Oddly enough, from the Earth's vantage point, the ring also happens to resemble The Eye of Sauron. One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them...
Zonk, to you everything looks like "The Eye of Sauron"... a latte with that swirly cream, a sundae with a cherry on top, a toilet seat, anything vaugely circular...
It's called Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder and you need to get help before you get on that white ship with Gandalf.
A fantastic way to reintroduce methods to be prejudiced in the workplace. It starts with head size, then heart size, stamina, and physical fitness. Then disabilities.
No, really folks. There's a reason we don't impose IQ tests on people applying for jobs anymore.
If everything was easy many of us wouldn't have jobs. Programmers for instance wouldn't have any work at all. If buying things online becomes hard enough then a whole cottage industry could spring up around online-shopping and US government regulations bringing much needed jobs to America.
Imagine online-shopping as easy to use as IRS Tax Forms and online-stores as fast to use as the DMV.
The specific numbers are what have to drive your decision. I've read the other posts and most folks are quoting numbers between $150,000 and $500,000 which is a pretty small range considering we have no idea of exactly what software you need on all those linux desktops. I expect that $250,000 is a fairly good SWAG... but again, we have no real idea of what you need license/support wise.
An interesting comment made by a boss o'mine was along the lines of, "Why pay my programmers/techs to support a program that is practically a commodity?" The logic goes: If Operating Systems have vendors why write your own? If Word Processors have vendors why write your own? And so on. You focus your IT crew on the unique problems that your particular organisation faces.
I would push one level farther. Why pay for an OS/Word Processor/Browser if there is one that is free? Pay for the support contracts if you need support. Don't pay for software that there exist perfectly acceptable free substitutes for.
Keep in mind the stuff is free as in speech not just free as in beer. That means if you have an Open Source support guy on staff who contributes into the community, the whole community wins... you get better support... and you still employ the same number of IT staff. Yes, you lose one guy from your core IT goals... but you still lose one person to Anti-Virus stuff and pay-per-year software issues.
If you can do one of the following you might want to consider a Linux/Open Source strategy:
Use an Open Source Community project to replace most of the functions of your pay-per-year software. You might use Open Office instead of MS Office for example. You could use a universal document format that would work across a variety of platforms.
Create and maintain a replacement that is platform independent or SOA based. The replacement could be used as a platform for your business' future development. If you go SOA you can then support platforms such as PDAs, Cell Phones, and Kiosks. This only makes sense if you get a good ROI
You could decide to use Wine/CrossOver/Lin4Win or whatever to provide emulation of Windows. In my personal experience only "stuff" that works with Windows 98 will work properly on Wine.
I would put VNC or Citrix at the bottom of the list, but it could be a very cheap alternative. You just show the application where you need to. You could potentially get away without having to rewrite/retool anything. (except for the VNC server/client or Citrix server/client)
If none of these ideas offer a big enough payoff or offer a significant savings... I hate to say it but... you really might be better off as a windows shop.
Most companies pull money from different "pools" and many companies think that purchasing windows computers is a one time capital expense. It's not. You end up having to purchase new software annually from Microsoft or third parties to keep your systems running and patched.
Make sure you make the decision fully educated about recurring costs and the life-cycles of all your systems. Pay-per-year systems will cost you more in licenses and still require staff to support them. Open Source will require either service and support contracts, additional "expert" staff (or staff training), or both.
You can control whether OSS shifts underneath your company. You cannot control whether a vendor pulls support or shifts technology. If you go OSS you free your company from "Data Hostage" situations where other companies control your business' data.
If you go with Pay-per-year software you can get cheaper staff and supplement them with service/support contracts reasonably cheaply. That will change as more and more IT folks become experts with OSS.
The choice is: commit to a vendor and keep them happy since they essentially hold your data and your company hostage. OR commit to a community and quality employees who will hold expertise that is hard to replace.
Re:Perl is a write-only language
on
Perl Medic
·
· Score: 1
We're talking about Perl here -- what has Wall got to do with it?
Perl has a Wall.
Larry Wall.
or you can do "perl -cw" for compile and warn... because you can compile perl if you really want to.
once again... I've taken too long and somebody else has a project doing the same thing.
Re:Transparent PNG support
on
IE7 Details Emerge
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
How about the: "Wow, our browser is so amazingly complex that even with all our full-time programmers we can't reasonably support every possible platform in the universe" excuse? Lame, I know, but remember they aren't open sourced. That means if it's going to happen they have to put staff onto it officially.
Stinkin' open source and it's willy-nilly practices.
if you've got work to do you do the damn the work, you don't sit down and write tools so you can do it better
True story: I have this job. I write code. Much of this job ended up writing the same types of programs over and over again. So I got tired of writing the same thing over and over again and I wrote a tool to do my job better. The Objects I wrote allow me to make a program in a few minutes that used to take several days to create.
If I worked with the attitude that I don't get paid to make tools to do things better my productivity would never advance. I would never have had time to move on to more advanced projects. I would have only done the "damn" work and only the "damn" work would have been done.
Because I was able to be more than a code robot I was able to introduce other new tools to my company. Tools that allow others to produce more. Tools that will allow my company to be more profitable.
It's good for me. Good for my company. And if I felt it would benefit others I'd go ahead and release my code base because if others benefit from what I wrote, and others use the same tools/environment, it improves the market share for my skills. It makes me more valuable, it makes my skill set more valuable, it makes my company incrementally more valuable by improving it's status (and at worst doesn't hurt it at all).
So my view may not be fashionable, but it does seem to resonate with some people. It would be the reason I would make Open Source contributions. I know I have several itches that need scratching... and if I don't find existing projects to contribute to then I'll make something from scratch.
I would guess that a great number of OSS projects are driven by people who need things for work, but whose work isn't exclusivley demanding ownership of their code. Small shops that need probelms solved that are very nearly solved already... and can spare a developers time to solve them... and won't be hurt by releasing the code. That's the idea I get in my mind.
For example, I'm considering making contributions to several projects myself. My contributions may be tiny but they may help to add up to a real finished product. It's all about the aggregate contributions of the many many tiny improvements people make adding up to make major differences... Open Source projects build up the same way civilisation does. Millions of small contributions over time.
...research on the internet, in magazines and also pestering friends who own one, so you're an expert before buying said item?
Got me right off the bat. I don't buy often, I only buy what I know will work, and I have a full and complete understanding of what I'm buying before I do.
The problem is a director has two hours to make, and keep the audience, engaged with what the director thinks is the point of the movie.
Article Title: "A Whitewashed Earthsea"
So that's why the director had to make eveyone in the movie white in a book that was at least partially about race relations. I get it. The audience wouldn't have been able to handle a brown-skinned hero.
From the article: I have heard, not often, but very memorably, from readers of color who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in--and how much this meant to them, particularly as adolescents, when they'd found nothing to read in fantasy and science fiction except the adventures of white people in white worlds.
It sounds to me like the race card was very important to the story. I never read the books, (I did see the mini-series) but I can tell that the whole speech about the peoples of Earth Sea being united and all that makes a lot more sense if Ged isn't white.
The director must have made Ged white so people would stay engaged. I mean who would put a colored Captain in charge of a space-station? Who would make a non-white person the center of a heroic adventure set in the future?
Race problems and things like that don't belong in Sci-Fi anyway. Sci-Fi doesn't exist to challenge norms. You don't write sci-fi to make people think.
This probably isn't too healthy long-term, as I heard it depletes a chemical compound in the body that is gained by sleeping longer periods (and is needed). My recollection is sketchy, though - google for specifics.
Oops, must've burned too much of that vital chemical!
You'll just spend half the time you work the following week fixing mistakes you made the first week because you were so tired. If you keep it up long enough you actually spend more time dealing with design flaws and regular old mistakes the following week.
If you work like this too long then you will make progress, but your progress is of the two steps forward and one step back variety. If you limit the amount of time spent on "burn-out" hours to one week once every few months to once a year... then it's not so bad. If you never work burn-out hours then you're smart and your code will be too.
Slashdot Mirror
How on earth did we end up living in such daft places?
geo-chauvinist
I, for one, welcome our new pedigree space porcine overlords.
...can you feel the Zaz? Mod me down folks.
In Soviet Kankuckistan the pedigree space porcine send your sperm into space.
Oddly enough, from the Earth's vantage point, the ring also happens to resemble The Eye of Sauron. One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them...
... a latte with that swirly cream, a sundae with a cherry on top, a toilet seat, anything vaugely circular ...
Zonk, to you everything looks like "The Eye of Sauron"
It's called Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder and you need to get help before you get on that white ship with Gandalf.
A fantastic way to reintroduce methods to be prejudiced in the workplace. It starts with head size, then heart size, stamina, and physical fitness. Then disabilities.
No, really folks. There's a reason we don't impose IQ tests on people applying for jobs anymore.
If everything was easy many of us wouldn't have jobs. Programmers for instance wouldn't have any work at all. If buying things online becomes hard enough then a whole cottage industry could spring up around online-shopping and US government regulations bringing much needed jobs to America.
Imagine online-shopping as easy to use as IRS Tax Forms and online-stores as fast to use as the DMV.
An interesting comment made by a boss o'mine was along the lines of, "Why pay my programmers/techs to support a program that is practically a commodity?" The logic goes: If Operating Systems have vendors why write your own? If Word Processors have vendors why write your own? And so on. You focus your IT crew on the unique problems that your particular organisation faces.
I would push one level farther. Why pay for an OS/Word Processor/Browser if there is one that is free? Pay for the support contracts if you need support. Don't pay for software that there exist perfectly acceptable free substitutes for.
Keep in mind the stuff is free as in speech not just free as in beer. That means if you have an Open Source support guy on staff who contributes into the community, the whole community wins... you get better support... and you still employ the same number of IT staff. Yes, you lose one guy from your core IT goals... but you still lose one person to Anti-Virus stuff and pay-per-year software issues.
If you can do one of the following you might want to consider a Linux/Open Source strategy:
- Use an Open Source Community project to replace most of the functions of your pay-per-year software. You might use Open Office instead of MS Office for example. You could use a universal document format that would work across a variety of platforms.
- Create and maintain a replacement that is platform independent or SOA based. The replacement could be used as a platform for your business' future development. If you go SOA you can then support platforms such as PDAs, Cell Phones, and Kiosks. This only makes sense if you get a good ROI
- You could decide to use Wine/CrossOver/Lin4Win or whatever to provide emulation of Windows. In my personal experience only "stuff" that works with Windows 98 will work properly on Wine.
- I would put VNC or Citrix at the bottom of the list, but it could be a very cheap alternative. You just show the application where you need to. You could potentially get away without having to rewrite/retool anything. (except for the VNC server/client or Citrix server/client)
If none of these ideas offer a big enough payoff or offer a significant savings... I hate to say it but... you really might be better off as a windows shop.Most companies pull money from different "pools" and many companies think that purchasing windows computers is a one time capital expense. It's not. You end up having to purchase new software annually from Microsoft or third parties to keep your systems running and patched.
Make sure you make the decision fully educated about recurring costs and the life-cycles of all your systems. Pay-per-year systems will cost you more in licenses and still require staff to support them. Open Source will require either service and support contracts, additional "expert" staff (or staff training), or both.
You can control whether OSS shifts underneath your company. You cannot control whether a vendor pulls support or shifts technology. If you go OSS you free your company from "Data Hostage" situations where other companies control your business' data.
If you go with Pay-per-year software you can get cheaper staff and supplement them with service/support contracts reasonably cheaply. That will change as more and more IT folks become experts with OSS.
The choice is: commit to a vendor and keep them happy since they essentially hold your data and your company hostage. OR commit to a community and quality employees who will hold expertise that is hard to replace.
We're talking about Perl here -- what has Wall got to do with it?
Perl has a Wall.
Larry Wall.
or you can do "perl -cw" for compile and warn... because you can compile perl if you really want to.
once again... I've taken too long and somebody else has a project doing the same thing.
How about the: "Wow, our browser is so amazingly complex that even with all our full-time programmers we can't reasonably support every possible platform in the universe" excuse? Lame, I know, but remember they aren't open sourced. That means if it's going to happen they have to put staff onto it officially.
Stinkin' open source and it's willy-nilly practices.
if you've got work to do you do the damn the work, you don't sit down and write tools so you can do it better
True story: I have this job. I write code. Much of this job ended up writing the same types of programs over and over again. So I got tired of writing the same thing over and over again and I wrote a tool to do my job better. The Objects I wrote allow me to make a program in a few minutes that used to take several days to create.
If I worked with the attitude that I don't get paid to make tools to do things better my productivity would never advance. I would never have had time to move on to more advanced projects. I would have only done the "damn" work and only the "damn" work would have been done.
Because I was able to be more than a code robot I was able to introduce other new tools to my company. Tools that allow others to produce more. Tools that will allow my company to be more profitable.
It's good for me. Good for my company. And if I felt it would benefit others I'd go ahead and release my code base because if others benefit from what I wrote, and others use the same tools/environment, it improves the market share for my skills. It makes me more valuable, it makes my skill set more valuable, it makes my company incrementally more valuable by improving it's status (and at worst doesn't hurt it at all).
So my view may not be fashionable, but it does seem to resonate with some people. It would be the reason I would make Open Source contributions. I know I have several itches that need scratching... and if I don't find existing projects to contribute to then I'll make something from scratch.
I would guess that a great number of OSS projects are driven by people who need things for work, but whose work isn't exclusivley demanding ownership of their code. Small shops that need probelms solved that are very nearly solved already... and can spare a developers time to solve them... and won't be hurt by releasing the code. That's the idea I get in my mind.
For example, I'm considering making contributions to several projects myself. My contributions may be tiny but they may help to add up to a real finished product. It's all about the aggregate contributions of the many many tiny improvements people make adding up to make major differences... Open Source projects build up the same way civilisation does. Millions of small contributions over time.
I'm probably wrong but it sounds good to me...
So stop reading slashdot and go code something.
[Joke: something about unsung heroes being sung about makes them sung heroes and therefore you can't sing an unsung heroes song about them.]
[close with formula joke]
Why don't they make a model with a scribe laser on the top so I don't have to flip my disk over?
...research on the internet, in magazines and also pestering friends who own one, so you're an expert before buying said item?
Got me right off the bat. I don't buy often, I only buy what I know will work, and I have a full and complete understanding of what I'm buying before I do.
Guess I'm a late adopter.
The problem is a director has two hours to make, and keep the audience, engaged with what the director thinks is the point of the movie.
Article Title: "A Whitewashed Earthsea"
So that's why the director had to make eveyone in the movie white in a book that was at least partially about race relations. I get it. The audience wouldn't have been able to handle a brown-skinned hero.
From the article:
I have heard, not often, but very memorably, from readers of color who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in--and how much this meant to them, particularly as adolescents, when they'd found nothing to read in fantasy and science fiction except the adventures of white people in white worlds.
It sounds to me like the race card was very important to the story. I never read the books, (I did see the mini-series) but I can tell that the whole speech about the peoples of Earth Sea being united and all that makes a lot more sense if Ged isn't white.
The director must have made Ged white so people would stay engaged. I mean who would put a colored Captain in charge of a space-station? Who would make a non-white person the center of a heroic adventure set in the future?
Race problems and things like that don't belong in Sci-Fi anyway. Sci-Fi doesn't exist to challenge norms. You don't write sci-fi to make people think.
BTW: I'm being sarcastic.
First, make a plan of what your trying to do.. then go browse apache Commons.
Bad mojo man...
From the site:
Unfortunately, the project never gained critical mass, so it was deemed best to close it (in August, 2004).
Looks like you'll have to find a new way to start projects. Bummer.
[tautological argument]
[straw-man]
[beat with stick]
[close with soviet russia joke]
However much I may want to live to 1000 I don't think I'd enjoy being 1000. Think about it.
[comment on research]
[faulty logic]
[hope for future advancement]
[poorly formulated response and misdirected zeal]
[gloom]
[doom]
[FUD]
[pitiful attempt at a joke]
[anti-software patents comment]
[unfunny joke about patenting something like cheese]
[freedom as in speech closing comment]
[insert microsoft bashing statement]
[something witty about linux]
[ressurect old joke for punchline]
This probably isn't too healthy long-term, as I heard it depletes a chemical compound in the body that is gained by sleeping longer periods (and is needed). My recollection is sketchy, though - google for specifics.
Oops, must've burned too much of that vital chemical!
You'll just spend half the time you work the following week fixing mistakes you made the first week because you were so tired. If you keep it up long enough you actually spend more time dealing with design flaws and regular old mistakes the following week.
If you work like this too long then you will make progress, but your progress is of the two steps forward and one step back variety. If you limit the amount of time spent on "burn-out" hours to one week once every few months to once a year... then it's not so bad. If you never work burn-out hours then you're smart and your code will be too.