Re:Private Company
on
Inside SAIC
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Don't lie like that!
SAIC ***bought*** Network Solutions. Many many many years after the ARPAnet contracts. They then spun the stock off for a very handsome profit. They did not in any way help create the technology.
I don't understand the hostility towards Lindows thats prevalent on/.
Maybe Lindows/Mr. Robertson got off on the wrong foot with the/. crowd. Remember when Lindows first came out and they (at least initially) refused to release source? Good to see he's (at least partially) come around.
"evidence" - well no, no evidence per se. (Since when does one need evidence to post a question on/.?)
I do not have any secret recordings of Michael Robertson outlining plans for focusing his efforts on legal (instead of technical) matters.
But his colorful history does show that he seems to excel in the legal arena. OTOH, his technical decisions lead to very belabored discussions about whether users should run as root or not.
I am happy with his answer to my question.
I am glad that my question was moderated up, AND he deigned to answer it.
Perhaps if I had carefully prepared a question, I would have asked how or if he intends to legally "help" the linux community. He was given the source code to a simply excellent operating system, as well as tons of application code for free. With some amount of effort, he is now able to call it his own. Does he now intend to fight legal battles that "little guys" cannot? (The Microsoft (TM) battle is the one example that I know of.) Does he feel that he owes the linux community anything?
But I didn't. That's what I get for being in a rush to post rapidly after the call for questions appeared.
BTW Otter, are you a Lindows employee or just an advocate?
Lastly, is he completely clueless or did a bunch of crack-addled moderators mod up a troll? I've never done crack myself (can't speak for the moderators) and it's been a long time since I've had any mind-altering chemical stronger than the caffeine in my coffee. I certainly do not consider myself (nor my question) a troll. I'm sorry that you do.
I agree - their 'solution' can't really work. It does not address the growing problem of spammers hijacking legitimate user's accounts. I think authenticating senders would help. I also think severe punishment for current spammers is needed. Getting caught buying a T-3 and using it as a spam server should have the death penalty.
I feel that all software patents, copyrights and trade secrets are wrong. Software patents accomplish the opposite of the stated goal of encouraging inventors. Copyright law is so perverted today, the copyright system as it stands should be scrapped. And at the very least trade secrets should not be sanctioned or encouraged by any government.
Whether people who profit *should* have damages levied against them or not, does not have much to do with US Law. I share your view that the profiteers should be held accountable. My question remains, aren't the damages that they can be expected to pay for product liability limited to what you paid them for their product or service?
Isn't product liability normally limited to what you paid for the product? Proving negligence or malfeasance I thought was a completely different kettle of fish.
The point the parent poster was making was that punitive dammages could (theoretically) be levied again the original author, but that is just wrong any way you look at it. Especially when you consider that open source software is reviewed by many more sets of eyes than any proprietary piece of software, and consequently *is* of much higher quality.
And I am not a big corporate donor. I am a taxpayer. Depending on the state, I likely paid for that software to be written; I underwrite tuition at the university; the university was founded with a land appropriation, which if left private could have made my grandfather rich; a variety of special provisions by the state legislature give this university a wide class of special exemptions and preferences.
This is not Bell Labs or Xerox Parc, folks. *Those* are places that can whine about a return on investment.
And now my and my ancestor's investments in an educated society full of opportunity are being hijacked by lawyers and weak, cowardly, and greedy administration. The trustees and administrators of most universities in the US these days are a craven mafia eager to claim the public's infrastructure for themselves and set up a toll gate. These are the people who didn't make it on to the board of Enron and WorldCom because they were too untrustworthy.
Quit now. And LIGHT THE PLACE ON FIRE WHEN YOU LEAVE.
I wish you had not posted that as AC. That was the most insightful thing I've read on/. this week.
You say you disagree, but seem to be making some of the same points I was aiming for.
1) I don't view loss of anonymity on the internet/over SMTP as a "Bad Thing (tm)." If absolutely everyone that connected to the internet were uniquely, traceably identified I think people would use the internet/e-mail a lot more responsibly.
2) SPAMmers will still find ways to subvert individual's legitimate accounts. This does and will partially negate any benefits of distinctly identifying sender(s).
3) SPAM-filter *corporations* in the meantime benefit by adding more spam to the mix (themselves!) I find myself unable to trust any company that says it has an e-mail solution. I tend to theorize that they are at least subsidizing third party SPAMmers (indirectly or directly.)
4) Certificate vendors are also suspect whenever a proposal arises that implies that all individuals need certificates. The article wasn't talking about using ssh-keygen or PGP. It was suggesting a paid CA issuing individuals certificates (or did I read too much into that?)
I agree. There were a couple slim areas in this article - the presumption that SPAMmers would not adapt was distressing.
Reading this article, I recalled that the ones that probably would gain the most financially from an increase in spam would be spam filtering companies.
Also, the idea of individuals having certificates was pretty funny. Good way to increase certificate sales without addressing the underlying SPAM problem at all.
The surface area they affect is also very tiny. Basically, you have a lot of tiny bubble doing serious dammage to a lot of very very small surfaces (that make one large surface.)
Here's my horrible analogy: the starting surface is like a indi race trace - very smooth. After cavitation, the road looks like the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (where the surface area of the potholes is greater than the surface area of flat roadway.)
I am currently going through a divorce. One (rather bizarre, IMHO) allegation my wife made at one point was that I was "addicted to pornogrophy." Now besides a statement like that being outrageous on it's face, it's also not true. I occasionally d/l softcore, legal porn, then flit through the download later. She alleges that I have amassed a huge porn collection (not true.) For her to use the presence of a couple legal newsgroup d/l files on my computer as evidence that I'm a pervert I hope will eventually show the court what an over-reacting freak she is. But then again, these *are* US courts.
I second this one! You absolutely MUST sleep when they do. With both my kids (now 5 and 3yrs) the first 6 weeks was never more than 4 hrs of sleep a night, so naps became VERY important, for Mommy and me!
Buy the Dr. Spock book now - read it now you won't have time later.
Buy the humourous book "What do do when your wife is EXPANDING" and make sure you show it to your wife and make it VERY CLEAR that it is just a joke to lighten the situation. If she finds it before you tell her, she'll be in tears for hours.
Also: read your dictionary to your wife's belly. Your child can get used to hearing your voice while still in the womb.
You are probably right, but then again, I don't believe *everything* I read on/. either.:-) At the time, the somewhat implausible explanation had a ring of truth to it, so I gave it some worth - probably more than it deserved.
By the way, what credentials do you have, that make you so knowledgable about copyright law, that you can say with certainty that 'you can't "copyright" a design for a physical part.'?
The last time I tried to get a replacement tail-light at Pep-boys, I was told there were none being made for my car, because the dealer had a copyright on the lens design. I eventually got a replacement tail-light kit from the dealer for (IIRC) $125. This was about 1 year ago.
Have you ever had to replace a broken tail-light? Auto manufacturers *are* copyrighting their designs only to prevent competitors from providing inexpensive replacement parts.
This is a pathetic attempt to appear philanthropic. He didn't have any money before January 2000? This was at best a PR stunt to try to mitigate the bad press he was getting for owning a monopoly and abusing that monopoly's power.
How can you say (presumably with a straight face) that "there was no major failure" and in the same sentence "there were many calls that could not be completed".
I hope you realize those two thoughts are mutually exclusive.
Also, any time a hard drive is at an angle from level that isn't 0 or 90 degrees that is very bad.
I agree! I once mounted a 40GB drive 180 degrees (in the last possible space in a small case) instead of just buying a new case. It died in about a month, I presume due to the grease settling the wrong way, and no longer lubricating the bearings, indirectly increasing the heat.
So these days, I won't mount a hard drive at 90 degrees either. It's worth $60 for a new case, to ensure they are mounted at 0 degrees.
Please don't post as AC; I almost missed your reply.
That is a good point. I wasn't trying to go in quite that direction but now that you mention it...I do think that programming naturally progresses to engineering. That is, a person will either 'get it' or not. If not, then they will not be programming long. But if they do, then they will accumulate their own bag of tricks over the years, and gradually appreciate and adopt engineering principles.
So in that context, yes, I would consider a senior programmer equivalent to an engineer trainee.
I was trying however, to point out that the term engineer is more often used as a cludgeon by bad managers.
When I worked for a large government contractor, there was intense interest in having our division become SEI level 3 compliant (then level 4 the next year, then level 5 the next year.)
This question was one of the ones asked by management at the time. They knew then that they were are the mercy of the 80/20 rules:
80% of the code takes 20% of the project time
last 20% of the code takes 80% of the time
80% of the staff does 20% of the work,
20% of the staff does 80% of the work.
etc.
So they tried to reign the "heroes" in. They did so by trying to adapt the over-performing 20% - by limiting what and when they could do, so as to:
A) bring the 80% along and
B) make the 80% not look so bad/suffer from low self esteem.
That division of that company reorganized itself into non-existence in the last few years (it had 1,200 "engineers" when they started in on the SEI stuff.)
-- In my opinion, programming is most efficiently done by individuals, when they are properly motivated. Much of the discipline of "software engineering" practices are VERY good but tend to be taken too far the instant politics are involved. For example, code reviews are essential for production quality code, yet when they become required for the tiniest change they become bureaucratic nightmares.
In my experience, the term 'engineer' has only been thrown about as a political buzzword; sometimes to justify higher education requirements, other times it is used to scare end-users out of filing formal complaints and other times it was used to raise hourly billing rates.
But whenever the term was used, it meant someone was planning on having programmers (ahem, engineers) program less.:-(
Slashdot Mirror
Don't lie like that!
SAIC ***bought*** Network Solutions. Many many many years after the ARPAnet contracts. They then spun the stock off for a very handsome profit. They did not in any way help create the technology.
I don't understand the hostility towards Lindows thats prevalent on /.
/. crowd. Remember when Lindows first came out and they (at least initially) refused to release source? Good to see he's (at least partially) come around.
Maybe Lindows/Mr. Robertson got off on the wrong foot with the
"evidence" - well no, no evidence per se. (Since when does one need evidence to post a question on /.?)
I do not have any secret recordings of Michael Robertson outlining plans for focusing his efforts on legal (instead of technical) matters.
But his colorful history does show that he seems to excel in the legal arena. OTOH, his technical decisions lead to very belabored discussions about whether users should run as root or not.
I am happy with his answer to my question.
I am glad that my question was moderated up, AND he deigned to answer it.
Perhaps if I had carefully prepared a question, I would have asked how or if he intends to legally "help" the linux community. He was given the source code to a simply excellent operating system, as well as tons of application code for free. With some amount of effort, he is now able to call it his own. Does he now intend to fight legal battles that "little guys" cannot? (The Microsoft (TM) battle is the one example that I know of.) Does he feel that he owes the linux community anything?
But I didn't. That's what I get for being in a rush to post rapidly after the call for questions appeared.
BTW Otter, are you a Lindows employee or just an advocate?
Lastly,
is he completely clueless or did a bunch of crack-addled moderators mod up a troll?
I've never done crack myself (can't speak for the moderators) and it's been a long time since I've had any mind-altering chemical stronger than the caffeine in my coffee. I certainly do not consider myself (nor my question) a troll. I'm sorry that you do.
I agree - their 'solution' can't really work. It does not address the growing problem of spammers hijacking legitimate user's accounts. I think authenticating senders would help. I also think severe punishment for current spammers is needed. Getting caught buying a T-3 and using it as a spam server should have the death penalty.
As an semi-frequent bicyclist, I would love for gasoline here in the US to be over $5/gallon.
I feel that all software patents, copyrights and trade secrets are wrong. Software patents accomplish the opposite of the stated goal of encouraging inventors. Copyright law is so perverted today, the copyright system as it stands should be scrapped. And at the very least trade secrets should not be sanctioned or encouraged by any government.
Whether people who profit *should* have damages levied against them or not, does not have much to do with US Law. I share your view that the profiteers should be held accountable. My question remains, aren't the damages that they can be expected to pay for product liability limited to what you paid them for their product or service?
Isn't product liability normally limited to what you paid for the product? Proving negligence or malfeasance I thought was a completely different kettle of fish.
The point the parent poster was making was that punitive dammages could (theoretically) be levied again the original author, but that is just wrong any way you look at it. Especially when you consider that open source software is reviewed by many more sets of eyes than any proprietary piece of software, and consequently *is* of much higher quality.
Dear Mr. Robertson,
Could you please update me on your efforts to patent your once-click-software-update solution?
If you are granted such a patent, do you plan on allowing the open source community free (beer/speech/both?) licensing?
And I am not a big corporate donor. I am a taxpayer. Depending on the state, I likely paid for that software to be written; I underwrite tuition at the university; the university was founded with a land appropriation, which if left private could have made my grandfather rich; a variety of special provisions by the state legislature give this university a wide class of special exemptions and preferences.
/. this week.
This is not Bell Labs or Xerox Parc, folks. *Those* are places that can whine about a return on investment.
And now my and my ancestor's investments in an educated society full of opportunity are being hijacked by lawyers and weak, cowardly, and greedy administration. The trustees and administrators of most universities in the US these days are a craven mafia eager to claim the public's infrastructure for themselves and set up a toll gate. These are the people who didn't make it on to the board of Enron and WorldCom because they were too untrustworthy.
Quit now. And LIGHT THE PLACE ON FIRE WHEN YOU LEAVE.
I wish you had not posted that as AC. That was the most insightful thing I've read on
You say you disagree, but seem to be making some of the same points I was aiming for.
1) I don't view loss of anonymity on the internet/over SMTP as a "Bad Thing (tm)." If absolutely everyone that connected to the internet were uniquely, traceably identified I think people would use the internet/e-mail a lot more responsibly.
2) SPAMmers will still find ways to subvert individual's legitimate accounts. This does and will partially negate any benefits of distinctly identifying sender(s).
3) SPAM-filter *corporations* in the meantime benefit by adding more spam to the mix (themselves!) I find myself unable to trust any company that says it has an e-mail solution. I tend to theorize that they are at least subsidizing third party SPAMmers (indirectly or directly.)
4) Certificate vendors are also suspect whenever a proposal arises that implies that all individuals need certificates. The article wasn't talking about using ssh-keygen or PGP. It was suggesting a paid CA issuing individuals certificates (or did I read too much into that?)
I agree. There were a couple slim areas in this article - the presumption that SPAMmers would not adapt was distressing.
Reading this article, I recalled that the ones that probably would gain the most financially from an increase in spam would be spam filtering companies.
Also, the idea of individuals having certificates was pretty funny. Good way to increase certificate sales without addressing the underlying SPAM problem at all.
The surface area they affect is also very tiny. Basically, you have a lot of tiny bubble doing serious dammage to a lot of very very small surfaces (that make one large surface.)
Here's my horrible analogy: the starting surface is like a indi race trace - very smooth. After cavitation, the road looks like the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (where the surface area of the potholes is greater than the surface area of flat roadway.)
I share your lack of understanding. But the courts entertains her complaints nevertheless.
I am currently going through a divorce. One (rather bizarre, IMHO) allegation my wife made at one point was that I was "addicted to pornogrophy." Now besides a statement like that being outrageous on it's face, it's also not true. I occasionally d/l softcore, legal porn, then flit through the download later. She alleges that I have amassed a huge porn collection (not true.) For her to use the presence of a couple legal newsgroup d/l files on my computer as evidence that I'm a pervert I hope will eventually show the court what an over-reacting freak she is. But then again, these *are* US courts.
I second this one! You absolutely MUST sleep when they do. With both my kids (now 5 and 3yrs) the first 6 weeks was never more than 4 hrs of sleep a night, so naps became VERY important, for Mommy and me!
Buy the Dr. Spock book now - read it now you won't have time later.
Buy the humourous book "What do do when your wife is EXPANDING" and make sure you show it to your wife and make it VERY CLEAR that it is just a joke to lighten the situation. If she finds it before you tell her, she'll be in tears for hours.
Also: read your dictionary to your wife's belly. Your child can get used to hearing your voice while still in the womb.
You are probably right, but then again, I don't believe *everything* I read on /. either. :-) At the time, the somewhat implausible explanation had a ring of truth to it, so I gave it some worth - probably more than it deserved.
By the way, what credentials do you have, that make you so knowledgable about copyright law, that you can say with certainty that 'you can't "copyright" a design for a physical part.'?
The last time I tried to get a replacement tail-light at Pep-boys, I was told there were none being made for my car, because the dealer had a copyright on the lens design. I eventually got a replacement tail-light kit from the dealer for (IIRC) $125. This was about 1 year ago.
Have you ever had to replace a broken tail-light? Auto manufacturers *are* copyrighting their designs only to prevent competitors from providing inexpensive replacement parts.
The foundation was created in January of 2000!
This is a pathetic attempt to appear philanthropic. He didn't have any money before January 2000? This was at best a PR stunt to try to mitigate the bad press he was getting for owning a monopoly and abusing that monopoly's power.
How can you say (presumably with a straight face) that "there was no major failure" and in the same sentence "there were many calls that could not be completed".
I hope you realize those two thoughts are mutually exclusive.
Also, any time a hard drive is at an angle from level that isn't 0 or 90 degrees that is very bad.
I agree! I once mounted a 40GB drive 180 degrees (in the last possible space in a small case) instead of just buying a new case. It died in about a month, I presume due to the grease settling the wrong way, and no longer lubricating the bearings, indirectly increasing the heat.
So these days, I won't mount a hard drive at 90 degrees either. It's worth $60 for a new case, to ensure they are mounted at 0 degrees.
No. I've never set foot in Alabama.
Dear AC,
Please don't post as AC; I almost missed your reply.
That is a good point. I wasn't trying to go in quite that direction but now that you mention it...I do think that programming naturally progresses to engineering. That is, a person will either 'get it' or not. If not, then they will not be programming long. But if they do, then they will accumulate their own bag of tricks over the years, and gradually appreciate and adopt engineering principles.
So in that context, yes, I would consider a senior programmer equivalent to an engineer trainee.
I was trying however, to point out that the term engineer is more often used as a cludgeon by bad managers.
When I worked for a large government contractor, there was intense interest in having our division become SEI level 3 compliant (then level 4 the next year, then level 5 the next year.)
:-(
This question was one of the ones asked by management at the time. They knew then that they were are the mercy of the 80/20 rules:
80% of the code takes 20% of the project time
last 20% of the code takes 80% of the time
80% of the staff does 20% of the work,
20% of the staff does 80% of the work.
etc.
So they tried to reign the "heroes" in. They did so by trying to adapt the over-performing 20% - by limiting what and when they could do, so as to:
A) bring the 80% along and
B) make the 80% not look so bad/suffer from low self esteem.
That division of that company reorganized itself into non-existence in the last few years (it had 1,200 "engineers" when they started in on the SEI stuff.)
--
In my opinion, programming is most efficiently done by individuals, when they are properly motivated. Much of the discipline of "software engineering" practices are VERY good but tend to be taken too far the instant politics are involved. For example, code reviews are essential for production quality code, yet when they become required for the tiniest change they become bureaucratic nightmares.
In my experience, the term 'engineer' has only been thrown about as a political buzzword; sometimes to justify higher education requirements, other times it is used to scare end-users out of filing formal complaints and other times it was used to raise hourly billing rates.
But whenever the term was used, it meant someone was planning on having programmers (ahem, engineers) program less.