From the article: For example, wireless phone users might choose to be unlisted but willing to receive a short text message, sent through the directory service, from someone trying to contact them.
I can see this situation: 411: We cannot give out that phone number because it is a cell phone. Telemarketer: But I really need to contact them. 411: You could send a message to 4841234567@attws.com. Telemarketer: Thank you. I will do that.
The only text messages I receive are from ATT advertising their text services. The only text messages I sent were little romantic sayings to a girlfriend, but they did not do well because she could not discover how to read them. This was not entirely her fault: it was her first cell phone, she only had it one month, and Nokia buried the messages 3 levels into the menus.
-- Someone asked why cell phones do not have true caller ID. They only display the phone number, unless the number and name are in the phone book in the cell phone. I had asked ATT about this. They said that Verizon was refusing to let them into the local phone directories. I will believe anything evil about Verizon, but this seems silly: 1. Verizon cell phone customers have the same poor caller ID as ATT customers. 2. Every telemarketer, phone book publisher, and 411 operator has access to that list. I believe that the cell phone companies are just too lazy to build the system properly.
-- And good news for me: Verizon turned off my land line on WED MAR 12. On FRI MAR 14, I received a snailmail notice that they would shut it off on MAR 24 if I did not pay the $60 that was 20 days overdue. Today (MAR 21) they are probably trying to leave me a voicemail about the proposed shutoff.
I warned them last year that if they ever shut off my service again it would not be turned back on. Last year's shutoff was due to Verizon's computer problems. I was on auto-pay at the time, but they charged me to have the phone lines restored. When they would not refund the charges, I turned off one phone line and made the threat.
So they are permanently losing a customer. No more land lines for me. Yeah!
-- The Slashdot quote for this article was appropriately: The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get. I believe that summarizes the entire telecommunications industry.
Most Java IDEs and Lotus Notes needs 1024x768 just to have all the panels readable. MS Visual Interdev is much worse; most developers start with 1280x1024, but quickly switch to 1600x1200.
The IDEs need room for a: - object browser, - visual layout, and a - code editor. Other possibilities include a - project browser, and - quick reference.
I write Java using Notepad or vi, but I still wish for more vertical space so I can read many lines of code at once. I wish my monitors had the ability to turn sideways. They can do 1920x1440. 1440x1920 would be better for programming. But 60lb 21" monitors are not easily to position on their side.
Call waiting is rude. Voicemail and answering machines allow for us to be polite.
Answering machines are for when you are not near your phone. They cannot be used with cell phones. It is a nice way of saying "I am not here, but your planned interruption of my life is important so I'll listen to your message later."
Voicemail is for when you are not near your phone, or are on the phone. It is a nice way of saying "I am busy at the moment, but your planned interruption of my life is important to me so I'll listen to your message later."
Call waiting is for when you are busy. You tell the person you are with that they are not the most important person in your life. You check the new caller. Then you probably tell them that they are less important to you than the person to whom you were already speaking. It is almost impossible to use without being rude to at least one person. There are exceptions, such as interrupting gossip to take a call from work, or interrupting work to take a call while your child is at the hospital, but they are rare. Most people think that an incoming call must be answered. Many people seem confused if you are not waiting patiently when/if they remember to switch back to you. The answer to "Can you hold a moment?" should usually be "No."
I am sorry that you believe that hearing your voice at the moment you decide to allow it to be heard is the most important action any of your acquaintances could possibly do. Maybe if you dealt with more people you would understand the uses of technology. Maybe if you understood modern technology you would deal with more people. And if you have a system for receiving messages, and never retrieve them, then you are incredibly rude: having the system implies that you will listen to the message, so you are lying to your acquaintances. (Of course they probably will not "deal with you" again because they are still waiting for you to call back.)
Agreed. Windows is a generic name. Microsoft knows that when they threaten a lawsuit, the other company should start running away. Every so often Goliath meets David.
You should not call Lindows a stupid name. They used a proven algorithm for naming computer companies.
Lindows = Linux + Windows Microsoft = Microcomputer + Software
Lindows could lose its trademark if people start referring to all windowing systems on Linux as "lindows". Lucking we usually refer to them as X-Windows, KDE, or GNOME, thereby protecting the future of this trademark.
Microsoft could lose its trademark if everybody started to refer to all poorly written software as microsoft. Since MS is the primary producer of bad software, when we refer to microsoft software, we are always referring to Microsoft(TM) software. So their trademark will easily outlast the company.
MobilExxon pays some developers to create software that helps MobilExxon. And they release the software as OSS. Shell Oil notices the release and implements it.
1. MobilExxon still has the application. 2. MobilExxon implemented the application first, and so gained the advantage of using it longer. 3. The application exactly models MobilExxon's business processes. Shell Oil may need to modify it to work with their business processes. 4. Any changes/improvements Shell Oil makes will be available to MobilExxon. 5. When MobilExxon buys Shell Oil (or v.v.), software integration is easier since they are using the same applications. 6. The same people can work on the software at both companies. Initially there may be a premium for the original developers. Since the software is on its way to being an industry standard, there will soon be many people trained to use (or modify) the application.
Software should not be a point of competition between MobilExxon and Shell Oil. While having better software may give a short advantage, their competition should be about drilling for oil, shipping oil, processing oil, and selling oil and its derivatives. Better software may lower the operating costs of all the companies, but that makes the world a better place.
To argue against myself, there is a rather famous case where lack of software was the cause of death. Walmart, Target, and the other retail stores that implemented good software were able to compete more efficiently. Kmart saved money by not spending on software in the 90s; now they are bankrupt. But Walmart could have open-sourced their applications; Kmart still would not have spent the money on the hardware to implement it. Refusing to look forward remains non-competitive, regardless of the availability of seers and software.
There was also the major consolidation of banks in the late 90s. Those banks that had not become Y2K compliant asked the ones that had spent the money on the software to buy the non-compliant banks. If their software was open-sourced and industry-standard, the cheap (as in "would not spend money on software") banks could have survived. Is the world better without those banks? Maybe, but I prefer more competition. Would those banks have had problems anyway? Probably: refusing to do anything about something as well-known as Y2K shows a competitive spirit worthy of a Darwin Award.
I believe that outsourcing is sometimes a necessary evil for when a company is small and the effort required large. Payroll should be outsourced until the company can afford a fulltime accountant. Operating systems and applications should be outsourced (or bought from a closed-source supplier) until (and only until) enough resources can be dedicated to bring it in-house. Linux and OSS allow companies to share the creation of resources requiring very large efforts. The corporate software industry will disappear as soon as all of these efforts can be brought in-house.
You have to be persistent. When you call several times, and take up their phone time, it hurts the call center's statistics. And eventually you may find someone who understands computers.
The support center where I worked closed in 1998, and the people scattered. I was long gone by then. My girlfriend at the time worked there too and made certain that I did not maintain friendships with any of the others.
Most of the support people had never opened a case. They just searched four applications for the answer. (Integrated tools? From Compaq? Just type it once and copy/paste it into the others. Then fix the formatting because they all use different syntax.) Their search tools were better than Compaq's web site, because they could contain information that would get Compaq sued if it was publicly available.
Like the power supplies for the towers. One of the extra plugs for hard drives was wired wrong and would fry hard drives. They knew about this from the pre-Win95 900 series. They used them in the 9500 series that were being released when I started in 1995. Before they started selling the 9200 and 9600 series in 1996, they updated the support documentation so we knew they were still using the bad power supplies. I wonder how much this cost the hard drive manufacturers over the years that Compaq was the top consumer brand and hard drives were still small enough that you needed two or three. (Hey Seagate! Maxtor! Western Digital! Want some money?) Let's forget all the frustration from people unable to get their new hard drive to work: can you really prove the heart attack was caused by bad hardware? (I meant in the computer.)
--- I used to love Supermicro mobos. I have one each P55CM, P6SBA, and P6SBU in systems within my arm's reach. I never tried their dual processor mobos. Win98SE wouldn't use the second processor, and Linux runs fast enough for my uses without it.
I agree the article should have looked a bit more professional. Maybe the writer should haved used Word or FrontPage? (Joke! It was a joke. I'm sorry.)
IBM bought Lotus in 1994, so count them as one company. Or add Tivoli as another closed source 'company'. You could add Oracle, SAP, and many others to your list.
MS did take BSD and released it as Xenix. BillyG was pushing Unix as the best thing in operating systems back in 1989. After his engineers informed him that they had bought something that could compete with Unix, he sold it to... what's their name now? Was SCO Xenix for a while in the early 90s, then Caldera? I forget.
Has MS ever developed anything? (Besides profits.)
There is another business case. It does not involve profit from software sales. It is about business.
Software was originally written by companies to make that company better able to do its primary business. An automobile manufacturer uses software to make and sell automobiles. A retail store uses software to assist selling merchandise.
All the "business cases mentioned by OS proponents are" about how to make money selling software.
But what if most software was developed internally? - What if the programmers shared with programmers from other companies to ask for help? - What if it was easier to maintain the software publicly than to pass around copies every time you had an issue? - What if it meant you received fixes for things you had not encountered yet? - What if it meant you received fixes for things you had not NOTICED yet? (Like that bug that affects payroll.)
This is the world of GPL open source applications.
We need an application.
We download a database program.
We build our application.
We realize the database is missing a feature.
We add the feature.
While programming, we notice a bug.
We fix the bug.
Our application does exactly what we want, and we send our changes back to maintainers of the program.
?Profit? There is no profit from the software sale. The only benefit is that the company has the application that allows it to compete better.
The programmers may have been a consultant, so maybe they profited. Or an employee, who got paid. Or a student, who gained experience and a line on an rather empty resume. Or a hobbyist, who had fun.
It would be nice if the company sent a few dollars to the program maintainers or mirrored the site, but it cannot be required. I doubt there is money there. The program maintainers COULD sell their services to help with implementation. But so could anybody else. This is where your four business models fit.
But none of this is necessary to make open source a good investment for a company. Even if the company is the only source for improvements for years, eventually someone else may start to use the software (such as the company your former programmers join. Programmers hate solving the same issue twice.) And if they use it, they will add value. (If you fork the code, you lose the benefits of what everybody else is doing. If there is any development progress, you quickly lose the ability to apply your patches to the maintained version.)
Open source is about programming to support business models that are not based on selling intangibles like software. That is why companies that are completely based on selling software will do anything to destroy it. That is why companies that have trouble selling software packages are embracing it. That is why every non-software company should be embracing GPL open source software whenever they can. And they outnumber the software companies.
--- About the financial value of software, there is none. Software's value is what it does to help you. Hopefully it helps your primary business make money. (Even if it is just the extra alertness from walking and getting coffee every time you need to reboot.)
Imagine if information transfer was free, because there is no method to record it so it has to be person to person, or because something like the internet removes the cost of the transfer. With the personal method, I can tell you an idea, or sing you a song, for free. With the internet, I can send you a million word idea, or send you a recording of an opera, for free. Words went from spoken to written to printing-pressed to websites over a very long period, but music and 2D video have only had about a century between the ability to record and the ability to freely transfer. The companies that were created to deal with the difficulty in distribution are complaining loudly now that they are obsolete.
You can put artificial constraints around software, music, and other intangibles, but this is not good for society. The whole patent system was created to make sharing easier. Today was built on yesterday, and tomorrow will be built on today, if we remember what we did today. Most examples of creativity, whether software, music, or doodles, is thrown away after a very short period. The example of creativity with music is the performance. Recording it allows me to share it with others. If I do not record it, it is lost forever. If I record it and bury it in the backyard, it is useless. Only by sharing can others improve on my work. This goes double for software: you probably cannot improve my songs; you can probably improve my programs.
Ideas are free for those who can hear them. Stop trying to silence them to increase the scarcity so you can increase your compensation. The world that requires no new software is a world without progress.
I was the one of the top technical people for Compaq support at one of the 5 centers from 1995 to 1996. This was during the release of Windows 95. I still have a ton of my own documentation from those days. I thought about publishing it, but it would be work to make it presentable. Sometimes I notice my writing on the Compaq and Microsoft support sites, although they are nice enough to change every letter and even the length of my name.
There are a couple of problems with your story:
1. We never worried about someone opening the case. Half the hardware repairs were customers playing Break-It-Myself, but we fixed it anyway for the goodwill. Yes, there was a limit of 2 cup-holder replacements, but if the customer was noisy enough they might get a third.
2. We would not/could not replace a capacitor. Call us with a motherboard with a burn mark (or any other easily identifiable problem), and we are going to send a replacement motherboard. Most of the A+ certified technicians that would be sent to install it don't know how to open a case, never mind use a soldering iron.
3. The serial number is on the case. You do not need anything else for warranty work.
It is rather easy to prove that support centers cannot last. As soon as someone learns enough to be useful, they find a job where they are not tied to the phone. Occasionally the economy dries up and they get some experienced people, but nobody is buying new stuff, so they get less calls and need less people. Compaq solved these issues by shutting down the centers often, and opening new ones. Just insist that you are computer literate and get transferred until you talk to a computer literate support person.
I cannot believe you used MS as an example of American software design? Can you prove they designed ANYTHING?
If you want examples, point to IBM in the NorthEast and Colorado, or the game companies in Maryland and around San Francisco. Most of the big name software products are still completely written in the US; the rest are in Canada and Europe. Would most slashdotters know the name of any software package produced primarily in India?
From my experience, most of the design work (specification writing) is still done here in the US. Then the first draft of the code is written in India. Then the project falls apart because nobody here can get the software to run, and it is swept under the carpet. [OK. I usually write code, or lead projects with Americans, Canadians, and a few Europeans. Just lucky? Or is it because I discriminate, willing to turn down projects if I have no confidence in the management?]
(Probably not first post since I waited read both of the stories first. Also, my post is from a nerd's perspective, even though the article was about many business functions, not just IT.)
I am happy we are moving the support centers away. While they have given many Americans the foot in the door, it is boring work that doesn't fit the American short attention span. I believe that support centers cannot survive in the US, because as soon as someone is trained, they must be promoted to management or will leave for a better job. Very few people are patient or masochistic enough to stay in a support position for more than 12 months.
"mind-numbing digital toil, like writing software code"
Those who believe writing software is mind-numbing should stay out of the business. People whose primary motivation is the money are going to colleges and certificate institutes, learn just enough to get a job, then complain about it. Most programmers with talent just understand computers, would rather have the manual than training, and can outproduce ten of the money-seekers. We program for 20 hours straight because it is what we love to do. But the world needs more techies than are available, so most companies must be (and would rather be) satisfied with 50 mediocre programmers than 2 good ones.
I do not worry about companies who are willing to outsource the information infrastructure, because:
Outsourcing a critical business function shows the company is ready to start the slide into oblivion. I want my work to last. Building software for one of these companies does not achieve my objectives.
Companies hire me because they want something done correctly. Companies that are willing to let foreigners over whom they have no control make critical business decisions are not looking for best solutions, and will never hire me.
I feel sorry for everybody trying to break into the business.
I do not feel sorry for everybody who was will to put up with the "mind-numbing" work just for a ton of money. Although my performance-tuning business may suffer, the world will be a better place.
OTOH, companies were still complaining about the lack of IT people even last year when the market "was slow". I believe most of the issue was that companies decided to lower the pay rates until we decided it was better to take a year off than work.
Microsoft has to extend their product support because at 3 years they have usually fixed enough bugs that companies can start to use the software. If they promised not to fix any more bugs, no one would ever install their software.
But DNS servers and print spoolers that have already been running for several years do not need support from RH. In the rare case that an upgrade is needed (for a good business reason such as new abilities or a security fix,) most linux administrators can easily handle it.
This announcement means two things to me: 1. RH will no longer maintain the lists of fixes/upgrades for me unless I download/buy a recent version. 2. RH will no longer produce and test binary installs for me. (Most of the software we use is available as RPMs from the developers anyway.)
Oh well. I may have to stay current by checking ten websites instead of one.
I wish it was around 20 years ago. (Of course I wish the internet had been around 20 years ago.)
- How To's such as "How To Tape your glasses together so they break cleanly when you get beat up" - Discussions about the spending time at the book stores and libraries. - Jokes that require knowledge of algrebra, geometry, and basic physics. - Online D&D games, forums... - Any way to get this past the censors?
My coworkers made me do all the design and most of the programming, while promising to test, write the documentation, and keep the client distracted so I could get the project finished. They felt that I should write all the code just because I knew more algorithms, designed better applications, and could code more in an hour than they could in days.
This is not a good thing. It meant that if there ever were any problems with the applications, I would be the only one who could maintain it. Most other "developers" could barely understand the code, even though it was fully commented, and usually written to be understandable (long variable names and extra lines if it helped.)
Luckily (at least everybody tells me it is luck) none of my applications ever seem to need maintenance. Occasionally they get expanded, but the hooks for the expansions are always visible to the new programmers. But I keep getting told that this is just luck and someday code of mine will require changes that I did not anticipate. I really wish this would happen soon so I could make some money from the maintenance. ===
On the other hand, I disagree with hiding your source. - I learned that my programming skills were good when others asked if they could use my functions. How do you know your code is good if no one else has seen it? - And my skills improve when others criticize. Even if we do not change the algorithm for this project, it may help me on the next one. (Never recode unless there are provable performance benefits.) The worst programmer you know may know one trick that you don't; and that trick may improve a program or save you hours of programming someday.
I hate waiting until I can share the source for my current project so I can listen to the oohs, aahs, and boos.
If these products (MS-DOS, Win3.1, Win95, NT3.5) are passed their EOL, then:
1. MS will no longer supply on-line help. 2. They cannot be bought.
#1 means that MS can clean out their web servers, saving tons, since hard drives are so expensive now. Of course with billions of bug reports that may actually be costing MS something. (Now if they could just post a few of the fixes...)
Does #2 means these OSes are in the public domain? Microsoft no longer wants money from them? Isn't the point of copyright that the owner can collect money for the use of the work? Since MS doesn't want money for them, they are free!
Personally, I've already paid for my MS (usually in lost work), and use RH on my other PCs, but we had an article here in the last year about how MS was beating up some charity that was distributing old PCs because they didn't pay licensing fees for DOS. Now they won't need licenses! This is a good thing.
I was absolutely thrilled when we got a state-of-the-art 386Mhz PC and I could compile in only 30 minutes. I still did the design work on paper, then programmed it, then reviewed it. Then compiled during lunch, preferably on a different PC. If the compiler did produce an error, I would fix it on my development PC, but would probably wait until I had more work finished before compiling again.
So compile the piece being developed and then unit test it rather than recompiling the entire project. Full builds should rarely be done more than once a day. It may only be ten minutes to rebuild the entire project, but that should be followed by at least a few hours of integration testing, which provides the ToDo list for more development. Errors in the code are BUGS. Take the time to code it right the first time.
Have you read about any software development methodologies? Most of them recommend that you review the code manually, rather than depend on the compiler. The old "Code Complete" strongly recommended it, and the new Extreme Programming suggests paying someone to review your code as you type. Compiling should be the last step before you hand off the code to QA, not part of the development process.
May I assume that 170,000 lines of code is not being developed completely by one person? So who approves the changes to the "high up" header files? Who tests it? What tracks what is affected by each change, and who verifies that each affected piece still works? Why do YOU need to recompile the entire project more thn once a day?
I am also assuming you understand what you are programming. If you really need to see "hello world" on the screen to know what the code should do, your programs may suffer other problems, such as lack of design, which is unacceptable outside of Redmond.
Back to the topic (or rather, I guess I should say something about the main article):
I have friends who are still happy with Pentium133s, since all they do is email, browse, and occasionally edit pictures. Of course high end graphics require better processors. The latest games have us buying the latest PCs. FPSs have been acceptable at almost movie quality for a while. But editing a video with a Pentium500 is painful. Movie-editing is about the only app left to push CPUs.
Now that the Intel-AMD war has made the 2Ghz processors really inexpensive, they can sit back and collect some supplies before charging into unneeded territory. I don't mind.
Shopping carts with computers need to be integrated with an application that makes them useful to customers.
Discounts are nice. They attract the poor and the bored. Neither are our typical technology-savvy customer who will come to THIS store because they have the computerized shopping carts.
Off-topic: Why are Pepsi products on sale last week, Coke products this week, and Pepsi next week? Are these rotating sales actually generating business, or are they just traditions? I sometimes drive 25 mins to go to a store that doesn't have sales (or a "discount" card) but I always bring home more goods than my local shopping trips (mostly because of the travel), but the total cost is about the same as my local shopping trips. Back to the topic...
The reason I will use these shopping carts (and maybe even carry one of those damned cards) is if it helps me shop.
I want a web site where I can track my needs. Add a turkey and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. Have it automatically add a gallon of milk every 9 days. (Notice that recurring items should be a basic requirement for the system.)
My wife could add to the list. Actually she would probably be the one managing it. I am more of an impulse buyer. This way I could not forget the essentials. (Cell phones work great only if I remember to call, she answers, and she happens to remember something I forgot during the 30 secs we are talking.)
Then have the checkout remove the items from the list, and keep the list of what I bought for a week. So I won't buy another gallon of milk the next day. (It has happened.) So my wife stops at the store and doesn't buy the stuff I am unpacking at home. (It has happened.)
Anything that a store adds to the shopping experience should be about the shopping experience.
So the specifications for the system are: Input from home - web site
- Add/remove items with frequency rate in days for recurring items. A frequency rate of zero means it is a one-time purchase. - an application to work off-line (open-source so we don't fear the software analyzing our hard drives.) - an application to sync with a palm computer. Location-sensitive shopping carts - alert you when you are near a product you need - show your lists:
- Remaining items needed.
- Items in cart.
- Items bought recently.
- Special deals based on customer profiling. - a price-checker. (The human resource savings from not putting price stickers on every item may quickly offset the cost of the system. Keep the shelf pricing for comparison shopping.) Application-aware cashiers - Remove purchased items from the web-accesible list.
This will probably start as a chain-specific system, but I would expect consumers to demand that their list can be synched between chains, at least from the software at home if the chains refuse to use cross-company system. I'd expect it quickly from us developers even if the chains do not provide the software.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
For example, wireless phone users might choose to be unlisted but willing to receive a short text message, sent through the directory service, from someone trying to contact them.
I can see this situation:
411: We cannot give out that phone number because it is a cell phone.
Telemarketer: But I really need to contact them.
411: You could send a message to 4841234567@attws.com.
Telemarketer: Thank you. I will do that.
The only text messages I receive are from ATT advertising their text services. The only text messages I sent were little romantic sayings to a girlfriend, but they did not do well because she could not discover how to read them. This was not entirely her fault: it was her first cell phone, she only had it one month, and Nokia buried the messages 3 levels into the menus.
--
Someone asked why cell phones do not have true caller ID. They only display the phone number, unless the number and name are in the phone book in the cell phone. I had asked ATT about this. They said that Verizon was refusing to let them into the local phone directories. I will believe anything evil about Verizon, but this seems silly:
1. Verizon cell phone customers have the same poor caller ID as ATT customers.
2. Every telemarketer, phone book publisher, and 411 operator has access to that list.
I believe that the cell phone companies are just too lazy to build the system properly.
--
And good news for me:
Verizon turned off my land line on WED MAR 12. On FRI MAR 14, I received a snailmail notice that they would shut it off on MAR 24 if I did not pay the $60 that was 20 days overdue. Today (MAR 21) they are probably trying to leave me a voicemail about the proposed shutoff.
I warned them last year that if they ever shut off my service again it would not be turned back on. Last year's shutoff was due to Verizon's computer problems. I was on auto-pay at the time, but they charged me to have the phone lines restored. When they would not refund the charges, I turned off one phone line and made the threat.
So they are permanently losing a customer. No more land lines for me. Yeah!
--
The Slashdot quote for this article was appropriately:
The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
I believe that summarizes the entire telecommunications industry.
Visual developers need high resolution monitors.
Most Java IDEs and Lotus Notes needs 1024x768 just to have all the panels readable. MS Visual Interdev is much worse; most developers start with 1280x1024, but quickly switch to 1600x1200.
The IDEs need room for a:
- object browser,
- visual layout, and a
- code editor.
Other possibilities include a
- project browser, and
- quick reference.
I write Java using Notepad or vi, but I still wish for more vertical space so I can read many lines of code at once. I wish my monitors had the ability to turn sideways. They can do 1920x1440. 1440x1920 would be better for programming. But 60lb 21" monitors are not easily to position on their side.
Call waiting is rude. Voicemail and answering machines allow for us to be polite.
Answering machines are for when you are not near your phone. They cannot be used with cell phones. It is a nice way of saying "I am not here, but your planned interruption of my life is important so I'll listen to your message later."
Voicemail is for when you are not near your phone, or are on the phone. It is a nice way of saying "I am busy at the moment, but your planned interruption of my life is important to me so I'll listen to your message later."
Call waiting is for when you are busy. You tell the person you are with that they are not the most important person in your life. You check the new caller. Then you probably tell them that they are less important to you than the person to whom you were already speaking. It is almost impossible to use without being rude to at least one person. There are exceptions, such as interrupting gossip to take a call from work, or interrupting work to take a call while your child is at the hospital, but they are rare. Most people think that an incoming call must be answered. Many people seem confused if you are not waiting patiently when/if they remember to switch back to you. The answer to "Can you hold a moment?" should usually be "No."
I am sorry that you believe that hearing your voice at the moment you decide to allow it to be heard is the most important action any of your acquaintances could possibly do. Maybe if you dealt with more people you would understand the uses of technology. Maybe if you understood modern technology you would deal with more people. And if you have a system for receiving messages, and never retrieve them, then you are incredibly rude: having the system implies that you will listen to the message, so you are lying to your acquaintances. (Of course they probably will not "deal with you" again because they are still waiting for you to call back.)
Agreed. Windows is a generic name. Microsoft knows that when they threaten a lawsuit, the other company should start running away. Every so often Goliath meets David.
You should not call Lindows a stupid name. They used a proven algorithm for naming computer companies.
Lindows = Linux + Windows
Microsoft = Microcomputer + Software
Lindows could lose its trademark if people start referring to all windowing systems on Linux as "lindows". Lucking we usually refer to them as X-Windows, KDE, or GNOME, thereby protecting the future of this trademark.
Microsoft could lose its trademark if everybody started to refer to all poorly written software as microsoft. Since MS is the primary producer of bad software, when we refer to microsoft software, we are always referring to Microsoft(TM) software. So their trademark will easily outlast the company.
MobilExxon pays some developers to create software that helps MobilExxon. And they release the software as OSS. Shell Oil notices the release and implements it.
1. MobilExxon still has the application.
2. MobilExxon implemented the application first, and so gained the advantage of using it longer.
3. The application exactly models MobilExxon's business processes. Shell Oil may need to modify it to work with their business processes.
4. Any changes/improvements Shell Oil makes will be available to MobilExxon.
5. When MobilExxon buys Shell Oil (or v.v.), software integration is easier since they are using the same applications.
6. The same people can work on the software at both companies. Initially there may be a premium for the original developers. Since the software is on its way to being an industry standard, there will soon be many people trained to use (or modify) the application.
Software should not be a point of competition between MobilExxon and Shell Oil. While having better software may give a short advantage, their competition should be about drilling for oil, shipping oil, processing oil, and selling oil and its derivatives. Better software may lower the operating costs of all the companies, but that makes the world a better place.
To argue against myself, there is a rather famous case where lack of software was the cause of death. Walmart, Target, and the other retail stores that implemented good software were able to compete more efficiently. Kmart saved money by not spending on software in the 90s; now they are bankrupt. But Walmart could have open-sourced their applications; Kmart still would not have spent the money on the hardware to implement it. Refusing to look forward remains non-competitive, regardless of the availability of seers and software.
There was also the major consolidation of banks in the late 90s. Those banks that had not become Y2K compliant asked the ones that had spent the money on the software to buy the non-compliant banks. If their software was open-sourced and industry-standard, the cheap (as in "would not spend money on software") banks could have survived. Is the world better without those banks? Maybe, but I prefer more competition. Would those banks have had problems anyway? Probably: refusing to do anything about something as well-known as Y2K shows a competitive spirit worthy of a Darwin Award.
I believe that outsourcing is sometimes a necessary evil for when a company is small and the effort required large. Payroll should be outsourced until the company can afford a fulltime accountant. Operating systems and applications should be outsourced (or bought from a closed-source supplier) until (and only until) enough resources can be dedicated to bring it in-house. Linux and OSS allow companies to share the creation of resources requiring very large efforts. The corporate software industry will disappear as soon as all of these efforts can be brought in-house.
You have to be persistent. When you call several times, and take up their phone time, it hurts the call center's statistics. And eventually you may find someone who understands computers.
The support center where I worked closed in 1998, and the people scattered. I was long gone by then. My girlfriend at the time worked there too and made certain that I did not maintain friendships with any of the others.
Most of the support people had never opened a case. They just searched four applications for the answer. (Integrated tools? From Compaq? Just type it once and copy/paste it into the others. Then fix the formatting because they all use different syntax.) Their search tools were better than Compaq's web site, because they could contain information that would get Compaq sued if it was publicly available.
Like the power supplies for the towers. One of the extra plugs for hard drives was wired wrong and would fry hard drives. They knew about this from the pre-Win95 900 series. They used them in the 9500 series that were being released when I started in 1995. Before they started selling the 9200 and 9600 series in 1996, they updated the support documentation so we knew they were still using the bad power supplies. I wonder how much this cost the hard drive manufacturers over the years that Compaq was the top consumer brand and hard drives were still small enough that you needed two or three. (Hey Seagate! Maxtor! Western Digital! Want some money?) Let's forget all the frustration from people unable to get their new hard drive to work: can you really prove the heart attack was caused by bad hardware? (I meant in the computer.)
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I used to love Supermicro mobos. I have one each P55CM, P6SBA, and P6SBU in systems within my arm's reach. I never tried their dual processor mobos. Win98SE wouldn't use the second processor, and Linux runs fast enough for my uses without it.
I agree the article should have looked a bit more professional. Maybe the writer should haved used Word or FrontPage? (Joke! It was a joke. I'm sorry.)
IBM bought Lotus in 1994, so count them as one company. Or add Tivoli as another closed source 'company'. You could add Oracle, SAP, and many others to your list.
MS did take BSD and released it as Xenix. BillyG was pushing Unix as the best thing in operating systems back in 1989. After his engineers informed him that they had bought something that could compete with Unix, he sold it to... what's their name now? Was SCO Xenix for a while in the early 90s, then Caldera? I forget.
Has MS ever developed anything? (Besides profits.)
It does not involve profit from software sales.
It is about business.
Software was originally written by companies to make that company better able to do its primary business. An automobile manufacturer uses software to make and sell automobiles. A retail store uses software to assist selling merchandise.
All the "business cases mentioned by OS proponents are" about how to make money selling software.
But what if most software was developed internally?
- What if the programmers shared with programmers from other companies to ask for help?
- What if it was easier to maintain the software publicly than to pass around copies every time you had an issue?
- What if it meant you received fixes for things you had not encountered yet?
- What if it meant you received fixes for things you had not NOTICED yet? (Like that bug that affects payroll.)
This is the world of GPL open source applications.
- We need an application.
- We download a database program.
- We build our application.
- We realize the database is missing a feature.
- We add the feature.
- While programming, we notice a bug.
- We fix the bug.
- Our application does exactly what we want, and we send our changes back to maintainers of the program.
- ?Profit? There is no profit from the software sale. The only benefit is that the company has the application that allows it to compete better.
The programmers may have been a consultant, so maybe they profited. Or an employee, who got paid. Or a student, who gained experience and a line on an rather empty resume. Or a hobbyist, who had fun.It would be nice if the company sent a few dollars to the program maintainers or mirrored the site, but it cannot be required. I doubt there is money there. The program maintainers COULD sell their services to help with implementation. But so could anybody else. This is where your four business models fit.
But none of this is necessary to make open source a good investment for a company. Even if the company is the only source for improvements for years, eventually someone else may start to use the software (such as the company your former programmers join. Programmers hate solving the same issue twice.) And if they use it, they will add value. (If you fork the code, you lose the benefits of what everybody else is doing. If there is any development progress, you quickly lose the ability to apply your patches to the maintained version.)
Open source is about programming to support business models that are not based on selling intangibles like software. That is why companies that are completely based on selling software will do anything to destroy it. That is why companies that have trouble selling software packages are embracing it. That is why every non-software company should be embracing GPL open source software whenever they can. And they outnumber the software companies.
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About the financial value of software, there is none. Software's value is what it does to help you. Hopefully it helps your primary business make money. (Even if it is just the extra alertness from walking and getting coffee every time you need to reboot.)
Imagine if information transfer was free, because there is no method to record it so it has to be person to person, or because something like the internet removes the cost of the transfer. With the personal method, I can tell you an idea, or sing you a song, for free. With the internet, I can send you a million word idea, or send you a recording of an opera, for free. Words went from spoken to written to printing-pressed to websites over a very long period, but music and 2D video have only had about a century between the ability to record and the ability to freely transfer. The companies that were created to deal with the difficulty in distribution are complaining loudly now that they are obsolete.
You can put artificial constraints around software, music, and other intangibles, but this is not good for society. The whole patent system was created to make sharing easier. Today was built on yesterday, and tomorrow will be built on today, if we remember what we did today. Most examples of creativity, whether software, music, or doodles, is thrown away after a very short period. The example of creativity with music is the performance. Recording it allows me to share it with others. If I do not record it, it is lost forever. If I record it and bury it in the backyard, it is useless. Only by sharing can others improve on my work. This goes double for software: you probably cannot improve my songs; you can probably improve my programs.
Ideas are free for those who can hear them. Stop trying to silence them to increase the scarcity so you can increase your compensation. The world that requires no new software is a world without progress.
I was the one of the top technical people for Compaq support at one of the 5 centers from 1995 to 1996. This was during the release of Windows 95. I still have a ton of my own documentation from those days. I thought about publishing it, but it would be work to make it presentable. Sometimes I notice my writing on the Compaq and Microsoft support sites, although they are nice enough to change every letter and even the length of my name.
There are a couple of problems with your story:
1. We never worried about someone opening the case. Half the hardware repairs were customers playing Break-It-Myself, but we fixed it anyway for the goodwill. Yes, there was a limit of 2 cup-holder replacements, but if the customer was noisy enough they might get a third.
2. We would not/could not replace a capacitor. Call us with a motherboard with a burn mark (or any other easily identifiable problem), and we are going to send a replacement motherboard. Most of the A+ certified technicians that would be sent to install it don't know how to open a case, never mind use a soldering iron.
3. The serial number is on the case. You do not need anything else for warranty work.
It is rather easy to prove that support centers cannot last. As soon as someone learns enough to be useful, they find a job where they are not tied to the phone. Occasionally the economy dries up and they get some experienced people, but nobody is buying new stuff, so they get less calls and need less people. Compaq solved these issues by shutting down the centers often, and opening new ones. Just insist that you are computer literate and get transferred until you talk to a computer literate support person.
I cannot believe you used MS as an example of American software design? Can you prove they designed ANYTHING?
If you want examples, point to IBM in the NorthEast and Colorado, or the game companies in Maryland and around San Francisco. Most of the big name software products are still completely written in the US; the rest are in Canada and Europe. Would most slashdotters know the name of any software package produced primarily in India?
From my experience, most of the design work (specification writing) is still done here in the US.
Then the first draft of the code is written in India.
Then the project falls apart because nobody here can get the software to run, and it is swept under the carpet.
[OK. I usually write code, or lead projects with Americans, Canadians, and a few Europeans. Just lucky? Or is it because I discriminate, willing to turn down projects if I have no confidence in the management?]
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My girlfriend says I'm not a nerd.
I am happy we are moving the support centers away. While they have given many Americans the foot in the door, it is boring work that doesn't fit the American short attention span. I believe that support centers cannot survive in the US, because as soon as someone is trained, they must be promoted to management or will leave for a better job. Very few people are patient or masochistic enough to stay in a support position for more than 12 months.
"mind-numbing digital toil, like writing software code"
Those who believe writing software is mind-numbing should stay out of the business. People whose primary motivation is the money are going to colleges and certificate institutes, learn just enough to get a job, then complain about it. Most programmers with talent just understand computers, would rather have the manual than training, and can outproduce ten of the money-seekers. We program for 20 hours straight because it is what we love to do. But the world needs more techies than are available, so most companies must be (and would rather be) satisfied with 50 mediocre programmers than 2 good ones.
I do not worry about companies who are willing to outsource the information infrastructure, because:
I feel sorry for everybody trying to break into the business.
I do not feel sorry for everybody who was will to put up with the "mind-numbing" work just for a ton of money. Although my performance-tuning business may suffer, the world will be a better place.
OTOH, companies were still complaining about the lack of IT people even last year when the market "was slow". I believe most of the issue was that companies decided to lower the pay rates until we decided it was better to take a year off than work.
Gartner says you need more consulting.
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My girlfriend says I am not a nerd.
Microsoft has to extend their product support because at 3 years they have usually fixed enough bugs that companies can start to use the software. If they promised not to fix any more bugs, no one would ever install their software.
But DNS servers and print spoolers that have already been running for several years do not need support from RH. In the rare case that an upgrade is needed (for a good business reason such as new abilities or a security fix,) most linux administrators can easily handle it.
This announcement means two things to me:
1. RH will no longer maintain the lists of fixes/upgrades for me unless I download/buy a recent version.
2. RH will no longer produce and test binary installs for me. (Most of the software we use is available as RPMs from the developers anyway.)
Oh well. I may have to stay current by checking ten websites instead of one.
slashdot.kids.us
... - Any way to get this past the censors?
News for Nerdy Kids.
I wish it was around 20 years ago. (Of course I wish the internet had been around 20 years ago.)
- How To's such as "How To Tape your glasses together so they break cleanly when you get beat up"
- Discussions about the spending time at the book stores and libraries.
- Jokes that require knowledge of algrebra, geometry, and basic physics.
- Online D&D games, forums
Hey Cowboy, did you register yet?
I had the opposite problem at my last few jobs.
My coworkers made me do all the design and most of the programming, while promising to test, write the documentation, and keep the client distracted so I could get the project finished. They felt that I should write all the code just because I knew more algorithms, designed better applications, and could code more in an hour than they could in days.
This is not a good thing. It meant that if there ever were any problems with the applications, I would be the only one who could maintain it. Most other "developers" could barely understand the code, even though it was fully commented, and usually written to be understandable (long variable names and extra lines if it helped.)
Luckily (at least everybody tells me it is luck) none of my applications ever seem to need maintenance. Occasionally they get expanded, but the hooks for the expansions are always visible to the new programmers. But I keep getting told that this is just luck and someday code of mine will require changes that I did not anticipate. I really wish this would happen soon so I could make some money from the maintenance.
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On the other hand, I disagree with hiding your source.
- I learned that my programming skills were good when others asked if they could use my functions. How do you know your code is good if no one else has seen it?
- And my skills improve when others criticize. Even if we do not change the algorithm for this project, it may help me on the next one. (Never recode unless there are provable performance benefits.) The worst programmer you know may know one trick that you don't; and that trick may improve a program or save you hours of programming someday.
I hate waiting until I can share the source for my current project so I can listen to the oohs, aahs, and boos.
If these products (MS-DOS, Win3.1, Win95, NT3.5) are passed their EOL, then:
1. MS will no longer supply on-line help.
2. They cannot be bought.
#1 means that MS can clean out their web servers, saving tons, since hard drives are so expensive now. Of course with billions of bug reports that may actually be costing MS something. (Now if they could just post a few of the fixes...)
Does #2 means these OSes are in the public domain? Microsoft no longer wants money from them? Isn't the point of copyright that the owner can collect money for the use of the work? Since MS doesn't want money for them, they are free!
Personally, I've already paid for my MS (usually in lost work), and use RH on my other PCs, but we had an article here in the last year about how MS was beating up some charity that was distributing old PCs because they didn't pay licensing fees for DOS. Now they won't need licenses! This is a good thing.
I was absolutely thrilled when we got a state-of-the-art 386Mhz PC and I could compile in only 30 minutes. I still did the design work on paper, then programmed it, then reviewed it. Then compiled during lunch, preferably on a different PC. If the compiler did produce an error, I would fix it on my development PC, but would probably wait until I had more work finished before compiling again.
So compile the piece being developed and then unit test it rather than recompiling the entire project. Full builds should rarely be done more than once a day. It may only be ten minutes to rebuild the entire project, but that should be followed by at least a few hours of integration testing, which provides the ToDo list for more development. Errors in the code are BUGS. Take the time to code it right the first time.
Have you read about any software development methodologies? Most of them recommend that you review the code manually, rather than depend on the compiler. The old "Code Complete" strongly recommended it, and the new Extreme Programming suggests paying someone to review your code as you type. Compiling should be the last step before you hand off the code to QA, not part of the development process.
May I assume that 170,000 lines of code is not being developed completely by one person? So who approves the changes to the "high up" header files? Who tests it? What tracks what is affected by each change, and who verifies that each affected piece still works? Why do YOU need to recompile the entire project more thn once a day?
I am also assuming you understand what you are programming. If you really need to see "hello world" on the screen to know what the code should do, your programs may suffer other problems, such as lack of design, which is unacceptable outside of Redmond.
Back to the topic (or rather, I guess I should say something about the main article):
I have friends who are still happy with Pentium133s, since all they do is email, browse, and occasionally edit pictures. Of course high end graphics require better processors. The latest games have us buying the latest PCs. FPSs have been acceptable at almost movie quality for a while. But editing a video with a Pentium500 is painful. Movie-editing is about the only app left to push CPUs.
Now that the Intel-AMD war has made the 2Ghz processors really inexpensive, they can sit back and collect some supplies before charging into unneeded territory. I don't mind.
Shopping carts with computers need to be integrated with an application that makes them useful to customers.
Discounts are nice. They attract the poor and the bored. Neither are our typical technology-savvy customer who will come to THIS store because they have the computerized shopping carts.
Off-topic: Why are Pepsi products on sale last week, Coke products this week, and Pepsi next week? Are these rotating sales actually generating business, or are they just traditions? I sometimes drive 25 mins to go to a store that doesn't have sales (or a "discount" card) but I always bring home more goods than my local shopping trips (mostly because of the travel), but the total cost is about the same as my local shopping trips.
Back to the topic...
The reason I will use these shopping carts (and maybe even carry one of those damned cards) is if it helps me shop.
I want a web site where I can track my needs. Add a turkey and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. Have it automatically add a gallon of milk every 9 days. (Notice that recurring items should be a basic requirement for the system.)
My wife could add to the list. Actually she would probably be the one managing it. I am more of an impulse buyer. This way I could not forget the essentials.
(Cell phones work great only if I remember to call, she answers, and she happens to remember something I forgot during the 30 secs we are talking.)
Then have the checkout remove the items from the list, and keep the list of what I bought for a week.
So I won't buy another gallon of milk the next day. (It has happened.)
So my wife stops at the store and doesn't buy the stuff I am unpacking at home. (It has happened.)
Anything that a store adds to the shopping experience should be about the shopping experience.
So the specifications for the system are:
Input from home
- web site
- Add/remove items with frequency rate in days for recurring items. A frequency rate of zero means it is a one-time purchase.
- an application to work off-line (open-source so we don't fear the software analyzing our hard drives.)
- an application to sync with a palm computer.
Location-sensitive shopping carts
- alert you when you are near a product you need
- show your lists:
- Remaining items needed.
- Items in cart.
- Items bought recently.
- Special deals based on customer profiling.
- a price-checker. (The human resource savings from not putting price stickers on every item may quickly offset the cost of the system. Keep the shelf pricing for comparison shopping.)
Application-aware cashiers
- Remove purchased items from the web-accesible list.
This will probably start as a chain-specific system, but I would expect consumers to demand that their list can be synched between chains, at least from the software at home if the chains refuse to use cross-company system. I'd expect it quickly from us developers even if the chains do not provide the software.