What ever you do... do *not* come to Seattle. Seattle has this sickening quality that draws people here and then keeps them, even as they complain bitterly about how shitty it is. I know... I have lived all over the world and I *still* keep ending up back in Seattle. This last time has been 2 years. Two years in a city where IT market took a *mighty* dump... so mighty, in fact, that it is still clogging the toilet bowl. The stench is incredible. I am not being sensationalist... the IT market in Seattle is pitiful... Okay, maybe the part about the IT market here literally being a turd is a bit sensationalist, but the rest is true!
While I love my Sparcs, and think OpenBoot is really neat, I recently did an upgrade to Solaris9 on an old SS5. I went out and bought a SCSI CDROM to install from, popped open the case, installed the drive, shut case and rebooted. Nothing. After much, much, *much* digging, it turned out that the CDROM was hardwired to SCSI ID 5 and the Sparc expected its CDROM to be at 3. Damn! So, I dropped into OpenBoot and tried to make it be. Anyway, to make a long story short, I got it to work after much swearing and smacking of the poor Sparc and learning that the name of my new CDROM was actually: sbus@1,f8400000/esp@4,40000/sd@5,0:a (or whatever it was).
Microsoft is not necessarily *anti* open source, they are pro protected IP rights. These two things are not necessarily at odds. Internally at MS, you have a mixture of people, many of them very smart, some rabidly pro-MS (Program Managers) and some who are very much pro-Linux/*BSD (Developers). At the top of the heap, at the Evangelist level and above, there are many people who openly acknowledge the benefits of the OS community, but *not* the Free Software community. FS is much too radical for MS, as it is in direct opposition to part of the prime directive: make money.
That being said, there are many people within MS that see great value in the OS (not FS) philosophy. Mark my words: we are not far off from MS utilizing OS in some capacity. Obviously they will never OS Windows, SQL Server, or Office, which is possibly just as well (who wants to look at obsfucated VC++ code anyway?).
If MS can be shown a solid *business* reason to use OS, I don't think they are far off from biting. This conference and MS's participation, in my opinion, will do more good for the OS advocates than it will for MS.
It covers their asses, and I am using the term loosely, in a couple of ways. First, they can show that they made a good faith effort to determine your "financial character". This can be important if you end up embezzling money from the company and the CEO is standing in front of his shareholders trying to explain it. Secondly, I know of at least one insurance company that requires this sort of check in order to get officer and director insurance.
I didn't say I thought the company's policies were good, just that I can see why they might institute them.
Chances are, and I am speaking from experience, that the company will not run the credit check, but that your saying it is okay will show that you have nothing to hide.
That aside, I worked as a contractor many years ago for a very large software company (whose name ends in "soft") on a project dealing with a large financial institution. The process of checks was nearly as involved as those to get top security clearance. I understand the reason behind that, of course: by working on the project I became privy to information about how the large financial institution did business.
I am going to assume that the poster has bad credit. That in itself is not a reason to *not* get the job, especially if you are honest with your employer and state something like "I have had some bad luck in recent years, but, hey, who hasn't with the economy the way it is?"
All of that being said, I would sign the release. Companies need to cover their asses, and this is just one more way of them doing so.
I was an original NWLink customer and they have always been, um, interesting to deal with. A business associate of mine was suddenly cut off from his NWL account for "suspicion of hacking" for trying to ping addresses in the NWL address range. I dropped them in '97 and have never looked back.
As for Semaphore, they are *great* people. They were probably the first hardcore corporate data provider in Seattle. Sure, they are expensive, but in my opinion well worth it.
Sure... but as Phil Condit said publicly a few weeks back "The Washington State government needs to stop paying attention to the voters". I mean, come on, what is a voter more likely to vote for: more taxes or less taxes?
"Excuse me, Mr. Jones, but would you rather pay 600/yr for your auto tags, or 30/yr?"
Re:START voting for higher taxes.
on
Giant Sucking Noise
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· Score: 2, Informative
I am also in Seattle and we are actually taking a long, hard look at relocating our corporation. Surprisingly, Idaho has come out on top for the west. Why? The state government in Idaho has all sorts of wonderful perks for corporations. Fine, you say, so do lots of states. However, the perks in Idaho tend to be geared towards both helping the corporation *and* helping the populace of the state. For example, the Idaho Workforce Development Training Fund gives employers up to $3,000USD per employee for training purposes. So, the corporation wins and the employee gets training they might not have otherwise received. I find this to be rather forward-thinking.
Any organization looking at relocating somewhere west, feel free to contact me at the email above. I am more than happy to contribute to the giant sucking sound coming out of Seattle... that is, until the officials pull their heads out of their asses as the parent post alluded to.
Might also need some sort of (eep!) central authority to verify pages were who they claimed to be (so I couldn't take over CNN, for example).
I have recently performed cursory exploration of using connected user's caches as a source of a p2p web mesh. Yes, (some) people would scream bloody mercy at having their "privacy" invaded, but then again they probably aren't the target market anyway.
Think of different binaries for the possible
combinations of MMX, MMX2, SSE, SSE2, 3Dnow, 3Dnow2. and then C code
compiled for i386, i586, i686, k6 etc. and then think of non-x86 archs.
and then debian can introduce the one-program-one-cd concept.
I would think that any rational person would be able to see the logic in this. However, apparently there are those that cannot. Amazing.
You see... the GPL throws the source at people who don't give a flying fuck about it (in the case of most end-users), and then followers of the GPL get their proverbial panties in a bunch when someone doesn't distribute the *binaries*. I don't get it.
Actually, more honestly, I don't really care. It's things like this that make Free Software zealots look like idiots in the eyes of the public. That is too bad, but until people realize that software is, well, software, and not some political instrument to stake your life on, these things will continue to occur.
It should cost someone less than $2000 for a nice laptop and at most $1000 for them to distribute the software online. So, if they sell 10,000 copies, the unit cost should be around 30 cents.
I don't even know where to begin. Oh, yeah: there are no laws that state you cannot make a *huge* profit on what you sell.
As with software, the cost of producing and distributing music is approaching the cost of the labor involved. How would you value J. S. Bach's time vs. Britney's? How would you value Knuth's time vs. a notoriously poor programmer whose code you were once forced to use?
Maybe you can't... but what's the difference? If you buy something you have made a conscious choice to pay for it. You are making a bet that the amount of money you shell out will net you a product/service that is at least of the same value. Now, if the product is grossly negligent, or falsely advertised, you have at the very least a moral right to demand your money back, but the company who sold it to you is not necessarily required to honor that request.
The company needs to pay its resources, software developers, marketers, rent, etc, etc, etc. Your hypothesis that the unit cost of software is around.30 is ridiculous.
They know that geeks will boycott them but their only asset is the ownership of the "UNIX" trademark.
Actually... quite a few manufacturing firms still use SCO and there is quite a bit of EDI software that runs under SCO. I can't pretend to say that I like it, but one of my clients (dental supply company) has been running the same SCO box (sitting under the CEO's desk for christ's sake) without a reboot or any maintenance for the last several years and rely exclusively on it as a terminal server for 20+ EDI terminals. Not one person in the company knows how it works, or exactly what it does, but whatever it does it does well.
In Japan there are actually *two* sets of area codes... a general area code (for example, 03 is Tokyo, 04 is Saitama, etc...), and then a more specific area code (for example, my prefix in Soka, Saitama-ken was 0489). When calling within the 0489 area I did not have to dial 0489. When dialing within the 04, but not the 89, I had to dial the numbers in place of the 89, but not the 04. Oh, wait... except for *some* calls to Chiba which for some reason demanded the 04. It got really confusing right around the time I left ('97) when they decided to drop the 0... at least, in certain circumstances. Ah, Japan.
I suspect that replacing the NT kernel will not fix this problem
In the mid-90's. when I had a short contract out at the MS campus, I got to meet a couple of the NT 4.0 kernel guys (it's funny, the only smokers at MS tend to be the kernel and VC++ teams). There were rumors, completely unsubstantiated mind you, of the possibility of the next version of Windows supporting "Plug and Play Kernels". While the mechanics of this were never made clear to me, the possibility to boot Windows with the stock kernel, then turn around and boot it with say a *BSD kernel are pretty neat. Possible? Maybe, but not without a fuckload of work.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I was thinking of something like:
Esc ->Tap 3 fingers -> draw a curly line with middle finger = set syntax=python
After looking at this, I am sure glad I don't use Emacs. Although,one really has to wonder how the Vim gestures would look...
Um... why does a Sybian cost almost 1400USD?
I mean, *that* is friendly! ;-)
True. But with the GPL you run the risk of the first product you sell being the last you actually get paid for... ;-)
Microsoft is not necessarily *anti* open source, they are pro protected IP rights. These two things are not necessarily at odds. Internally at MS, you have a mixture of people, many of them very smart, some rabidly pro-MS (Program Managers) and some who are very much pro-Linux/*BSD (Developers). At the top of the heap, at the Evangelist level and above, there are many people who openly acknowledge the benefits of the OS community, but *not* the Free Software community. FS is much too radical for MS, as it is in direct opposition to part of the prime directive: make money.
That being said, there are many people within MS that see great value in the OS (not FS) philosophy. Mark my words: we are not far off from MS utilizing OS in some capacity. Obviously they will never OS Windows, SQL Server, or Office, which is possibly just as well (who wants to look at obsfucated VC++ code anyway?).
If MS can be shown a solid *business* reason to use OS, I don't think they are far off from biting. This conference and MS's participation, in my opinion, will do more good for the OS advocates than it will for MS.
What about with FFS? Is this behaviour only being seen with NTFS and FAT32?
Ah... I believe that is called the "Slashdot Effect".
I didn't say I thought the company's policies were good, just that I can see why they might institute them.
That aside, I worked as a contractor many years ago for a very large software company (whose name ends in "soft") on a project dealing with a large financial institution. The process of checks was nearly as involved as those to get top security clearance. I understand the reason behind that, of course: by working on the project I became privy to information about how the large financial institution did business.
I am going to assume that the poster has bad credit. That in itself is not a reason to *not* get the job, especially if you are honest with your employer and state something like "I have had some bad luck in recent years, but, hey, who hasn't with the economy the way it is?"
All of that being said, I would sign the release. Companies need to cover their asses, and this is just one more way of them doing so.
or, well, you know...
As for Semaphore, they are *great* people. They were probably the first hardcore corporate data provider in Seattle. Sure, they are expensive, but in my opinion well worth it.
"Excuse me, Mr. Jones, but would you rather pay 600/yr for your auto tags, or 30/yr?"
Any organization looking at relocating somewhere west, feel free to contact me at the email above. I am more than happy to contribute to the giant sucking sound coming out of Seattle... that is, until the officials pull their heads out of their asses as the parent post alluded to.
*cough*Porn*cough*
Um, yeah... that would make email *really* efficient.
I have recently performed cursory exploration of using connected user's caches as a source of a p2p web mesh. Yes, (some) people would scream bloody mercy at having their "privacy" invaded, but then again they probably aren't the target market anyway.
That is from one of the mesages in the thread.
I would think that any rational person would be able to see the logic in this. However, apparently there are those that cannot. Amazing.
You see... the GPL throws the source at people who don't give a flying fuck about it (in the case of most end-users), and then followers of the GPL get their proverbial panties in a bunch when someone doesn't distribute the *binaries*. I don't get it.
Actually, more honestly, I don't really care. It's things like this that make Free Software zealots look like idiots in the eyes of the public. That is too bad, but until people realize that software is, well, software, and not some political instrument to stake your life on, these things will continue to occur.
This software has not passed Microsoft Logo Testing and will not be installed.
Wonderful.
Shouldn't that be:
Seeing your album on KaZaA before it has left the mastering plant: priceless. ?
I don't even know where to begin. Oh, yeah: there are no laws that state you cannot make a *huge* profit on what you sell.
As with software, the cost of producing and distributing music is approaching the cost of the labor involved. How would you value J. S. Bach's time vs. Britney's? How would you value Knuth's time vs. a notoriously poor programmer whose code you were once forced to use?
Maybe you can't... but what's the difference? If you buy something you have made a conscious choice to pay for it. You are making a bet that the amount of money you shell out will net you a product/service that is at least of the same value. Now, if the product is grossly negligent, or falsely advertised, you have at the very least a moral right to demand your money back, but the company who sold it to you is not necessarily required to honor that request.
The company needs to pay its resources, software developers, marketers, rent, etc, etc, etc. Your hypothesis that the unit cost of software is around .30 is ridiculous.
Actually... quite a few manufacturing firms still use SCO and there is quite a bit of EDI software that runs under SCO. I can't pretend to say that I like it, but one of my clients (dental supply company) has been running the same SCO box (sitting under the CEO's desk for christ's sake) without a reboot or any maintenance for the last several years and rely exclusively on it as a terminal server for 20+ EDI terminals. Not one person in the company knows how it works, or exactly what it does, but whatever it does it does well.
In Japan there are actually *two* sets of area codes... a general area code (for example, 03 is Tokyo, 04 is Saitama, etc...), and then a more specific area code (for example, my prefix in Soka, Saitama-ken was 0489). When calling within the 0489 area I did not have to dial 0489. When dialing within the 04, but not the 89, I had to dial the numbers in place of the 89, but not the 04. Oh, wait... except for *some* calls to Chiba which for some reason demanded the 04. It got really confusing right around the time I left ('97) when they decided to drop the 0... at least, in certain circumstances. Ah, Japan.
In the mid-90's. when I had a short contract out at the MS campus, I got to meet a couple of the NT 4.0 kernel guys (it's funny, the only smokers at MS tend to be the kernel and VC++ teams). There were rumors, completely unsubstantiated mind you, of the possibility of the next version of Windows supporting "Plug and Play Kernels". While the mechanics of this were never made clear to me, the possibility to boot Windows with the stock kernel, then turn around and boot it with say a *BSD kernel are pretty neat. Possible? Maybe, but not without a fuckload of work.