Mate, things work pretty similar the world over for an engineer, the research you need to do is more so with visa and living arrangements.
In terms of your work, the situation is mostly the same, be it Canada, UK, Australia, in that you are expected to hold a professional attitude, and be good with your work. You will find Australians have strong work ethic reputations abroad, so you need to back that up.
Short of that, you merely need to be resourceful, and you don't necessarily need to go through recruiters. Get your resume up to speed, make sure it is within 2 pages so as not to waste others time, and advertise your skills and project work so as to give potential employment a good honest run down on your skillset.
Print it out 20-50 times, and go walk through the front door in professional attire and give it to reception, possibly ask to see if they are seeking help.
With a skills shortage of competent engineers, you will gain employment fast, and gain the margin a recruiter normally takes.
Every top 500 needs engineers, and google for the integration/IT comms companies in your city of settlement.
If you work with specialist sectors like network/comms, speak to the local distributors to find out what integrators work with those products.
1. GPS. Whether or not the government can, or would, degrade a GPS network at its own whim, generally speaking, one assumes it will be running as we would expect, all bar WWIII breaks out. Whilst their is never a shortage of cash for projects like this (Photo recognition positioning software), fact is GPS is a technology that is on a day to day basis, more accurate, and cheaper to implement and use. (IE, cost of imaging all major cities/towns. How long will it take in the first place to create that database.) It wont be long before mobile phones have GPS recievers in them, along with any other need gadget.
2. Triangular positioning. It's been in various media articles, the concept of parents being able to use this technology provided by the mobile phone company, to keep track of thier child, using 3 towers to calculate the position of the phone. Wouldn't be hard to implement a service where by which you dial that number, and you are provided with immediate locations.
The point is, as cool as the idea is, practically speaking, it's a very long way of solving a problem, that's allready solved!
The truth is, that despite the intensity of the point, the point still holds truth. I love linux, I have used it for almost 10 years now, and have done everything from kernel hacking, to my own C programming etc.
However, what began as an enthusiasts project, became an essential part of my work, has now become to some degree tiresome, and laboured. It's simply because binary distribution and configuration designs between OS's varies so much, that it becomes difficult to release software that easily integrates into ANY environment. Permeatations on OS's means many more for the software.
However, it is up to successful programmers to fix this, and trust me, if it can happen, it will happen with linux, and open source, if not demonstrated by the current wave of self booting, nice looking Linux distro's, the installation menu's these days, etc....sure it needs more work, but it will have it shortly.
Just think of the next wave of Linux Distro's in 12 months time, how much easier even still they will be to use, install or download software.
One only has to take a step back for a second and realise whats possibly going on here.
Remember when Microsoft renewed its license to SCO for Unix?
I am curious to know if they are now giving it away for free because they don't want to be the company that provides licensing royalties to SCO, or at least keep them to a bare minimum.
Perhaps the side effects of SCO's legal action is free microsoft software. Who knows.....
It's interesting, I have a friend who works for one of the major music labels here in Australia, and very strongly advocates that the only real reason the label's are against the whole mp3/online thing is becuase it removes both revenue and the gross ability to influence the market from those major labels. It's difficult to setup a distribution chain, advertising and marketing model, instantly, to compete with the existing companies. However with the advent of the internet, competition is more likely, and that same competition could well be motivated to do a better job.
It's understandable....only time will tell if it happens, and that will be directly influenced by the attitudes of major artists towards record labels in securing contracts.
One can only presume that there will similarly be successful online mp3 sites, who have the ability to see musical ability in artists that identifies with the markets taste, and have power in the music industry. Will it be Sony/Universal/EMI/....or will it be the new tech startups......
In the mean time, the argument is still valid that many people will still copy mp3's when they haven't paid for them, even if they were 10c a song. Argument is also valid that whilst those people exist, they will usually put more effort into finding a way to crack protection than actually spending what should hopefully become, a fair price for music online.
Note to industry: bloody hell music is over priced!
Well I have to say, that Larry and Andy's attempts at intellect and metaphorical representation might have gone too far in a lot of viewers minds.
Production: Stunning, and you would expect so with a budget like that. The continuity from 2nd to 3rd movie movie make it feel like a sequel broken into 2 parts. Which it is some would think anyway. If only the average movie goer wasn't getting accustomed to seeing fantastic visual effects, as many won't appreciate the quality of the CGI, editing, and general visual representation.
Plot: Lost it? Perhaps. One either expects the Wachowski brothers to be doing one of two things. Setting it up for 4, or, depending on the financial results of 3, leaving it closed with a scenario the requires the user to have to "imagine too much" to get closure from the story line. It would appear they have lost touch with their audience, and gambled the wrong ending for the trilogy, in an attempt to be different yet again. I am guessing that 3/5 viewers would be annoyed or unimpressed at how the movie was ended.
What strikes me as most odd is that there appears to be no commercially logical reason for the script to have been written as it was. Is it possible that if a final, 4th movie is released, many will now have lost interest like the X files? Who knows, but the next few days will reveal the true reactions of the general viewing public.
What I am surprised by (being outside the US), is that common sense has not prevailed and the Patent Office either made redundant, or at least the process reviewed. Maybe I should not be surprised by this, seeing as it IS the US, a country founded on freedom, easily manipulated into greed.
Generally speaking, people respond to this with an attitude of, "Is it possible to patent a process, by which the person recieving the patent was fully aware of a given entity(s), who have exercised a similar R&D process, to come up with a similar product". Does this not imply that the US Patent Office, is in itself, promoting Anti competitive behaviour, the exact same practice that the DoJ took Microsoft to court with?
If Microsoft can argue, and win, that something as obvious as a Graphical User Interface which Apple came up with first does not belong to them(before you start I'm a PC User), what right does this office have to say that something as simple as a single click, an online auction, a transparent cache and so on, is a process that someone can say is exclusively their technology.
The answer here is: Apple, go patent the GUI. Now watch Microsoft reply. Watch them win. Watch the rest of the world use the case as precedence, and have the Patent Office effectively thrown out the window.
Now take a step back to reality, and watch the rest of the world look at the United States Patent Office, as quite literally, a joke. And you wonder why the world looks at you and says:
Only in the United States.
If you do not look beyond the short term, it will have a detrimental effect on Intellectual Property that has legal right to this process. Probably to the point where most people just dont care what the USPTO says, and simply goes ahead anyway with whatever it was they are doing. If a governing body cannot act responsibilty, sensibly, and in a way that appeals to the common sense of the community, then the community through its actions will render it ineffective.
Games are just another market like many others, be it retail, anything. In order to sell, you have to have a couple of key components:
1. What it is your selling must be quality. If its a software game, people must believe that besides the graphic illustrious factor, the game is quality to play. Take the recent release of Battle Field 1942. Theres a game I have seen crash more people's pc's than most.
2. Attention to Multiplay. Developers out there are, and I can't quite understand this because its so BLOODY OBVIOUS, are continuing to develop games in single player, when it can be easily seen there should be a multi player aspect. Need for Speed hot Pursuit 2 on the Playstation 2 recently released, won't support online play, but the PC version does. If you want a game to succeed, MAKE IT MULTIPLAYER, at least then you can play humans.
2a. Now on the server side, one can learn a great deal from id here. Make it so the server binary is freely available, and can run easily on windows and unix platforms. The fact that quake3 and its off shoots are STILL going from (how long ago was it released?!?) demonstrates that this can definately be a factor.
3. Pride. Gamedevelopers: Stop projecting your point of view as if you thought it was the entire communities. It seems to be, that you are developing without listening to the community. There are certainly some development houses that are releasing beta previews etc...and this is a great idea, however make feedback interactive, get people INVOLVED in this, not just, send email here, we MIGHT look through it. Set up websites, with multiple answer radio buttons, so users who aren't terribly fantastic at communicating these things, can simply fill it out. You will retain a lot of players this way.
4. PRICE. Here in Australia, we pay up to $100 AU for a game. Work from the point of view that our average salaries might be the same in terms of figures to those in the US, now work with the fact you get 2 of our dollars to your 1. This is DEFINATELY a factor in Australia, I am not so sure about the US.
5. Poor programming. Some games I see developed, look visually stunning, but the attention has clearly been focused on 3dsmax side of things, rather than the actual coding. The responsiveness of an action game can sometimes be classed as worse than a dogs breakfast. Developers, CONSULT PEOPLE, I wonder how many games get released because the boss pushed the developers to get it out, and no one asked public gaming people to have a look at it. Now it fails, developers get fired...etc...
I have a few associates who have been in the US over the past few years, plus other people I know from the US. All have the same complaints you guys talk about, yet over here we simply look and wonder....HOW?
Over here, we can buy any handset we want, plug it into any network we want, and thats the end of the story. Handsets are subsidised by the committment to a contract you purchase, usually now for 24 months, at a rate of something like $50 AU.
What your carriers are up to simply sounds like anti competitive bullshit.
Screw it. The answer here is quite simple really, and I have more confidence now than ever before. Being a consultant, and one that installs mostly Microsoft solutions, I have to support a lot of things they do. And arguably, some of their technologies are pretty kewl, invented, bought out, or whatever. However, whats at play here, is a greater mentality, that in general, people disagree with. Microsoft I don't think REALISE that as a "generality", people are using their technology only because its all that exists, to the level of professional development that it exists on.
Simply, Linux, whatever, people have just plain got the shits. Microsoft: Go ahead. Continue on your way. In the end, (and the fact that one of your execs in years past was quoted as saying "there are six things that stop me from going to sleep, Linux is one of them" says a lot about how below the surface, you fear what is just a public expression of disapproval of your attitude) you will suffer the same fate of an IBM, an AT&T, and so on.
Microsoft, I like some of what you do. As for the rest, you are merely a small group of greedy corporate executives. Thats all. Nothing more. I suspect you will all bail and just say we had it wrong when the share price slumps, indicating the same lack of spine you have in "how" do you things now. To want to produce the best OS, is not wrong. To want to eradicate all opposition, is.
To the guys actually putting in a hard days work: I am disappointed for you in that what you do helps you get a days pay, when ordinarily if only you could have a different crowd to earn that days crust from. Whilst I know Linux isn't that opportunity, I am none the less aware of what must be an enourmously frustrating situation.
In the meantime, Linux is the providing the best fight, with the most guts, purely because (and don't get me wrong, we're talking about computers vs life and World Wars) people are actually prepared to put aside time and use their expertise to support something, whilst enduring what has been a lengthy process (but is getting so much better), simply to avoid YOU. I fin'd it ironic that the there are 3 things where this is found.
1. To avoid defeat of freedom. Which ties into 2:
2. To uphold their religious belief (merely stating fact here, a reflection upon events over all time, where people have come together to support a notion.
3. To not do business with you.
Now the first 2 are galant, and on a scale beyond what we can possibly apply to this issue. I am merely stating that you guys have managed to irritate enough people so that they can volunatarily develop an OS capable of what yours can now, only harder to setup, with no where near the application support. Funny, I notice people developing for Linux a bit more now. But I am guessing your deliberately ignoring this at the moment.
Ignorance is bliss, but in the court of public opinion, it is not an excuse for being greedy.
I hope for your sake you might emply some dignity, humility, and actually serve the public interest for once, not your own.
Pardon Me?
"Oh, but I sold Windows 2000 to the Military supporting US soldiers, so they can upgrade to XP within 18 months..." does not make you patriotic.
By Military standards, a good technology is one that does its job, to the best of its ability, faster, smarter, with an ability to grow, and work well with other technologies.
Well, it came out on the news tonight (Sydney), and no big fuss was made. I doubt they intend to move the russian space program to Australia.
A couple of things intrigue me however. How would this affect relations with the US? Does it? Even a little? What given the cold war/space race between the US and Russia, is the US relaxed and encouraging this link to help get the International Space Station into space, or are there any concerns.
One tends to speculate that the push to get into space is now a bit of an open source project, governments realising the cash its going to cost to get it up there.
The other is what commercial cost would this have for Au. Obviously the US has stacks more cash that Australia, but is the Space Program profitable? Would we be playing with a black hole, that sucked a bit too much cash before we realised it had an impact on the economy. One assumes Russia gives us the staff, we pay for the rockets.
I myself run a small business, dealing with consulting to many different companies, mostly based around IT.
However, I take the standpoint, that I don't believe a lot of people in the industry take. I am merely as a consultant, working for the company part time. It is still my job, to take the interests of that company, to be the most important.
At the end of the day, this means being fair, and whilst my fees per hour usually do not change, I will attempt to give them the best possible deal economically, and evaluate these situations.
My recommendations are based upon what the company NEEDS, what the company can afford, even whether they can afford my time. It is this attitude that has built up for myself a business rep, and based upon this I have healthy business relationship with many clients.
In so far as other consultancy, once again, my interests are for the company. I would call a meeting with the GM, or 2IC etc.., to, as fairly and as calmy as possible, say, I don't believe you need this technology, these are the reasons a) b) and c), and here are your different alternatives. These are the possible reasons why what is being recommended is good, and weigh them up and give your evaluation of the pros vs the cons.
Being able to evaluate in this fashion, demonstrates an unobjective ability, and they should at least be able to consider what it is you have to recommend.
Having said that, a number of times, I have had competing interests recommend solutions, to which I can, and will only say, correct, what they have recommended is a good solution, and will work well for you.
It comes down, to you are consulting in the interests of your client, not necessarily just IT.
Is Novell doomed? Consider these points...
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Is Novell Doomed?
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The difficulty with a topic like this, is that there are many points to make. I will try to be brief.
- Novell has BEEN, the industry leader in network/file printer servers for a long time. Whilst it would appear that they are now slowly losing this (what with linux now becoming the 2 most abundant server OS) they still have a place in many corporations around the world.
Whilst I am a strong advocate of linux/freebsd, I must also realise for the Companies that I support, that there must be a level of "allready working" in what solutions are applied, and that can't be taken away from Novell.
- The difficulty that Novell is facing is that there OS doesn't do what the other server OS's do, and that is "other things". Worst comes to worst, you can run a word processor on the server, at the console. A dedicated server has removed the ease with which you can do some things from its competitors consoles, linux and NT/2000.
- To say Novell is dead because IPX was beaten by IP is not in my opinion, a valid point. There was a day when Microsoft installed by default Netbui and perhaps IPX. Both these protocols have certain advantages and disadvantes. IP wins because of one point, and ONE point alone. Scalability. It can run a network, world wide, where the others cannot. Microsoft changed their default protocol, have not yet attempted to claim it as their own, and will march on as if nothing happened.
Novell can do the same, the choice is theirs, they have already implemented it in 5.
- One also has to look at backup application support. Someone mentioned the proxy. Also the management utilites. A server OS is useless if you do not have good utilites to configure the server with. There comes a time even with myself, where I get tired of editing configs, and just want to do it with a high level config util. There is a balance between the use of the two, and Novell has had in past good management utilites to get things sorted. Microsoft continually changes thier GUI, and *nix/linux/bsd platforms et al, have an ever evolving set of different utils, thanks to the open source movement, and peoples desire to attack this problem.
The conclusion:
Is Novell dead? Not yet. It is based upon how they think from here. An acceptance of where the direction the server market is heading, and an "adaptive" approach, will surely see them around for some time to come. They DO have a market, and it is bigger than the average SOHO user may think. It is probably a radical change in thinking that is required, which at that level is more unlikely than for a smaller company, so one can perhaps calculate they may be doomed. But, as with anything, you have to consider the whole picture to create a valid conclusion.
Post the decision against Microsoft, it would appear that many agree on little will change.
If anything I can see, at the least, attitudes will change. Maybe not Bill Gates attitude, but others will. How, is not exactly known.
Bill Gates has a large self esteem problem. His driving desire to gain a large control, at the same time as wishing to be viewed as somewhat as a visionary, is example of the fact the he cannot satisfy his ego/self esteem.
That said, it twists his view. Not only that, but post a decision that rules against his company, he feels put down, and sticks his arm up, "Dont forget about how much we have achieved and what we have done for the Computer Paradygm."
Now to a point this is true. In a lot of sense, Microsoft has done a lot for PC's, in that they ripped it away from Apple originally.
But it lays it down now, for exactly that. Apple and Microsoft were playing the same ballgame. Microsoft ripped it away. Whats good for the goose, is good for the gander. Microsoft is now, 100 billion away from being the largest company in the world. Who is going to stop anyone now Microsoft, from ripping the carpet from underneath you, when they can only be tried for their crimes, in 10 years, long after you have lost your company worth, and someone has bought you out.
You have set the example, even by losing the case, that it is possible to break the law, and get away with it.
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Mate, things work pretty similar the world over for an engineer, the research you need to do is more so with visa and living arrangements.
In terms of your work, the situation is mostly the same, be it Canada, UK, Australia, in that you are expected to hold a professional attitude, and be good with your work. You will find Australians have strong work ethic reputations abroad, so you need to back that up.
Short of that, you merely need to be resourceful, and you don't necessarily need to go through recruiters. Get your resume up to speed, make sure it is within 2 pages so as not to waste others time, and advertise your skills and project work so as to give potential employment a good honest run down on your skillset.
Print it out 20-50 times, and go walk through the front door in professional attire and give it to reception, possibly ask to see if they are seeking help.
With a skills shortage of competent engineers, you will gain employment fast, and gain the margin a recruiter normally takes.
Every top 500 needs engineers, and google for the integration/IT comms companies in your city of settlement.
If you work with specialist sectors like network/comms, speak to the local distributors to find out what integrators work with those products.
Hope this helps.
MantiX
IT CEO.
1. GPS. Whether or not the government can, or would, degrade a GPS network at its own whim, generally speaking, one assumes it will be running as we would expect, all bar WWIII breaks out. Whilst their is never a shortage of cash for projects like this (Photo recognition positioning software), fact is GPS is a technology that is on a day to day basis, more accurate, and cheaper to implement and use. (IE, cost of imaging all major cities/towns. How long will it take in the first place to create that database.) It wont be long before mobile phones have GPS recievers in them, along with any other need gadget.
2. Triangular positioning. It's been in various media articles, the concept of parents being able to use this technology provided by the mobile phone company, to keep track of thier child, using 3 towers to calculate the position of the phone. Wouldn't be hard to implement a service where by which you dial that number, and you are provided with immediate locations.
The point is, as cool as the idea is, practically speaking, it's a very long way of solving a problem, that's allready solved!
The truth is, that despite the intensity of the point, the point still holds truth. I love linux, I have used it for almost 10 years now, and have done everything from kernel hacking, to my own C programming etc.
However, what began as an enthusiasts project, became an essential part of my work, has now become to some degree tiresome, and laboured. It's simply because binary distribution and configuration designs between OS's varies so much, that it becomes difficult to release software that easily integrates into ANY environment. Permeatations on OS's means many more for the software.
However, it is up to successful programmers to fix this, and trust me, if it can happen, it will happen with linux, and open source, if not demonstrated by the current wave of self booting, nice looking Linux distro's, the installation menu's these days, etc....sure it needs more work, but it will have it shortly.
Just think of the next wave of Linux Distro's in 12 months time, how much easier even still they will be to use, install or download software.
Now imagine 24 months.
Now compare that to Longhorn?
Microsoft knows it's coming....
One only has to take a step back for a second and realise whats possibly going on here.
Remember when Microsoft renewed its license to SCO for Unix?
I am curious to know if they are now giving it away for free because they don't want to be the company that provides licensing royalties to SCO, or at least keep them to a bare minimum.
Perhaps the side effects of SCO's legal action is free microsoft software. Who knows.....
It's interesting, I have a friend who works for one of the major music labels here in Australia, and very strongly advocates that the only real reason the label's are against the whole mp3/online thing is becuase it removes both revenue and the gross ability to influence the market from those major labels. It's difficult to setup a distribution chain, advertising and marketing model, instantly, to compete with the existing companies. However with the advent of the internet, competition is more likely, and that same competition could well be motivated to do a better job.
It's understandable....only time will tell if it happens, and that will be directly influenced by the attitudes of major artists towards record labels in securing contracts.
One can only presume that there will similarly be successful online mp3 sites, who have the ability to see musical ability in artists that identifies with the markets taste, and have power in the music industry. Will it be Sony/Universal/EMI/....or will it be the new tech startups......
In the mean time, the argument is still valid that many people will still copy mp3's when they haven't paid for them, even if they were 10c a song. Argument is also valid that whilst those people exist, they will usually put more effort into finding a way to crack protection than actually spending what should hopefully become, a fair price for music online.
Note to industry: bloody hell music is over priced!
Well I have to say, that Larry and Andy's attempts at intellect and metaphorical representation might have gone too far in a lot of viewers minds.
Production: Stunning, and you would expect so with a budget like that. The continuity from 2nd to 3rd movie movie make it feel like a sequel broken into 2 parts. Which it is some would think anyway. If only the average movie goer wasn't getting accustomed to seeing fantastic visual effects, as many won't appreciate the quality of the CGI, editing, and general visual representation.
Plot: Lost it? Perhaps. One either expects the Wachowski brothers to be doing one of two things. Setting it up for 4, or, depending on the financial results of 3, leaving it closed with a scenario the requires the user to have to "imagine too much" to get closure from the story line. It would appear they have lost touch with their audience, and gambled the wrong ending for the trilogy, in an attempt to be different yet again. I am guessing that 3/5 viewers would be annoyed or unimpressed at how the movie was ended.
What strikes me as most odd is that there appears to be no commercially logical reason for the script to have been written as it was. Is it possible that if a final, 4th movie is released, many will now have lost interest like the X files? Who knows, but the next few days will reveal the true reactions of the general viewing public.
Fair enough. My bad. However the point remains the same, whoever it may have been, who got the ball rolling......
What I am surprised by (being outside the US), is that common sense has not prevailed and the Patent Office either made redundant, or at least the process reviewed. Maybe I should not be surprised by this, seeing as it IS the US, a country founded on freedom, easily manipulated into greed.
Generally speaking, people respond to this with an attitude of, "Is it possible to patent a process, by which the person recieving the patent was fully aware of a given entity(s), who have exercised a similar R&D process, to come up with a similar product". Does this not imply that the US Patent Office, is in itself, promoting Anti competitive behaviour, the exact same practice that the DoJ took Microsoft to court with?
If Microsoft can argue, and win, that something as obvious as a Graphical User Interface which Apple came up with first does not belong to them(before you start I'm a PC User), what right does this office have to say that something as simple as a single click, an online auction, a transparent cache and so on, is a process that someone can say is exclusively their technology.
The answer here is: Apple, go patent the GUI. Now watch Microsoft reply. Watch them win. Watch the rest of the world use the case as precedence, and have the Patent Office effectively thrown out the window.
Now take a step back to reality, and watch the rest of the world look at the United States Patent Office, as quite literally, a joke. And you wonder why the world looks at you and says:
Only in the United States.
If you do not look beyond the short term, it will have a detrimental effect on Intellectual Property that has legal right to this process. Probably to the point where most people just dont care what the USPTO says, and simply goes ahead anyway with whatever it was they are doing. If a governing body cannot act responsibilty, sensibly, and in a way that appeals to the common sense of the community, then the community through its actions will render it ineffective.
Games are just another market like many others, be it retail, anything. In order to sell, you have to have a couple of key components:
1. What it is your selling must be quality. If its a software game, people must believe that besides the graphic illustrious factor, the game is quality to play. Take the recent release of Battle Field 1942. Theres a game I have seen crash more people's pc's than most.
2. Attention to Multiplay. Developers out there are, and I can't quite understand this because its so BLOODY OBVIOUS, are continuing to develop games in single player, when it can be easily seen there should be a multi player aspect. Need for Speed hot Pursuit 2 on the Playstation 2 recently released, won't support online play, but the PC version does. If you want a game to succeed, MAKE IT MULTIPLAYER, at least then you can play humans.
2a. Now on the server side, one can learn a great deal from id here. Make it so the server binary is freely available, and can run easily on windows and unix platforms. The fact that quake3 and its off shoots are STILL going from (how long ago was it released?!?) demonstrates that this can definately be a factor.
3. Pride. Gamedevelopers: Stop projecting your point of view as if you thought it was the entire communities. It seems to be, that you are developing without listening to the community. There are certainly some development houses that are releasing beta previews etc...and this is a great idea, however make feedback interactive, get people INVOLVED in this, not just, send email here, we MIGHT look through it. Set up websites, with multiple answer radio buttons, so users who aren't terribly fantastic at communicating these things, can simply fill it out. You will retain a lot of players this way.
4. PRICE. Here in Australia, we pay up to $100 AU for a game. Work from the point of view that our average salaries might be the same in terms of figures to those in the US, now work with the fact you get 2 of our dollars to your 1. This is DEFINATELY a factor in Australia, I am not so sure about the US.
5. Poor programming. Some games I see developed, look visually stunning, but the attention has clearly been focused on 3dsmax side of things, rather than the actual coding. The responsiveness of an action game can sometimes be classed as worse than a dogs breakfast. Developers, CONSULT PEOPLE, I wonder how many games get released because the boss pushed the developers to get it out, and no one asked public gaming people to have a look at it. Now it fails, developers get fired...etc...
What do YOU think?
I have a few associates who have been in the US over the past few years, plus other people I know from the US. All have the same complaints you guys talk about, yet over here we simply look and wonder....HOW?
Over here, we can buy any handset we want, plug it into any network we want, and thats the end of the story. Handsets are subsidised by the committment to a contract you purchase, usually now for 24 months, at a rate of something like $50 AU.
What your carriers are up to simply sounds like anti competitive bullshit.
Screw it. The answer here is quite simple really, and I have more confidence now than ever before. Being a consultant, and one that installs mostly Microsoft solutions, I have to support a lot of things they do. And arguably, some of their technologies are pretty kewl, invented, bought out, or whatever. However, whats at play here, is a greater mentality, that in general, people disagree with. Microsoft I don't think REALISE that as a "generality", people are using their technology only because its all that exists, to the level of professional development that it exists on.
Simply, Linux, whatever, people have just plain got the shits. Microsoft: Go ahead. Continue on your way. In the end, (and the fact that one of your execs in years past was quoted as saying "there are six things that stop me from going to sleep, Linux is one of them" says a lot about how below the surface, you fear what is just a public expression of disapproval of your attitude) you will suffer the same fate of an IBM, an AT&T, and so on.
Microsoft, I like some of what you do. As for the rest, you are merely a small group of greedy corporate executives. Thats all. Nothing more. I suspect you will all bail and just say we had it wrong when the share price slumps, indicating the same lack of spine you have in "how" do you things now. To want to produce the best OS, is not wrong. To want to eradicate all opposition, is.
To the guys actually putting in a hard days work: I am disappointed for you in that what you do helps you get a days pay, when ordinarily if only you could have a different crowd to earn that days crust from. Whilst I know Linux isn't that opportunity, I am none the less aware of what must be an enourmously frustrating situation.
In the meantime, Linux is the providing the best fight, with the most guts, purely because (and don't get me wrong, we're talking about computers vs life and World Wars) people are actually prepared to put aside time and use their expertise to support something, whilst enduring what has been a lengthy process (but is getting so much better), simply to avoid YOU. I fin'd it ironic that the there are 3 things where this is found.
1. To avoid defeat of freedom. Which ties into 2:
2. To uphold their religious belief (merely stating fact here, a reflection upon events over all time, where people have come together to support a notion.
3. To not do business with you.
Now the first 2 are galant, and on a scale beyond what we can possibly apply to this issue. I am merely stating that you guys have managed to irritate enough people so that they can volunatarily develop an OS capable of what yours can now, only harder to setup, with no where near the application support. Funny, I notice people developing for Linux a bit more now. But I am guessing your deliberately ignoring this at the moment.
Ignorance is bliss, but in the court of public opinion, it is not an excuse for being greedy.
I hope for your sake you might emply some dignity, humility, and actually serve the public interest for once, not your own.
Pardon Me?
"Oh, but I sold Windows 2000 to the Military supporting US soldiers, so they can upgrade to XP within 18 months..." does not make you patriotic.
By Military standards, a good technology is one that does its job, to the best of its ability, faster, smarter, with an ability to grow, and work well with other technologies.
So Microsoft, I ask you:
Where do you want to BE... Tomorrow?
Well, it came out on the news tonight (Sydney), and no big fuss was made. I doubt they intend to move the russian space program to Australia.
A couple of things intrigue me however. How would this affect relations with the US? Does it? Even a little? What given the cold war/space race between the US and Russia, is the US relaxed and encouraging this link to help get the International Space Station into space, or are there any concerns.
One tends to speculate that the push to get into space is now a bit of an open source project, governments realising the cash its going to cost to get it up there.
The other is what commercial cost would this have for Au. Obviously the US has stacks more cash that Australia, but is the Space Program profitable? Would we be playing with a black hole, that sucked a bit too much cash before we realised it had an impact on the economy. One assumes Russia gives us the staff, we pay for the rockets.
I myself run a small business, dealing with consulting to many different companies, mostly based around IT.
However, I take the standpoint, that I don't believe a lot of people in the industry take. I am merely as a consultant, working for the company part time. It is still my job, to take the interests of that company, to be the most important.
At the end of the day, this means being fair, and whilst my fees per hour usually do not change, I will attempt to give them the best possible deal economically, and evaluate these situations.
My recommendations are based upon what the company NEEDS, what the company can afford, even whether they can afford my time. It is this attitude that has built up for myself a business rep, and based upon this I have healthy business relationship with many clients.
In so far as other consultancy, once again, my interests are for the company. I would call a meeting with the GM, or 2IC etc.., to, as fairly and as calmy as possible, say, I don't believe you need this technology, these are the reasons a) b) and c), and here are your different alternatives. These are the possible reasons why what is being recommended is good, and weigh them up and give your evaluation of the pros vs the cons.
Being able to evaluate in this fashion, demonstrates an unobjective ability, and they should at least be able to consider what it is you have to recommend.
Having said that, a number of times, I have had competing interests recommend solutions, to which I can, and will only say, correct, what they have recommended is a good solution, and will work well for you.
It comes down, to you are consulting in the interests of your client, not necessarily just IT.
The difficulty with a topic like this, is that there are many points to make. I will try to be brief.
- Novell has BEEN, the industry leader in network/file printer servers for a long time. Whilst it would appear that they are now slowly losing this (what with linux now becoming the 2 most abundant server OS) they still have a place in many corporations around the world.
Whilst I am a strong advocate of linux/freebsd, I must also realise for the Companies that I support, that there must be a level of "allready working" in what solutions are applied, and that can't be taken away from Novell.
- The difficulty that Novell is facing is that there OS doesn't do what the other server OS's do, and that is "other things". Worst comes to worst, you can run a word processor on the server, at the console. A dedicated server has removed the ease with which you can do some things from its competitors consoles, linux and NT/2000.
- To say Novell is dead because IPX was beaten by IP is not in my opinion, a valid point. There was a day when Microsoft installed by default Netbui and perhaps IPX. Both these protocols have certain advantages and disadvantes. IP wins because of one point, and ONE point alone. Scalability. It can run a network, world wide, where the others cannot. Microsoft changed their default protocol, have not yet attempted to claim it as their own, and will march on as if nothing happened.
Novell can do the same, the choice is theirs, they have already implemented it in 5.
- One also has to look at backup application support. Someone mentioned the proxy. Also the management utilites. A server OS is useless if you do not have good utilites to configure the server with. There comes a time even with myself, where I get tired of editing configs, and just want to do it with a high level config util. There is a balance between the use of the two, and Novell has had in past good management utilites to get things sorted. Microsoft continually changes thier GUI, and *nix/linux/bsd platforms et al, have an ever evolving set of different utils, thanks to the open source movement, and peoples desire to attack this problem.
The conclusion:
Is Novell dead? Not yet. It is based upon how they think from here. An acceptance of where the direction the server market is heading, and an "adaptive" approach, will surely see them around for some time to come. They DO have a market, and it is bigger than the average SOHO user may think. It is probably a radical change in thinking that is required, which at that level is more unlikely than for a smaller company, so one can perhaps calculate they may be doomed. But, as with anything, you have to consider the whole picture to create a valid conclusion.
Post the decision against Microsoft, it would appear that many agree on little will change.
If anything I can see, at the least, attitudes will change. Maybe not Bill Gates attitude, but others will. How, is not exactly known.
Bill Gates has a large self esteem problem. His driving desire to gain a large control, at the same time as wishing to be viewed as somewhat as a visionary, is example of the fact the he cannot satisfy his ego/self esteem.
That said, it twists his view. Not only that, but post a decision that rules against his company, he feels put down, and sticks his arm up, "Dont forget about how much we have achieved and what we have done for the Computer Paradygm."
Now to a point this is true. In a lot of sense, Microsoft has done a lot for PC's, in that they ripped it away from Apple originally.
But it lays it down now, for exactly that. Apple and Microsoft were playing the same ballgame. Microsoft ripped it away. Whats good for the goose, is good for the gander. Microsoft is now, 100 billion away from being the largest company in the world. Who is going to stop anyone now Microsoft, from ripping the carpet from underneath you, when they can only be tried for their crimes, in 10 years, long after you have lost your company worth, and someone has bought you out.
You have set the example, even by losing the case, that it is possible to break the law, and get away with it.
Watch Your Back Microsoft, Watch Your Back.