I just find it odd that people who get worked up about the destruction of rain forests because they may hold the cure for cancer don't mind the destruction of humans even though they may have been the one to find it....
I think it rather horrendous that we have a lab attaching human embryos as a matter of experimentation and then aborting them. Is this where the IVF movement has lead us?
The researchers themselves admit this is going to lead to a lot of controversial laws and ethical questions for something that is not needed. And yet to paraphrase the Jurassic Park quip, they are so excited they can do something, they don't stop to ask if they should.
If they can make money off their engine, more power to them. Keeping them solvent will keep their public search up and freely running for the rest of us.
I found this very suspicious
on
The Laid-off Techie
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
This sounds like media FUD and that we're not getting the whole story on this guy. Unfortunately, the media is great at finding the oddball and making him the "norm". I would grant you that if this was geologists getting laid off in an oil crunch (i.e., those who are stuck working for one industry) that would be different.
I'm not saying some fields are having a hard time, but I find it VERY odd that someone with an engineering degree from Texas A&M AND an MBA is having a hard time landing a job other than sorting mail. I would love to know the answers to the following:
Have you look for work in other states? I have a stepson going to Texas A&M this school is about #5 or 7 in the nation for engineering. They also have a strong networking foundation as well as a lot of alumni in business locally. I can't believe he couldn't come back to Texas and find an engineering job. You can't just look in your town or even state. Sometimes you have to move to where the jobs are.
How old are you? If you're under 30 you may want to drop the MBA mention unless you're looking for a job in that field. Advanced titles can be a catch 22, i.e., employers think you're overqualified for lower positions, but aren't willing to hire you for the upper level positions because you don't have enough years of experience.
I would add: If you were some dot-commer management previously making a salary way above your experience/job duties from the regional average, I would list my salary as more reasonable if asked. Employers who look and see some 29 year old making well over the norm are going to shitcan the application because they are going to assume that's the range you're looking for.
Yes, these may seem like fudging or leaving out something on the application. However done creatively, this is NOT the same as declaring a degree you don't have.
"http://www.lovecalculator.com This site is a fraud! Don't use it! You'll only become disenchanted! The only person that everyone---I mean EVERYONE---has a 100% chance with is Kevin Bacon. Yeah, I know...RUN!"
SEC must be stooping pretty low!
Until Win/Lin versions released together...
on
Loki Games Closing?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
...this will not change.
This shouldn't come as any surprise.
For Christmas I got Mandrake 8.1 Gaming Edition with The Sims. Very cool and just like the Windows version. The only thing is, on my Windows machine, I've got all 3 add-on packs too. Would I have bought The Sims for Linux had it not been packaged with the upgrade? Probably not.
Until Linux games get released at the same time as the Windows games this won't change. People who have already bought the game under Windows, *most times* don't want to buy it again 1-2 years later just so they can use it under Linux. And they don't want to wait, hoping it will be one of the few ported to Linux, unless that's the only OS they're using AND the Win version doesn't work under Wine.
Re:What could the device be?
on
Woz's New Startup
·
· Score: 2, Funny
At least as far as this article is concerned, the workers here were being paid well over minimum wage at $8 an hour. Yes with CA's cost of living that pay sucks, but it's the cost of living in CA. When I last checked, jobs in California didn't pay much more than they do where I live, but the cost of living was 2.5 to 3X of here.
Depending on your skills, one of the advantages of temping (of which I've done quite a bit of) is that you can LEAVE or be reassigned to another job if you hate it. Or you know you'll be out of there soon. Sometimes, I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't work somewhere permanently! At least you got to see it from the inside first! Yeah, it's work without the benefits, but also without the commitment on your part too.
I liked the variety of temping. How you're treated can depend on the atmosphere of the company, but it depends on your attitude too. I was amazed at the number of employers that would put up with sloppy work or chronically late (really late) temps.
One thing I did gain from temp work was walking into different situations and a broader background.
The lesson that this brings out is to get an education. This author who's now "devoted to improving working conditions in Silicon Valley" according to his bio, moved on to a more successful position as a editor of a (sponsored) web magazine. He succeeded in getting out of a dead-end job. I think he would be even more helpful to the workers if he wrote on what he did to accomplish this rather than concentrating solely on working conditions at that plant. I'm pretty sure many others there moved on to other, better jobs too. This is why they call them entry level positions. But his tone was that they were all stuck there (except him) in temp-hell.
No education will leave you in a dead-in rut. My spouse knows this well. When he got out of the military and became an plumber's apprentice in the 70's he had no idea that he wouldn't be able to do the job 30 years down the road because of the back breaking work of commercial plumbing. Physical labor takes it's toll. He made good money (as long as the weather was good and there was work to be had). He had 3 kids and a spouse to provide for so he never took advantage of his military college benefits which he now realizes at 50+ was a big mistake. But he went hungry before his family did and he did whatever it took job wise to put food on the table, even if he had to move out of state and send the money back.
Unfortunately, although he's extremely good at what is essentially mechanical engineering, he has no degree and his job scope (and earnings) are limited by that.
Fortunately two of his sons are taking a different track. After four years in the Navy, his youngest is now studying electrical engineering at a good school. He works a job component testing for $7, but in a state that's a LOT cheaper to live in than California, so he's doing okay. The oldest has been inspired to go school after suffering though numerous security jobs. Both are paying their own way. The middle son unfortunately still works in security for about $10/hour and I don't know if he'll ever get truly motivated to do better.
Basically when I see people stuck in these type of jobs, I rarely see one who has truly reached their potential. It's more of a "this is my lot in life" attitude than their brains that's holding them back. Don't give me the, "Well not everyone doesn't have the same advantage as you." We all have our advantages and disadvantages. Motivation and desire are two powerful forces that can overcome almost obstacle.
But the cruelest thing is essentially tell people, "You're right, you have no hope, you're not smart enough to do better on your own. The only way things will be better is if someone else makes it better for you."
Some seem to be thinking that if this is a big political pissing contest, well no harm done, Linux is safe and all that.
Well, the problem being overlooked is RedHat is THE biggest corporate distro. If this is a just a whim to get what they want from M$ and AOL/TW screws around with this, they'll be a lot of corporations running back to Bill. It would play right into M$ FUD that there's no reliable support for Linux. And that would be bad for Linux.
Remember a lot of people making corporate decisions on these things are not necessarily tech types to begin with; they won't all just switch to another distro of Linux if RedHat doesn't perform.
Yeah, I know...if it does perform, it could attract more corporate customers with name recognition. Still, that's a big IF.
I don't know how it is on the federal level, but I think most government is probably the same.
I taught computers for 3 years at local government for a major city. If you aren't already cynical, you'll get there. There ARE a lot of good people. But there are also a LOT of incompetant management making every backroom deal you can think of (and some you can't) so they can eventually jump ship to a private consulting firm and make money getting contracts from the city. When I read the first Dilbert book, I was SURE he had worked in the government sector.
You make very little money and while the upper brass gets their raises, some how they can't find it in the budget for any of the little guys. Or they'll give it to you (so they can publish it in the paper that city workers get a raise) but it's only good for 1 year and they just take it back the next. Yes that really happened under one mayor.
I also had to laugh about them training you. Oh sure, they'll train you, but then they'll exect you to do the high qualified work at the same salary. I had programmers who got paid a heck of a lot more than me asking ME programming questions because they didn't know OOP.
When I left, some expressed concerns about the lack of job security in the real world. The truth is, if someone wants to get rid of you bad enough they'll find a way or make your life so miserable that you quit. Unfortunately, the people who stay there usually do so because they're so down they don't think they can survive without the security blanket. And a lot of them couldn't.
I left for a (non-dot com) company and doubled my salary. I'm still working there 5 years later.
I think that the biggest reason public transit won't work in the US is that people don't _want_ it to work (and don't want to put money into it, and...); and the biggest reason that people don't want it to work is that they're put off by the current, dysfunctional systems.
We pour billions of dollars into public transit that never pays for itself. This sort of thing works fine in cities where people are packed together such as London or NY. These cities were designed way before the car was invented--these cities were built where the populace living and working in the city.
Now look at the newer more sprawling cities. There is no practical way to have public transportation. If I want to go somewhere besides downtown, I would have to drive to the park-and-ride and take the bus to downtown and transfer out.
I can't even get to my work on the city bus because I work in another COUNTY. We use to have a vanpool from my area, but I would have had to drive half time it would have taken me to get to work in the opposite direction to get to the parking lot where they met.
Fortunately now I'm in a 3-day a week telecommuting program.
What we NEED is not just the focus on public transport, but more fuel efficient/alternate fuel cars, better roads (sitting in traffic causes pollution too!) and more encouragement to companies to have employees telecommute.
I keep seeing advice with these stories and on boards that say to buy the disk and then when it won't play on your computer or be able to rip it, to take it back to the store as defective.
However, most store policy regaring CDs (and software) is to exchange ONLY once the disk is opened. So you'll just get another disk you can't rip. Also, expect policies soon to start making exceptions to even this and saying that the inability to rip a disk will not be considered as a defect.
They certainly haven't been lax in the commercial industry either. They did some animations for Burger King a few years ago. And I think some of the Shaun's friends from A Close Shave are starring in a mattress commercial (the counting sheep).
As much effort as goes into making one of these animations, they can really put out quite a bit. Glad to see the dynamic duo is coming back.
Some providers are going under because they are not making money!
And that's because the Bells are under-cutting them. Which would Joe Consumer rather get: DSL for $39/month from SW Bell or $39 + 10 from a local ISP. Bell simply removed the additional fee they had been charging seperately to be the ISP. They simply undercut the competition. Our users group provides regular modem ISP service for $10/month and DSL for $5. But of course that doesn't include the charge from Bell, so even they're more expensive.
Since Bell owns all the phone lines the only real competition is from the satellite/cable companies....
Yes, but it wouldn't matter if some Linux distro had the "monopoly" (which btw--it isn't the monopoly that's illegal, it the unfair use of the monopoly that is.)
Because there isn't a per computer licensing fee, if a company decides to wipe the drives of pre-installed Red Hat and buy Windows licenses, it's not going to be a loss like it is when the computer come pre-installed with Windows OEM. IOW, there would be no "Linux tax".
They saved all those "Hot Teens 4 U" spams from oblivion.
First the cube.... More over-heat potential?
on
New iMac Announced
·
· Score: 1
I liked the Cube and its look but it had overheating problems.
This isn't nearly as cute--the comparison with a lamp is dead on. I can't see this doing much better in the cooling department. Also doesn't look very upgradeable.
Form is great as long as it FOLLOWS functionality.
The problem with this is the University will then start looking at projects as to whether it would be profitable. Who knows, the next big idea could be squashed because some bean counter thinks it has no potential.
Also, why should we fund them with public money if they're going to turn around and try to become Fortune 500 company?
This is what has happened to the news media. Now it's no longer getting out the actual stories...its getting out the loudest "teaser" that will draw in the viewers and, therefore, advertisers.
It really comes down to what the real motivations of the company or collective programming the software are.
If it's purely profit motivate then they're unlikely to succeed. Quotes like, "'Where is our business model if everyone else can copy it?' asked Holger Dyroff, former CEO and now director of sales for Linux software seller SuSE. 'The question is where we can make money now. Nobody cared about profitability two years ago,'" are very telling. (Is anyone else concerned that this guy is now the director of sales for SuSE?)
Those, OTOH, who themselves have a need or a desire to create will be satisfied with the results. Perhaps some will make both free and paid programs just like many software authors do to pay the bills. The point is, you do it for the love of creation.
Open source, IMHO, was never meant to be a cash cow by it's very nature. Giving a software away and then expecting a profit makes me wonder where some of these people went to business school. They're in the wrong business. Red Hat has a big slice of the corporate Linux pie and even they have struggled to make a profit from service.
Much of the upset in this parallels that going on in the Internet. Those who jumped in to make a fast buck will be disappointed. What we will be left with are the tried and true who just believe in the IDEA.
Slashdot Mirror
I just find it odd that people who get worked up about the destruction of rain forests because they may hold the cure for cancer don't mind the destruction of humans even though they may have been the one to find it....
I think it rather horrendous that we have a lab attaching human embryos as a matter of experimentation and then aborting them. Is this where the IVF movement has lead us?
The researchers themselves admit this is going to lead to a lot of controversial laws and ethical questions for something that is not needed. And yet to paraphrase the Jurassic Park quip, they are so excited they can do something, they don't stop to ask if they should.
If they can make money off their engine, more power to them. Keeping them solvent will keep their public search up and freely running for the rest of us.
This sounds like media FUD and that we're not getting the whole story on this guy. Unfortunately, the media is great at finding the oddball and making him the "norm". I would grant you that if this was geologists getting laid off in an oil crunch (i.e., those who are stuck working for one industry) that would be different.
I'm not saying some fields are having a hard time, but I find it VERY odd that someone with an engineering degree from Texas A&M AND an MBA is having a hard time landing a job other than sorting mail. I would love to know the answers to the following:
Have you look for work in other states? I have a stepson going to Texas A&M this school is about #5 or 7 in the nation for engineering. They also have a strong networking foundation as well as a lot of alumni in business locally. I can't believe he couldn't come back to Texas and find an engineering job. You can't just look in your town or even state. Sometimes you have to move to where the jobs are.
How old are you? If you're under 30 you may want to drop the MBA mention unless you're looking for a job in that field. Advanced titles can be a catch 22, i.e., employers think you're overqualified for lower positions, but aren't willing to hire you for the upper level positions because you don't have enough years of experience.
I would add: If you were some dot-commer management previously making a salary way above your experience/job duties from the regional average, I would list my salary as more reasonable if asked. Employers who look and see some 29 year old making well over the norm are going to shitcan the application because they are going to assume that's the range you're looking for.
Yes, these may seem like fudging or leaving out something on the application. However done creatively, this is NOT the same as declaring a degree you don't have.
"http://www.lovecalculator.com This site is a fraud! Don't use it! You'll only become disenchanted! The only person that everyone---I mean EVERYONE---has a 100% chance with is Kevin Bacon. Yeah, I know...RUN!"
SEC must be stooping pretty low!
...this will not change.
This shouldn't come as any surprise.
For Christmas I got Mandrake 8.1 Gaming Edition with The Sims. Very cool and just like the Windows version. The only thing is, on my Windows machine, I've got all 3 add-on packs too. Would I have bought The Sims for Linux had it not been packaged with the upgrade? Probably not.
Until Linux games get released at the same time as the Windows games this won't change. People who have already bought the game under Windows, *most times* don't want to buy it again 1-2 years later just so they can use it under Linux. And they don't want to wait, hoping it will be one of the few ported to Linux, unless that's the only OS they're using AND the Win version doesn't work under Wine.
It's a Segway...whoops!
Actually I'll give credit because your message was wrongly labled "insightful" when it should have been tagged as "funny".
He's being sarcastic about this, guys...don't take it so seriously. I just hate it when I have to explain a joke.
It's funny, laugh.
Not to forget, it was also "...posed by teachers in place of a conventional entrance exam."
Solve a problem and get in without taking the entrance exam. Sounds like a deal to me!
At least as far as this article is concerned, the workers here were being paid well over minimum wage at $8 an hour. Yes with CA's cost of living that pay sucks, but it's the cost of living in CA. When I last checked, jobs in California didn't pay much more than they do where I live, but the cost of living was 2.5 to 3X of here.
Depending on your skills, one of the advantages of temping (of which I've done quite a bit of) is that you can LEAVE or be reassigned to another job if you hate it. Or you know you'll be out of there soon. Sometimes, I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't work somewhere permanently! At least you got to see it from the inside first! Yeah, it's work without the benefits, but also without the commitment on your part too.
I liked the variety of temping. How you're treated can depend on the atmosphere of the company, but it depends on your attitude too. I was amazed at the number of employers that would put up with sloppy work or chronically late (really late) temps.
One thing I did gain from temp work was walking into different situations and a broader background.
The lesson that this brings out is to get an education. This author who's now "devoted to improving working conditions in Silicon Valley" according to his bio, moved on to a more successful position as a editor of a (sponsored) web magazine. He succeeded in getting out of a dead-end job. I think he would be even more helpful to the workers if he wrote on what he did to accomplish this rather than concentrating solely on working conditions at that plant. I'm pretty sure many others there moved on to other, better jobs too. This is why they call them entry level positions. But his tone was that they were all stuck there (except him) in temp-hell.
No education will leave you in a dead-in rut. My spouse knows this well. When he got out of the military and became an plumber's apprentice in the 70's he had no idea that he wouldn't be able to do the job 30 years down the road because of the back breaking work of commercial plumbing. Physical labor takes it's toll. He made good money (as long as the weather was good and there was work to be had). He had 3 kids and a spouse to provide for so he never took advantage of his military college benefits which he now realizes at 50+ was a big mistake. But he went hungry before his family did and he did whatever it took job wise to put food on the table, even if he had to move out of state and send the money back.
Unfortunately, although he's extremely good at what is essentially mechanical engineering, he has no degree and his job scope (and earnings) are limited by that.
Fortunately two of his sons are taking a different track. After four years in the Navy, his youngest is now studying electrical engineering at a good school. He works a job component testing for $7, but in a state that's a LOT cheaper to live in than California, so he's doing okay. The oldest has been inspired to go school after suffering though numerous security jobs. Both are paying their own way. The middle son unfortunately still works in security for about $10/hour and I don't know if he'll ever get truly motivated to do better.
Basically when I see people stuck in these type of jobs, I rarely see one who has truly reached their potential. It's more of a "this is my lot in life" attitude than their brains that's holding them back. Don't give me the, "Well not everyone doesn't have the same advantage as you." We all have our advantages and disadvantages. Motivation and desire are two powerful forces that can overcome almost obstacle.
But the cruelest thing is essentially tell people, "You're right, you have no hope, you're not smart enough to do better on your own. The only way things will be better is if someone else makes it better for you."
Some seem to be thinking that if this is a big political pissing contest, well no harm done, Linux is safe and all that.
Well, the problem being overlooked is RedHat is THE biggest corporate distro. If this is a just a whim to get what they want from M$ and AOL/TW screws around with this, they'll be a lot of corporations running back to Bill. It would play right into M$ FUD that there's no reliable support for Linux. And that would be bad for Linux.
Remember a lot of people making corporate decisions on these things are not necessarily tech types to begin with; they won't all just switch to another distro of Linux if RedHat doesn't perform.
Yeah, I know...if it does perform, it could attract more corporate customers with name recognition. Still, that's a big IF.
I don't know how it is on the federal level, but I think most government is probably the same.
I taught computers for 3 years at local government for a major city. If you aren't already cynical, you'll get there. There ARE a lot of good people. But there are also a LOT of incompetant management making every backroom deal you can think of (and some you can't) so they can eventually jump ship to a private consulting firm and make money getting contracts from the city. When I read the first Dilbert book, I was SURE he had worked in the government sector.
You make very little money and while the upper brass gets their raises, some how they can't find it in the budget for any of the little guys. Or they'll give it to you (so they can publish it in the paper that city workers get a raise) but it's only good for 1 year and they just take it back the next. Yes that really happened under one mayor.
I also had to laugh about them training you. Oh sure, they'll train you, but then they'll exect you to do the high qualified work at the same salary. I had programmers who got paid a heck of a lot more than me asking ME programming questions because they didn't know OOP.
When I left, some expressed concerns about the lack of job security in the real world. The truth is, if someone wants to get rid of you bad enough they'll find a way or make your life so miserable that you quit. Unfortunately, the people who stay there usually do so because they're so down they don't think they can survive without the security blanket. And a lot of them couldn't.
I left for a (non-dot com) company and doubled my salary. I'm still working there 5 years later.
We pour billions of dollars into public transit that never pays for itself. This sort of thing works fine in cities where people are packed together such as London or NY. These cities were designed way before the car was invented--these cities were built where the populace living and working in the city.
Now look at the newer more sprawling cities. There is no practical way to have public transportation. If I want to go somewhere besides downtown, I would have to drive to the park-and-ride and take the bus to downtown and transfer out.
I can't even get to my work on the city bus because I work in another COUNTY. We use to have a vanpool from my area, but I would have had to drive half time it would have taken me to get to work in the opposite direction to get to the parking lot where they met.
Fortunately now I'm in a 3-day a week telecommuting program.
What we NEED is not just the focus on public transport, but more fuel efficient/alternate fuel cars, better roads (sitting in traffic causes pollution too!) and more encouragement to companies to have employees telecommute.
I keep seeing advice with these stories and on boards that say to buy the disk and then when it won't play on your computer or be able to rip it, to take it back to the store as defective.
However, most store policy regaring CDs (and software) is to exchange ONLY once the disk is opened. So you'll just get another disk you can't rip. Also, expect policies soon to start making exceptions to even this and saying that the inability to rip a disk will not be considered as a defect.
They certainly haven't been lax in the commercial industry either. They did some animations for Burger King a few years ago. And I think some of the Shaun's friends from A Close Shave are starring in a mattress commercial (the counting sheep).
As much effort as goes into making one of these animations, they can really put out quite a bit. Glad to see the dynamic duo is coming back.
Some providers are going under because they are not making money!
And that's because the Bells are under-cutting them. Which would Joe Consumer rather get: DSL for $39/month from SW Bell or $39 + 10 from a local ISP. Bell simply removed the additional fee they had been charging seperately to be the ISP. They simply undercut the competition. Our users group provides regular modem ISP service for $10/month and DSL for $5. But of course that doesn't include the charge from Bell, so even they're more expensive.
Since Bell owns all the phone lines the only real competition is from the satellite/cable companies....
Yes, but it wouldn't matter if some Linux distro had the "monopoly" (which btw--it isn't the monopoly that's illegal, it the unfair use of the monopoly that is.)
Because there isn't a per computer licensing fee, if a company decides to wipe the drives of pre-installed Red Hat and buy Windows licenses, it's not going to be a loss like it is when the computer come pre-installed with Windows OEM. IOW, there would be no "Linux tax".
They saved all those "Hot Teens 4 U" spams from oblivion.
I liked the Cube and its look but it had overheating problems.
This isn't nearly as cute--the comparison with a lamp is dead on. I can't see this doing much better in the cooling department. Also doesn't look very upgradeable.
Form is great as long as it FOLLOWS functionality.
The problem with this is the University will then start looking at projects as to whether it would be profitable. Who knows, the next big idea could be squashed because some bean counter thinks it has no potential.
Also, why should we fund them with public money if they're going to turn around and try to become Fortune 500 company?
This is what has happened to the news media. Now it's no longer getting out the actual stories...its getting out the loudest "teaser" that will draw in the viewers and, therefore, advertisers.
Actually email is MORE likely to be read than snail mail due to the anthrax scares.
Dear Santa,
What I would like:
Karma {sigh}
Also:
Some caffinated mints or beverages
and a couple of cool ThinkGeek t-shirts.
It really comes down to what the real motivations of the company or collective programming the software are.
If it's purely profit motivate then they're unlikely to succeed. Quotes like, "'Where is our business model if everyone else can copy it?' asked Holger Dyroff, former CEO and now director of sales for Linux software seller SuSE. 'The question is where we can make money now. Nobody cared about profitability two years ago,'" are very telling. (Is anyone else concerned that this guy is now the director of sales for SuSE?)
Those, OTOH, who themselves have a need or a desire to create will be satisfied with the results. Perhaps some will make both free and paid programs just like many software authors do to pay the bills. The point is, you do it for the love of creation.
Open source, IMHO, was never meant to be a cash cow by it's very nature. Giving a software away and then expecting a profit makes me wonder where some of these people went to business school. They're in the wrong business. Red Hat has a big slice of the corporate Linux pie and even they have struggled to make a profit from service.
Much of the upset in this parallels that going on in the Internet. Those who jumped in to make a fast buck will be disappointed. What we will be left with are the tried and true who just believe in the IDEA.