I'm glad to see an informed post about how seawalls accelerate coastal erosion, but wish you'd lose the anti-American rhetoric.
The reason you saw so many posts discussing seawalls in legal terms, instead of evaluating them according to some larger moral critera, is that the article spoke of "illegal" sea walls, and one of the earliest posts to get some activity was entitled "Why Illegal?".
The first mention of the issue in your own post, once you got the America-bashing out of the way, spoke of personal property, public property, and the general environment - in that order. I'd like to point out that some of the first discussion in the "Why Illegal?" thread brought up marine frogs. Perhaps that wasn't very well-informed, but it tells me that the/. readers here were thinking of environmental concerns first, then legal ones.
The article does not say at all that Congressmen are trying to "outlaw the GPL", as the poster's inflammatory words would have you believe, but that they do not want taxpayer-funded software to be licensed under the GPL. That's a significant difference.
It's not at all uncommon for contractors to provide clients with unrealistic estimates for schedule and cost, either because they're inexperienced at estimating software development project schedules, or, worse, because they know they can provide an unrealistically low bid to win the contract and make up the difference (and some!) with time and material charges when the project inevitably takes longer to deliver than they estimated. Either way, the client is going to avoid options they percieve as risky.
Unfortunately, the poster has a few things working against him in competing for this contract. There are many honest but inexperienced software professionals working today. Also, there are a lot of real creeps out there selling professional services by bidding low and then bleeding the clients dry once they've commited to a project.
The client's gut reaction to the pricing is surely based on its prior experience with software development contractors that have successfully delivered for them (or on what their own team could have done before they laid them all off). It's quite possible that the poster is much more capable than those contractors. Still, convincing the client that his bid is not naively optimistic or an intentional low-ball will be very tough.
I sure hope this doesn't get lost in all the emotional ranting. There's a good site for researching U.S. based nonprofits at GuideStar hosted by Philanthropic Research Inc.
It is targeted primarily at people who are interested in donating to charity, but would also be ideal for looking for employment since it hosts the addresses of all nonprofit organizations that file with the IRS (all U.S. nonprofits earning more than $25,000 per annum are required to file) as well as information voluntarily provided by organizations that do not file.
Technical skills can be put to good use in charity work. It's not a matter of choosing to give luxury items like computers to people who really need medicine. The organizations can use the skills to meet logistical challenges and to keep operating costs low - ensuring that the most resources go towards those that need them.
I use a Mackie mixer for any serious pro audio work I do, you can't go wrong there, but for this kind of use you don't need to pay for *that* kind of quality.
For mixing and audio editing at the computer, I have a Behringer MX802A Eurodesk that I bought from musician's friend for about $200. The quality of its components are comparable to Mackie's, but the Mackie equivalent is closer to $500.
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I'm glad to see an informed post about how seawalls accelerate coastal erosion, but wish you'd lose the anti-American rhetoric.
/. readers here were thinking of environmental concerns first, then legal ones.
The reason you saw so many posts discussing seawalls in legal terms, instead of evaluating them according to some larger moral critera, is that the article spoke of "illegal" sea walls, and one of the earliest posts to get some activity was entitled "Why Illegal?".
The first mention of the issue in your own post, once you got the America-bashing out of the way, spoke of personal property, public property, and the general environment - in that order. I'd like to point out that some of the first discussion in the "Why Illegal?" thread brought up marine frogs. Perhaps that wasn't very well-informed, but it tells me that the
The article does not say at all that Congressmen are trying to "outlaw the GPL", as the poster's inflammatory words would have you believe, but that they do not want taxpayer-funded software to be licensed under the GPL. That's a significant difference.
It's not at all uncommon for contractors to provide clients with unrealistic estimates for schedule and cost, either because they're inexperienced at estimating software development project schedules, or, worse, because they know they can provide an unrealistically low bid to win the contract and make up the difference (and some!) with time and material charges when the project inevitably takes longer to deliver than they estimated. Either way, the client is going to avoid options they percieve as risky.
Unfortunately, the poster has a few things working against him in competing for this contract. There are many honest but inexperienced software professionals working today. Also, there are a lot of real creeps out there selling professional services by bidding low and then bleeding the clients dry once they've commited to a project.
The client's gut reaction to the pricing is surely based on its prior experience with software development contractors that have successfully delivered for them (or on what their own team could have done before they laid them all off). It's quite possible that the poster is much more capable than those contractors. Still, convincing the client that his bid is not naively optimistic or an intentional low-ball will be very tough.
It is targeted primarily at people who are interested in donating to charity, but would also be ideal for looking for employment since it hosts the addresses of all nonprofit organizations that file with the IRS (all U.S. nonprofits earning more than $25,000 per annum are required to file) as well as information voluntarily provided by organizations that do not file.
Technical skills can be put to good use in charity work. It's not a matter of choosing to give luxury items like computers to people who really need medicine. The organizations can use the skills to meet logistical challenges and to keep operating costs low - ensuring that the most resources go towards those that need them.
For mixing and audio editing at the computer, I have a Behringer MX802A Eurodesk that I bought from musician's friend for about $200. The quality of its components are comparable to Mackie's, but the Mackie equivalent is closer to $500.