All right, all you college types. Time to give something back to the society that has either given you so very very much or at least failed thus far to kill you. Go to your university library, and try to order Mao Zedong's Little Red Book. Preferably using inter-library loan, and preferably order it in the original Chinese. Knowing a foreign language has to be a red flag, right?
Response:
I'm going to go request it tomorrow! Everybody join in, and let's watch DHS crumble under the weight of a rather unusual slashdotting...
Is it something only the 14-18 year old crowd is into?
Definitely not. CEOs and high-ranking executives of some of the world's biggest companies blog. Blogging is very popular with software developers, who post all sorts of interesting observations, solutions to problems, etc. For example, I was recently struggling to work out how to share a Spring ApplicationContext across web applications in an app server. My first instinct was to store it in JNDI, but it turns out the class isn't Serializable, so you can't really store it in JNDI. I found the solution in some guy's blog, who spoke of the NonSerializableFactory class that JBoss provides. While I probably would have eventually stumbled into a similiar solution on my own, a blog saved me a lot of time, because someone chose to share their experience.
get sucked into publicly bashing the leader of the free world?
What does a story about George W. Bush have to do with the "leader of the Free World?"
Bush isn't a leader, he's a servant, just like all the other elected officials in the United States. His job is to serve us... "We The People" and all that.
Also, the "United States" != "The Free World." The United States isn't even the most free nation in the world, and we're becoming steadily LESS free with each passing day. In fact, by simply invoking the magic "T Word" the US government can now effectively do anything they want, regardless of what the Constitution says.
Arrest and indefinite imprisonment with no trial? Check. Torture? Check. Illegal Surveillance? Check. Secret courts with no oversight? Check. Internal passports / National ID? Almost there. Freedom is rapidly becoming an afterthought in this country, and people like George W. Bush are largely at fault.
I don't care if you like him or not, he's the president, have some respect for heaven's sake.
Respect has to be earned, and - speaking for myself - Bush hasn't done anything to earn my respect.
Didn't your mother teach you to be polite to your elders?
Being polite to the average old geezer walking down the sidewalk is one thing... standing idly by and saying nothing while GWB ass-rapes our country with no Vaseline is quite another. Personally I'm not interested in living in this Fascist Theocracy that Bush is trying to create.
But sometimes it's fun to go hang out with "the guys" from work. Although I guess this only applies if you're legitimately friends with your co-workers, instead of being "just" co-workers. Anyway, given my druthers, I'd like to work in a place where I genuinely like my co-workers; and that occassionally takes the crew out to dinner. Although I do agree with what someone else said: make it optional, and not a CLM to skip.
And to be considerate to folks like yourself, who have families and would rather go to dinner with their family than their co-workers, a good company should probably do a mix of all of the above: the occasional company dinner, occasional company lunch, and gift-cards every now and then.
More important than all that though, are two things a company should do:
1. make your employees feel like you consider them human beings, not numbers. Treat them with respect and as much compassion as possible. Even if it seems like it's costing the company money, the rewards will be in the long-term.
2. Pay your employees a fair salary. This might sound shallow, but at the most fundamental level, most people go to work for one primary reason: the paycheck. Yeah, specific individuals are sometimes motivated by other "touchie feelie" things besides money, but at the end of the day, paying your people what they're worth is the most obvious way to motivate them and incite loyalty.
(bonus item) 3. provide paths for advancement for technical folks, which allow them to continue to advance in "rank" and pay throughout their careers, *without* forcing a switch to management. Create titles and positions if you have to, ala the "Distinguished Engineer" or "Research Fellow" or whatever, that some companies use.
How could someone from a state that elected Strom Thurmond umpteen times be shocked by anything else its elections board does?
When I lived in NC for a short while it was always a pleasure to see the occasional "I'm from North Carolina and I didn't vote for Strom Thurmond" bumper sticker.
Strom Thurmond was from South Carolina, not North Carolina.
and can easily interfere with other people's ability to use it, just like radio.
And how exactly can my domain affect anybody else's ability to use this "public resource" you speak of?
There needs to be a way to contact you if there is a problem with your domain.
Why? And says who? What if I don't care that there's a problem with my domain?
The only scenario where any of this makes sense, would be if I were aggressively attacking someone else's net resource... but you don't even *need* a domain name to do that, just a 'net connection and an ip address. And if I'm attacking you, you can track me down by my ip address, regardless of whether I have published correct domain info or not.
Well you will have plenty of privacy in that casket when they send contaminants in the water, small tactical nukes in the airport and so on and so forth.
Apparently you are operating under the assumption that you will live forever... boy, do you have a big surprise coming.
I myself think this government is doing a piss poor job, but I don't think complete anonymity is the way to go.
It is not the government's job to protect you from any possible source of danger. For them to do so is essentially impossible. Anyway, the ultimate responsibility for your safety (or the safety of any individual) lies with you (or the individual in question).
Anway, that you cannot be required to identify yourself to anyone else is a fundamental right of free men. The parent post has it right, IMO. I'd just as soon see the terrorists "win" (whatever that means) befor seeing this country reduced to a caricature of itself, relative to the freedoms of the individuals which compose it.
One guy I worked with wrote a three page letter detailing the company and all senior management's flaws. Depending on how big the pond you live in is, this is not a good idea...
I dunno... I just resigned my job last Thursday; gave them 2 weeks notice, verbally, no letter at all. But they proceeded to ask me a lot of questions about why I was leaving and what things I'd do different in terms of retention (they've had some turnover problems lately, I make the 3rd person to leave in the span of about 2 months). So I told them as much stuff as I could (in truth there wasn't a lot to say, because my reason for leaving basically boils down to a great opportunity at a great company, making a lot more money).
Anyway, later that day my manager came up and asked me to write up all the stuff we talked about, as an actual "resignation letter." They want it, I think, as something to show executive management to justify some of the changes that they know they need to make (paying more, for example) in order to retain people.
Yeah, but that class-lib code is considered (at best) "pseudo-open" by most F/OSS advocates, because the license it's provided under does not meet the Open Source definition, nor (I believe) is it even close to GPL compatible.
That said, and as others have already pointed out, there are efforts underway (most notably, GNU Classpath) to create Java classlibs that are purely Free / Open Source.
The only part that isn't open is the actual Java bytecode compiler and executor.
Compilers aren't a problem, there are several open-source Java compilers, including the one built into Eclipse. And there are free runtimes as well, including SableVM, Kaffe, JikesRVM, JamVM, etc.
He didn't lose any Constitutional rights. The Constitution only regulates what the government can and cannot do... this was a private school. He (the student) freely chose Marquette, presumably knowing the terms of the "code of conduct" and presumably agreeing to them, in effect creating a contract between private entities. For Marquette to enforce their rules is perfectly legitimate, albeit (in this case) classless and abhorrent to anybody who values freedom. But he didn't have to choose Marquette, he could have gone anywhere.
Is it a ridiculous policy by the University? Yes... but did the student have his rights violated? No. At best the student may have a valid claim that a contract was breached, depending on the exact wording of whatever agreements were signed between him and the school, and how one interprets those agreements (and associated "stuff" like the Honor Code, Code of Ethics, blah).
I hope we can agree that while they are not legally bound to do so, at least at present, that it is certainly something that a university, of all places, ought to do.
Yes, precisely. And of course, the free-market being what it is, the student in question is free to pursue his dental education elsewhere... it's not like Marquette is the only university with a dental school.
"Stating that "duplicate stories are the future" of the software industry, Slashdot's President and COO Rob Malda announced that Slashdot will be opening its duplication software in a manner similar to Solaris 10. Slashdot is opening up the Slashdot Duplication System, Slashdot N+1 Dupe Management software, and Slashdot duplication tools, etc. - practically everything except News- hoping to lure more slashdotters and chief executive officers worldwide to use and deploy its duplication software."
8. A good anthology of H.P. Lovecraft stories. Closer to horror than sci-fi, but probably good stuff for teens to read.. I wish I'd discovered Lovecraft sooner.
9. 1984 by George Orwell. May result in the reader developing an aversion to statism and government, but hey..
10. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
11. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. I would recommend this *extra* highly if the would be recipient has been identified in his/her school system as "advanced" or "gifted" in any way and especially if he/she has been placed into a special curriculum for advanced students. May result in the reader developing a mild case of paranoia and a fear of being manipulated, but hey...
That's part of the problem. Everyone demands and unrealistically expects Super Man to walk through the door. Very, very few are willing to invest to create that person.
Point taken, but in our case I would't say we're looking for superman... we're just looking for somebody who is legitimately highly skilled in the areas we're looking for... eg, a real senior-level developer who can step in and contribute (almost) immediately. But a lot of people who are describing themselves as "senior developers" on their resumes do not come close to being what we consider "senior" developers. I don't think our requirements are unreasonable, personally, but I could be wrong.
That said, I (and several others in the organization) wish we could hire some of the "smart but green" types and educate / groom / train / apprentice / whatever them for the long-haul, but two factors are working against that... 1. executive managment hasn't given us the money for separate "junior" positions, and 2. our schedule kinda demands that we bring in people who can hit the ground running, for the openings we currently have.
Well, FWIW, I live in Chapel Hill, NC and work in Cary, NC... and the job market for IT folks here is what I would describe as "solid." No, it's not anything like it was when the dot com bubble era was raging, but there are plenty of jobs. My company is looking for two senior level Java developers and we've been interviewing for 3 weeks and only found one guy so far who was really qualified.. and he took another offer. Also, rumor has it that Motricity is looking for about 80 developers in this area, and at the Tri-JUG meeting on Monday night, Redhat announced they were looking for 17 Java developers. The monster.com and dice.com listing for this area have new jobs popping up daily.
I don't know how representative this area is to anywhere else, but around here there seems to be plenty of demand. As far as I can tell, all of the really good people are working. The candidates being sent to us by the recruiting companies are generally pretty much all what we would consider junior developers or just not very good. Unfortunately we don't have any budget for junior developer positions now so we can't hire some of the smart but green folks and "groom" them.
C'mon,/. posting a Nigerian scam as an article? What's up with that?
I haven't figured out what the angle on this one is yet, but I know there is one... maybe they're gonna ask us to come to Nigeria for a conference on eliminating scams, then kidnap us and hold us hostage? Hmm...
This is not and never will be The Prisoner. In taking its name it's getting attention, but not on its own merits.
Very true.
Unless it totally blows people away, they're going to have a turkey on their hands. It would've been better to have taken the original creative inspiration and made something new. You may copy a master, but you never be a master, unless you learn to stand up on your two feet and create something of yourself.
Yes, exactly. Stallman has principles and he stands by his principles; I feel like you have to respect him for that, if nothing else. Whether you agree with his positions or not, he seems to live and breathe the message that he's trying to spread, which is better than you can say for many people.
Stallman is consistent and not a hypocrite, that alone is rare in today's world.
(note: intentional over-simplifications included below, due to time constraints, use this comment at your own risk)
Parent has hit the nail on the head. Selling solutions and going "up the stack" is where it's at... If you can sell the components of "the stack" as part of a comprehensive solution, you're golden. IBM has the broad product line to cover almost everything an enterprise needs, and they may be the only company in the world who are as well positioned in that regard. Oracle is getting better in that area, with all their recent acquisitions, and Computer Associates has a broad product line, but neither manufactures hardware or has the consulting / services arm to match IBM. The main thing IBM doesn't have now is "applications" (think, HR, ERP, MRP, Financials, etc) but they have partnerships to be able to provide that stuff.
If some of you guys really want to make some money, put together a company to sell a complete "enterprise" solutions portfolio made up of open-source software, acquire SGI for hardware (their market cap is only about $112 million, and their last 10-Q mentions looking for an acquirer), and hire as many talented F/OSS developers and admins as you can before JBoss gobbles them all up. Then emulate IBM's model - hardware, software, services - but focus on the SMB market who don't *quite* need the high-end capabilities of IBM's software and servers.
Zonk has sent out another memo heralding the latest big development in the industry, as he sees it. This time it's web-based software using technology such as DUPES (that Slashdot 'invented but failed to exploit'). The Economist says 'As in previous cases, what is new is not the story itself, but the fact that Slashdotters are taking it seriously.' Commander Taco of Slashdot decided against writing a memo. 'Posting dupes is easy,' he says, whereas 'professional quality editing is a whole lot harder.'"
Slashdot Mirror
Seen on Slashdot:
All right, all you college types. Time to give something back to the society that has either given you so very very much or at least failed thus far to kill you. Go to your university library, and try to order Mao Zedong's Little Red Book. Preferably using inter-library loan, and preferably order it in the original Chinese. Knowing a foreign language has to be a red flag, right?
Response:
I'm going to go request it tomorrow! Everybody join in, and let's watch DHS crumble under the weight of a rather unusual slashdotting...
Is it something only the 14-18 year old crowd is into?
Definitely not. CEOs and high-ranking executives of some of the world's biggest companies blog. Blogging is very popular with software developers, who post all sorts of interesting observations, solutions to problems, etc. For example, I was recently struggling to work out how to share a Spring ApplicationContext across web applications in an app server. My first instinct was to store it in JNDI, but it turns out the class isn't Serializable, so you can't really store it in JNDI. I found the solution in some guy's blog, who spoke of the NonSerializableFactory class that JBoss provides. While I probably would have eventually stumbled into a similiar solution on my own, a blog saved me a lot of time, because someone chose to share their experience.
get sucked into publicly bashing the leader of the free world?
What does a story about George W. Bush have to do with the "leader of the Free World?"
Bush isn't a leader, he's a servant, just like all the other elected officials in the United States. His job is to serve us... "We The People" and all that.
Also, the "United States" != "The Free World." The United States isn't even the most free nation in the world, and we're becoming steadily LESS free with each passing day. In fact, by simply invoking the magic "T Word" the US government can now effectively do anything they want, regardless of what the Constitution says.
Arrest and indefinite imprisonment with no trial? Check. Torture? Check. Illegal Surveillance? Check. Secret courts with no oversight? Check. Internal passports / National ID? Almost there. Freedom is rapidly becoming an afterthought in this country, and people like George W. Bush are largely at fault.
I don't care if you like him or not, he's the president, have some respect for heaven's sake.
Respect has to be earned, and - speaking for myself - Bush hasn't done anything to earn my respect.
Didn't your mother teach you to be polite to your elders?
Being polite to the average old geezer walking down the sidewalk is one thing... standing idly by and saying nothing while GWB ass-rapes our country with no Vaseline is quite another. Personally I'm not interested in living in this Fascist Theocracy that Bush is trying to create.
But sometimes it's fun to go hang out with "the guys" from work. Although I guess this only applies if you're legitimately friends with your co-workers, instead of being "just" co-workers. Anyway, given my druthers, I'd like to work in a place where I genuinely like my co-workers; and that occassionally takes the crew out to dinner. Although I do agree with what someone else said: make it optional, and not a CLM to skip.
And to be considerate to folks like yourself, who have families and would rather go to dinner with their family than their co-workers, a good company should probably do a mix of all of the above: the occasional company dinner, occasional company lunch, and gift-cards every now and then.
More important than all that though, are two things a company should do:
1. make your employees feel like you consider them human beings, not numbers. Treat them with respect and as much compassion as possible. Even if it seems like it's costing the company money, the rewards will be in the long-term.
2. Pay your employees a fair salary. This might sound shallow, but at the most fundamental level, most people go to work for one primary reason: the paycheck. Yeah, specific individuals are sometimes motivated by other "touchie feelie" things besides money, but at the end of the day, paying your people what they're worth is the most obvious way to motivate them and incite loyalty.
(bonus item) 3. provide paths for advancement for technical folks, which allow them to continue to advance in "rank" and pay throughout their careers, *without* forcing a switch to management. Create titles and positions if you have to, ala the "Distinguished Engineer" or "Research Fellow" or whatever, that some companies use.
Fine, so just use Kubuntu instead.
How could someone from a state that elected Strom Thurmond umpteen times be shocked by anything else its elections board does?
When I lived in NC for a short while it was always a pleasure to see the occasional "I'm from North Carolina and I didn't vote for Strom Thurmond" bumper sticker.
Strom Thurmond was from South Carolina, not North Carolina.
I was also looking to build a tesla coil at the time but couldn't find a source of thin copper wire
You could have found plenty by taking apart an old TV.
(this was beforoe the interweb).
Beforoe the WHAT?!?!
I'm kinda glad I didn't find any.
Well, you might be dead of permanently disfigured if you had, but think how
much fun you would have had...
You are using a public resource
Which public resource is that?
and can easily interfere with other people's ability to use it, just like radio.
And how exactly can my domain affect anybody else's ability to use this "public resource" you speak of?
There needs to be a way to contact you if there is a problem with your domain.
Why? And says who? What if I don't care that there's a problem with my domain?
The only scenario where any of this makes sense, would be if I were aggressively attacking someone else's net resource... but you don't even *need* a domain name to do that, just a 'net connection and an ip address. And if I'm attacking you, you can track me down by my ip address, regardless of whether I have published correct domain info or not.
Well you will have plenty of privacy in that casket when they send contaminants in the water, small tactical nukes in the airport and so on and so forth.
Apparently you are operating under the assumption that you will live forever... boy, do you have a big surprise coming.
I myself think this government is doing a piss poor job, but I don't think complete anonymity is the way to go.
It is not the government's job to protect you from any possible source of danger. For them to do so is essentially impossible. Anyway, the ultimate responsibility for your safety (or the safety of any individual) lies with you (or the individual in question).
Anway, that you cannot be required to identify yourself to anyone else is a fundamental right of free men. The parent post has it right, IMO. I'd just as soon see the terrorists "win" (whatever that means) befor seeing this country reduced to a caricature of itself, relative to the freedoms of the individuals which compose it.
One guy I worked with wrote a three page letter detailing the company and all senior management's flaws. Depending on how big the pond you live in is, this is not a good idea ...
I dunno... I just resigned my job last Thursday; gave them 2 weeks notice, verbally, no letter at all. But they proceeded to ask me a lot of questions about why I was leaving and what things I'd do different in terms of retention (they've had some turnover problems lately, I make the 3rd person to leave in the span of about 2 months). So I told them as much stuff as I could (in truth there wasn't a lot to say, because my reason for leaving basically boils down to a great opportunity at a great company, making a lot more money).
Anyway, later that day my manager came up and asked me to write up all the stuff we talked about, as an actual "resignation letter." They want it, I think, as something to show executive management to justify some of the changes that they know they need to make (paying more, for example) in order to retain people.
Yeah, but that class-lib code is considered (at best) "pseudo-open" by most F/OSS advocates, because the license it's
provided under does not meet the Open Source definition, nor (I believe) is it even close to GPL compatible.
That said, and as others have already pointed out, there are efforts underway (most notably, GNU Classpath) to create Java classlibs that are purely Free / Open Source.
The only part that isn't open is the actual Java bytecode compiler and executor.
Compilers aren't a problem, there are several open-source Java compilers, including the one built into Eclipse. And there are free runtimes as well, including SableVM, Kaffe, JikesRVM, JamVM, etc.
He didn't lose any Constitutional rights. The Constitution only regulates what the government can and cannot do... this was a private school. He (the student) freely chose Marquette, presumably knowing the terms of the "code of conduct" and presumably agreeing to them, in effect creating a contract between private entities. For Marquette to enforce their rules is perfectly legitimate, albeit (in this case) classless and abhorrent to anybody who values freedom. But he didn't have to choose Marquette, he could have gone anywhere.
Is it a ridiculous policy by the University? Yes... but did the student have his rights violated? No. At best the student may have a valid claim that a contract was breached, depending on the exact wording of whatever agreements were signed between him and the school, and how one interprets those agreements (and associated "stuff" like the Honor Code, Code of Ethics, blah).
I hope we can agree that while they are not legally bound to do so, at least at present, that it is certainly something that a university, of all places, ought to do.
Yes, precisely. And of course, the free-market being what it is, the student in question is free to pursue his dental education elsewhere... it's not like Marquette is the only university with a dental school.
more important things to worry about?
"Stating that "duplicate stories are the future" of the software industry, Slashdot's President and COO Rob Malda announced that Slashdot will be opening its duplication software in a manner similar to Solaris 10. Slashdot is opening up the Slashdot Duplication System, Slashdot N+1 Dupe Management software, and Slashdot duplication tools, etc. - practically everything except News- hoping to lure more slashdotters and chief executive officers worldwide to use and deploy its duplication software."
Oh, and...
8. A good anthology of H.P. Lovecraft stories. Closer to horror than sci-fi, but probably good stuff for teens to read.. I wish I'd discovered Lovecraft sooner.
9. 1984 by George Orwell. May result in the reader developing an aversion to statism and government, but hey..
10. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
11. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. I would recommend this *extra* highly if the would be recipient has been identified in his/her school system as "advanced" or "gifted" in any way and especially if he/she has been placed into a special curriculum for advanced students. May result in the reader developing a mild case of paranoia and a fear of being manipulated, but hey...
12. Possibly any of Asimov's "Foundation" books.
13. LOTR or the Hobbit.
14. a good anthology of Edgar Allen Poe stories.
it's hard for me to say what might be appealing to a girl specifically. But relative to age range, I would suggest some stuff like:
1. the Madeline L'Engle "Wrinkle in Time" books
2. The Chronicles of Narnia
3. Some of the more sci-fi'ish "Choose Your Own Adventure" books
4. Any of the Tom Swift / Tom Swift Jr. adventures
5. The Mad Scientists Club
6. Any of the Doctor Who novelisations.
7. and while not exactly sci-fi, how about some of the "The Three Investigators" stories?
That's part of the problem. Everyone demands and unrealistically expects Super Man to walk through the door. Very, very few are willing to invest to create that person.
Point taken, but in our case I would't say we're looking for superman... we're just looking for somebody who is legitimately highly skilled in the areas we're looking for... eg, a real senior-level developer who can step in and contribute (almost) immediately. But a lot of people who are describing themselves as "senior developers" on their resumes do not come close to being what we consider "senior" developers. I don't think our requirements are unreasonable, personally, but I could be wrong.
That said, I (and several others in the organization) wish we could hire some of the "smart but green" types and educate / groom / train / apprentice / whatever them for the long-haul, but two factors are working against that... 1. executive managment hasn't given us the money for separate "junior" positions, and 2. our schedule kinda demands that we bring in people who can hit the ground running, for the openings we currently have.
Well, FWIW, I live in Chapel Hill, NC and work in Cary, NC... and the job market for IT folks here is what I would describe as "solid." No, it's not anything like it was when the dot com bubble era was raging, but there are plenty of jobs. My company is looking for two senior level Java developers and we've been interviewing for 3 weeks and only found one guy so far who was really qualified.. and he took another offer. Also, rumor has it that Motricity is looking for about 80 developers in this area, and at the Tri-JUG meeting on Monday night, Redhat announced they were looking for 17 Java developers. The monster.com and dice.com listing for this area have new jobs popping up daily.
I don't know how representative this area is to anywhere else, but around here there seems to be plenty of demand. As far as I can tell, all of the really good people are working. The candidates being sent to us by the recruiting companies are generally pretty much all what we would consider junior developers or just not very good. Unfortunately we don't have any budget for junior developer positions now so we can't hire some of the smart but green folks and "groom" them.
1) Jason X
2) Hellraiser: Bloodline
3) Leprechaun: In Space
C'mon, /. posting a Nigerian scam as an article? What's up with that?
I haven't figured out what the angle on this one is yet, but I know there is one... maybe they're gonna ask us to come to Nigeria for a conference on eliminating scams, then kidnap us and hold us hostage? Hmm...
This is not and never will be The Prisoner. In taking its name it's getting attention, but not on its own merits.
Very true.
Unless it totally blows people away, they're going to have a turkey on their hands. It would've been better to have taken the original creative inspiration and made something new. You may copy a master, but you never be a master, unless you learn to stand up on your two feet and create something of yourself.
Well said.
Yes, exactly. Stallman has principles and he stands by his principles; I feel like you have to respect him for that, if nothing else. Whether you agree with his positions or not, he seems to live and breathe the message that he's trying to spread, which is better than you can say for many people.
Stallman is consistent and not a hypocrite, that alone is rare in today's world.
(note: intentional over-simplifications included below, due to time constraints, use this comment at your own risk)
Parent has hit the nail on the head. Selling solutions and going "up the stack" is where it's at... If you can sell the components of "the stack" as part of a comprehensive solution, you're golden. IBM has the broad product line to cover almost everything an enterprise needs, and they may be the only company in the world who are as well positioned in that regard. Oracle is getting better in that area, with all their recent acquisitions, and Computer Associates has a broad product line, but neither manufactures hardware or has the consulting / services arm to match IBM. The main thing IBM doesn't have now is "applications" (think, HR, ERP, MRP, Financials, etc) but they have partnerships to be able to provide that stuff.
If some of you guys really want to make some money, put together a company to sell a complete "enterprise" solutions portfolio made up of open-source software, acquire SGI for hardware (their market cap is only about $112 million, and their last 10-Q mentions looking for an acquirer), and hire as many talented F/OSS developers and admins as you can before JBoss gobbles them all up. Then emulate IBM's model - hardware, software, services - but focus on the SMB market who don't *quite* need the high-end capabilities of IBM's software and servers.
Zonk has sent out another memo heralding the latest big development in the industry, as he sees it. This time it's web-based software using technology such as DUPES (that Slashdot 'invented but failed to exploit'). The Economist says 'As in previous cases, what is new is not the story itself, but the fact that Slashdotters are taking it seriously.' Commander Taco of Slashdot decided against writing a memo. 'Posting dupes is easy,' he says, whereas 'professional quality editing is a whole lot harder.'"