Re:Is a GNU/Linux biz feasible?
on
Linux in Iraq
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· Score: 1
How difficult would it be to start a successful Free Software business in Iraq? For example by selling installation/training/troubleshooting services?
Probably very difficult. For all the talk many companies based on OSS in the West are struggling for profitability as far as I can make out, and I dont see them flooding the job markets with linux requirements. Additionally you have the 'benefactor' issue in Iraq. The US want their contracts, and to be honest many of these are huge projects. Abdul and his mate working out of their garage are just not going to be able to supply the IT requirements to them.
I suppose you might make a few bucks if you could snag some sub-contracting work, give the team a local feel, help with language/customs issues and all that.
I usually frown when I see many of these so called studies offering conclusions, several of which differ radically from my own experience. There recent Java/C++ performance one was a classic example. It gets annoying when a pro MS result is immediately decried as marketing FUD because it just cant be better and a pro Linux result is taken gospel truth here on/. Usually I tend to take all results with a grain of salt or just plain ignore them and focus on the debate around them.
The benifit of these studies though is that fantical crap aside informed people will usually take the time to interpret results or suggest corrections/improvements that actually benifit developers and improve their knowledge base more than any information provided by the actual study.
For myself no. I tone up pretty quickly when I work out but I would not like to get too bulky, it used to be a real pain getting pants to fit my waist and thighs properly when I was bigger.
That aside there are health and dietary implications. You heart has to work harder to supply blood, particularly under heavy exercise, you lose mobility, and endurance sports become a lot more difficult (not really a bad thing:-) ). I'm sort of half expecting to hear this kid keeled over from heart failure at 35 while putting the garbage out.
Because strangely enough Yahoo as a company would like to make a profit. They provide some excellent free services to users and are heavily reliant on advertising revenue from these to generate income to fund their operations. Yes the adds can be be a tad annoying but I get a very good email and IM service for free so I am not going to complain. 3rd party clients cut out a potential source of revenue for Yahoo so while there is money involved for them they will always bother.
You must have read a different article. Closer inspection will show you that a lot of this software is being paid for so your taxes are not going to change much. They mentioned one 9 million dollar contract to AMS and you still see ZERO because its Linux. Talk about seeing what you want to see!
Actually its not a key point, it looks more like a matter of convenience since intel is the cheapest hardware option and RedHat are probably the cheapest OS option on intel. In the case of Momentum anyway it would not be a major issue (cost aside) to drop Linux and move back to Solaris or even to Windows if they wanted. Linux is not really important here, its the apps that run on it (Tuxedo, J2EE stuff, etc.). They even point out the cross platform aspect on their website.
Ah yes because there is endless room for improvements that clients will pay for in small or niche markets. Oh wait, no they won't and if they can get something for free then they have even less incentive to pay a small vendor to do anything for them. I alwys think this lots of opportunity to poke about extend, improve argument is nonsensical because thats not what clients want. They want stability and a clear roadmap.
I did not say there were no opportunities to make money from Open Source, quite the opposite but they biggest opportunities fall to large corporations, not smaller organisations. IBM are laughing all the way to the bank on the back on linux now and fair play to them. But thats my whole point. OS can actually favour the big guy because it presents massive economy of scale and allows them to dip further into the middle market. Free offerings can then take care of most of the rest leaving little for the mid size. There are still opportunities but they are greatly reduced and the market is as I said more or less polarised.
Particularly if they are a small software house. I think its a common misconception here that OS threatens the big players most. It doesnt. They may start using OS tools but will keep getting the big enterprise contracts. If I am a small or niche vendor though and a viable free as in beer OS solution then I can pretty much kiss my business goodbye and find something else to do. I think there is a significant risk of OS polarizing the market into 'pure' OS and the big corporate vendors and taking out all the middle players.
This could lead to the second coming of Linus !!! Let us rejoice and sacrafice junior VB coders to the Gods of Code.
Re:But why would non-geeks want to run Linux?
on
Linux for Non-Geeks
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Strange argument, the ones that cant keep windows secure, not an immensly difficult task these days with the tools available, are the ones least likely to be able to run linux, or are you suggesting they install something friendly like linspire or whatever its called today which runs as root by default I believe?
Re:This isnt a credible news source
on
Open Source Life?
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· Score: 1
Truly you are fearless to disdain the power, factual correctness and influence of the blog, especially when it mentions that topic of mind warping importance to slashdot, patents. I vote Kevin Conway be our new overlord.
Re:You got a purrty laptop...
on
War Kayaking
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· Score: 1
"A large sand hourglass timer, a sextant, a compass, several long pieces of rope and a reliable cabin boy to turn the hourglass over will be more than anyone ever needs to determine their position"
Brilliant idea. Why not piss off hundreds of millions of users by breaking all their apps, which they have paid for and making them wait for updates. Why not piss the vendors off because they now have no products because you have just removed the OS and the API's their products were based on. They have to build completely new products based on a new OS and API's (but thats just a bit of a lag to you). Why not piss the millions of windows developers off because their a big chunk of their skillset is now worthless. Truly you are a visionary thinker.
With all the weirdo animals the Australian continent has produced I guess this program will produce some highly interesting results. I cant wait for the announcement that a pattern resembling a Duck Billed Platypus is ideal for streaming Digital TV.
When the Enterprise is facing yet another crisis and someone suggests rerouting the coffee machine output through a highly focused baryeon ray and then reverse polarizing it through the deflector dish, instead of the usual "Yes that might just work" whats really needed is for more of the other crew members to adopt completely bemused expessions and ask "What the Fuck are you babbling about????", "Is this another one of your loon ideas that involves writing a subroutine in less than 3 seconds with your left hand?", or "through the what dish?, will that affect Sky Sports reception?". Why does no one ever says "what?" on Star Trek, no matter how preposterous the proposed solution, enquiring minds want to know.
Oh the double standards. When its an MS system or a dumb windows user that gets hacked its because they are are stupid or have crap security or they deserved it anyway. When its OSS its a pity and because of nasty malicious hackers.
Good point. I have often wondered what would happen if there was a diaspora of humans into space without some type of FTL communication and the 'human' connection becomes weaker and weaker. What are the odds that one group will turn into a bunch of warmongers and seek to conquer the rest.
Slashdot Mirror
How difficult would it be to start a successful Free Software business in Iraq? For example by selling installation/training/troubleshooting services?
Probably very difficult. For all the talk many companies based on OSS in the West are struggling for profitability as far as I can make out, and I dont see them flooding the job markets with linux requirements. Additionally you have the 'benefactor' issue in Iraq. The US want their contracts, and to be honest many of these are huge projects. Abdul and his mate working out of their garage are just not going to be able to supply the IT requirements to them.
I suppose you might make a few bucks if you could snag some sub-contracting work, give the team a local feel, help with language/customs issues and all that.
I usually frown when I see many of these so called studies offering conclusions, several of which differ radically from my own experience. There recent Java/C++ performance one was a classic example. It gets annoying when a pro MS result is immediately decried as marketing FUD because it just cant be better and a pro Linux result is taken gospel truth here on /. Usually I tend to take all results with a grain of salt or just plain ignore them and focus on the debate around them.
The benifit of these studies though is that fantical crap aside informed people will usually take the time to interpret results or suggest corrections/improvements that actually benifit developers and improve their knowledge base more than any information provided by the actual study.
Wouldn't everyone want to be big and muscular?
:-) ). I'm sort of half expecting to hear this kid keeled over from heart failure at 35 while putting the garbage out.
For myself no. I tone up pretty quickly when I work out but I would not like to get too bulky, it used to be a real pain getting pants to fit my waist and thighs properly when I was bigger.
That aside there are health and dietary implications. You heart has to work harder to supply blood, particularly under heavy exercise, you lose mobility, and endurance sports become a lot more difficult (not really a bad thing
No it doesnt. It will be tough enough for the kid growing up without people like you needing to look at him as if he's in a freak show.
The Governator has been playing away from home
Because strangely enough Yahoo as a company would like to make a profit. They provide some excellent free services to users and are heavily reliant on advertising revenue from these to generate income to fund their operations. Yes the adds can be be a tad annoying but I get a very good email and IM service for free so I am not going to complain. 3rd party clients cut out a potential source of revenue for Yahoo so while there is money involved for them they will always bother.
You must have read a different article. Closer inspection will show you that a lot of this software is being paid for so your taxes are not going to change much. They mentioned one 9 million dollar contract to AMS and you still see ZERO because its Linux. Talk about seeing what you want to see!
Actually its not a key point, it looks more like a matter of convenience since intel is the cheapest hardware option and RedHat are probably the cheapest OS option on intel. In the case of Momentum anyway it would not be a major issue (cost aside) to drop Linux and move back to Solaris or even to Windows if they wanted. Linux is not really important here, its the apps that run on it (Tuxedo, J2EE stuff, etc.). They even point out the cross platform aspect on their website.
Ah yes because there is endless room for improvements that clients will pay for in small or niche markets. Oh wait, no they won't and if they can get something for free then they have even less incentive to pay a small vendor to do anything for them. I alwys think this lots of opportunity to poke about extend, improve argument is nonsensical because thats not what clients want. They want stability and a clear roadmap.
I did not say there were no opportunities to make money from Open Source, quite the opposite but they biggest opportunities fall to large corporations, not smaller organisations. IBM are laughing all the way to the bank on the back on linux now and fair play to them. But thats my whole point. OS can actually favour the big guy because it presents massive economy of scale and allows them to dip further into the middle market. Free offerings can then take care of most of the rest leaving little for the mid size. There are still opportunities but they are greatly reduced and the market is as I said more or less polarised.
Particularly if they are a small software house. I think its a common misconception here that OS threatens the big players most. It doesnt. They may start using OS tools but will keep getting the big enterprise contracts. If I am a small or niche vendor though and a viable free as in beer OS solution then I can pretty much kiss my business goodbye and find something else to do. I think there is a significant risk of OS polarizing the market into 'pure' OS and the big corporate vendors and taking out all the middle players.
a dwo-digit
Is that something you get from typing in stolen code?
This could lead to the second coming of Linus !!! Let us rejoice and sacrafice junior VB coders to the Gods of Code.
Strange argument, the ones that cant keep windows secure, not an immensly difficult task these days with the tools available, are the ones least likely to be able to run linux, or are you suggesting they install something friendly like linspire or whatever its called today which runs as root by default I believe?
Truly you are fearless to disdain the power, factual correctness and influence of the blog, especially when it mentions that topic of mind warping importance to slashdot, patents. I vote Kevin Conway be our new overlord.
Best comment yet!
No you fool, that would be stupid. They chalk the river surface.
"A large sand hourglass timer, a sextant, a compass, several long pieces of rope and a reliable cabin boy to turn the hourglass over will be more than anyone ever needs to determine their position"
Brilliant idea. Why not piss off hundreds of millions of users by breaking all their apps, which they have paid for and making them wait for updates. Why not piss the vendors off because they now have no products because you have just removed the OS and the API's their products were based on. They have to build completely new products based on a new OS and API's (but thats just a bit of a lag to you). Why not piss the millions of windows developers off because their a big chunk of their skillset is now worthless. Truly you are a visionary thinker.
With all the weirdo animals the Australian continent has produced I guess this program will produce some highly interesting results. I cant wait for the announcement that a pattern resembling a Duck Billed Platypus is ideal for streaming Digital TV.
When the Enterprise is facing yet another crisis and someone suggests rerouting the coffee machine output through a highly focused baryeon ray and then reverse polarizing it through the deflector dish, instead of the usual "Yes that might just work" whats really needed is for more of the other crew members to adopt completely bemused expessions and ask "What the Fuck are you babbling about????", "Is this another one of your loon ideas that involves writing a subroutine in less than 3 seconds with your left hand?", or "through the what dish?, will that affect Sky Sports reception?". Why does no one ever says "what?" on Star Trek, no matter how preposterous the proposed solution, enquiring minds want to know.
Put it in stasis for 20 years. It will be a lot fresher to a new generation when it come out.
Most websites have no idea how many people view their content
We normally use our leaves to view content. Hope this helps the analysis.
The cars produced by nano technology are only 2 mm long at most so getting in to them will be a bit of squeeze.
It's a real pity when things like that get hacked
Oh the double standards. When its an MS system or a dumb windows user that gets hacked its because they are are stupid or have crap security or they deserved it anyway. When its OSS its a pity and because of nasty malicious hackers.
Good point. I have often wondered what would happen if there was a diaspora of humans into space without some type of FTL communication and the 'human' connection becomes weaker and weaker. What are the odds that one group will turn into a bunch of warmongers and seek to conquer the rest.