If you want complete privacy, but want to live in a 1st world country, move to rural Canada. Toronto is an urban metropolis on par with other world-class cities. However, if you get 3+ hours north of here, the pace of life retrogrades back to the late 1960s.
When i go camping I need to hit small town northern ontario for supplies. They usually have ~one~ of everything...a supermarket, a liquor store, a department store, a bank branch, etc. If you get smaller than a town, things start to get conglomerated...e.g. "The General Store"
Once you get smaller than a large town, the communities are almost 100% cash based. Credit cards are seen as a city-slicker luxury. There's ALOT less commercialism as it doesn't have the critical size required to attract mass marketing. Walmart ignores these communities as its not cost effective.
Anonymity is still available in the world should you desire it, but you'll have to make some sacrifices. I concur with your post that there are more important things to worry about at this time.
I've never spent more than $1500 on a PC. Today, I wouldn't spend more than $1000. And that's Canadian $.
And true there is some convergence with the computer, but i justified it only for an application suite, internet access, digital pictures, and video games.
Music is a nice add-on (mp3s) but does not replace my stereo and receiver.
I don't watch TV on my computer, nor DVDs. I don't make cell phone calls with my computer. I copy and edit digital camera photos with my computer, but I see that as an extension of my application suite of tools...and the pictures are taken with a dedicated camera, not a frickin' cellphone!!!
As for pron, well...i know lots of people that have spent more than $3k on the sex industry.:/ I did too, but weddings are expensive...
Why i hate convergence in my electronics:
1. All-in-one = single point of failure when something breaks, and needs to be replaced.
2. Generally speaking, all-in-one devices incorporate propietary technologies to promote lock-in and/or reduce 3rd party tech licensing costs for the company (SONY!!!!).
3. Quality of stand alone components is usually much higher. Think stereo equipment.
4. Modularity = more cost effective upgrade path.
5. All-in-one = usually more complex than individual devices. Stand alone means you can learn and understand the functions fully before moving onto the next component. Sometimes the 'role' of a device is confused when it is consolidated. e.g. Does 'play' mean play the.mp3, the CD, the DVD, or the video game???
6. All-in-one convergence not always a logical combination. Digital camera cell phones? mp3 player cell phones? Cell phones tend to be the worst examples of this phenomenon.
Convergence usually is successful if its the result of a natural evolution of a product. I don't think that marketers can force convergence on its audience...especially when its marked up substantially.
Re:Please follow her advice.
on
Vive La Loafing!
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I feel for you. I've seen employees -- coworkers, superiors, people who report to me -- lose their focus in life. Corporations and management can easily run over their employees unless they say 'no'. What I've always found surprising is how little negative response 'no' ultimately solicits... I've never seen someone fired for saying 'no' to overtime, or 'no' to working on yet another project, or 'no' to a missed deliverable. At most it only hits your performance rating (in a severe case) which might effect your bonus...if there is a bonus that year. Life is too short to worry about $1,000 - $10,000 extra per year.
I'm my last organisation I was a middle-level manager. I was on the fast track to a senior manager or director position. But then I looked at my boss and his peers. All were divorced, or unmarried. Workaholics every one of them. And not one of them was physically fit or led a healthy lifestyle. I refused a promotion, and the response was akin to me speaking Farsi. After a few interviews ('why are you refusing a promotion???') the end result was that my boss' peers thought I either had a) personal problems, b) a bad work ethic and I needed career counselling, or c) was holding out for more money. My boss fortunately understood my reasons and didn't take it personally. He was impressed with my confidence, and was also happy that i would continue working for him.
Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall and I was out on my own accord in 6 months. I took a promotion in another department that promised 9-5 hours (meaning 8-6, with ~occasional~ OT when necessary), and extra vacation. Best career move I ever made.
I won't comment specifically on the engineering aspects -- I've seen strong arguments in favour of it being both great and overrated. I'm unqualified to offer an opinion.
However, I'd argue that ultimately what killed this project was the invention of the ICBM. In the early 1950s the concepts pertaining to nuclear defense were interceptor based: chase down the bombers and destroy them before they could nuke your cities. The Arrow was intended to become a pre-emminent interceptor for its age.
What happened? US and NATO strategy changed. There was no chance of intercepting an ICBM w/ multiple warheads, and thus funding priorities changed. By the early 1960s it was obvious that an interceptor based strategy was no longer relevant. Fighters were being designed as air superiority fighters, tactical bombers, or all-weather craft. No customers = limited market for the Arrow. It was also way over budget (although close to completion of the Mk II) and thus the Diefenbaker government killed it.
I will agree that there's alot of myth and rumour about beligerent and nasty destruction of the program. Most of these are not founded in fact, and are tied to the managers of the Avro Arrow program and not politically motivated.
/$0.02 as couch military historian
welcome to commoditisation
on
You've Got PC
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
$299 for a PC, heavily subsidised by an AOL subscription.
This is like a cellphone plan being applied to home PCs.
I wonder how much of that $299 is for the Windows license? This is linux's opportunity in my mind...if PCs become throw-away items (e.g. equal to or less value than a console system) at what point do the corporate masters figure 30-40% of your capital costs going to Microsoft doesn't make much sense?
In my mind, this is probably the biggest reason for the decline of women in ~computer~ sciences. Lets face it, lots of industries still have deeply entrenched male-chauvinistic values. I cringe when I hit the trading floor from time to time at this bank. But...there's a large number of women working there too, dishing out as good as they get. They're motiviated.
However, IT is no longer the promise land of career stability and longevity. IT suffers from a poor image ("geeks!", "they work for the people who make the money") and is increasingly being commoditised through outsourcing, downsizing, and general lack of respect. Hours are mostly worse than most other white-collar jobs, if only for the 24/7 paging aspect and irregular work patterns (e.g. you'll work 160 hrs this week to get the project launched, and then take the following week off unpaid).
I think, on the whole, that women are better able to make life-value judgements than men. Men must be tough...must endure...must prove self-worth through working hard. Otherwise he's a bum. But women tend to take a longer view. In my experience, women here in IT are more willing to take down time, lieu hours, negotiate different working hours/conditions than the men.
I'd seriously reconsider an IT career if I was starting from scratch, entering university, if i could roll back the clock. Don't you think that alot of girls are now saying "Hmmm, pharmaceuticals vs computers...I'll go with something where I might make a difference?"
One casual recommendation I'm make is to stop populating universities/colleges with masochistic professors who relish a 50% dropout rate in tough courses.
Lots of people graduate with Computer Science degrees, but that's not an indicator to me that the courses were taught well or that the learning experience was positive.
Could someone explain to me -- a chosen humanities major -- why people chose to endure such degradation? I've heard and seen first hand experiences with non-commnunicable professors, poorly artciulated lesson plans, and hostile learning environments.
Is your love of technology so great that you'd endure these pains, or is the possibility of a lucrative career afterwards so immense that it's worth the hassle? Or are my anecdotal stories and first hand experiences not indicative of the norm?
I agree, but I think IT is broken into two distinct fields: harcore programming and software engineering, and applied IT.
To me, applied IT is people working in IT departments supporting business functions in everyday companies. They're the system admins, the database administrators, the operations managers, the application developers. They never get lower than C or J2EE, but are smart competent professionals that have a variety of skills. This is where the lion's share of IT jobs are today.
Then the 'hardcore' technology careers are the real engineers. They guys who code in machine language, microcode for processors. The ones who are intimately involved in the development of operating systems or complex application suites. People who can look at a CPU schematic and interpolate what that means to future generations of code. These are the people that I would suspect have true computer science and computer engineering degrees.
These are broad generalisations I've presented, but I think they are somewhat accurate of the IT landscape. I'm a humanities major who is now a senior IT consultant in a bank. I've led teams of developers and operations people over my career. I consider myself competent in IT and my skills are valued, but I never delude myself into believing my practical skills and career experiences replace the theoretical knowledge of a comp sci degree. Nor would I want to have a comp sci degree...;)
Thanks, although I was previously aware of bugmenot.
I was trying to make a wry comment in response to the poster's question about whether media outlets were covering privacy concerns as a topic. Given that most are now owned by huge mega-conglomerate multi-nationals or are independently large corporations in their own right.
By the -1 mod I'm guessing my comments are just being taken as a being a smart-alec though...
Rationale for ignoring acaemdic IT:
1. Usually consists of THOUSANDS of pockets of IT flavours located department by department. You name a technology, I can find it on any major university campus. This is unrealistic and inefficient in a corporate/government environment.
2. Clusters. You're 100% right -- and I've rarely seen massive clusters in any corporate or government environment, except in research capacities. You'll note than on the SPEC100 most of those systems are huge render or computational farms dedicated to pure math, or pure geological research. Not very pragmatic for mixed-workload environments in a corporate space.
I agree with your comments about the corporate world limiting technology advancement -- most cool stuff originates in the academic or research world, and takes years to permate the business world or become a marketable product. However, the vast majority of IT spending is to support the world of commerce at this point, and is the environment at which I believe Linux/Open Source is trying most desperately to penetrate. All of my comments are intended as constructive criticism to explain why adoption will difficult. Rarely are technology decisions made based solely on the technology...usually its only a small percentage of the evaluation criteria.
Realistically, no major IT company will leave its paying customers out to dry, as its bad for business. There's also the issue of legal precedent... some IP holder might sue a small sized company using SQL Server on the basis of rights infringement. If this is successful, then that becomes the basis of future judgements against other mid-size (then large size deployments). At this point companies begin to divest from a risky product, and with a legal caseload on their side the IP holder goes against the primary infringer -- Micrsoft (this is an example).
There's a saying in IT... "No one was ever fired for buying IBM." I've heard it extended to quite a few other companies now (Sun, HP, Microsoft), but ~NEVER~ to open source.
Agreed... but theoretically if you have good asset management in your organisation you would never be caught liable. I also suspect that mid-size businesses (50-1000 people), which lack some of the bureacracy and maturity of larger companies, are more susceptible to these type of 'investigations'.
Ultimately when I recommend to my executives what technology to purchase, I'm usually overriden on the basis of quanitfied risk. e.g. Yes, we'll pay millions more for MS/AIX/Solaris, but we know what we're getting. Especially in the era of Sorbanes-Oxley there's very little interest in risk pertaining to capital assets.:(
The good news about Linux is that as a distributed, non-owned asset, its difficult for owners of 'intellectual property' to pursue lawsuits that would prevent further kernel development. Who do you sue? Linus? If so, someone else will take over stewardship. If its problematic in the US and Germany, move repositories and organisations to Canada or Italy or Thailand...who cares?
The next generation of spurious lawsuits will be targeted at users of the technology. Without a blanket organisation to indemnify (sp?) the users, I suspect widespread adoption will slow very quickly. I was hoping IBM or a big player would step into this space (as per the one-off SCO lawsuit situation re: HP) but right now the scope of lawsuits is so vast that it would be suicide to do so in a blanket fashion.
When I buy and deploy MS, at least I know that EOLAS won't/can't come after me. Linux however faces increasing paralysis as this 'death by a thousand cuts' discourages widespread adoption.
Can anyone comment on the largest linux deployment in the world? How many large scale deployments exist? I'll ask people to ignore academic installations, as they are rarely relevant to corporate/government environments which drives the IT industry.
Here's some tips:
- Read Joyce from a 'stream of conciousness' perspective. Joyce realised from early film that a story did not have to be written linearly. He tranposes modern invention into the written word and makes it part of the style.
- He integrates commercial society and colloquialisms into the prose itself. 'Valvoline' is now escalated to a lyrical level.
- Post-modern anti-establishment humanistic themes in high art. Nihilistic and existentialistic in other cases. Cynicism not as satire or comedy, but as a legitimate piece of art.
I don't read Joyce for fun, but its difficult to deny his importance or creativity. Try "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man".... it's more accessible than Finnegan's Wake or Ulysses.
Agree wholeheartedly! Its a really intimidating read at first -- so many characters, and has a very biblical tone for the first bit. But the story progresses into a very homeric-like epic/legend, which ends with an almost complete doom save intervention by divine powers. You really can't understand the flight of the Elves to the West in LOTR unless you've read The Silmarillion.
I like to compare The Silmarillion to The Lord of the Rings the way The Lord of the Rings compares to The Hobbit. A progression in theme, complexity, while at the same time remaining completely harmonious with the former.
Slashdotters... commence downloading. I'm talking about burn your ethernet cable, fry your modem, overheat your CPU, blow your powersupply like the 4th of July (or Guy Fawkes) type of volume.
HP benefits more from the merger than Compaq, for the following reasons:
1. One less commodity x86 company to deal with on the Wintel side.
2. Acquisition of DEC, aka Compaq Alpha, and Tandem, aka NonStop. Instant credibility and long term customer base in the high-end transactional space. For non-enterprise Slashdotters, Tandems are almost as prevalent as MVS (mainframes) in the financial services sector.
3. iPaq and hand held technologies. HP's offerings weren't so hot until they got Compaq's mindshare.
Ironically, HP is massacring it own customer base in the HP-UX space. The Itanium relationship has been a disaster. "Hey, port to Itanium as its our long term unix strategy. Well, yes the processors underperform...and yes, no ISVs have ported over. And, well, no, we'll keep supporting HP-UX as long as its possible.." Of course, HP-UX customers are questioning the future of PA-RISC now in light of Itanium. So basically what's happened is no one is picking up Itanium nor PA-RISC at this point, and the PA-RISC space is slowly declining as people move to the P-Series (IBM) or Sun or linux clusters. Look at the latest sales and install base charts. I figure PA-RISC jumped the shark about 3-4 quarters ago, and its descent is accelerating month-by-month. (Mostly at the expense of IBM P-Series it seems)
I find it amazing that HP can make money some days...
1) Radar detectors are illegal in Canada. I don't think our CRTC (Canadian FCC equivalent) recognises the frequency wavelength as commerically viable in that capactiy. (i'm guessing here).
2) For a country that covers such a large landmass, satellite based internet access is HUGE. Something like 80% of Canada's population is spread across a 100km deep band bordering the US. DSL, Cable, T1/3s etc are readily accessible to these people. However, for the rest of Canada, internet access is a biatch. In many circumstances, some communities will be getting high-speed internet access before a phone line. (e.g. Nunavut)
Unfortunately all of the creditors would be left high and dry in those circumstances. That sort of scenario would be resulting in two evils... the bankruptcy of a corporation that was thoroughly unethical and deceptive in its dealings, and the bankruptcy of innocent/not so innocent creditors. Even if the subsidiary lenders were corrupt, their shareholders probably had no idea what was being orchestrated...they shouldn't lose their savings.
Now, if the penalties faced by Enron involved financial fines, and they were to take precednecne over the payment of creditors, your scenario would be a valid payment scheme.
As a Canadian in IT (who would benefit big time from a strong domestic labour demand, even if I having a good job now), I agree with you 100%.
Corporate interests in the US tend to be east coast/west coast oriented. there's alot of low cost labour centres that could be exploited in the US to reduce costs.
The only real detriment to remaining in the US that I can see if the legal culture... lawsuit heavy and intellectual property quagmires.
Just keep in mind that the Fraser Insitute is a right-wing think tank that is funded by the Conservative party and other corporate interests. I'm not disputing their numbers, but I'm certain that the perpective they present does not take into account quality of life.
FYI -- I'm just as skeptical about sociology studies released by Canadian universities with their left wing perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want complete privacy, but want to live in a 1st world country, move to rural Canada. Toronto is an urban metropolis on par with other world-class cities. However, if you get 3+ hours north of here, the pace of life retrogrades back to the late 1960s.
When i go camping I need to hit small town northern ontario for supplies. They usually have ~one~ of everything...a supermarket, a liquor store, a department store, a bank branch, etc. If you get smaller than a town, things start to get conglomerated...e.g. "The General Store"
Once you get smaller than a large town, the communities are almost 100% cash based. Credit cards are seen as a city-slicker luxury. There's ALOT less commercialism as it doesn't have the critical size required to attract mass marketing. Walmart ignores these communities as its not cost effective.
Anonymity is still available in the world should you desire it, but you'll have to make some sacrifices. I concur with your post that there are more important things to worry about at this time.
I've never spent more than $1500 on a PC. Today, I wouldn't spend more than $1000. And that's Canadian $.
:/ I did too, but weddings are expensive...
And true there is some convergence with the computer, but i justified it only for an application suite, internet access, digital pictures, and video games.
Music is a nice add-on (mp3s) but does not replace my stereo and receiver.
I don't watch TV on my computer, nor DVDs. I don't make cell phone calls with my computer. I copy and edit digital camera photos with my computer, but I see that as an extension of my application suite of tools...and the pictures are taken with a dedicated camera, not a frickin' cellphone!!!
As for pron, well...i know lots of people that have spent more than $3k on the sex industry.
Why i hate convergence in my electronics: .mp3, the CD, the DVD, or the video game???
1. All-in-one = single point of failure when something breaks, and needs to be replaced.
2. Generally speaking, all-in-one devices incorporate propietary technologies to promote lock-in and/or reduce 3rd party tech licensing costs for the company (SONY!!!!).
3. Quality of stand alone components is usually much higher. Think stereo equipment.
4. Modularity = more cost effective upgrade path.
5. All-in-one = usually more complex than individual devices. Stand alone means you can learn and understand the functions fully before moving onto the next component. Sometimes the 'role' of a device is confused when it is consolidated. e.g. Does 'play' mean play the
6. All-in-one convergence not always a logical combination. Digital camera cell phones? mp3 player cell phones? Cell phones tend to be the worst examples of this phenomenon.
Convergence usually is successful if its the result of a natural evolution of a product. I don't think that marketers can force convergence on its audience...especially when its marked up substantially.
I feel for you. I've seen employees -- coworkers, superiors, people who report to me -- lose their focus in life. Corporations and management can easily run over their employees unless they say 'no'. What I've always found surprising is how little negative response 'no' ultimately solicits... I've never seen someone fired for saying 'no' to overtime, or 'no' to working on yet another project, or 'no' to a missed deliverable. At most it only hits your performance rating (in a severe case) which might effect your bonus...if there is a bonus that year. Life is too short to worry about $1,000 - $10,000 extra per year.
I'm my last organisation I was a middle-level manager. I was on the fast track to a senior manager or director position. But then I looked at my boss and his peers. All were divorced, or unmarried. Workaholics every one of them. And not one of them was physically fit or led a healthy lifestyle. I refused a promotion, and the response was akin to me speaking Farsi. After a few interviews ('why are you refusing a promotion???') the end result was that my boss' peers thought I either had a) personal problems, b) a bad work ethic and I needed career counselling, or c) was holding out for more money. My boss fortunately understood my reasons and didn't take it personally. He was impressed with my confidence, and was also happy that i would continue working for him.
Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall and I was out on my own accord in 6 months. I took a promotion in another department that promised 9-5 hours (meaning 8-6, with ~occasional~ OT when necessary), and extra vacation. Best career move I ever made.
I won't comment specifically on the engineering aspects -- I've seen strong arguments in favour of it being both great and overrated. I'm unqualified to offer an opinion.
/$0.02 as couch military historian
However, I'd argue that ultimately what killed this project was the invention of the ICBM. In the early 1950s the concepts pertaining to nuclear defense were interceptor based: chase down the bombers and destroy them before they could nuke your cities. The Arrow was intended to become a pre-emminent interceptor for its age.
What happened? US and NATO strategy changed. There was no chance of intercepting an ICBM w/ multiple warheads, and thus funding priorities changed. By the early 1960s it was obvious that an interceptor based strategy was no longer relevant. Fighters were being designed as air superiority fighters, tactical bombers, or all-weather craft. No customers = limited market for the Arrow. It was also way over budget (although close to completion of the Mk II) and thus the Diefenbaker government killed it.
I will agree that there's alot of myth and rumour about beligerent and nasty destruction of the program. Most of these are not founded in fact, and are tied to the managers of the Avro Arrow program and not politically motivated.
$299 for a PC, heavily subsidised by an AOL subscription.
This is like a cellphone plan being applied to home PCs.
I wonder how much of that $299 is for the Windows license? This is linux's opportunity in my mind...if PCs become throw-away items (e.g. equal to or less value than a console system) at what point do the corporate masters figure 30-40% of your capital costs going to Microsoft doesn't make much sense?
You'd probably just feed it junk food so that it would become overweight and slothful...
Now if you could get a monkey with a bowler hat that attends college on Mars, now THAT would be something!
In my mind, this is probably the biggest reason for the decline of women in ~computer~ sciences. Lets face it, lots of industries still have deeply entrenched male-chauvinistic values. I cringe when I hit the trading floor from time to time at this bank. But...there's a large number of women working there too, dishing out as good as they get. They're motiviated.
However, IT is no longer the promise land of career stability and longevity. IT suffers from a poor image ("geeks!", "they work for the people who make the money") and is increasingly being commoditised through outsourcing, downsizing, and general lack of respect. Hours are mostly worse than most other white-collar jobs, if only for the 24/7 paging aspect and irregular work patterns (e.g. you'll work 160 hrs this week to get the project launched, and then take the following week off unpaid).
I think, on the whole, that women are better able to make life-value judgements than men. Men must be tough...must endure...must prove self-worth through working hard. Otherwise he's a bum. But women tend to take a longer view. In my experience, women here in IT are more willing to take down time, lieu hours, negotiate different working hours/conditions than the men.
I'd seriously reconsider an IT career if I was starting from scratch, entering university, if i could roll back the clock. Don't you think that alot of girls are now saying "Hmmm, pharmaceuticals vs computers...I'll go with something where I might make a difference?"
One casual recommendation I'm make is to stop populating universities/colleges with masochistic professors who relish a 50% dropout rate in tough courses.
Lots of people graduate with Computer Science degrees, but that's not an indicator to me that the courses were taught well or that the learning experience was positive.
Could someone explain to me -- a chosen humanities major -- why people chose to endure such degradation? I've heard and seen first hand experiences with non-commnunicable professors, poorly artciulated lesson plans, and hostile learning environments.
Is your love of technology so great that you'd endure these pains, or is the possibility of a lucrative career afterwards so immense that it's worth the hassle? Or are my anecdotal stories and first hand experiences not indicative of the norm?
I agree, but I think IT is broken into two distinct fields: harcore programming and software engineering, and applied IT.
;)
To me, applied IT is people working in IT departments supporting business functions in everyday companies. They're the system admins, the database administrators, the operations managers, the application developers. They never get lower than C or J2EE, but are smart competent professionals that have a variety of skills. This is where the lion's share of IT jobs are today.
Then the 'hardcore' technology careers are the real engineers. They guys who code in machine language, microcode for processors. The ones who are intimately involved in the development of operating systems or complex application suites. People who can look at a CPU schematic and interpolate what that means to future generations of code. These are the people that I would suspect have true computer science and computer engineering degrees.
These are broad generalisations I've presented, but I think they are somewhat accurate of the IT landscape. I'm a humanities major who is now a senior IT consultant in a bank. I've led teams of developers and operations people over my career. I consider myself competent in IT and my skills are valued, but I never delude myself into believing my practical skills and career experiences replace the theoretical knowledge of a comp sci degree. Nor would I want to have a comp sci degree...
Thanks, although I was previously aware of bugmenot.
I was trying to make a wry comment in response to the poster's question about whether media outlets were covering privacy concerns as a topic. Given that most are now owned by huge mega-conglomerate multi-nationals or are independently large corporations in their own right.
By the -1 mod I'm guessing my comments are just being taken as a being a smart-alec though...
I heard that the NYT ran a good piece of privacy concerns and IT, but I couldn't read the article since I had to register....
Rationale for ignoring acaemdic IT:
1. Usually consists of THOUSANDS of pockets of IT flavours located department by department. You name a technology, I can find it on any major university campus. This is unrealistic and inefficient in a corporate/government environment.
2. Clusters. You're 100% right -- and I've rarely seen massive clusters in any corporate or government environment, except in research capacities. You'll note than on the SPEC100 most of those systems are huge render or computational farms dedicated to pure math, or pure geological research. Not very pragmatic for mixed-workload environments in a corporate space.
I agree with your comments about the corporate world limiting technology advancement -- most cool stuff originates in the academic or research world, and takes years to permate the business world or become a marketable product. However, the vast majority of IT spending is to support the world of commerce at this point, and is the environment at which I believe Linux/Open Source is trying most desperately to penetrate. All of my comments are intended as constructive criticism to explain why adoption will difficult. Rarely are technology decisions made based solely on the technology...usually its only a small percentage of the evaluation criteria.
Legally you're hung out to dry.
Realistically, no major IT company will leave its paying customers out to dry, as its bad for business. There's also the issue of legal precedent... some IP holder might sue a small sized company using SQL Server on the basis of rights infringement. If this is successful, then that becomes the basis of future judgements against other mid-size (then large size deployments). At this point companies begin to divest from a risky product, and with a legal caseload on their side the IP holder goes against the primary infringer -- Micrsoft (this is an example).
There's a saying in IT... "No one was ever fired for buying IBM." I've heard it extended to quite a few other companies now (Sun, HP, Microsoft), but ~NEVER~ to open source.
Agreed... but theoretically if you have good asset management in your organisation you would never be caught liable. I also suspect that mid-size businesses (50-1000 people), which lack some of the bureacracy and maturity of larger companies, are more susceptible to these type of 'investigations'.
:(
Ultimately when I recommend to my executives what technology to purchase, I'm usually overriden on the basis of quanitfied risk. e.g. Yes, we'll pay millions more for MS/AIX/Solaris, but we know what we're getting. Especially in the era of Sorbanes-Oxley there's very little interest in risk pertaining to capital assets.
The good news about Linux is that as a distributed, non-owned asset, its difficult for owners of 'intellectual property' to pursue lawsuits that would prevent further kernel development. Who do you sue? Linus? If so, someone else will take over stewardship. If its problematic in the US and Germany, move repositories and organisations to Canada or Italy or Thailand...who cares?
The next generation of spurious lawsuits will be targeted at users of the technology. Without a blanket organisation to indemnify (sp?) the users, I suspect widespread adoption will slow very quickly. I was hoping IBM or a big player would step into this space (as per the one-off SCO lawsuit situation re: HP) but right now the scope of lawsuits is so vast that it would be suicide to do so in a blanket fashion.
When I buy and deploy MS, at least I know that EOLAS won't/can't come after me. Linux however faces increasing paralysis as this 'death by a thousand cuts' discourages widespread adoption.
Can anyone comment on the largest linux deployment in the world? How many large scale deployments exist? I'll ask people to ignore academic installations, as they are rarely relevant to corporate/government environments which drives the IT industry.
Here's some tips:
- Read Joyce from a 'stream of conciousness' perspective. Joyce realised from early film that a story did not have to be written linearly. He tranposes modern invention into the written word and makes it part of the style.
- He integrates commercial society and colloquialisms into the prose itself. 'Valvoline' is now escalated to a lyrical level.
- Post-modern anti-establishment humanistic themes in high art. Nihilistic and existentialistic in other cases. Cynicism not as satire or comedy, but as a legitimate piece of art.
I don't read Joyce for fun, but its difficult to deny his importance or creativity. Try "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man".... it's more accessible than Finnegan's Wake or Ulysses.
Agree wholeheartedly! Its a really intimidating read at first -- so many characters, and has a very biblical tone for the first bit. But the story progresses into a very homeric-like epic/legend, which ends with an almost complete doom save intervention by divine powers. You really can't understand the flight of the Elves to the West in LOTR unless you've read The Silmarillion.
I like to compare The Silmarillion to The Lord of the Rings the way The Lord of the Rings compares to The Hobbit. A progression in theme, complexity, while at the same time remaining completely harmonious with the former.
No, not anymore. They sold them to Enron and Worldcom, and then Haliburton got them for a steal at the bankruptcy proceedings.
Slashdotters... commence downloading. I'm talking about burn your ethernet cable, fry your modem, overheat your CPU, blow your powersupply like the 4th of July (or Guy Fawkes) type of volume.
You should do it for the sake of humanity.
HP benefits more from the merger than Compaq, for the following reasons:
1. One less commodity x86 company to deal with on the Wintel side.
2. Acquisition of DEC, aka Compaq Alpha, and Tandem, aka NonStop. Instant credibility and long term customer base in the high-end transactional space. For non-enterprise Slashdotters, Tandems are almost as prevalent as MVS (mainframes) in the financial services sector.
3. iPaq and hand held technologies. HP's offerings weren't so hot until they got Compaq's mindshare.
Ironically, HP is massacring it own customer base in the HP-UX space. The Itanium relationship has been a disaster. "Hey, port to Itanium as its our long term unix strategy. Well, yes the processors underperform...and yes, no ISVs have ported over. And, well, no, we'll keep supporting HP-UX as long as its possible.." Of course, HP-UX customers are questioning the future of PA-RISC now in light of Itanium. So basically what's happened is no one is picking up Itanium nor PA-RISC at this point, and the PA-RISC space is slowly declining as people move to the P-Series (IBM) or Sun or linux clusters. Look at the latest sales and install base charts. I figure PA-RISC jumped the shark about 3-4 quarters ago, and its descent is accelerating month-by-month. (Mostly at the expense of IBM P-Series it seems)
I find it amazing that HP can make money some days...
Two things:
1) Radar detectors are illegal in Canada. I don't think our CRTC (Canadian FCC equivalent) recognises the frequency wavelength as commerically viable in that capactiy. (i'm guessing here).
2) For a country that covers such a large landmass, satellite based internet access is HUGE. Something like 80% of Canada's population is spread across a 100km deep band bordering the US. DSL, Cable, T1/3s etc are readily accessible to these people. However, for the rest of Canada, internet access is a biatch. In many circumstances, some communities will be getting high-speed internet access before a phone line. (e.g. Nunavut)
Unfortunately all of the creditors would be left high and dry in those circumstances. That sort of scenario would be resulting in two evils... the bankruptcy of a corporation that was thoroughly unethical and deceptive in its dealings, and the bankruptcy of innocent/not so innocent creditors. Even if the subsidiary lenders were corrupt, their shareholders probably had no idea what was being orchestrated...they shouldn't lose their savings.
Now, if the penalties faced by Enron involved financial fines, and they were to take precednecne over the payment of creditors, your scenario would be a valid payment scheme.
As a Canadian in IT (who would benefit big time from a strong domestic labour demand, even if I having a good job now), I agree with you 100%.
Corporate interests in the US tend to be east coast/west coast oriented. there's alot of low cost labour centres that could be exploited in the US to reduce costs.
The only real detriment to remaining in the US that I can see if the legal culture... lawsuit heavy and intellectual property quagmires.
Just keep in mind that the Fraser Insitute is a right-wing think tank that is funded by the Conservative party and other corporate interests. I'm not disputing their numbers, but I'm certain that the perpective they present does not take into account quality of life.
FYI -- I'm just as skeptical about sociology studies released by Canadian universities with their left wing perspective.