day's worth of mailing list stuff gets whisked away into a half-dozen different files. After this, I feel really sorry for people trapped in the Outlook dungeons!
(I don't like the idea of companies as entities comparable to individuals -- it removes responsibility and encourages unethical behavior)
In the U.S., my incentive to incorporate my business is to insulate myself and my assets from my business and its assets. This is an important legal protection. I'm not really convinced it encourages unethical behavior; rather, it encourages people to take on greater risks, which are very important in growing innovative businesses.
Some people may try to use this mechanism to mask accountability, but it really doesn't work in the long run. Healthy businesses have to maintain accountability to stay strong, since a business is fundamentally a group of people working together.
Well, I'll admit it: I am not a zealot. I'll defer the moron issue for now.
I judge companies, people, and things at face value. With respect to Microsoft, it's a matter of their attitude towards their customers. If Sun starts treating me like slime, then I won't hesitate in finding another company to cite in my arguments.
I value greatly the relationships between businesses and their customers. Businesses should never feel they are in a position to dictate their customers' terms. Instead, businesses should feel they are at the mercy of their customers' trust. It's pretty simple, and businesses that succeed at establishing healthy relationships with their customers will last a long time and be successful. Successful is a vague term, since it really doesn't require being #1 or even in the top ten.
This is why Microsoft is in a dangerous position. There are many people who look upon Microsoft with suspicion, now, who didn't five or ten years ago. Microsoft is losing the trust of their customer base. If they don't start behaving better, soon, then they will just become another case of "the bigger they are, the harder they fall."
As far as the auto industry goes (as well as the aviation industry), the massive barriers to entry are largely due to massive government regulation and the huge investment in safe factories. Could I start a small business, now, and expect to build a fully DOT/OSHA/ISO9000/whatever-compliant factory and compete with Toyota or General Motors? Probably not. Can I start a small software business with $1,000? Absolutely (myself + one used workstation + Free Software).
...from MS to Redhat to Sun, everyone bundles, is forced to, or goes out of business because that's what the customer wants.
However, the manner in which companies do the bundling varies widely. Take Solaris, for example.
Sun hides nothing when it bundles software and gives credit where it is due. They do this with Apache, Perl, Java, X Windows, and the Berkeley UNIX compatibility tools, for example. The user is never forced to use these tools, but they certainly may choose to. The only component of Solaris a person is really forced to use is the kernel. Otherwise, Solaris is very modular allowing the user to pick and choose pretty much everything else.
The same is true for Linux and the free BSDs, as well. This is not true of Windows.
The difference between Microsoft and everyone else is that Microsoft is arrogant, imposing, and rude towards its customers. Microsoft has lost the notion of working for the customers, which is why more and more people are turning away from Microsoft every day.
Companies should be bending over backwards to satisfy their customers, and they should be honest about it, too. Meanwhile, Microsoft has been steadily dropping in rank on my list of companies that have earned my business. I think it will be very soon before Microsoft drops off that list entirely.
So, with a little word twisting:
If the school can't afford the <<severe beating>>, they can pay Microsoft a yearly tribute to not <<severly beat them up>>.
This speaks for itself!
It's a pretty smart tactic on M$'s part when you think about it.
Financially, yes, but it really looks bad from the public's point of view. The headlines will be, "Microsoft Takes $1 Million from Public School XYZ," not "Microsoft aids schools with software compliance."
Quite honestly, I think a large percentage of the audited government agencies will be angry enough to search hard for alternatives. It may take them a while, but they will certainly be looking for "a way out" of the M$ regime. The audits may ease the fines against M$, but M$ is really hurting themselves in the long run.
When I was hired by my current employer, my contract basically stated that anything I do on their time is theirs.
Things get even more complex, when my time is spent representing my company as a subcontractor to another company. During this time, who owns my work is spelled out in the contract between those companies.
Thus, the only real answer to your question is: you have to convince the people who set up your business contracts to include a clause spelling out your rights to submit patches to Open Source projects. However, none of the parties in that contract want to pay a lot of money for you to work up such patches, so it will probably be an up-hill battle for you.
Mainly, I have learned that large bureaucracies, such as those in large companies and governments, tend to stifle such initiatives. Also, you will find that no one in that bureaucracy will be willing to take on any risk for your sake.
Sometimes these bureaucracies are so mind-numbingly stupid that sometimes I just want to go live in the woods for a while and play chess with my squirrel friends. Yes, that would be much better.
I think it would be very nice if Sun offered both Solaris and Linux on its new lines of low-end servers.
Solaris shops can purchase these servers knowing they will work very well in their workplace, and Linux shops can purchase these servers knowing they will work very well in their workplace.
Solaris can also help Sun differentiate their Intel-based products from those offered by other companies, such as Compaq and IBM. I know the Sun Intel servers will be better (with the familiar RAS features, etc.), but it might be hard to convince the PHBs that this is the case (since they are too used to bending over for M$ and cheap PCs).
The Asus boards I've bought offer a number of bus speeds and multipliers that really span a wide range. For example, my older Pentium Asus board will easily handle 75MHz through 550MHz Pentiums/K6s. I recently bought an Athlon Asus board that will handle from 800MHz to 1470MHz.
My point is to buy the Athlon Asus board, for example, with one of the slower CPUs in its range. This saves money up front, and saves money later when the 1.4GHz CPUs come down in price. To get the 1.4GHz CPU initially, buy a newer model of motherboard that handles 2GHz+.
It is also important to fill less than half of the memory slots initially to leave room for more RAM later on.
To take advantage of major jumps in hard disk sizes, Asus often releases BIOS updates that follow such increases. For example, my older Pentium motherboard has a 40GB drive connected to it.
Any of the UDMA speeds are mostly hype, since the disk platter itself has a bandwidth of only 20 to 25 MB/sec. High bandwidth disk busses really shine only when a proper SCSI disk array is configured. Unfortunately, UDMA IDE doesn't support SCSI disk arrays.
Following the scheme above will make for a computer that is good for at least six years allowing for one major CPU upgrade, one major memory upgrade, and one major disk upgrade.
Granted, this plan doesn't build ultimate gaming machines, but it works well for getting the biggest "bang for the buck".
It really depends on how you obtain your computer.
If you buy a pre-built one from Compaq, HP, Dell, Gateway, etc., then you have to accept the limitations they build into their computers. They want you to keep coming back for certain upgrades, but they really want you to come back for a whole new computer.
If you build your own computer, you can choose a motherboard that guarantees a way up. I generally view the motherboard as the most important component to spend money on, and, then, I skimp on the other stuff, such as expensive CPUs, knowing I can upgrade cheaply later on. With the right motherboard, you will have many years of cost-effective upgrades and not be bound to Dell's or Gateway's business schedule.
In the year 2020, the #1 sound bite will be, "Well, hindsight is 20-20."
It's about control over information, folks!
This will be the end of the U.S. federal government as we know it, and the Terrorists will have had nothing to do with it!
How can they be so naive?!? What did their mothers tell them about strangers in dark alleys?!? Do these people send money to every telemarketing scam they encounter?!?
This idea is so damn stupid that, if it goes through, I'll seriously have to reconsider the value of my citizenship! I really, really do not want to have to do that! I don't want to have to give up the Constitution and everything it stands for! Not over this!!!
What this means is that the PC market is clearly maturing. Humans really are capable of doing only so much at any given time, and PCs have been capable of satisfying us for many years, now.
This is also apparent in the maturation of office productivity applications. It has gotten to the point where added features, such as the automatic-MS-Office-knows-better-than-I-do crap, really detract from a product.
There will always be science, engineering, and games to want for more CPU power and bandwidth, but, in general, the industry has reached a critical mass for most of us.
Honestly, for my work, any computer made since 1994 is just fine. Pentium 200 PC--just fine for OpenBSD. 75MHz SPARCstation--perfect without any frustration.
Yes, absolutely. Running computers really is expensive over a long period of time.
300 watts is more than the typical computer really uses. 60 to 100 watts continuous is more realistic judging from my UPS data output. Even then, $84/year is not trivial (this is the cost of a good component upgrade, these days).
There are reasons why initiatives like Energy Star exist. World-wide, I would bet the equivalent of an entire power plant output is devoted just to keeping our computers idle. It is easily argued that this is lots of money and other resources going straight down the commode.
What portion of California's recent energy crisis was due to tens of thousands of computers running unused?
Starting salary of $60K? Right. Starting salaries like that mainly exist in cities, such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, where the cost of living is oppressive. Make sure you put such data into its proper context before interpreting it.
...this Logicon company thinger...
FYI. Logicon, now known as Northrop Grumman Information Technology, is a sector of Northrop Grumman Corporation. Northrop Grumman Information Technology is the second-largest supplier of information technology products to the federal government.
who gives a shit what browser comes out on top??
I care a great deal that IE not come out on top. There is much too much at stake, here, for Microsoft to be given any chance at making the Internet proprietary. In fact, Microsoft taking over the Internet is one of the biggest threats to the future of global society. Microsoft taking over the Internet is equivalent, in principle, to Nazi Germany winning World War 2. Imagine the hordes of software projects that will simply be crushed. How many businesses will simply go out of business? How will anyone succeed in truly exercising their right to free speech? Will computer scientists and engineers be given academic freedom? Would we ever be able to trust anything we see on the WWW again? Microsoft will not be a benevolent dictator. In fact, they could end up being the most horrendous dictator the world has ever known (just think about what is at stake, here).
Here's something worth considering:
If most people will choose free over inexpensive, then why do the major Linux distributors, such as RedHat, make the money they do (looking at gross revenues)? This isn't pocket change, here.
For example, I have decided that I don't want to pay $600/year for a broadband connection and that my 33.6kbs modem is mostly just fine. However, I also found that the time involved in downloading software packages is prohibitive. I, then, quickly decided that time saved is worth some money, which is why I have purchased CD distributions of Linux and OpenBSD without any regrets. Also, I like the idea of providing some money in support of free software.
If the music industry can achieve something similar--providing high quality downloads & CDs for the market value of the time saved by not using peer-to-peer priateware--then they just got for themselves a guranteed revenue stream, since time will always equal money in the minds of many people for as long as people exist.
The Author's Guild had their chance when the first-ever used bookstore opened however many decades/centuries/millenia ago. Just because Amazon.com can sell used books on a much larger scale than Mom&Pop Used Book Store doesn't change the fundamental issues about selling used books.
I say to the authors, "Too bad." This whole supposed scandal just reeks of the same Napster fiasco odors, where the proposed solutions just don't fix the underlying issues. Publishers, authors, record labels, musicians, etc., just need to think harder about how to live in this modern world. If they can't deal with it, they should just become Amish or find some 3rd world country that is stuck in 1400AD and move there.
It struck me that the Internet is somewhat like the U.S. Interstate highway system. The infrastructure is owned and maintained by the People (via the federal, state, and local governments), and the auto manufacturers compete on their "client" implementations (a.k.a. cars and trucks). Where the cost of the infrastructure is especially high, there are tolls, but the highway system is mostly freely usable by everyone.
In general, this has worked pretty well, except, now, there is a great deal of resistance to change, such as newer and possibly better transit technologies.
UNIX has tab completion, too. Just choose a different shell than the default /bin/sh or /bin/csh.
Also, the Windows shell language is absolutely terrible. Any of the UNIX shells is a joy to work with relative to the default Windows shell.
The only way to compare Windows with UNIX is to install a UNIX toolkit onto Windows.
I run a modern version of UNIX (Solaris 8) on my workstation and haven't ever rebooted it except when we apply kernel patches or when a harddrive failure occurred.
While persistent RAM might be nice, there still is no substitute for mature software that manages its memory properly. Corrupt persistent RAM is still corrupt.
Yes, COBOL is definitely in some demand. I went to a job fair a couple of years ago, handed a man a resume, and he asked, "Do you have experience with COBOL?" When I said, "No," I could see the disappointment in his face. I can imagine his frustration trying to find someone qualified for the position, when COBOL hasn't been stressed in academia or even the mainstream marketplace for years, yet there is a very large installed base of running COBOL software.
Even if Java loses popularity, the current popularity will most certainly live on.
I'm not sure there is a "pure OO", since there are so many variations of OO over such a long history. There are general information-modeling languages, such as EXPRESS, middle-of-the-road programming languages, such as C++, limited but useful programming languages, such as Java, and very limited languages, such as C, Pascal, etc. All of these languages exhibit OO-ness, but there isn't a clear time when OO suddenly sprang into being.
There may be a paper somewhere that began the OO buzz, but OO really started when philosophers began classifying reality (this may even have occurred before the 1970s!).
Without oxygen, anaerobic bacteria, such as those that cause botulism, can still grow. Chemicals will still be needed, unless the food can be guaranteed sterile when packaged.