Somehow, I can't imagine these big companies needing our ten and twenty dollar contributions.
I would happily contribute $20 to the legal fund. It's about the only way I can tangibly show my displeasure with SCO. How would you like to be SCO and know that millions (yeah, probably optimistic) of people were contributing to a bounty on your ears and nose? (Sorry, just saw "Gangs of New York").
I suppose if Sun distributed a Linux kernel that had code in it that IBM got from AIX or Dynix?
Sun was already free and clear. Then they secretly purchased an additional license from SCO, which they don't need but indemnifies them for using the so-called UNIX(C)(R)(TM) code. Now, the licensing deal has been made public. Sun will look like a legal Linux distributer to many. In the worst case of a brain-dead judge in the SCO/IBM case, Sun just drops Linux and laughs all the way to the bank, while helpfully switching Linux users to Solaris. What part of that is so hard to understand?
Latvia has a ratio of 119:100, so should we assume that in Latvia, they practice infanticide and targeted abortions against male babies?
Given its position and history, I think we can assume a good deal of the male population in Latvia was lost during *political discussions* with Russia. The fact that parents in some countries practice infanticide is hardly news.
To old timers among you, I ask this... have you made any breakthroughs lately? If not, I doubt tenure will keep you around these days. Unless you're a teacher. Tenure nowadays just means a higher pay job to eliminate and a bigger bonus to get for some CEO somewhere.
Well, I can't speak for the original AC poster, and your's was certainly was an "angry rant", but what made you suppose that the AC was an "old timer"? First, tenure only applies to academic teaching positions, which is a tiny portion of IT-related jobs. Second, old-timers are the primary victims of outsourcing and offshoring. Age discrimination is rampant in U.S. companies, and they admit it, because they can claim it reduces costs, which is acceptable under the current laws. Companies prefer youngsters and foreigners, whom they believe will be cheaper and more docile. Please point your future rants in the proper direction.
Not neccesarily. In the unlikely event that SCO were to win their case, Sun would be distributing any tainted parts of Linux without a valid license from the original copyright holder of the tainted code.
How so? Sun has been in bed with SCO for months.
They paid some portion of many millions of dollars for the right to the Unix code. To me it looks like Sun is playing both ends of the game, and in the middle is Solaris. I certainly wouldn't construe this as a friendly move -- just another move for Sun.
Yes it does... it's a cultural faux pas in today's post-boom tech economy.
Really? Please (really) tell that to all the CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and others who are busy cashing in. Then please report back to us with your success stories.
Granted, the execs now are doing okay. It's paying off for them. Now they're just ass-clowns for working for a company like SCO. If their stock tanks before they sell, they'll be ass-clowns for my original reason.
Agreed, they're dregs, but the point is they won't wait for the stock to tank -- they are doing a pump-and-dump. Where did you get lost?
It's a simple rule of business. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.
The SCO execs have a penny stock option today that is worth $10.00 tomorrow. It doesn't mean it's right, in fact it should be illegal, but that's the way it is, and that is why they have an incentive to screw the rest of the world, including me.
Payment in stock options... in 2003? Anyone who took stock options in a tech company after Dec 2000 is an ass-clown.
If you got a boat-load of SCO stock options for a exercise price of less than a penny, and the stock price is now $10.00+, that makes the holder an ass-clown? That is the SCO executives' position now.
So, I see at least Two Commandments broken here, Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness, and Thou Shall Not Steal.
Sorry, that's not covered in the MBA program. Do you have something that's relevant to making stock options profitable? And, of course, executives are not required to take the ethics training they mandate for the, ahem, employees.:)
If the 'knowledgable users" will never ever require IT support again for their machine(i.e. they become their own little SA) then they are very welcomed to have the root password.
Actually I would demand they change it and I don't want to know it.
The "knowledgeable users" know how to administrate Linux and should not have to wait for days for "IT" to show up and perform a simple task on their personal box. It's no different from all the Windows users who have control over their boxes.
I don't understand why anyone with a serious question would post AC./. accounts are free if you wish. Most of the parent's questions are just restatements of another, but there seemed to be a few serious points.
do you really think that it's an efficient use of their time to split between administering Linux boxes instead of performing revenue generating activites? Is it really efficient to have, what, dozens, hundreds, thousands of employees working maintaining their boxes instead of doing their work?
Normal Linux maintenance is a noise-level activity. Again, it's not everyone in the company, just those projects and people who want Linux, and we have all agreed to go with a single distribution. Is it really efficient to spend two days sitting on your thumb, waiting for an IS person to come and do a 30-second task?
Who enforces user level security since a user with root on their box could become anyone?
You lost me -- unless you have very lax security where you work. There are only two real users on a personal Linux box, root and the normal user. There isn't "anyone" else to become.
You claim that Linux isn't more expensive to administer. I'm curious as to how you arrived at that, and does that answer scale?
There has been a pilot project using Linux for over two years, and the help-desk calls are a matter of record. We believe it will scale very well, which may be the problem.
I'd be willing to bet that you know your way around Linux fairly well. I would also bet that you have little knowledge or experience regarding the implications of technical and policy choices for an organization of any size.
Well, you'd be right -- then you'd be wrong. I've spent some decades working for companies small, medium, and huge, and I've seen companies die when they take the path of least resistance rather than annoy the naysayers.
whats funny is that the real article says nothing about Wi-fi it just says the districts policy is that only employees can touch the computers now.
Which means that the servers will now be really secure, since none of the employees have any idea what they do, and they certainly wouldn't touch them.:)
Obviously it depends on the task, but there are still a lot of tasks that I'd rather tackle with a Sun or SGI box that I wouldn't want to undertake with a Linux box.
And I agree with that. But, many of the tasks that we've previously done on Sun or SGI boxes just don't justify the costs any longer. A multi-processor Intel box running Linux is far cheaper, and porting the code is fairly trivial. In some cases, we have even been rewarded with performance increases, but that's just gravy. The much cheaper hardware and vendor support costs are driving the changes.
I can see where there might be some security concerns, but I think the real concern for IS (IT, whatever) is being in control.
I work for a company that was heavily Unix (and X-terms) until the LAN somehow became all MS PCs. Now people and projects are insisting on replacing not only MS but Sun and SGI stuff with Linux. We are meeting heavy resistance from IS.
They are claiming that it costs more to administer a Linux box, even though we've been in meetings and showed that it wasn't true, based on recent experience. They refuse to give even knowledgeable users superuser privileges on their own machines, although Windows users can install anything or delete everything on their boxes at will.
To me it appears that some of the people in IS are afraid of being made less powerful, less needed, and less relied upon.
Hah. And you couldn't spot it for the clever C troll it was. (I wish.:) I'll just go don my hair shirt and wait for the tar, feathers, and the lynch mob to arrive. I hope K&R aren't in it, although they would have good reason.
So yeah, where'd that 2 come from? I'm amused that it actually worked, since you define a pointer, then assign to the dereference of it, which is god-only-knows where.
Say what? *j = 2; (In English, "the contents of j equals 2"). You could also look at it like the pointer j is being assigned the address where the literal 2 is stored. Where's the confusion?
I don't understand the lash against H1-B visa holders (I'm one myself) - The argument I keep hearing is that they are cheaper than US workers and thus drive down the wage for US tech workers. In my experience this just isnt the case.
I can't speak for your experience. Perhaps you work for a rare, honest American company. Do a Google on "matloff h-1b". That should bring you up to speed on the evidence.
We're hired because we have great skills that are difficult to find in the US. (Try foreign language skills and international experience)
Yeah, the messiah complex, we hear that over and over again, how the H-1Bs saved American IT. There are no Americans with international experience. There are no Americans who can do math, etc., ad nauseum. The truth is you are just adding to the bonus for the American CEO because (s)he replaced American workers with cheaper labor.
On top of that, we have to lead a precarious life, whereby if we lose our jobs, our lives are then transplanted half way across the World with little warning.
Why is that an issue? First, the H-1B is supposed to be a NON-IMMIGRANT visa for TEMPORARY workers. Second, the INS is not enforcing regulations in any case and is instead basically ignoring the rules. Americans who are out of work have to battle with so-called "guest workers" for jobs in this country. The reality is that which you left unsaid: the H-1B visa is really a planned back-door to a green card or immigrant status, and you don't like it when the winks and nods are questioned.
Excuse me, are you saying that 12:00 doohickey does something?
Do what I did; just unplug the stupid thing. It won't play DVDs anyway. If you have kids, chances are there's a peanut-butter sandwich inside it, and you don't want to disturb it anyway. The upside is that you no longer have that flashing thing adding to the utility bills.
WordPefect had near-monopoly numbers in the old days and it didn't stop people from switching to MS Word. I'll bet most legacy documents were never converted, since most of them were never edited again.
MS's main advantage is not closed file formats but rather the average user's lack of interest in learning a new tool unless it's significantly better than what they're currently using.
MS undercut WordPerfect's price with Word. That is why users switched, even though WordPerfect was better. Word was cra^H^H^Halmost useable at the time. Now look at the price for MS Word, after the competition was eliminated. It didn't have anything to do with better tools. As always with MS, it's about marketing.
What would work is to LIMIT !!! their share of the MARKET as a penalty and allow competition to unfold.
Right. You're suddenly going to tell 30% or 40% of desktop users they can no longer use MS and have to find something else. How are you going to pick the lusers? Lottery? What are you going to do when they *pirate* MS software and reinstall it because it's all they know? While many of us here might find the idea amusing, the actual chances of that happening are indistinguishable from zero. Even though MS is a convicted monopolist still under probation, the federal government continually buys ever more of its software from MS. Even the DHS (S for SECURITY) admitted that it gave a huge contract to MS because of expediancy, not security. Your idea is well-intentioned but DOA.
One pissed of employee can set your whole company on fire, so why do anything criminal when you are gigantic corporation?
FYI: MCI is a Worldcom company so fraud does run in the family.
FYI: WorldCom is doing business as MCI. MCI was fraudulent even before WorldCom bought them out. You didn't get hired by MCI unless you agreed with their weird, company-is-everything-and-knows-all mindset. Otherwise, you weren't a "team player".
Just how many major crimes do you have to commit before it ceases to be a civil matter in this country ? Just how many people do you have to harm before its considered criminal or is that just reserved for people that download songs ?
Welcome to the new America, where greed is considered a laudable corporate trait and even many slashbots rush to defend corporate amorality. It is the new order. Orwell was just off by a few decades.
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Somehow, I can't imagine these big companies needing our ten and twenty dollar contributions.
I would happily contribute $20 to the legal fund. It's about the only way I can tangibly show my displeasure with SCO. How would you like to be SCO and know that millions (yeah, probably optimistic) of people were contributing to a bounty on your ears and nose? (Sorry, just saw "Gangs of New York").
I suppose if Sun distributed a Linux kernel that had code in it that IBM got from AIX or Dynix?
Sun was already free and clear. Then they secretly purchased an additional license from SCO, which they don't need but indemnifies them for using the so-called UNIX(C)(R)(TM) code. Now, the licensing deal has been made public. Sun will look like a legal Linux distributer to many. In the worst case of a brain-dead judge in the SCO/IBM case, Sun just drops Linux and laughs all the way to the bank, while helpfully switching Linux users to Solaris. What part of that is so hard to understand?
Latvia has a ratio of 119:100, so should we assume that in Latvia, they practice infanticide and targeted abortions against male babies?
Given its position and history, I think we can assume a good deal of the male population in Latvia was lost during *political discussions* with Russia. The fact that parents in some countries practice infanticide is hardly news.
To old timers among you, I ask this... have you made any breakthroughs lately? If not, I doubt tenure will keep you around these days. Unless you're a teacher. Tenure nowadays just means a higher pay job to eliminate and a bigger bonus to get for some CEO somewhere.
Well, I can't speak for the original AC poster, and your's was certainly was an "angry rant", but what made you suppose that the AC was an "old timer"? First, tenure only applies to academic teaching positions, which is a tiny portion of IT-related jobs. Second, old-timers are the primary victims of outsourcing and offshoring. Age discrimination is rampant in U.S. companies, and they admit it, because they can claim it reduces costs, which is acceptable under the current laws. Companies prefer youngsters and foreigners, whom they believe will be cheaper and more docile. Please point your future rants in the proper direction.
Not neccesarily. In the unlikely event that SCO were to win their case, Sun would be distributing any tainted parts of Linux without a valid license from the original copyright holder of the tainted code.
How so? Sun has been in bed with SCO for months. They paid some portion of many millions of dollars for the right to the Unix code. To me it looks like Sun is playing both ends of the game, and in the middle is Solaris. I certainly wouldn't construe this as a friendly move -- just another move for Sun.
Yes it does... it's a cultural faux pas in today's post-boom tech economy.
Really? Please (really) tell that to all the CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and others who are busy cashing in. Then please report back to us with your success stories.
Granted, the execs now are doing okay. It's paying off for them. Now they're just ass-clowns for working for a company like SCO. If their stock tanks before they sell, they'll be ass-clowns for my original reason.
Agreed, they're dregs, but the point is they won't wait for the stock to tank -- they are doing a pump-and-dump. Where did you get lost?
It's a simple rule of business. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.
The SCO execs have a penny stock option today that is worth $10.00 tomorrow. It doesn't mean it's right, in fact it should be illegal, but that's the way it is, and that is why they have an incentive to screw the rest of the world, including me.
No.
Payment in stock options... in 2003? Anyone who took stock options in a tech company after Dec 2000 is an ass-clown.
If you got a boat-load of SCO stock options for a exercise price of less than a penny, and the stock price is now $10.00+, that makes the holder an ass-clown? That is the SCO executives' position now.
So, I see at least Two Commandments broken here, Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness, and Thou Shall Not Steal.
Sorry, that's not covered in the MBA program. Do you have something that's relevant to making stock options profitable? And, of course, executives are not required to take the ethics training they mandate for the, ahem, employees. :)
Notice the smiley? Umm, that was the point. Boy, I hate being the straight man for people who beat jokes to death for the moderators. ;)
If the 'knowledgable users" will never ever require IT support again for their machine(i.e. they become their own little SA) then they are very welcomed to have the root password.
Actually I would demand they change it and I don't want to know it.
The "knowledgeable users" know how to administrate Linux and should not have to wait for days for "IT" to show up and perform a simple task on their personal box. It's no different from all the Windows users who have control over their boxes.
I don't understand why anyone with a serious question would post AC. /. accounts are free if you wish. Most of the parent's questions are just restatements of another, but there seemed to be a few serious points.
do you really think that it's an efficient use of their time to split between administering Linux boxes instead of performing revenue generating activites? Is it really efficient to have, what, dozens, hundreds, thousands of employees working maintaining their boxes instead of doing their work?
Normal Linux maintenance is a noise-level activity. Again, it's not everyone in the company, just those projects and people who want Linux, and we have all agreed to go with a single distribution. Is it really efficient to spend two days sitting on your thumb, waiting for an IS person to come and do a 30-second task?
Who enforces user level security since a user with root on their box could become anyone?
You lost me -- unless you have very lax security where you work. There are only two real users on a personal Linux box, root and the normal user. There isn't "anyone" else to become.
You claim that Linux isn't more expensive to administer. I'm curious as to how you arrived at that, and does that answer scale?
There has been a pilot project using Linux for over two years, and the help-desk calls are a matter of record. We believe it will scale very well, which may be the problem.
I'd be willing to bet that you know your way around Linux fairly well. I would also bet that you have little knowledge or experience regarding the implications of technical and policy choices for an organization of any size.
Well, you'd be right -- then you'd be wrong. I've spent some decades working for companies small, medium, and huge, and I've seen companies die when they take the path of least resistance rather than annoy the naysayers.
whats funny is that the real article says nothing about Wi-fi it just says the districts policy is that only employees can touch the computers now.
Which means that the servers will now be really secure, since none of the employees have any idea what they do, and they certainly wouldn't touch them. :)
Obviously it depends on the task, but there are still a lot of tasks that I'd rather tackle with a Sun or SGI box that I wouldn't want to undertake with a Linux box.
And I agree with that. But, many of the tasks that we've previously done on Sun or SGI boxes just don't justify the costs any longer. A multi-processor Intel box running Linux is far cheaper, and porting the code is fairly trivial. In some cases, we have even been rewarded with performance increases, but that's just gravy. The much cheaper hardware and vendor support costs are driving the changes.
I can see where there might be some security concerns, but I think the real concern for IS (IT, whatever) is being in control.
I work for a company that was heavily Unix (and X-terms) until the LAN somehow became all MS PCs. Now people and projects are insisting on replacing not only MS but Sun and SGI stuff with Linux. We are meeting heavy resistance from IS.
They are claiming that it costs more to administer a Linux box, even though we've been in meetings and showed that it wasn't true, based on recent experience. They refuse to give even knowledgeable users superuser privileges on their own machines, although Windows users can install anything or delete everything on their boxes at will.
To me it appears that some of the people in IS are afraid of being made less powerful, less needed, and less relied upon.
Hah. And you couldn't spot it for the clever C troll it was. (I wish. :) I'll just go don my hair shirt and wait for the tar, feathers, and the lynch mob to arrive. I hope K&R aren't in it, although they would have good reason.
Never mind, I finally got it. I was thinking of something like:
char *msg = "default message\n";
So yeah, where'd that 2 come from? I'm amused that it actually worked, since you define a pointer, then assign to the dereference of it, which is god-only-knows where.
Say what? *j = 2; (In English, "the contents of j equals 2"). You could also look at it like the pointer j is being assigned the address where the literal 2 is stored. Where's the confusion?
I don't understand the lash against H1-B visa holders (I'm one myself) - The argument I keep hearing is that they are cheaper than US workers and thus drive down the wage for US tech workers. In my experience this just isnt the case.
I can't speak for your experience. Perhaps you work for a rare, honest American company. Do a Google on "matloff h-1b". That should bring you up to speed on the evidence.
We're hired because we have great skills that are difficult to find in the US. (Try foreign language skills and international experience)
Yeah, the messiah complex, we hear that over and over again, how the H-1Bs saved American IT. There are no Americans with international experience. There are no Americans who can do math, etc., ad nauseum. The truth is you are just adding to the bonus for the American CEO because (s)he replaced American workers with cheaper labor.
On top of that, we have to lead a precarious life, whereby if we lose our jobs, our lives are then transplanted half way across the World with little warning.
Why is that an issue? First, the H-1B is supposed to be a NON-IMMIGRANT visa for TEMPORARY workers. Second, the INS is not enforcing regulations in any case and is instead basically ignoring the rules. Americans who are out of work have to battle with so-called "guest workers" for jobs in this country. The reality is that which you left unsaid: the H-1B visa is really a planned back-door to a green card or immigrant status, and you don't like it when the winks and nods are questioned.
Excuse me, are you saying that 12:00 doohickey does something?
Do what I did; just unplug the stupid thing. It won't play DVDs anyway. If you have kids, chances are there's a peanut-butter sandwich inside it, and you don't want to disturb it anyway. The upside is that you no longer have that flashing thing adding to the utility bills.
WordPefect had near-monopoly numbers in the old days and it didn't stop people from switching to MS Word. I'll bet most legacy documents were never converted, since most of them were never edited again.
MS's main advantage is not closed file formats but rather the average user's lack of interest in learning a new tool unless it's significantly better than what they're currently using.
MS undercut WordPerfect's price with Word. That is why users switched, even though WordPerfect was better. Word was cra^H^H^Halmost useable at the time. Now look at the price for MS Word, after the competition was eliminated. It didn't have anything to do with better tools. As always with MS, it's about marketing.
What would work is to LIMIT !!! their share of the MARKET as a penalty and allow competition to unfold.
Right. You're suddenly going to tell 30% or 40% of desktop users they can no longer use MS and have to find something else. How are you going to pick the lusers? Lottery? What are you going to do when they *pirate* MS software and reinstall it because it's all they know? While many of us here might find the idea amusing, the actual chances of that happening are indistinguishable from zero. Even though MS is a convicted monopolist still under probation, the federal government continually buys ever more of its software from MS. Even the DHS (S for SECURITY) admitted that it gave a huge contract to MS because of expediancy, not security. Your idea is well-intentioned but DOA.
So everybody else is allowed to break the law ?
Everyone else with $40 Billion is allowed to break the law. There are standards, you know -- can't have just any old riffraff admitted to the club.
One pissed of employee can set your whole company on fire, so why do anything criminal when you are gigantic corporation?
FYI: MCI is a Worldcom company so fraud does run in the family.
FYI: WorldCom is doing business as MCI. MCI was fraudulent even before WorldCom bought them out. You didn't get hired by MCI unless you agreed with their weird, company-is-everything-and-knows-all mindset. Otherwise, you weren't a "team player".
Just how many major crimes do you have to commit before it ceases to be a civil matter in this country ? Just how many people do you have to harm before its considered criminal or is that just reserved for people that download songs ?
Welcome to the new America, where greed is considered a laudable corporate trait and even many slashbots rush to defend corporate amorality. It is the new order. Orwell was just off by a few decades.