If I've built a $100M system that then later is shown to have a $1M bug. I could pound myself that I cost the company $1M or I could be a bit more positive and say that I still made the company $99M.
I guess the hiring companies better find a good excuse. I expect that the legislation makes it illegal to discriminate against a whistleblower.
Still, for the kind of money that is involved, who wants another job? There's a lot of surf needs riding.
Putting a percentage bounty on things makes for a dumb law. Instead of encouraging whistleblowing at an early date (when less damage has been done), it encourages delaying the whistleblowing as long as possible to rake in the best rewards.
1)Get job at dodgy company. 2)Find out all about their dodgy dealings. 3)Blow whistle. 4)Profit!
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the whole reason for the whistle blowing law was to protect employees who want to come clean, not for them to make a profit.
The summary is wrong. ARM does not control the cellphone market, but merely provide a technology which others use. They own, and continue to develop, ARM cores.
What makes them different, and not monopolistic, is that they do not use the uptake of their cores to force other sales. They don't force anyone to use their software - you can equally use gdb or ARM or whomever's compilers. They make their debugger specifications public so that anyone can develop ARM tools.
I grew up in rural africa, though I was a privaleged white guy who went to university, studied computer science and have been a programmer etc for over 20 years now. I have lived outside of Africa for ten years now, but can still stumble along in two African languages. My life and values are seriously out of step with mainstream Africa, but at least I recognise this from actual experience - ie talking to real Africans.
I have an observation: most of Africa is based on subsistance agriculture. Most Africans don't have a bank account, electricity, running water or even access telephone (let alone a telephone in the house). In short, most Africans have no need for a computer.
It is the height of arrogance for western cultures to think they can "fix the world" by applying western technology and values.
Often the biggest problem when trying to set up service locations is to do so in a cost-effective manner. Then, one needs to be able to transport the goods...
By using UPS outlets, Toshiba makes it really easy to provide service points for customers and nails the transport issue too.
Cell will not replace two way radio for emergency services for a long time because two way radio can keep going after a an earthquake knocks out all the cell towers and the emergency services can still communicate when everyone is choking the network by phoning there friends to ask "Did you feel that?".
M$ has nothing new to release this year, therefore M$ will not permit there to be a show??? Is this a realistic scenario or is there a hole in my tin-foil hat?
The lack of drivers is not because Hurd is difficult, but because nobody is doing it. Linux has momentum that Hurd does not. Momentum builds further momentum.
Forced replication of work is silly since the OS with momentum will get the effort and the other OS will get nothing and will thus stagnate further. It would be great if there could be a compatability module for Hurd that would allow the Linux drivers to be used as-is.
QNX is a micro-kernel OS. I promise you it is very practical. Microkernels have certain benefits over monolythics. A lot of the cool stuff in Linux didn't get there because of what Linus did, but because someone "scratched an itch". If more people start "scratching their itch" while using Hurd, it will make advances. If you pulled the drivers out of Linux there would just be some boring CS stuff too.
The biggest problem with drivers etc is that nobody wants to duplicate work for many OSs. Having a "Linux driver comapatability environment" could make Hurd a viable place for experimenters to play in.
One of the biggest issues with Hurd does not seem to be the basic OS architecture, but rather the lack of support for various file systems, devices, PPP etc.
This could potentially be rectified by building a "File System Manager" and "Device Manager" that support the Linux device and file system models. Then, all Linux device drivers and file systems etc could be plugged into Hurd and used with little/no modification.
The benefit of an exercise like this is that it would push Hurd into "useful" space so that it would become worth putting effort into, and there would then be a microkernel OS with a rich set of code.
For all Linus' comments about "computer science masturbation", there is still a place for microkernels and they can be pretty damn efficient. Having a solid microkernel OS in OpenSource land is of significant value.
I find it hard to understand how John Doe can be found guilty, presumably by a court of law, when they can't even be identified. Wonder how they get John Doe to pay the fine?
How about contributing to GNU/Hurd instead? At least Hurd intends to oneday be a real OS and has a microkernel architecture.
I guess though it is also worth noting that while Minix was only designed for teaching OS concepts it has been used for RealWork. The same happened to Pascal. Nobody was ever supposed to write any RealCode in Pascal - it was also intended only as a teaching tool.
I've heard terms like this and calling him the pilot, but AFAIK he's not actually doing anything to control the flight and is just a payload... with the emphasis on "paying loads of $$$".
The whole point is not to make legal sense but to keep enough bafflement in there to confuse the "investors" and keep them hoping that there is still some reason why SCO stock should not be printed on toilet paper.
Slashdot Mirror
You must make the code freely (ie to anyone) available, but you may charge a reasonable fee for the service.
So now all those aliens that got sucked into black holes in the seventies will be back in future Startrek etc episodes.
If I've built a $100M system that then later is shown to have a $1M bug. I could pound myself that I cost the company $1M or I could be a bit more positive and say that I still made the company $99M.
Unless it has been loaded with the ability to be humiliated and bullied it's not much of a kid humanoid.
Still, for the kind of money that is involved, who wants another job? There's a lot of surf needs riding.
Putting a percentage bounty on things makes for a dumb law. Instead of encouraging whistleblowing at an early date (when less damage has been done), it encourages delaying the whistleblowing as long as possible to rake in the best rewards.
2)Find out all about their dodgy dealings.
3)Blow whistle.
4)Profit!
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the whole reason for the whistle blowing law was to protect employees who want to come clean, not for them to make a profit.
We could employ more programmers if we only wrote in assembly, or even better hex!
What makes them different, and not monopolistic, is that they do not use the uptake of their cores to force other sales. They don't force anyone to use their software - you can equally use gdb or ARM or whomever's compilers. They make their debugger specifications public so that anyone can develop ARM tools.
... as discussed bany times before. This fellow sounds far more pleasant.
I have an observation: most of Africa is based on subsistance agriculture. Most Africans don't have a bank account, electricity, running water or even access telephone (let alone a telephone in the house). In short, most Africans have no need for a computer.
It is the height of arrogance for western cultures to think they can "fix the world" by applying western technology and values.
The last great defiers were those "civilised nations": USA, UK,....
By using UPS outlets, Toshiba makes it really easy to provide service points for customers and nails the transport issue too.
Cell will not replace two way radio for emergency services for a long time because two way radio can keep going after a an earthquake knocks out all the cell towers and the emergency services can still communicate when everyone is choking the network by phoning there friends to ask "Did you feel that?".
... and sue him for infringement!
... and here in New Zealand there's a market for 70million MP3 players for sheep.
Weedkiller + Green paint. Mix. Apply.
M$ has nothing new to release this year, therefore M$ will not permit there to be a show??? Is this a realistic scenario or is there a hole in my tin-foil hat?
Forced replication of work is silly since the OS with momentum will get the effort and the other OS will get nothing and will thus stagnate further. It would be great if there could be a compatability module for Hurd that would allow the Linux drivers to be used as-is.
The biggest problem with drivers etc is that nobody wants to duplicate work for many OSs. Having a "Linux driver comapatability environment" could make Hurd a viable place for experimenters to play in.
This could potentially be rectified by building a "File System Manager" and "Device Manager" that support the Linux device and file system models. Then, all Linux device drivers and file systems etc could be plugged into Hurd and used with little/no modification.
The benefit of an exercise like this is that it would push Hurd into "useful" space so that it would become worth putting effort into, and there would then be a microkernel OS with a rich set of code.
For all Linus' comments about "computer science masturbation", there is still a place for microkernels and they can be pretty damn efficient. Having a solid microkernel OS in OpenSource land is of significant value.
I find it hard to understand how John Doe can be found guilty, presumably by a court of law, when they can't even be identified. Wonder how they get John Doe to pay the fine?
I guess though it is also worth noting that while Minix was only designed for teaching OS concepts it has been used for RealWork. The same happened to Pascal. Nobody was ever supposed to write any RealCode in Pascal - it was also intended only as a teaching tool.
I've heard terms like this and calling him the pilot, but AFAIK he's not actually doing anything to control the flight and is just a payload... with the emphasis on "paying loads of $$$".
oops! Did I really mean to do that!
The whole point is not to make legal sense but to keep enough bafflement in there to confuse the "investors" and keep them hoping that there is still some reason why SCO stock should not be printed on toilet paper.