Seriously, Old computers don't have to run old software. Many oganizations aren't aware that they could pay a grand or two for a server and then run old machines as thin clients. Many people seem to have the idea that you must buy an individual powerhouse for each node, and this is a huge deterrent. When you throw in the costs of licensing proprietary software, hardly anyone can afford this type of solution. I just finished a project like that in a rural county in west texas. These kids were still learning logo on Comm64's. Now I have a few new Linux geeks that look up to me as some sort of Linux Guru God. That alone is worth the effort:)
Not only did I have to reboot my linksys router every time I had more than 3 computers using the net simulutaneously, it died during a simple firmware update. I now use a freesco 386 with 5 ISA NICs, all parts and software free, and I also run PPPoE for authentication of my wireless hotspot. I hope cisco will up the level of quality on Linksys, or at least security. But the fact that you bought a Linksys router does not mean you have a cisco at half the price. Maybe when the new ones comes out..
If you want to see what I mean with Linksys sucking in general, scan a large range for port 8080 and try logging in with no username and the password as admin. Then you can go look at their internet connection and when you view the source all passwords are in plain text in older models and seriously weak encryption on newer firmare. The funniest part is that some of the Linksys AP's suggest that you should never need to change any settings. I don't know why anyone would suggest you leave the default password on your router.
You have every right to block port scanners just as they have every right to scan your ports. It may be your system, but you have it hooked up to a public internet with a public IP address. You do not own either of those, and by using them you are entering a social contract. You can't tell people on the street not to look at you just because you're naked, or think staring is rude. You can only either go home where you have privacy, or put some clothes on.
"Ok, I don't think you understand how open source works. Does redhat pay for the development of vim?, xawtv?(i'm using them now). The way you see it open source software wouldn't be created until a developer was paid to create it."
No, as I said, a majority of open source is a labor of love. Many other Open Source applications were funded by companies, for their internal use, and released out to the general public. They are not selling outher peoples software, not are they allowed to. They are simply redistributing it completely in accordance with the licensing.
"But this isn't the way it's being done now. By far most open source software is created by developers for free, then companies like red hat grab it package it and sell it."
Again you mistake free software for open source. Redhat doesn't sell xawtv or vim, they include it. When you "buy" redhat, you only buy the service and support, which is all RedHat sells. RedHat created an excellent easy to use install system that is used by tons of other distros, without charge.
"True there not slaves in that they don't have to do it, but yeah red hat gets software for nothing. Which brings me to my point. Companies are using free open source products in place of products that they would have paid for, money that would have gone to a developer."
So when did it become a businesses responsibility to ensure the career of developers? What is wrong with using something free if it is of equal quality? Should I start paying royalites to Francis Scott Keye's family every time I sing the star spangled banner? Where is the logic in the "People should have to pay for everything" mindset?
It took developers and engineers time and money to come up with protocols like TCP/IP, yet Microsoft just steals these people's work and puts it in their OS and sells it.
"This is not great because companies get for free what they would have other wise paid for, what would otherwise have been money in a developers pocket. Wouldn't it be better to make companies pay developers for their work?"
When a company pays you to write them a program it is THEIR program, not yours. When you write an open source, GPL'd program, it is YOUR program. That is the payment developers get for writing free software. I make good money at my job, but I'd like to make more. I'd rather help out a bunch of my fellow Linux geeks than make a little more money however. This is the spirit and attitude that drives open source and scares the crap out of closed source commercial vendors. We don't want compensation, we want credit. We want people to say "Gee thanks for writing me this program, it's ever so useful!", not "Gee this program would be useful, too bad it's so prohibitively expensive that only mega corporations could hope to implement such a solution."
"I think it would be great if as you say developers made a company pay them to develop that software, and to GPL it. I just don't see that, most open source software is also free software, software that I work with every day."
IBM, Dell, Sun, Redhat, Orcale, HP, and many other huge corporations throw tons of money behind open source development. The money goes into the developers pockets. You complain about redhat not having to pay for the software, yet you say you are using it right now. Did you pay the developers for their time? You're actually using the program, RedHat is just distributing it.
The problem as you see it, I think, is that you think open source, free software developers are being ripped off. This couldn't be further from the truth. As I said, there are rewards far greater than monetary for a developer, else you'd see Linus having a "pay for patch acceptance" program with Linux. The only other problem I could see you having with free software is that you are a closed source commercial developer and OSF and FSF are cutting into your bread and butter.
"Suppose I came to your house, found the door to be unlocked and decided to come in and take your stuff. Or if you object to me taking your stuff, let's say I just look around because I'm simply curious "
Jiggling your door handle wouldn't be illegal, I think that's a poor analogy though. It's more like I'm looking at your house and counting the number of windows and doors. Actually walking through the door or crawling through the window is where the illegality lies.
You are confusing port scanning and crack/hacking. You're making the assumption that finding an open port means finding an open hole, and that's pretty far fetched.
The argument you use would be better suited to those grey area hacking cases where there was no hack, just a default password or no password set, and the hacker walks in.
There is nothing wrong with scanning ports and seeing what services a particular server offers to the general public. It's not like it's circumventing any security measures, it's just using TCP/IP in a manner it was meant to be used in. This is like saying that p2p filesharing clients are in a gray market. There's nothing wrong with a p2p filesharing program, the problem lies with those that abuse it.
"Right, that's why I fork out a visa # everytime I visit freshmeat. Good luck getting redhat for free too."
That doesn't even make sense. I can't tell if you were being sarcastic or not. There are a few nonfree opensource projects on freshmeat, but not many. Besides that, freshmeat has nothing to do with open source or free software, other than being one of the many repositories for such software. You can download and use Redhat for free, without any charges, because it is free software. Most Unix variants are open source, but are nowhere near free. However, when you get one of these free apps (esp GPL) you are recognizing that there is no warranty and no gaurantee of support. This is how open source makes money, by supporting the application they create.
"I can list off the top of my head open source apps that I used just today vim, ant, and jboss. All are free of charge, all were expensive to develop, all are used by companies with out putting money in the hands of that apps developers."
Still you misundertand what open source mean. Software can be open source without being free, and can be free without having open source. All the software you listed is not only open source, it is free sopftware. The reason you're not putting money directly into the hands of the developer isn't because it's open source, it's because it's free software.
"So a company gets operating systems, and applications for free, then pays some one to just glue them together, great. Companies love open source, they get slaves to do the hard part(building the low level apps) then they get cheaper monkeys to glue the parts together. This is great how?"
The creators of open source aren't "slaves" as you seem to like to put it. No one is forced to contribute to open source. How is this different than companies paying for the low level apps and still having to hire a cheaper monkey to glue them together? How is this NOT great? Are you implying that companies should have to pay for OS and licenses and applications, or that there is something wrong with open source?
"Oh but it gets much worse. Just think if some programmers will not only work for half your rate in this country, but instead will work for free!. Companies will just use these slaves to build most of their software, and pay the rest of us budget rates to glue these pieces together. Welcome to the open source world."
That was a very flawed analogy. First off, open source != Free. You're thinking of Free Software. There's quite a difference in the two. Open Source simply means you make you code open to those you distribute it to.
Second, free software != free work. While many of the applications out there are labors of love, many programmers are still paid to further develop their programs. Gentoo has corporate backing, Dan Robbins is working on it full time, and I bet his pay is pretty damn good too.
Third, companies can't use open source developers as slaves. As an open source advocate, I make my code freely available and I charged no one to do it, but if company X says "Hey, we need something to do this" I'm not going to code it for free, nor do I know ANY open source developers who would.
I think you have quite a misunderstanding of open source, free software, and how they work.
Spam needs legitimization. Hear me out, now, before you add that -1, Troll. By legitimizing spam we put ourselves in control. We need laws on a national level defining exactly what is valid spam and what is illegal.
We need the ISPs to work WITH the spammers ( or vice cersa). Make it trvial to filter, and only send it once. Give everybody a shared "Spam box", as place to go and see if they really need to acclerate their dialup to new levels, or a vacation, or whatever (I'm assuming 18" Penis and XXX TEEN LESBIANS will not be considered legit). We need stiff penalties to those who violate the law. We can't enforce the law in other spammer friendly countries, but we can enforce the law in our own. The company marketing should also be held responsible for violations, preventing American companies from just outsourcing their spam. Any spammer friendly ISP's either deal with their spammers or risk the entire range being blocked (voluntarily) by American ISPs. I know 99% of service providers would have no problem blocking out spammers voluntarily, especially if they are being good Americans while they are doing so. Let's not forget that as rapidly as it's changing, a majority of popular sites are American based. I know all you Norwiglians out there would probably drop your ISP if you couldn't get to slashdot just because your ISP supported spam.
The DMA has too much money to let spam die, and apart from the slashdot crowd a majority of people don't find spam to be a big problem in their daily lives (albeit mostly thhanks to us busting ass). Some people actually enjoy getting spam. I don't understand it either, but to each his own. As an option in a recent poll said, grey areas definately exist.
I think spam is a fact of life. Sometimes I get emails from business friends who include a small ad as their sig. We can't kill spam but we can change the face of it to be ever os less intrusive. We're going to have to compromise our "FUCK YOU AND YOUR GOD DAMN SPAM" attitudes if we plan on giving our credibility to our cause.
We want complete restriciton, and they want no restriciton. Somewhere in the middle there's a feasible solution for both of us.
I agree with what you are saying. But the reason we couldn't buy most of these things we have is because they are so incredibly artificially expensive. If I wanted to buy a super deisel 100mpg box car like are so popular in europe, I'd have to pay roughly the same as buying an American SUV. This is because we tax foreign imports coming into this country to protect corporations from the same kind of foriegn cheap labor competition that workers are facing. What I don't understand is why corporations are provided protection and not the people. I mean how is it so much worse for an Indian tech firm to replace an American tech firm, than an Indian worker to replace an American worker? Companies are reaping the benefits of cheap labor, while preventing companies based in those countries to do the same. I just don't understand this double standard. In a nation supposedly for the people, by the people, why is it that the corporations are the only ones being protected, and why are the being protected in an unfair manner?
Look at it this way, because we have minimum wage laws in America, and there are none in India, the company can hire out engineers, techs, manual labor, or whatever at a cheaper rate than I can legally compete with. I don't have the option to program for $4 an hour. I agree that it helps impoverished people worldwide, but I don't think American corporations should be allowed to treat foreigners any worse than they treat Americans. I think they should be forced to adhere to minimum wage, provide all benefits given to an american counterpart, including health care insurance, and pension. Global competition should be based on merits and qulity of work, not on the lack of labor laws or taking advantage of the financial chaos in still developing countries. Not only will this greatly increase the impoverished areas were work is outsourced, it will prevent American companies from taking advantage of people in need.
I don't see why they should enjoy the protection import taxes and such bring them against global competition when they have no penalty for exporting jobs. Tax imported goods, tax exported jobs. Don't tax exported jobs, don't tax imported goods. You can't have it both ways.. corporations want protection from countries without labor laws becase they can't compete with sweatshops or massively underpaid workers, but they also want to reap the benefits of those same workers. I don't see why my employers job should be any more protected than mine.
Re:how many hack books do i need to buy?
on
Linux Server Hacks
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· Score: 2, Informative
All of this information is searchable in google. By buying the book you are paying for the convenience of having everything consolidated right there in front of you, in a searchable (index) format. You could also go with a Safari subscription from O'reilly to acheive the same effect with a webpage.
There's was a book review of this same book about a week or two ago, wasn't there? I bought the book and have been pleased overall with it, but there wasn't really anything new or exciting, just a few tips and tricks. Note you can find most of these by going to www.google.com/linux and looking up tips and tricks. One example would be that you can find out who is hogging the most disk space using an alias for du, like this:
du -cks | sort -rn | head -n 10
Pretty simple, yet really effective. This book is full of little things like this.
Again, you do nothing but completely dodge the issue at hand. You are incapable of forming a coherent argument in any manner. You have not once addressed the simple fact that I can not legally work in this country for $4 an hour. Because of minimun wage laws non existant in other countries, I am by law unable to compete. You refuse to address this issue because you think anything that anything that is unfair to Americans is good for everyone else. You have not given any credibility to a single argument. You simply make unsubstantiated remarks, and when called on that you respond only with more unsubstatiated remarks.
"Each of these techs must have computers. They hire 3x as many techs, they sell 3x as many computers, licenses, phone systems. See how that works? Everybody sells more."
This is the dumbest logic I have ever seen in my life. They hire 3x as many techs and they sell 3x as many computers? Are computer manufacturers now exclusively selling computers to technicians? You also ignore the fact that those technincians can not hope to afford to buy machines from Dell, at prices Dell makes any sort of profit on. Dell is in the business of making money based on the value of an American dollar. Why sell 50 T-shirts for a $1 when you could sell one T-shirt fot $50? Your argument that the outsourced nation contributes to the company in a finiancial manner other than cheap labor is unfounded and without substance,
"And I can eat better than McDonalds on about a dollar a day in Morocco, what's your point? Or I can go to a tourist cafe and pay $5 for kooskoos. Or I can still go to McDonalds, and it's about 1/3 of the cost. In Japan, McDonalds and Starbucks cost more. That's the wonder of scaled and localized pricing! Amazing what these kids will think of next."
Thank you for again proving to the world that you are a complete and total idiot. Scaled localized pricing? I guess this just exists because of the natural order of the economy and not based on factors of import taxation, localized affordability based on labor laws or lack thereof, levels of taxation by municipality, providence or state, inflation, deflation, developmental status, healthcare state, welfare, or any other localized factors relevant to fair economic trade on a global scale. Each of your blanket assertations takes in no account for any of the obvious relevant factors. You make an inane comment, and hold it as a rule of economy.
"You said the US is a nation of the people. I said fuck your CDs. I was using the DMCA as another example of how the US is definitely not a nation of the people, but of the corporation. For instance; this whole thing you are objecting to is a push from corporations not from the people. And people can't stop it."
That's funny, because the DMCA has yet to be used successfully in terms of prosection. Each time it has actually been brought into court, the plaintiff has withdrawn charges, or lost. A law isn't unconstitutional until the supreme court deems it to be so. It has so far only been abused as a threat, and these "Small time" threats against these people "Who can do nothing about it" has prompted legislation to explicitly protect the rights of these people as well as legislation to ammend the supposed unconstitutional portions of the otherwise completley constitutional DMCA.
"I have already answered this; sweatshop workers will deliver lower quality of work."
I have already proven you wrong and absurd. You constantly take single case scenarios which are weak to begin with and bsae your complete argument off of that. Kathie Lee's line of clothing was of comparable quality to that work not done in a sweathsop. How is a sweathsop worker going to learn english? The same way anyone else would, that's a retarded question. You forget these people don't have a choice. If it is required of them to learn english and sound happy to feed their families, they will do it. You assertion that they are incapable shows your negative disposition on the human condition.
This is the true story (true story) of eight unrelated programmers picked to work on a Linux project and have their code made open. This is what happens when programmers stop being nice, and start being real.
Seriously, I could see this as being the next big reality TV series. I have no doubt that there will be some serious "static" between these people. What kind of leadership model is there going ot be? Are they just throwing them together and letting them work it out amongst themselves? I worked on a Linux game with my best friend, and we were at each others throats within a week and had to ditch the project before we killed each other.
"No, we're actually talking about tech support being outsourced. "
Again you miss the point that tech support is NOT high wage. Tech Support is the lowest rung on the IT ladder. Aside from that, while this article may focus on "high tech" jobs, this article was not the be all and end all of outsourced work in the US. I guess if it's not posted on slashdot, it's none of your concern, right?
"$600 * 12 is a whole lot more than $2500 you quoted, again, try to get some math. Just to quote the first person, from China. Spending $300 a month on rent, in a luxury apartment tends to make $600 last a lot longer."
I guess you don't understand the difference between average income and single case income. $3200 is not much more than $2500. You seem to really enjoy focusing on the low cost of living for the incredibly small precentage making a "decent money" while completely ignoring the low standard and high cost of living for everyone else. As I said, I know of at least three icredibly competent system developers who made $200 or less a month. Do you think an entry level Dell support technician is going to make even close to that?
"So it's my fault that you respond with irrelevant quotes about sweat shops and I tell you that you are an idiot for bringing it up? Riight. So, let me try to analyze what your point is. I think that outsourcing tech work is good for the world, and you disagree."
Comments about sweatshops are far from irrelevant. What makes you think that tech support absolutely and positively will not be done in sweatshops? You've done nothing but dodge the issue, because you don't have an answer. Human rights elements are critical in any discussion of global economics, the fact that you consistantly ignore them doesn't mean they become any less of a factor.
"So, now lets discuss this then. Why is it bad? What is the problem with increasing the pay of a set of individuals in a country, to increase their GNP and therefore increase the purchasing power of those people?"
Proving yet again that you completely and totally miss the point. I'll explain yet again why this is bad, so this time try really hard to understand. Let's turn the situation around so you can perhaps think outside of your Anti-US propaganda based ideals.. the US is making goods cheaper than China and flooding China's market with them. The Chinese government makes less money off of the chinese companies because they aren't selling anything, because US products are cheaper. To protect it's companies, which in turn employ it's people, China impliments a tarriff designed to make American product X artificially as expensive as Chinese product X. The companies are then legally protected from fair competition by national law. Well, now company X gets a foothold back in the market and thinks of ways to make even MORE money. If they get Americans to make it for cheaper than they can produce it for, they can make a profit percentage unattainable by any foriegn based company, because they are protected by their government's taxation from true outside competition, because outsiders products/services are kept artificially high by import taxes. The chinese people then become "obsolete" becasue their governement gave more financial protection to the businesses than to the people.
I just bought a meal from McDonalds and it cost me $5.85. It cost me that much because supposedly that's what it costs for an American company to make money off of that particular product. If I could get my happy meal from Russia for $0.15 I wouldn't need to make much money. If it were possible to get happy meals from russia there would be a $4.70 cent tax placed on it.
"Tell me where my logic is flawed here, because I would love to hear it."
You don't have much logic to be flawed, becuase you missed the point of my argument completely, but your argument that the US outsourcing jobs can only be a good thing is also flawed. You proved it best yourself with your case study of outsourced tech support to t
I think a book like this has been due for awhile now. Google has more features than even they probably know about, but thankfully they don't try to cram them all into blocks all over the page. When you go to www.google.com you get a very accessible, very simple, yet still powerful site. Many people I know use nothing but the default google search, because it gets the job done. I can find out whatever I want about Linux from a basic google search. I can usually find it easier, however, with www.google.com/linux. I only head about it form word of mouth, I had never actually lookd for it. New services and tools are being added all the time, and I mean all the time:) check here to see some of the new and upcoming features. I think most of you would be suprised to find out all the ways google can make your life easier aside from just by being the best damned web search engine.
"Holy shit, go look at a job site. You are actually more likely to make much, much more. Seriously, go to a google site. I know people from/in China. They are programmers or business man who hire programmers. They all make good money, especially for the cost of living. It would be equivalent to about $55K a year, and a quick job search in a few places will confirm that you are full of shit. Feel free to provide some facts for the bullshit numbers you spew in the future, it actually helps your argument." Here's some real world statistics. And as far as providing some facts for bullshit statistics, I'd suggest you take your own advice. 3/5 of my development team is from China, and they all made $200 a month when they moved here 1998. You're correct in that the cost of living is quite low in china. That happens when 98% of the population lives in poverty.
"Yes, and you know, since we're talking about high-wage work it's completely relevant."
No we're not talking about high-wage work. We're talking about all types of work from all sectors of industry. Again you show that you do not possess any sort of critical thinking capacity. The high wage work is the project manager (me) and the low wage work is the peon visual basic programmer or the entry level tech support (you).
"Wow, you are so amazingly wrong, and apparently know this, and are attempting to salvage some sort of dignity here by bringing in sad memories of sweat shops and compare those to current development and tech support industries located out of the US?"
That was a very poor attempt at dodging the issue. Aside from that, sweatshops aren't memories for the chinese. Just because MSNBC stopped focusing on the Kathie Lee scandal doesn't mean sweatshops went away. You take the position that because you don't see or hear about them, they must not exist. Put your head back in the sand, ostrich, the real world is too scary for you.
"You have just proven yourself inadequate in this discussion past any reasonable doubt I already had."
There has been no discussion from your side. You've done nothing but hide from the facts with irrelevant scenarios and non-sensical arguments. You don't have a basic understanding of economics, politics, or humanities.
" Let me break it down to you again: You don't like it because you think America is some fantastic land of opportunity that nobody else should share the same quality of life because you feel your own life will be put in jeopardy because of it. You are a selfish fuck. Your comments about the US market being the most lucrative is because of fucks like you, who think that the only country that should have the same lifestyle as you, is the US and all other countries should be made to suffer because of your greed."
This is exactly what I mean when I say you are stupid. You can't even understand a signle, simple point. You are so ignorantly and incorrectly bent on this idea that I want to protect jobs from "them damn foreigners" you can't or won't actually understand what you read. My argument the whole time was not that I was against globalization. You are too stupid to see that. I was arguing that this is double standard globalization, the corporations are protected, but the people are not. If you're going to open up jobs to other countries without penalty, you need to open up trade with other countries without penalty. If you're going to tax imported goods, you need to tax exported jobs. You still haven't addressed that simple issue. So in your next psychotic rant, I'd like you to justify to me how this is globalization. Try focusing on what I say, and not the twisted, delusional ideas resulting from an obviously fucked up thought process.
"It doesn't matter, because the rules of economics are against you. You apparently only got a neat story out of A Beautiful Mind instead of actually understanding Nash's Equilibrium, because that is what this is."
This is the reason I roll my own PVR instead of buying a TiVo. I can do anything I want with my PVR, but a TiVo is somewhat crippled, in that respect. Rolling your own PVR can be a fairly big project, requiring some amount of work. The Lancaster seems like it's a step to bridge the gap between the two types. Ease of use, but the power of modularity, expansion, and (maybe?) interoperability between my non-PVR entertainment components. Perhaps instead of upgrading my PVR, I can just upgrade my file server, and get use out of it for both the PVR and any data storgae needs as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Only way I could find a decent server. Don't use anything from the first page until I'm done. :)
Here ya go
Seriously, Old computers don't have to run old software. Many oganizations aren't aware that they could pay a grand or two for a server and then run old machines as thin clients. Many people seem to have the idea that you must buy an individual powerhouse for each node, and this is a huge deterrent. When you throw in the costs of licensing proprietary software, hardly anyone can afford this type of solution. I just finished a project like that in a rural county in west texas. These kids were still learning logo on Comm64's. Now I have a few new Linux geeks that look up to me as some sort of Linux Guru God. That alone is worth the effort :)
"It might be a good thing if they started offering a pay version so there would be no ads."
They do this already. Look into it.
Not only did I have to reboot my linksys router every time I had more than 3 computers using the net simulutaneously, it died during a simple firmware update. I now use a freesco 386 with 5 ISA NICs, all parts and software free, and I also run PPPoE for authentication of my wireless hotspot. I hope cisco will up the level of quality on Linksys, or at least security. But the fact that you bought a Linksys router does not mean you have a cisco at half the price. Maybe when the new ones comes out..
If you want to see what I mean with Linksys sucking in general, scan a large range for port 8080 and try logging in with no username and the password as admin. Then you can go look at their internet connection and when you view the source all passwords are in plain text in older models and seriously weak encryption on newer firmare. The funniest part is that some of the Linksys AP's suggest that you should never need to change any settings. I don't know why anyone would suggest you leave the default password on your router.
Parties are being held in various cities around the world...
I don't think 10 guys doing a shot together over IRC counts as "parties in various cities",
You have every right to block port scanners just as they have every right to scan your ports. It may be your system, but you have it hooked up to a public internet with a public IP address. You do not own either of those, and by using them you are entering a social contract. You can't tell people on the street not to look at you just because you're naked, or think staring is rude. You can only either go home where you have privacy, or put some clothes on.
"Ok, I don't think you understand how open source works. Does redhat pay for the development of vim?, xawtv?(i'm using them now). The way you see it open source software wouldn't be created until a developer was paid to create it."
No, as I said, a majority of open source is a labor of love. Many other Open Source applications were funded by companies, for their internal use, and released out to the general public. They are not selling outher peoples software, not are they allowed to. They are simply redistributing it completely in accordance with the licensing.
"But this isn't the way it's being done now. By far most open source software is created by developers for free, then companies like red hat grab it package it and sell it."
Again you mistake free software for open source. Redhat doesn't sell xawtv or vim, they include it. When you "buy" redhat, you only buy the service and support, which is all RedHat sells. RedHat created an excellent easy to use install system that is used by tons of other distros, without charge.
"True there not slaves in that they don't have to do it, but yeah red hat gets software for nothing. Which brings me to my point. Companies are using free open source products in place of products that they would have paid for, money that would have gone to a developer."
So when did it become a businesses responsibility to ensure the career of developers? What is wrong with using something free if it is of equal quality? Should I start paying royalites to Francis Scott Keye's family every time I sing the star spangled banner? Where is the logic in the "People should have to pay for everything" mindset?
It took developers and engineers time and money to come up with protocols like TCP/IP, yet Microsoft just steals these people's work and puts it in their OS and sells it.
"This is not great because companies get for free what they would have other wise paid for, what would otherwise have been money in a developers pocket. Wouldn't it be better to make companies pay developers for their work?"
When a company pays you to write them a program it is THEIR program, not yours. When you write an open source, GPL'd program, it is YOUR program. That is the payment developers get for writing free software. I make good money at my job, but I'd like to make more. I'd rather help out a bunch of my fellow Linux geeks than make a little more money however. This is the spirit and attitude that drives open source and scares the crap out of closed source commercial vendors. We don't want compensation, we want credit. We want people to say "Gee thanks for writing me this program, it's ever so useful!", not "Gee this program would be useful, too bad it's so prohibitively expensive that only mega corporations could hope to implement such a solution."
"I think it would be great if as you say developers made a company pay them to develop that software, and to GPL it. I just don't see that, most open source software is also free software, software that I work with every day."
IBM, Dell, Sun, Redhat, Orcale, HP, and many other huge corporations throw tons of money behind open source development. The money goes into the developers pockets. You complain about redhat not having to pay for the software, yet you say you are using it right now. Did you pay the developers for their time? You're actually using the program, RedHat is just distributing it.
The problem as you see it, I think, is that you think open source, free software developers are being ripped off. This couldn't be further from the truth. As I said, there are rewards far greater than monetary for a developer, else you'd see Linus having a "pay for patch acceptance" program with Linux. The only other problem I could see you having with free software is that you are a closed source commercial developer and OSF and FSF are cutting into your bread and butter.
"Suppose I came to your house, found the door to be unlocked and decided to come in and take your stuff. Or if you object to me taking your stuff, let's say I just look around because I'm simply curious "
Jiggling your door handle wouldn't be illegal, I think that's a poor analogy though. It's more like I'm looking at your house and counting the number of windows and doors. Actually walking through the door or crawling through the window is where the illegality lies.
You are confusing port scanning and crack/hacking. You're making the assumption that finding an open port means finding an open hole, and that's pretty far fetched.
The argument you use would be better suited to those grey area hacking cases where there was no hack, just a default password or no password set, and the hacker walks in.
There is nothing wrong with scanning ports and seeing what services a particular server offers to the general public. It's not like it's circumventing any security measures, it's just using TCP/IP in a manner it was meant to be used in. This is like saying that p2p filesharing clients are in a gray market. There's nothing wrong with a p2p filesharing program, the problem lies with those that abuse it.
"Right, that's why I fork out a visa # everytime I visit freshmeat. Good luck getting redhat for free too."
That doesn't even make sense. I can't tell if you were being sarcastic or not. There are a few nonfree opensource projects on freshmeat, but not many. Besides that, freshmeat has nothing to do with open source or free software, other than being one of the many repositories for such software. You can download and use Redhat for free, without any charges, because it is free software. Most Unix variants are open source, but are nowhere near free. However, when you get one of these free apps (esp GPL) you are recognizing that there is no warranty and no gaurantee of support. This is how open source makes money, by supporting the application they create.
"I can list off the top of my head open source apps that I used just today vim, ant, and jboss. All are free of charge, all were expensive to develop, all are used by companies with out putting money in the hands of that apps developers."
Still you misundertand what open source mean. Software can be open source without being free, and can be free without having open source. All the software you listed is not only open source, it is free sopftware. The reason you're not putting money directly into the hands of the developer isn't because it's open source, it's because it's free software.
"So a company gets operating systems, and applications for free, then pays some one to just glue them together, great. Companies love open source, they get slaves to do the hard part(building the low level apps) then they get cheaper monkeys to glue the parts together. This is great how?"
The creators of open source aren't "slaves" as you seem to like to put it. No one is forced to contribute to open source. How is this different than companies paying for the low level apps and still having to hire a cheaper monkey to glue them together? How is this NOT great? Are you implying that companies should have to pay for OS and licenses and applications, or that there is something wrong with open source?
FURST PANTS BEETCHES!
"Oh but it gets much worse. Just think if some programmers will not only work for half your rate in this country, but instead will work for free!. Companies will just use these slaves to build most of their software, and pay the rest of us budget rates to glue these pieces together. Welcome to the open source world."
That was a very flawed analogy. First off, open source != Free. You're thinking of Free Software. There's quite a difference in the two. Open Source simply means you make you code open to those you distribute it to.
Second, free software != free work. While many of the applications out there are labors of love, many programmers are still paid to further develop their programs. Gentoo has corporate backing, Dan Robbins is working on it full time, and I bet his pay is pretty damn good too.
Third, companies can't use open source developers as slaves. As an open source advocate, I make my code freely available and I charged no one to do it, but if company X says "Hey, we need something to do this" I'm not going to code it for free, nor do I know ANY open source developers who would.
I think you have quite a misunderstanding of open source, free software, and how they work.
Spam needs legitimization. Hear me out, now, before you add that -1, Troll. By legitimizing spam we put ourselves in control. We need laws on a national level defining exactly what is valid spam and what is illegal.
We need the ISPs to work WITH the spammers ( or vice cersa). Make it trvial to filter, and only send it once. Give everybody a shared "Spam box", as place to go and see if they really need to acclerate their dialup to new levels, or a vacation, or whatever (I'm assuming 18" Penis and XXX TEEN LESBIANS will not be considered legit). We need stiff penalties to those who violate the law. We can't enforce the law in other spammer friendly countries, but we can enforce the law in our own. The company marketing should also be held responsible for violations, preventing American companies from just outsourcing their spam. Any spammer friendly ISP's either deal with their spammers or risk the entire range being blocked (voluntarily) by American ISPs. I know 99% of service providers would have no problem blocking out spammers voluntarily, especially if they are being good Americans while they are doing so. Let's not forget that as rapidly as it's changing, a majority of popular sites are American based. I know all you Norwiglians out there would probably drop your ISP if you couldn't get to slashdot just because your ISP supported spam.
The DMA has too much money to let spam die, and apart from the slashdot crowd a majority of people don't find spam to be a big problem in their daily lives (albeit mostly thhanks to us busting ass). Some people actually enjoy getting spam. I don't understand it either, but to each his own. As an option in a recent poll said, grey areas definately exist.
I think spam is a fact of life. Sometimes I get emails from business friends who include a small ad as their sig. We can't kill spam but we can change the face of it to be ever os less intrusive. We're going to have to compromise our "FUCK YOU AND YOUR GOD DAMN SPAM" attitudes if we plan on giving our credibility to our cause.
We want complete restriciton, and they want no restriciton. Somewhere in the middle there's a feasible solution for both of us.
I agree with what you are saying. But the reason we couldn't buy most of these things we have is because they are so incredibly artificially expensive. If I wanted to buy a super deisel 100mpg box car like are so popular in europe, I'd have to pay roughly the same as buying an American SUV. This is because we tax foreign imports coming into this country to protect corporations from the same kind of foriegn cheap labor competition that workers are facing. What I don't understand is why corporations are provided protection and not the people. I mean how is it so much worse for an Indian tech firm to replace an American tech firm, than an Indian worker to replace an American worker? Companies are reaping the benefits of cheap labor, while preventing companies based in those countries to do the same. I just don't understand this double standard. In a nation supposedly for the people, by the people, why is it that the corporations are the only ones being protected, and why are the being protected in an unfair manner?
Look at it this way, because we have minimum wage laws in America, and there are none in India, the company can hire out engineers, techs, manual labor, or whatever at a cheaper rate than I can legally compete with. I don't have the option to program for $4 an hour. I agree that it helps impoverished people worldwide, but I don't think American corporations should be allowed to treat foreigners any worse than they treat Americans. I think they should be forced to adhere to minimum wage, provide all benefits given to an american counterpart, including health care insurance, and pension. Global competition should be based on merits and qulity of work, not on the lack of labor laws or taking advantage of the financial chaos in still developing countries. Not only will this greatly increase the impoverished areas were work is outsourced, it will prevent American companies from taking advantage of people in need.
I don't see why they should enjoy the protection import taxes and such bring them against global competition when they have no penalty for exporting jobs. Tax imported goods, tax exported jobs. Don't tax exported jobs, don't tax imported goods. You can't have it both ways.. corporations want protection from countries without labor laws becase they can't compete with sweatshops or massively underpaid workers, but they also want to reap the benefits of those same workers. I don't see why my employers job should be any more protected than mine.
All of this information is searchable in google. By buying the book you are paying for the convenience of having everything consolidated right there in front of you, in a searchable (index) format. You could also go with a Safari subscription from O'reilly to acheive the same effect with a webpage.
There's was a book review of this same book about a week or two ago, wasn't there? I bought the book and have been pleased overall with it, but there wasn't really anything new or exciting, just a few tips and tricks. Note you can find most of these by going to www.google.com/linux and looking up tips and tricks. One example would be that you can find out who is hogging the most disk space using an alias for du, like this:
du -cks | sort -rn | head -n 10
Pretty simple, yet really effective. This book is full of little things like this.
Again, you do nothing but completely dodge the issue at hand. You are incapable of forming a coherent argument in any manner. You have not once addressed the simple fact that I can not legally work in this country for $4 an hour. Because of minimun wage laws non existant in other countries, I am by law unable to compete. You refuse to address this issue because you think anything that anything that is unfair to Americans is good for everyone else. You have not given any credibility to a single argument. You simply make unsubstantiated remarks, and when called on that you respond only with more unsubstatiated remarks.
"Each of these techs must have computers. They hire 3x as many techs, they sell 3x as many computers, licenses, phone systems. See how that works? Everybody sells more."
This is the dumbest logic I have ever seen in my life. They hire 3x as many techs and they sell 3x as many computers? Are computer manufacturers now exclusively selling computers to technicians? You also ignore the fact that those technincians can not hope to afford to buy machines from Dell, at prices Dell makes any sort of profit on. Dell is in the business of making money based on the value of an American dollar. Why sell 50 T-shirts for a $1 when you could sell one T-shirt fot $50? Your argument that the outsourced nation contributes to the company in a finiancial manner other than cheap labor is unfounded and without substance,
"And I can eat better than McDonalds on about a dollar a day in Morocco, what's your point? Or I can go to a tourist cafe and pay $5 for kooskoos. Or I can still go to McDonalds, and it's about 1/3 of the cost. In Japan, McDonalds and Starbucks cost more. That's the wonder of scaled and localized pricing! Amazing what these kids will think of next."
Thank you for again proving to the world that you are a complete and total idiot. Scaled localized pricing? I guess this just exists because of the natural order of the economy and not based on factors of import taxation, localized affordability based on labor laws or lack thereof, levels of taxation by municipality, providence or state, inflation, deflation, developmental status, healthcare state, welfare, or any other localized factors relevant to fair economic trade on a global scale. Each of your blanket assertations takes in no account for any of the obvious relevant factors. You make an inane comment, and hold it as a rule of economy.
"You said the US is a nation of the people. I said fuck your CDs. I was using the DMCA as another example of how the US is definitely not a nation of the people, but of the corporation. For instance; this whole thing you are objecting to is a push from corporations not from the people. And people can't stop it."
That's funny, because the DMCA has yet to be used successfully in terms of prosection. Each time it has actually been brought into court, the plaintiff has withdrawn charges, or lost. A law isn't unconstitutional until the supreme court deems it to be so. It has so far only been abused as a threat, and these "Small time" threats against these people "Who can do nothing about it" has prompted legislation to explicitly protect the rights of these people as well as legislation to ammend the supposed unconstitutional portions of the otherwise completley constitutional DMCA.
"I have already answered this; sweatshop workers will deliver lower quality of work."
I have already proven you wrong and absurd. You constantly take single case scenarios which are weak to begin with and bsae your complete argument off of that. Kathie Lee's line of clothing was of comparable quality to that work not done in a sweathsop. How is a sweathsop worker going to learn english? The same way anyone else would, that's a retarded question. You forget these people don't have a choice. If it is required of them to learn english and sound happy to feed their families, they will do it. You assertion that they are incapable shows your negative disposition on the human condition.
This is the true story (true story) of eight unrelated programmers picked to work on a Linux project and have their code made open. This is what happens when programmers stop being nice, and start being real.
Seriously, I could see this as being the next big reality TV series. I have no doubt that there will be some serious "static" between these people. What kind of leadership model is there going ot be? Are they just throwing them together and letting them work it out amongst themselves? I worked on a Linux game with my best friend, and we were at each others throats within a week and had to ditch the project before we killed each other.
"No, we're actually talking about tech support being outsourced. "
Again you miss the point that tech support is NOT high wage. Tech Support is the lowest rung on the IT ladder. Aside from that, while this article may focus on "high tech" jobs, this article was not the be all and end all of outsourced work in the US. I guess if it's not posted on slashdot, it's none of your concern, right?
"$600 * 12 is a whole lot more than $2500 you quoted, again, try to get some math. Just to quote the first person, from China. Spending $300 a month on rent, in a luxury apartment tends to make $600 last a lot longer."
I guess you don't understand the difference between average income and single case income. $3200 is not much more than $2500. You seem to really enjoy focusing on the low cost of living for the incredibly small precentage making a "decent money" while completely ignoring the low standard and high cost of living for everyone else. As I said, I know of at least three icredibly competent system developers who made $200 or less a month. Do you think an entry level Dell support technician is going to make even close to that?
"So it's my fault that you respond with irrelevant quotes about sweat shops and I tell you that you are an idiot for bringing it up? Riight. So, let me try to analyze what your point is. I think that outsourcing tech work is good for the world, and you disagree."
Comments about sweatshops are far from irrelevant. What makes you think that tech support absolutely and positively will not be done in sweatshops? You've done nothing but dodge the issue, because you don't have an answer. Human rights elements are critical in any discussion of global economics, the fact that you consistantly ignore them doesn't mean they become any less of a factor.
"So, now lets discuss this then. Why is it bad? What is the problem with increasing the pay of a set of individuals in a country, to increase their GNP and therefore increase the purchasing power of those people?"
Proving yet again that you completely and totally miss the point. I'll explain yet again why this is bad, so this time try really hard to understand. Let's turn the situation around so you can perhaps think outside of your Anti-US propaganda based ideals.. the US is making goods cheaper than China and flooding China's market with them. The Chinese government makes less money off of the chinese companies because they aren't selling anything, because US products are cheaper. To protect it's companies, which in turn employ it's people, China impliments a tarriff designed to make American product X artificially as expensive as Chinese product X. The companies are then legally protected from fair competition by national law. Well, now company X gets a foothold back in the market and thinks of ways to make even MORE money. If they get Americans to make it for cheaper than they can produce it for, they can make a profit percentage unattainable by any foriegn based company, because they are protected by their government's taxation from true outside competition, because outsiders products/services are kept artificially high by import taxes. The chinese people then become "obsolete" becasue their governement gave more financial protection to the businesses than to the people.
I just bought a meal from McDonalds and it cost me $5.85. It cost me that much because supposedly that's what it costs for an American company to make money off of that particular product. If I could get my happy meal from Russia for $0.15 I wouldn't need to make much money. If it were possible to get happy meals from russia there would be a $4.70 cent tax placed on it.
"Tell me where my logic is flawed here, because I would love to hear it."
You don't have much logic to be flawed, becuase you missed the point of my argument completely, but your argument that the US outsourcing jobs can only be a good thing is also flawed. You proved it best yourself with your case study of outsourced tech support to t
I think a book like this has been due for awhile now. Google has more features than even they probably know about, but thankfully they don't try to cram them all into blocks all over the page. When you go to www.google.com you get a very accessible, very simple, yet still powerful site. Many people I know use nothing but the default google search, because it gets the job done. I can find out whatever I want about Linux from a basic google search. I can usually find it easier, however, with www.google.com/linux. I only head about it form word of mouth, I had never actually lookd for it. New services and tools are being added all the time, and I mean all the time :) check here to see some of the new and upcoming features. I think most of you would be suprised to find out all the ways google can make your life easier aside from just by being the best damned web search engine.
"Holy shit, go look at a job site. You are actually more likely to make much, much more. Seriously, go to a google site. I know people from/in China. They are programmers or business man who hire programmers. They all make good money, especially for the cost of living. It would be equivalent to about $55K a year, and a quick job search in a few places will confirm that you are full of shit. Feel free to provide some facts for the bullshit numbers you spew in the future, it actually helps your argument."
Here's some real world statistics. And as far as providing some facts for bullshit statistics, I'd suggest you take your own advice. 3/5 of my development team is from China, and they all made $200 a month when they moved here 1998. You're correct in that the cost of living is quite low in china. That happens when 98% of the population lives in poverty.
"Yes, and you know, since we're talking about high-wage work it's completely relevant."
No we're not talking about high-wage work. We're talking about all types of work from all sectors of industry. Again you show that you do not possess any sort of critical thinking capacity. The high wage work is the project manager (me) and the low wage work is the peon visual basic programmer or the entry level tech support (you).
"Wow, you are so amazingly wrong, and apparently know this, and are attempting to salvage some sort of dignity here by bringing in sad memories of sweat shops and compare those to current development and tech support industries located out of the US?"
That was a very poor attempt at dodging the issue. Aside from that, sweatshops aren't memories for the chinese. Just because MSNBC stopped focusing on the Kathie Lee scandal doesn't mean sweatshops went away. You take the position that because you don't see or hear about them, they must not exist. Put your head back in the sand, ostrich, the real world is too scary for you.
"You have just proven yourself inadequate in this discussion past any reasonable doubt I already had."
There has been no discussion from your side. You've done nothing but hide from the facts with irrelevant scenarios and non-sensical arguments. You don't have a basic understanding of economics, politics, or humanities.
"
Let me break it down to you again: You don't like it because you think America is some fantastic land of opportunity that nobody else should share the same quality of life because you feel your own life will be put in jeopardy because of it. You are a selfish fuck. Your comments about the US market being the most lucrative is because of fucks like you, who think that the only country that should have the same lifestyle as you, is the US and all other countries should be made to suffer because of your greed."
This is exactly what I mean when I say you are stupid. You can't even understand a signle, simple point. You are so ignorantly and incorrectly bent on this idea that I want to protect jobs from "them damn foreigners" you can't or won't actually understand what you read. My argument the whole time was not that I was against globalization. You are too stupid to see that. I was arguing that this is double standard globalization, the corporations are protected, but the people are not. If you're going to open up jobs to other countries without penalty, you need to open up trade with other countries without penalty. If you're going to tax imported goods, you need to tax exported jobs. You still haven't addressed that simple issue. So in your next psychotic rant, I'd like you to justify to me how this is globalization. Try focusing on what I say, and not the twisted, delusional ideas resulting from an obviously fucked up thought process.
"It doesn't matter, because the rules of economics are against you. You apparently only got a neat story out of A Beautiful Mind instead of actually understanding Nash's Equilibrium, because that is what this is."
Actually
This is the reason I roll my own PVR instead of buying a TiVo. I can do anything I want with my PVR, but a TiVo is somewhat crippled, in that respect. Rolling your own PVR can be a fairly big project, requiring some amount of work. The Lancaster seems like it's a step to bridge the gap between the two types. Ease of use, but the power of modularity, expansion, and (maybe?) interoperability between my non-PVR entertainment components. Perhaps instead of upgrading my PVR, I can just upgrade my file server, and get use out of it for both the PVR and any data storgae needs as well.
How am I supposed to pretend I'm Dirty Harry weilding one of those things? No thanks..