How can a business "open source" something which is not code?
It's a pretty intriguing question actually. Maybe not open source, but businesses can certainly be a lot more open. At Slim Devices we pushed that envelope quite a bit by inviting customers to participate meaningfully in developing the products. <plug>There is an interesting article just posted at Fast Company which asks Is this the company of the future?.</plug>
I believe it _is_ a model that will work well for many other companies, and in fact I've spent plenty of time wondering just how far you could take it. As an extreme, imagine if a new business were to begin with open discussions of strategy, fund raising, hiring, executive comp decisions, etc. Discuss it all on forums and let an open community create the whole thing, not just the products.
If you are strong on comp sci theory but weak on "real world" programming experience, you may want to consider embedded systems development as opposed to the newfangled and rapidly changing world of server apps or windows/mac apps.
The reason is you will be working with a smaller code base which is largely of your own writing, and the challenges are more in line with "classic" comp sci problems, as opposed to things like UI, web, etc.
If you spend your first couple years getting C and a bit of hardware/assembler knowledge under your belt, you can then move to many interesting and highly paid fields with relative ease.
Novell also retained the unusual right to require SCO to follow its directions to amend, supplement, modify or waive these licenses and, if SCO does not comply, Novell can do so on SCO's behalf.
I just popped over to google finance and saw that this had come in today, not mentioned in TFA:
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=2BF 9274C-A4EF-4A3F-8E14-ABFBA2178EF8
Can somebody who has been following this a bit closer explain this? It's getting quite hard to tell who is friend or foe any more...
And in any case, why bother... their stock is toast, so couldn't IBM just buy a controlling interest for $11.2M and wind it down?
What if the plastic were scored such that you could break the edges off by bending it a few times? You could still use the clear stuff, and it would be enough of a deterrent to keep people from opening it in the store.
Even if minivans get marginally better mileage than SUVs, they still both have very poor (passenger*miles)/gallon, because they are both usually driven with few passengers.
An acura, on the other hand, gets better mileage than either of them, and is also lighter and more meuverable - therefore much safer to everyone on the road.
I really don't see a difference between SUVs and minivans when you consider safety and mpg together.
that was palo alto traffic court for a ticket in cupertino (280) and redwood city for highway 1 near hwy 84. Key words: "traffic light, weather dry and clear, road straight and well maintained, visibility unlimited"
In addition to the basic speed exception to the >65 law, you can also argue the minimum speed rule
It like driving a little over the speed limit on a road where EVERYONE does it. Not technically legal, but not not something that will be enforced unless you take it to ridiculous levels.
Actually in my state, California, it is technically legal, at least under typical conditions.
My last three speeding tickets were all 85-90MPH, two by CHP and one by SJPD, and for each one I wrote a letter which began: "I do not deny driving in excess of 65MPH, but [...]"
The results: #1 (Watsonville) I got my money back and a letter saying Not Guilty. #2 (Palo Alto) I never heard anything and the ticket did not go on my record. #3 (Redwood City) It was Dismissed and I got my money back including the ~$200 FTA fine.
And I never even stepped in a court house, except for once because of the FTA.
What does my magic form letter say? I am not going to spoil the fun - let your fingers do the googling you can figure it out. But I will tell you that the speeding laws don't say what most people might think.
And if the RIAA does not see a corresponding increase in their music sales, will they then realize that "stealing" is not the problem, but rather a lack of sanctioned paid music sites which offer the quality, convenience, unencumbered formats, and broad selection that piracy offers?
Ironically, the EU regulation RoHS (which is intended to cut down on hazardous materials in electronics) is likely to make the waste problem worse - since it bans solder with lead in it. Lead free solder is quite inferior to leaded solder - it tends to be more brittle, and tin whiskers are more likely to form.
Having been through the RoHS transition for my company's consumer products, I can tell you it is really not that bad.
There were some pains - plastic in one connector that had very minor heat deformation issues, and tin whiskers in another connector, which were easily cleared with a blast of air. However, as soon as we pointed these out to the suppliers they were quickly fixed.
There were also some delays getting new lead-free ICs and hexavalent-chromium-free screws, but nothing disastrous.
Reliability in the field has been just as good with non-RoHS product.
And as an added bonus, since it is far more cost effective to produce _only_ RoHS compliant products, our US shipments will also be lead-free.
I suspect your experiences are not first-hand. I have yet to hear from anyone who is experiencing big problems with RoHS that can't be chalked up to simple bad planning.
The RoHS requirements may have been a transitional PITA for many, but now that everyone had made the switch, it is really no more difficult to design and build than it was before. Maybe the solder costs a few cents more.
indeed, what an obviously self-selected sample set. Asking the _internet_ to tell you what spam is?
I reealize this was a European court and Spam is not popular over there, but imagine what you'd get if you asked, say 100 people as they walked through the canned meats section of a supermarket.
That's about as ridiculous as asking google to tell you what it means on the internet. It's all about context.
I don't think anyone would confuse spam with just email if you invited them over for a nice spam casserole. They'd just tell you they'd rather eat cat feces, which smells the same but tastes slightly better.
When management is the BoD that setup doesn't work so well.
It's not quite that black and white. If you have competent management, it is GOOD to have them on the BOD (plus a few, perhaps a majority, of disinterested members for checks and balances). Otherwise the BOD doesn't know what the fuck they're supposed to be doing, which is quite often the case. For example, in a private company it is not unusual for the founder to also be CEO and Chariman. Keep in mind, shareholders ELECT the board and as long as your charter gives them reasonable voting rights it should not be able to get too far out of hand. Ideally shareholders should elect a few people who are "in the know", plus a few principal shareholders who are NOT employees, plus a few industry experts who are compensated only for the time in serving on the BOD.
Also board members, be they management or not, have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, so if the CEO does something against shareholders interests he is liable. And not just to the tune of whatever personal benefit he may have gained, but jointly for the full damages attributed to malice/fraud on the part of the BOD.
However, when push comes to shove, I need programs that work, and, while I really hate to say this, the OSS programs have always fallen short.
Really? Ever use a Tivo? Ever go to a web site? How about Google? How about wikipedia? Do you have any idea how much BSD licensed code (math libraries, for example) might be running on your cell phone, your car stereo, etc?
People don't know it but open source is everywhere and it works great. Sure, you're not using an OSS spreadsheet or word processor, but that doesn't mean you don't rely on OSS a zillion times a day without even realizing it.
Exactly. There are precisely two kinds of contract manufacturers in the world:
i) Extremely good ones ii) Extremely bad ones
I have worked with both, both domestically and in Asia.
To get a good CM to build your product you will have to choose them really carefully, and you will also need to have enough volume to make it interesting for them. They will gladly work for razor thin margins as long as you are building enough. However, even if your product is a big-ticket item, it is very hard to get any electronics manufactured in small volumes unless you can buy 100% of the parts from Digikey.
With some excedptions, a good Asian manufacturer can get electronics built cheaper, faster, and with much better quality than any American shop. It's not just their lower labor cost but also that all your upstream suppliers will be geographically close to the factory, which not only drasstically lowers shipping and handling costs, but also allows the buyers to work with them directly instead of you haveing to go through at least one layer of incompetent middlemen.
This guy had a bad experience. Shit happens. It is not indicative of what is possible with proper planning and a good business arrangement.
In the old days, disk drive motors and fans. But many of these now run on 5V, hence the cheap USB-powered drive cases out there. Chips at CMOS power levels run at 3.3v, TTL is 5v, but hardly anything runs at 12v anymore. It seems to me that if they'd just pick their hardware carfully, they could run their entire server rack off of 5v+- rails.
You are correct that hard drives generally use just 5V, but the rest of your points are not even close. Modern CPUs require lower voltages, higher current, and tighter regulation, which is why DC-DC power supplies are now on motherboards instead of running directly from an ATX supply.
Furthermore, running a rack of servers on 5V rails would be absolutely absurd. Do you have any idea what the amperage would be? The bus bars would have to be several inches thick, the transmission loss would be enormous, and if you accidentally shorted them.... forget it!
Something like 48VDC might work but then you lose out on all the economies of scale driven by the 110/240VAC standard.
Just match the power supply to the motherboard and be done with it. Standardizing on one voltage is impractical, and besides, how would it improve "efficiency"?
Sorry no. Modern rs232 circuits, if it's not already built into the UART, use a chip like max232 that runs off 5V and has a built-in charge pump to generate (close to) RS232 output voltages.
I believe you're both wrong, but IANAL and would welcome an informed opinion.
As I understand it: "you can't change it" means you may not edit the license on some code you received. It does not mean you can't use the GPL itself as a template for a license of your own.
Secondly (and reinforcing the first point), though I can't find a reference, I've been under the impression that legal agreements in general are not protected by copyright. Re-use of legal documents is commonplace - there is "standard language" that gets pieced together for practically everything, and furthermore, it is often a practical necessity that both parties are able to duplicate and distribute them. For example, have you ever seen an employment agreement, EULA, or anything else that said (c) BigCorp at the end?
You're right that networks are faster now than they used to be. That means that it's even more important to enable Nagle's algorithm for interactive sessions like SSH. When it's enabled, the kernel won't send a datagram for every keystroke, but will wait until it has a good number of bytes to send.
Wrong - it will send each byte as fast as the acks are coming back. That's the whole idea.
On a fact network, that's practically instantaneous - on the order of 1ms vs (for a very fast typer) 100ms between keystrokes.
Slashdot Mirror
How can a business "open source" something which is not code?
It's a pretty intriguing question actually. Maybe not open source, but businesses can certainly be a lot more open. At Slim Devices we pushed that envelope quite a bit by inviting customers to participate meaningfully in developing the products. <plug>There is an interesting article just posted at Fast Company which asks Is this the company of the future?.</plug>
I believe it _is_ a model that will work well for many other companies, and in fact I've spent plenty of time wondering just how far you could take it. As an extreme, imagine if a new business were to begin with open discussions of strategy, fund raising, hiring, executive comp decisions, etc. Discuss it all on forums and let an open community create the whole thing, not just the products.
If you are strong on comp sci theory but weak on "real world" programming experience, you may want to consider embedded systems development as opposed to the newfangled and rapidly changing world of server apps or windows/mac apps. The reason is you will be working with a smaller code base which is largely of your own writing, and the challenges are more in line with "classic" comp sci problems, as opposed to things like UI, web, etc. If you spend your first couple years getting C and a bit of hardware/assembler knowledge under your belt, you can then move to many interesting and highly paid fields with relative ease.
Over here it's spelled dumbening.
Better explanation here: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2068769,00.as p
Novell also retained the unusual right to require SCO to follow its directions to amend, supplement, modify or waive these licenses and, if SCO does not comply, Novell can do so on SCO's behalf.
I just popped over to google finance and saw that this had come in today, not mentioned in TFA: http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=2BF 9274C-A4EF-4A3F-8E14-ABFBA2178EF8
Can somebody who has been following this a bit closer explain this? It's getting quite hard to tell who is friend or foe any more...
And in any case, why bother... their stock is toast, so couldn't IBM just buy a controlling interest for $11.2M and wind it down?
What if the plastic were scored such that you could break the edges off by bending it a few times? You could still use the clear stuff, and it would be enough of a deterrent to keep people from opening it in the store.
Even if minivans get marginally better mileage than SUVs, they still both have very poor (passenger*miles)/gallon, because they are both usually driven with few passengers. An acura, on the other hand, gets better mileage than either of them, and is also lighter and more meuverable - therefore much safer to everyone on the road. I really don't see a difference between SUVs and minivans when you consider safety and mpg together.
that was palo alto traffic court for a ticket in cupertino (280) and redwood city for highway 1 near hwy 84. Key words: "traffic light, weather dry and clear, road straight and well maintained, visibility unlimited" In addition to the basic speed exception to the >65 law, you can also argue the minimum speed rule
It like driving a little over the speed limit on a road where EVERYONE does it. Not technically legal, but not not something that will be enforced unless you take it to ridiculous levels.
Actually in my state, California, it is technically legal, at least under typical conditions.
My last three speeding tickets were all 85-90MPH, two by CHP and one by SJPD, and for each one I wrote a letter which began: "I do not deny driving in excess of 65MPH, but [...]"
The results:
#1 (Watsonville) I got my money back and a letter saying Not Guilty.
#2 (Palo Alto) I never heard anything and the ticket did not go on my record.
#3 (Redwood City) It was Dismissed and I got my money back including the ~$200 FTA fine.
And I never even stepped in a court house, except for once because of the FTA.
What does my magic form letter say? I am not going to spoil the fun - let your fingers do the googling you can figure it out. But I will tell you that the speeding laws don't say what most people might think.
And if they do see a corresponding increase in their music sales, will you then realise the opposite?
Yes, for I am not an asshat.
And if the RIAA does not see a corresponding increase in their music sales, will they then realize that "stealing" is not the problem, but rather a lack of sanctioned paid music sites which offer the quality, convenience, unencumbered formats, and broad selection that piracy offers?
Ok the Background picture that honestly looks like.... a young oriental women being raped.
I'd say she looks rather disoriented...
Ironically, the EU regulation RoHS (which is intended to cut down on hazardous materials in electronics) is likely to make the waste problem worse - since it bans solder with lead in it. Lead free solder is quite inferior to leaded solder - it tends to be more brittle, and tin whiskers are more likely to form.
Having been through the RoHS transition for my company's consumer products, I can tell you it is really not that bad.
There were some pains - plastic in one connector that had very minor heat deformation issues, and tin whiskers in another connector, which were easily cleared with a blast of air. However, as soon as we pointed these out to the suppliers they were quickly fixed.
There were also some delays getting new lead-free ICs and hexavalent-chromium-free screws, but nothing disastrous.
Reliability in the field has been just as good with non-RoHS product.
And as an added bonus, since it is far more cost effective to produce _only_ RoHS compliant products, our US shipments will also be lead-free.
I suspect your experiences are not first-hand. I have yet to hear from anyone who is experiencing big problems with RoHS that can't be chalked up to simple bad planning.
The RoHS requirements may have been a transitional PITA for many, but now that everyone had made the switch, it is really no more difficult to design and build than it was before. Maybe the solder costs a few cents more.
"Atheists are good for nothing."
Why don't the iraqis just use subtitles?
indeed, what an obviously self-selected sample set. Asking the _internet_ to tell you what spam is?
I reealize this was a European court and Spam is not popular over there, but imagine what you'd get if you asked, say 100 people as they walked through the canned meats section of a supermarket.
That's about as ridiculous as asking google to tell you what it means on the internet. It's all about context.
I don't think anyone would confuse spam with just email if you invited them over for a nice spam casserole. They'd just tell you they'd rather eat cat feces, which smells the same but tastes slightly better.
When management is the BoD that setup doesn't work so well.
It's not quite that black and white. If you have competent management, it is GOOD to have them on the BOD (plus a few, perhaps a majority, of disinterested members for checks and balances). Otherwise the BOD doesn't know what the fuck they're supposed to be doing, which is quite often the case. For example, in a private company it is not unusual for the founder to also be CEO and Chariman. Keep in mind, shareholders ELECT the board and as long as your charter gives them reasonable voting rights it should not be able to get too far out of hand. Ideally shareholders should elect a few people who are "in the know", plus a few principal shareholders who are NOT employees, plus a few industry experts who are compensated only for the time in serving on the BOD.
Also board members, be they management or not, have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, so if the CEO does something against shareholders interests he is liable. And not just to the tune of whatever personal benefit he may have gained, but jointly for the full damages attributed to malice/fraud on the part of the BOD.
However, when push comes to shove, I need programs that work, and, while I really hate to say this, the OSS programs have always fallen short.
Really? Ever use a Tivo? Ever go to a web site? How about Google? How about wikipedia? Do you have any idea how much BSD licensed code (math libraries, for example) might be running on your cell phone, your car stereo, etc?
People don't know it but open source is everywhere and it works great. Sure, you're not using an OSS spreadsheet or word processor, but that doesn't mean you don't rely on OSS a zillion times a day without even realizing it.
And what exactly has the Professional Cricketers' Association and The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts to do with this ?
PCA is industry lingo for Printed Circuit Assembly (with parts installed), as opposed to PCB, the bare board.
Exactly. There are precisely two kinds of contract manufacturers in the world:
i) Extremely good ones
ii) Extremely bad ones
I have worked with both, both domestically and in Asia.
To get a good CM to build your product you will have to choose them really carefully, and you will also need to have enough volume to make it interesting for them. They will gladly work for razor thin margins as long as you are building enough. However, even if your product is a big-ticket item, it is very hard to get any electronics manufactured in small volumes unless you can buy 100% of the parts from Digikey.
With some excedptions, a good Asian manufacturer can get electronics built cheaper, faster, and with much better quality than any American shop. It's not just their lower labor cost but also that all your upstream suppliers will be geographically close to the factory, which not only drasstically lowers shipping and handling costs, but also allows the buyers to work with them directly instead of you haveing to go through at least one layer of incompetent middlemen.
This guy had a bad experience. Shit happens. It is not indicative of what is possible with proper planning and a good business arrangement.
In the old days, disk drive motors and fans. But many of these now run on 5V, hence the cheap USB-powered drive cases out there. Chips at CMOS power levels run at 3.3v, TTL is 5v, but hardly anything runs at 12v anymore. It seems to me that if they'd just pick their hardware carfully, they could run their entire server rack off of 5v+- rails.
You are correct that hard drives generally use just 5V, but the rest of your points are not even close. Modern CPUs require lower voltages, higher current, and tighter regulation, which is why DC-DC power supplies are now on motherboards instead of running directly from an ATX supply.
Furthermore, running a rack of servers on 5V rails would be absolutely absurd. Do you have any idea what the amperage would be? The bus bars would have to be several inches thick, the transmission loss would be enormous, and if you accidentally shorted them.... forget it!
Something like 48VDC might work but then you lose out on all the economies of scale driven by the 110/240VAC standard.
Just match the power supply to the motherboard and be done with it. Standardizing on one voltage is impractical, and besides, how would it improve "efficiency"?
RS-232
Sorry no. Modern rs232 circuits, if it's not already built into the UART, use a chip like max232 that runs off 5V and has a built-in charge pump to generate (close to) RS232 output voltages.
Meh - there it is:
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
I believe you're both wrong, but IANAL and would welcome an informed opinion.
As I understand it: "you can't change it" means you may not edit the license on some code you received. It does not mean you can't use the GPL itself as a template for a license of your own.
Secondly (and reinforcing the first point), though I can't find a reference, I've been under the impression that legal agreements in general are not protected by copyright. Re-use of legal documents is commonplace - there is "standard language" that gets pieced together for practically everything, and furthermore, it is often a practical necessity that both parties are able to duplicate and distribute them. For example, have you ever seen an employment agreement, EULA, or anything else that said (c) BigCorp at the end?
You're right that networks are faster now than they used to be. That means that it's even more important to enable Nagle's algorithm for interactive sessions like SSH. When it's enabled, the kernel won't send a datagram for every keystroke, but will wait until it has a good number of bytes to send.
Wrong - it will send each byte as fast as the acks are coming back. That's the whole idea.
On a fact network, that's practically instantaneous - on the order of 1ms vs (for a very fast typer) 100ms between keystrokes.