take a look back at all of the things bulletin board systems offered; nation/world wide email, games, chat, text files, allowing users to post public comments, file transfers (software, text files, pictures). then look at the stuff that has driven the 'internet revolution'. not everyone has a fidonet email address, but everyone has an internet email address. there's irc, icq, yahoo messenger, aol IM. there's lots of news and information sites that have articles to read. people can post topics and discuss things at sites like slashdot. there are lots of sites (freshmeat.net for one) that offer downloads of software. images.google.com lets you (sort of) find images to download.
you may not be impressed, but most of the concepts that make the internet so popular were invented, implemented, and dreamed up by people using, creating, and running bulletin board systems 15+ years ago.
my first 'real' programming job was at a dot-com; we had the old factory warehouse, the vents, the wide open spaces. typical dot-com stuff. fun was not at all a part of the culture though; the idea that someone wanted to write code and design because that's what they liked to do was considered unprofessional. having fun at work meant you didn't have enough work to do. quake? heavens no. nerf guns? absolutely not. worst part wasn't that the managers frowned on those things, the workers frowned on those things.
if I'd leave a sarcastic or funny comment in a section of code, someone would invariably email me informing me that such things had no place.
some people will say that people like me shouldn't bitch, that we weren't 'real' IT people, that we've failed somehow because we're not senior software engineers by now, or religiously attached to 'doing the job'. but ya know what? when programming stopped being fun, and I *realized* that, I left. changed careers. walked away.
my current career is pretty much fun, and I don't have to put up with all the bs that went along with being a programmer. and I still can write code to do stuff if I want, without some dumbass telling me I'm unprofessional because I like to include a # WTF? in my code when appropriate.
my desk consists of two of those long, folding-leg bamquet tables in a corner of an extra bedroom. on one I have enough room for my linux box and my mac, plus phone, ham radio gear, and small stuff. the other is my analog desk, with plenty of room to spread papers and books out.
those fancy 'computer workstations' are a waste of money, imo. two tables full of equipment and books looks way cooler than any 'ol woodwork.
I was one of the multitudes, a programmer working for a dot com (one which still exists in spite of itself) who gave up on that and tried consulting. eventually, after that didn't work out, I decided that sitting in a cubicle with some pointy haired dumbass pestering me about every little thing really sucked. and I let go of the idea of being a programmer for money, and I'm now in a *completely* different job. I'm still a hacker, but I do what I do for the love.
been there, done that, had sense enough to move on. go back to college to finish the cs degree? no. I don't *think* so.
the DCMA is the *law of the land*... the RIAA and MPAA and god knows who else have the right to do such things, because the law gives them those rights. oh, and it doesn't hurt that Time-Warner Cable (aka AOL/Time-Warner), the ISP, is part of one of the major members of the MPAA and RIAA.
does that suck? *YES*. but until a case (or three) make it as far as the supreme court, and actually manage to strike down part or all of the DCMA as unconstitutional, it's the way it is. as morpheus said, "they are the gatekeepers. they guard all the doors, they hold all the keys." bastards. now go send EFF some money where it will do some good.
What would a user rather have -- a free server that does plain webserving, or a moderately priced one that does webserving plus e-commerce?
first, a user does not care. the only thing a user is concerned with is making the damn computer work so he/she can get his/her job done quickly enough to remain employed. second, not every company/organization needs or wants to be involved in direct sales on the web, or b2b, or whatever the current hot thing is. third, and I think most important: by themselves, web server software packages (apache, iis, whatever) make little difference. the add-ons such as e-commerce packages, hookups to already existing databases, etc., are what make the difference. if you really want to find out who's winning the war, worry about which 'e-commerce' software is being used at more installations as well as how many people are using what webserver.
if you're coming from NT, you don't know enough to see the technical differences between red hat, mandrake, and debian. you need to learn how and why unix (and unix-like) systems do things the way they do.
many windows developers use visual basic and interdev because of its rapid development capability , and to some extent, the availability of developers who can work with vb's menus, clicks, etc. it could be argued that the availability of easily learned tools such as vb have been a great benefit to windows as a platform. (I know several vb developers who are very productive, but won't touch anything involving a command line. -sigh-)
as a commercial developer, do you consider RAD tools to be as important to linux as they have been to windows? and where are we in terms of having the tools a commercial developer needs to push product out the door?
at home, I am on a 56k dialup (NAT through a linux box). lately, 95% of the connections I get are either scans for windows shares, or windows name lookups. they get blocked for unnecessarily using my bandwidth and for being stupid. 4.9% are looking/scanning for already published exploits that I have patched. the other.1% *may* be coming after me specifically, so I keep an eye on them. if they knock once and leave, cool. if they keep trying, I'll figure someone's after me for some reason and I start worrying about it.
it's important to be on your toes, but random scans and connections really aren't worth getting your panties in a bundle over.
Re:Unions are *bad* for Consultants
on
Dial U for Union
·
· Score: 1
Unions and their employees don't like non-union competition.
damn straight. it's hard being a staff employee whose job is going nowhere because all of the interesting and challenging work is being farmed out to consultants, and advancement opportunites don't exist because "you haven't worked on any high profile demanding projects".
not all of us are black belts, gunslingers, or whatever the current cute buzzword of the day is. some of us are just doing the best we can to do a job we kinda like doing. in other words, the (gasp!) working class. just because it's IT doesn't mean there aren't blue collar workers.
sorry, folks, but if the company I'm working for puts me in steerage^H^H^H^H^H^Hcoach , do you really think I'm going to shell out $20 an hour to check my mail and get work done? it'll wait 'til I get there:p
I have a little over two years of working with vb, vbscript, access/sql server, and asp. most of the corporate recruiters/HR people I've talked to around here (upper midwest/great lakes) want either visual basic or java, with the occasional c++ and/or c slot. rarely, a perl slot shows up. kylix/delphi rocks, but most suits I've encountered have never heard of it, because they couldn't care less about cross platform. everybody runs windows because everybody runs windows. from one place I talked to: "linux? yeah, we've heard of that, but it's not to the point where we're going to use it for a development platform. we use windows. period."
ok, we know about juno's new policy of requiring cycles on their customer's machines for running distributed apps. adding netzero's customers means they've got several million machines to crunch numbers for them; it's not about the ad revenue, it's about the (possible) revenue from selling those cycles to someone.
...into an Internet media hub brimming with Time Warner artists and publications, aimed at office workers and Web purists not already using AOL services....
in other words, one more way to get content controlled by the time-warner-aol conglomerate, but this time it's aimed at the "independent thinking people" who do things their own way instead of the unwashed sheeple masses on aol.
The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody.
um, isn't the idea of open source and/or free software, that it is available to everybody? damn, how suits miss the point.
at one place I worked recently, hardware didn't get repaired, it got replaced without question. flaky video card? hell, that secretary needs a 800mhz pentium III anyway, order a new machine. laser printer doesn't work? go to office depot and get a new one. gamma is a little off on the monitor? yup, replace that puppy too, don't even consider adjusting it properly and putting a piece of duct tape over the adjustment buttons. windows2000? yup, everyone needs new machines (never mind asking if they really need to upgrade to win2000 in the first place). new computers? gotta get new monitors too, along with new keyboards, mice, all the plastic and foam packaging, manuals no one is gonna read, etc.
maybe I'm old fashioned... but seems to me like replacing a video card, or sending a printer to a local repair guy is a better idea than replacing an entire system .
how many times have you asked the cute blonde waitress at the restaurant what she might be doing after work? and, if she was interested, wouldn't she hand over her home phone number so you could call her later? wouldn't you tell her your name, maybe where you work? and might she talk about you to her roommate when she gets home?
there is no such thing as absolute privacy. your personal information will be shared among people you do not know and have no control over. your personal information will be shared as a matter of course as you interact with other people and systems. you get the bad things about that one way or another. as scott is pointing out, it's up to you to decide if you want to enjoy the benefits.
this guy was trying to be like his successful brother in a family where success of all kinds is very highly valued. from the article:
Shinjan Majumder honed his computer programming skills at an age when most children have not learned to type.
He earned a black belt in tae kwon do with less than four years of training.
As a swimmer, he excelled in the breast stroke.
In the school orchestra, he played the violin.
Shinjan's parents hoped those accomplishments were only the beginning (my emphasis added).
fer cryin' out loud, that alone is more than most people accomplish in 12 years of school, and this kid was only 13. add the problem of having to be as good as, or better than his brother, and you've got one hell of a lot of pressure on a 13 year old kid. his father said "my life is meaningless now"; would he have said the same thing if his son had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, or been caught with a gram of pot? probably, since either of those things would be considered a failure by the kid's parents. yes, this is tragic, because someone died who shouldn't have, but I don't think the school district deserves all of the blame. I might have done the same thing living in an environment like that.
once the contract is rejected, there's nothing you can do but plan for the next one. I'd suggest that you include security as part of your product pitch, emphasizing that you use such-and-such technology over asp/iis/sql server because [insert standard reasons here], or that your people are highly skilled, etc. you'll also need to present that you can develop in whatever you're using as fast as the visual bozos down the street .
whatever you do, *do not* probe their servers, databases, or anything else. you have no legitimate business reason for doing so (no matter how much the bastages deserve being called out for being dumbasses and going with someone else). also,, be nice to them, they may need your services in the future.
is not that someone can make money from code that's licensed under the GPL. for me, the value of everything the FSF has done is that I have a computer with an operating system, utilities, and applications that are free. no one can do anything to take away my right to use the software on my system as i see fit. if a hunk 'o hardware doesn't work with my machine, I have the right to modify my copy of the gnu/linux software I'm running to make it work. the obligation to make that source code available is the main reason we've made it this far.
not everything is disappearing. I keep a list of free resources on my site. it's not all inclusive, but I try to keep it regularly updated.
it's interesting that one of the companies mentioned in the times article was yahoo; it wasn't that long ago that yahoo phone did have advertising throughout the service. makes you wonder, when the dot com advertisers disappeared, why didn't they get others to buy the ad time? cripes, with the amount of telemarketing calls and junk mail I get, you'd think someone would want to harass me while I'm checking my voice mail.
payphones are more complicated than just "do they make money"; there are a lotta regulatory issues as well. this article explains some of the mishmash of stuff involved in different types of calls, and who gets paid. also: while bellsouth might not consider the money they make on payphones to be worth it, a small, local operation like bob's payphones might find that small profit plenty to keep a business going.
we went through a similar time with dialup bulletin board systems; sysops discovered that they couldn't afford to provide 12 incoming lines and 40,000 messages bases without charging access fees. in most cases, when presented with having to pay, users bailed. some people considered the cost worth it, and of course some of the nicer systems survived. out of all that, though, people got used to paying for worldwide email and discussion groups, and good file downloads. kinda sounds similar to paying for internet access, doesn't it?
some of the elements of services like yahoo phone (reading email over the phone, especially) have a good chance of surviving, just as some of the elements of old commercial bbs services survived. the fact that yahoo is going to charge for the phone service is a small part of a bigger picture. how long will it be before you can check your email at work by calling to check your voice mail? probably not too long.
if you're interested in using and keeping track of free services, I maintain a resource list at laslocomm.net.
Slashdot Mirror
take a look back at all of the things bulletin board systems offered; nation/world wide email, games, chat, text files, allowing users to post public comments, file transfers (software, text files, pictures). then look at the stuff that has driven the 'internet revolution'. not everyone has a fidonet email address, but everyone has an internet email address. there's irc, icq, yahoo messenger, aol IM. there's lots of news and information sites that have articles to read. people can post topics and discuss things at sites like slashdot. there are lots of sites (freshmeat.net for one) that offer downloads of software. images.google.com lets you (sort of) find images to download.
you may not be impressed, but most of the concepts that make the internet so popular were invented, implemented, and dreamed up by people using, creating, and running bulletin board systems 15+ years ago.
woo hoo indeed.
my first 'real' programming job was at a dot-com; we had the old factory warehouse, the vents, the wide open spaces. typical dot-com stuff. fun was not at all a part of the culture though; the idea that someone wanted to write code and design because that's what they liked to do was considered unprofessional. having fun at work meant you didn't have enough work to do. quake? heavens no. nerf guns? absolutely not. worst part wasn't that the managers frowned on those things, the workers frowned on those things.
if I'd leave a sarcastic or funny comment in a section of code, someone would invariably email me informing me that such things had no place.
some people will say that people like me shouldn't bitch, that we weren't 'real' IT people, that we've failed somehow because we're not senior software engineers by now, or religiously attached to 'doing the job'. but ya know what? when programming stopped being fun, and I *realized* that, I left. changed careers. walked away.
my current career is pretty much fun, and I don't have to put up with all the bs that went along with being a programmer. and I still can write code to do stuff if I want, without some dumbass telling me I'm unprofessional because I like to include a # WTF? in my code when appropriate.
my desk consists of two of those long, folding-leg bamquet tables in a corner of an extra bedroom. on one I have enough room for my linux box and my mac, plus phone, ham radio gear, and small stuff. the other is my analog desk, with plenty of room to spread papers and books out.
those fancy 'computer workstations' are a waste of money, imo. two tables full of equipment and books looks way cooler than any 'ol woodwork.
I was one of the multitudes, a programmer working for a dot com (one which still exists in spite of itself) who gave up on that and tried consulting. eventually, after that didn't work out, I decided that sitting in a cubicle with some pointy haired dumbass pestering me about every little thing really sucked. and I let go of the idea of being a programmer for money, and I'm now in a *completely* different job. I'm still a hacker, but I do what I do for the love.
been there, done that, had sense enough to move on. go back to college to finish the cs degree? no. I don't *think* so.
the DCMA is the *law of the land*... the RIAA and MPAA and god knows who else have the right to do such things, because the law gives them those rights. oh, and it doesn't hurt that Time-Warner Cable (aka AOL/Time-Warner), the ISP, is part of one of the major members of the MPAA and RIAA.
does that suck? *YES*. but until a case (or three) make it as far as the supreme court, and actually manage to strike down part or all of the DCMA as unconstitutional, it's the way it is. as morpheus said, "they are the gatekeepers. they guard all the doors, they hold all the keys." bastards. now go send EFF some money where it will do some good.
maybe if they *didn't run IIS*....
What would a user rather have -- a free server that does plain webserving, or a moderately priced one that does webserving plus e-commerce?
first, a user does not care. the only thing a user is concerned with is making the damn computer work so he/she can get his/her job done quickly enough to remain employed. second, not every company/organization needs or wants to be involved in direct sales on the web, or b2b, or whatever the current hot thing is. third, and I think most important: by themselves, web server software packages (apache, iis, whatever) make little difference. the add-ons such as e-commerce packages, hookups to already existing databases, etc., are what make the difference. if you really want to find out who's winning the war, worry about which 'e-commerce' software is being used at more installations as well as how many people are using what webserver.
if you're coming from NT, you don't know enough to see the technical differences between red hat, mandrake, and debian. you need to learn how and why unix (and unix-like) systems do things the way they do.
many windows developers use visual basic and interdev because of its rapid development capability , and to some extent, the availability of developers who can work with vb's menus, clicks, etc. it could be argued that the availability of easily learned tools such as vb have been a great benefit to windows as a platform. (I know several vb developers who are very productive, but won't touch anything involving a command line. -sigh-)
as a commercial developer, do you consider RAD tools to be as important to linux as they have been to windows? and where are we in terms of having the tools a commercial developer needs to push product out the door?
at home, I am on a 56k dialup (NAT through a linux box). lately, 95% of the connections I get are either scans for windows shares, or windows name lookups. they get blocked for unnecessarily using my bandwidth and for being stupid. 4.9% are looking/scanning for already published exploits that I have patched. the other .1% *may* be coming after me specifically, so I keep an eye on them. if they knock once and leave, cool. if they keep trying, I'll figure someone's after me for some reason and I start worrying about it.
it's important to be on your toes, but random scans and connections really aren't worth getting your panties in a bundle over.
microsoft windows xp with smart pages enabled.
Unions and their employees don't like non-union competition.
damn straight. it's hard being a staff employee whose job is going nowhere because all of the interesting and challenging work is being farmed out to consultants, and advancement opportunites don't exist because "you haven't worked on any high profile demanding projects".
not all of us are black belts, gunslingers, or whatever the current cute buzzword of the day is. some of us are just doing the best we can to do a job we kinda like doing. in other words, the (gasp!) working class. just because it's IT doesn't mean there aren't blue collar workers.
sorry, folks, but if the company I'm working for puts me in steerage^H^H^H^H^H^Hcoach , do you really think I'm going to shell out $20 an hour to check my mail and get work done? it'll wait 'til I get there :p
I have a little over two years of working with vb, vbscript, access/sql server, and asp. most of the corporate recruiters/HR people I've talked to around here (upper midwest/great lakes) want either visual basic or java, with the occasional c++ and/or c slot. rarely, a perl slot shows up. kylix/delphi rocks, but most suits I've encountered have never heard of it, because they couldn't care less about cross platform. everybody runs windows because everybody runs windows. from one place I talked to: "linux? yeah, we've heard of that, but it's not to the point where we're going to use it for a development platform. we use windows. period."
ok, we know about juno's new policy of requiring cycles on their customer's machines for running distributed apps. adding netzero's customers means they've got several million machines to crunch numbers for them; it's not about the ad revenue, it's about the (possible) revenue from selling those cycles to someone.
in other words, one more way to get content controlled by the time-warner-aol conglomerate, but this time it's aimed at the "independent thinking people" who do things their own way instead of the unwashed sheeple masses on aol.
bah. phooey. pffffffththththt!!!!!
from the article:
The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody.
um, isn't the idea of open source and/or free software, that it is available to everybody? damn, how suits miss the point.
-laslo
http://www.laslocomm.net
at one place I worked recently, hardware didn't get repaired, it got replaced without question. flaky video card? hell, that secretary needs a 800mhz pentium III anyway, order a new machine. laser printer doesn't work? go to office depot and get a new one. gamma is a little off on the monitor? yup, replace that puppy too, don't even consider adjusting it properly and putting a piece of duct tape over the adjustment buttons. windows2000? yup, everyone needs new machines (never mind asking if they really need to upgrade to win2000 in the first place). new computers? gotta get new monitors too, along with new keyboards, mice, all the plastic and foam packaging, manuals no one is gonna read, etc.
maybe I'm old fashioned... but seems to me like replacing a video card, or sending a printer to a local repair guy is a better idea than replacing an entire system .
how many times have you asked the cute blonde waitress at the restaurant what she might be doing after work? and, if she was interested, wouldn't she hand over her home phone number so you could call her later? wouldn't you tell her your name, maybe where you work? and might she talk about you to her roommate when she gets home?
there is no such thing as absolute privacy. your personal information will be shared among people you do not know and have no control over. your personal information will be shared as a matter of course as you interact with other people and systems. you get the bad things about that one way or another. as scott is pointing out, it's up to you to decide if you want to enjoy the benefits.
after all, information wants to be free.
Shinjan's parents hoped those accomplishments were only the beginning (my emphasis added).
fer cryin' out loud, that alone is more than most people accomplish in 12 years of school, and this kid was only 13. add the problem of having to be as good as, or better than his brother, and you've got one hell of a lot of pressure on a 13 year old kid. his father said "my life is meaningless now"; would he have said the same thing if his son had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, or been caught with a gram of pot? probably, since either of those things would be considered a failure by the kid's parents. yes, this is tragic, because someone died who shouldn't have, but I don't think the school district deserves all of the blame. I might have done the same thing living in an environment like that.
once the contract is rejected, there's nothing you can do but plan for the next one. I'd suggest that you include security as part of your product pitch, emphasizing that you use such-and-such technology over asp/iis/sql server because [insert standard reasons here], or that your people are highly skilled, etc. you'll also need to present that you can develop in whatever you're using as fast as the visual bozos down the street .
whatever you do, *do not* probe their servers, databases, or anything else. you have no legitimate business reason for doing so (no matter how much the bastages deserve being called out for being dumbasses and going with someone else). also,, be nice to them, they may need your services in the future.
is not that someone can make money from code that's licensed under the GPL. for me, the value of everything the FSF has done is that I have a computer with an operating system, utilities, and applications that are free. no one can do anything to take away my right to use the software on my system as i see fit. if a hunk 'o hardware doesn't work with my machine, I have the right to modify my copy of the gnu/linux software I'm running to make it work. the obligation to make that source code available is the main reason we've made it this far.
karma? feh.
not everything is disappearing. I keep a list of free resources on my site. it's not all inclusive, but I try to keep it regularly updated.
it's interesting that one of the companies mentioned in the times article was yahoo; it wasn't that long ago that yahoo phone did have advertising throughout the service. makes you wonder, when the dot com advertisers disappeared, why didn't they get others to buy the ad time? cripes, with the amount of telemarketing calls and junk mail I get, you'd think someone would want to harass me while I'm checking my voice mail.
payphones are more complicated than just "do they make money"; there are a lotta regulatory issues as well. this article explains some of the mishmash of stuff involved in different types of calls, and who gets paid. also: while bellsouth might not consider the money they make on payphones to be worth it, a small, local operation like bob's payphones might find that small profit plenty to keep a business going.
we went through a similar time with dialup bulletin board systems; sysops discovered that they couldn't afford to provide 12 incoming lines and 40,000 messages bases without charging access fees. in most cases, when presented with having to pay, users bailed. some people considered the cost worth it, and of course some of the nicer systems survived. out of all that, though, people got used to paying for worldwide email and discussion groups, and good file downloads. kinda sounds similar to paying for internet access, doesn't it?
some of the elements of services like yahoo phone (reading email over the phone, especially) have a good chance of surviving, just as some of the elements of old commercial bbs services survived. the fact that yahoo is going to charge for the phone service is a small part of a bigger picture. how long will it be before you can check your email at work by calling to check your voice mail? probably not too long.
if you're interested in using and keeping track of free services, I maintain a resource list at laslocomm.net.