Talk to your accountant and solicitor. If you don't have them, hire some and talk to them. Oh, and don't use the same accountant/solicitor that your company or its key shareholders use; they should tell you if that's the case, but check yourself to be sure.
Business plans typically are full of best case scenarios - I've written a few of them myself, and have occasionally been told to "gild the lily" a bit in order to get the people putting up the money (in my case, banks; in your case, it's you!) excited and wanting to jump on board.
If you're keen on staying at the company for a long time, have a lot of belief in the people running it, your company has some competitive advantage that sets it apart (no, that doesn't include "the quality of our people" since all your competitors will say the same thing about themselves) and the market for what you produce seems to be set for long term growth, by all means think seriously about investing some of your loot.
If, as may be the case, you don't think you're in a position to judge these things, try to find someone who can.
Alternately, you can treat it like betting on the lottery - invest some small amount from each pay cheque and hope like hell.
Even if you're convinced your company is gonna make it big, talk to solicitor / accountant anyway. You don't want to make $5m in one big payday in 10 years' time, then have it all chewed up in taxes...
> I don't really see the great charm of stock > options, specifically as part of your employment > renumeration.
Actually, there is one case where I can see the big advantage of holding options - when you're actually running the show and therefore hold a high degree of control over when things happen.
If you're the person who can: - hire true experts, - fire the losers quickly - are deeply involved in when things happen - know when significant slabs of money are likely to become available, then you're in a good place to decide when and how much of your total income to take as options.
I was called up for the umpteenth time by one particular startup. One of my ex-workmates is running R&D there, and he must've given them an amazingly glowing reference for me - he rang me out of the blue for a chat one day, invited me to lunch and I found myself at a sort of "reverse job interview" where various execs sat around the lunch table telling me what a great place it was to work, what incredible things they would be doing in the future, etc. and wanting to know how I could possibly refuse to work there.
Anyway, they've rung me up several times since - I suspect as new rounds of funding come through - and their last offer to me included good old stock options as an incentive. They're planning to go public in the next year or so, and wanted me to sign on now for the promise of wealth beyond my wildest dreams at some unspecified future date.
It was like being in a time warp, and gave me a bit of a chuckle; unfortunately these days I'm not really interested in working for a small salary while having the promise of a huge payday dangled over my head at some vague date that's somewhat out of my control.
One of the funniest things I've witnessed is my kids watching "Video Hits" on Saturday morning here in Melbourne Australia.
They wake up and turn on the TV, generally before they're fully awake. The Video Hits producers have apparently decided that what teenage kids want to watch is (a) gangsta rap, and (b) Britney/Jessica/Delta/whoever, in strict rotation. Now I'm sure there's a small demographic out there that enjoys both gangsta rap *and* bimbo pop, but I'm also sure they're not awake at 9am on Saturday morning watching this strange heaven and hell combination of teenage angst.
My kids have the TV on with this stuff, but the sound turned down because they don't like the music! Instead, they're on the phone to their friends, laughing at the assorted gangsta d00ds and boofhead blonde hairstyles.
NOTE TO VIDEO HITS PRODUCERS: These kids are dead centre of your target demographic. They are impressionable, keen to distance themselves from their parents' tastes and have disposable income, but are laughing at what you think are their musical tastes. Instead, they spend their money on clothes and watching movies. Don't you think that, just maybe, putting on music that they enjoy might entice them to actually buy your product?
Absolutely the same experience here - my teenage kids like the music I bought in the 80s. Sure, they buy a bit of modern stuff as well, but probably less than 10% of what they listen to is from after 2000.
They're not fools - they know that marketing people are trying to sell as much "product" as possible, and like most teenagers they want to rebel against blatant consumerism as long as they don't get too offside with their friends... I honestly thought the advertising industry in general was starting to work this out for themselves, but no - apparently Britney et al are what they think teenagers want to listen to, when I've not yet met a teenager who likes that sort of music. Either my kids' teenage friends are a long way out of touch with modern music taste (which I find very hard to believe), or the record execs are.
Strangely enough, they watch Idol and all that sort of stuff on TV, but wouldn't be seen dead buying that type of music from a shop. I can only guess they watch it on TV for the comedy/sadism angle of watching people get voted off each week.
You're right - maybe I should have reworded it to "The Labour Party has traditionally been a bottom-up party". The unions and left-leaning factions have been marginalised to a large extent over the past several years...
However, the point still stands; the two parties have been run on a totally separate basis, and maybe the incidents in the Labor Party that you've highlighted have been an attempt to change that model. I could see how a Labor politician could be driven crazy by having to ensure that they're covering the requirements of every element in the party that has a public face; maybe it's just become "too hard" or the way forward has become "too obvious" to require that consensus in some peoples' eyes.
I still say the Labour Party has more brawls in public than the Libs, regardless of who's in power. It's obvious that some high-ranking Liberal Party people have very different views on e.g. the republic than the boss does, but the whole issue is kept tightly under wraps and dissenting views are very rarely expressed in the open. Whether that's a good or bad thing is another matter, but the two parties operate very differently in this respect.
... the two major political parties work very differently. The Liberal Party (who are the more *right*-leaning) have a top-down model broadly similar to how both major US parties work - decisions are made by the man/men at the top, and filter down to the underlings whose job it is to make them happen.
The Labor Party have a bottom-up model, where various factions (e.g. trade unions) push ideas, solutions etc. upwards to the man at the top. Infighting within the Labor Party is very much out in the open as the various factions try to win out, whereas infighting in the Liberal Party is almost exclusively carried out behind closed doors.
One thing that has been a pattern is that, when the Labor Party has been running the country, their leaders have almost always been extremely charismatic people. Keating, Hawke, Whitlam (and now we're back 30 years) have had very strong public personas. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, has had "grey men" in charge whenever they've been in power - nobody ever accused Howard, Fraser, McMahon, Holt or Gorton of being particularly visionary in the way they went about doing things (OK, Gorton is a slight exception, but he was nowhere near as charismatic as any of the Labor guys).
Here's my point, at long last: if you equate the open-source (bottom up movement) with the Australian Labor Party (bottom up model), maybe the thing that's missing is a highly charismatic leader for the open-source movement. Maybe FOSS needs someone who can present the vision, paint the future as rosy, etc. etc., while managing to galvanise the hard-headed FOSS coders behind the scenes to buy into the same vision. Someone who can stand up and convince a room full of sceptical businessmen and politicians that he knows what their problems are and FOSS can address them, while being able to stand up in a room full of C++ and Java coders and convince them his coding and design skills are on a par with theirs.
From what I've read, Miguel de Icaza would possible be the foremost candidate for that type of role at this particular instant, but I've got no idea if that's a role he sees himself filling at any point in the future.
> That said, I fail to see how choosing Linux > doesn't result into 'lock in'
OK, here's one way.
Current Windows platform of choice, as put forward by MS, is C#,.NET, ASP.NET and SQL Server. Let's even make things hard and assume you're well into your design for your app using these tools, and maybe you've even begun coding.
At some point in your design/development, you decide to move to Linux, so you do the following: - build a Linux server running Mono - take your.NET app and put it on the Linux server - either move from SQL Server to e.g. Postgres, or just keep one Windows box to run SQL Server. Provided you're not too far down the track in terms of writing code, have used.NET providers as recommended by MS, and have stuck to using views and stored procedures for most/all "non-admin" database access, it shouldn't be particularly tough to migrate from SQL Server to Postgres (or SAP DB or...). Stick with SQL Server if you're time-bound or squeamish about a possible lack of support for FOSS databases - start testing (unit, functional, load, user-acceptance, etc.)
It's quite reasonable to think that your app could run just fine on Linux. No, there's no Windows.Forms support in Mono yet (or if there is it's gonna be risky), but as long as your app is browser-based you're probably going to wind up with the following scenario: - server-side app runs OK on Windows, and you can pay $X to MS for licences and get your vendor support. Clients (Web browser) can run fine on IE - server-side app runs OK on Linux/Mono, and you pay nothing in licence costs. For vendor support, you may be able to find someone to support you on an as-needed basis, or you may decide to do it yourself. Clients (Web browser) can run fine on IE
Moving to Linux in this manner doesn't lock you in at all; if you want/need to, you can simply move your app back to Windows, re-test and deploy. Sure, you could argue that Postgres doesn't have a clear migration path from Linux back to Windows, but if that's going to be an issue then use SAP DB or another database tool.
FOSS doesn't "lock you in" by its very nature; you always have the option of extracting your data in a friendly format, even if you have to pay someone to change the source code in order to do so.
> Excuse the bluntness, but jesus christ. People's > lives have been ruined by this sort of shit and > you're dancing around like you're some sort of > special exception?
No, people's lives have been "ruined" because they shared movies, which violates existing law in many countries, and they got caught doing it. Their lives would not have been "ruined" if they hadn't done so.
Yes, it really is that simple.
There's many ways of changing these laws if you feel they're wrong; unfortunately, many of the traditional ways (e.g. challenge in court) are impractical due to the sheer size and financial holdings of those companies you'd be taking on.
The grandparent poster is using another well-proven method, known as "civil disobedience". The theory is, if enough people disobey a law, it becomes unenforceable and is eventually nuked out of existence.
I admire his bravery for taking a stance on what he believes; maybe sooner or later he or someone else will organize a large scale "Copy a CD or movie today" day, get it well-publicised and that'll take things to the next level.
I think you've got a bigger problem than you're making out.
As others have pointed out, your left wing (Democrat) party would be regarded as right wing in many/most other democracies.
Pause... confirm this with other non-US people if you must... take a deep breath... continue.
Your Republican party has progressively moved itself further and further to the right, and as a result you could reasonably expect it should be appealing to less and less people in the process. Obviously this isn't the case, so you have to ask why.
Reasons that occur to me: - fear; GWB promoted a fear of terrorist attacks extremely well, and Osama bin Laden's latest video helped him hugely - ageing population; it's well documented that people tend to move to the right politically as they age, and there's a huge grey vote that's going to grow in proportion to the rest of the voters for at least the next 10-20 years - simple vision that is easy to understand; GWB very clearly said "Follow me and I'll lead you to the promised land, free of terrorism". Kerry's vision was a lot muddier - positive message; GWB was all about "I'll lead you out of the darkness, as I've already done for Afghanistan and Iraq by bringing them democracy", while Kerry was all about undoing the bad things that Bush had done - single-mindedness; GWB consistently said the same thing over and over, whereas Kerry tried to present himself as rounded and across all the issues. I doubt many people think Bush is across all the issues that would normally confront a world leader, but apparently voters don't see that as important at present - war; countries tend not to change leaders during wartime - religion; the Republican party clearly positions itself as a Christian party, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are perceived by many as "good vs. bad" as well as "Christian vs. Muslim". It's not a big jump from there to "Christian=good; Muslim/other=bad" for many people
I'm betting study of how Bush/Cheney managed to win this election, against the very clear expectations of the rest of the world and after a pretty bad 4-year track record in those areas that most people thought were critical (i.e. economy, health, foreign policy, education), will become a very popular target in political courses over many years.
Parent is absolutely right - MRTG's capabilities are top notch, and adding RRDTool enhances it even further.
I've been an HP Openview consultant in a previous life, and MRTG+RRDTool is at least as good in terms of reporting and data management as anything HP has to offer. On top of that, it's free, simple to set up and doesn't require a lot of grunt to drive it.
We've decided to step in to fix a problem you seem to be having.
Unfortunately, the election of your President impacts many of us greatly. While it has been a source of considerable amusement to us in the past, recently we have become less tolerant of the outcomes it has produced.
Starting today, here is the amended process whereby a US president gets elected: - US citizens get together to elect a US Presidential *candidate*. Your current options: Bush, Kerry, various others nobody cares about. Method: Toss a coin, spin a bottle, use the results of a sporting event nobody cares about. We don't care, so knock yourselves out - candidate is put forward to the rest of the world to decide whether he/she/it is suitable. Their current options: winner of Bush/Kerry, "go find someone else". Method: secured regulated ballot process, as used in nearly all Western countries for many years without problems. Feel free to read up on it some time if you're interested - results announced: "go find someone else" - repeat approx 300 million times, or until point is made...
WE REALLY LIKE YOU AMERICANS, BOTH INDIVIDUALLY AND COLLECTIVELY. SURE, YOU DRESS FUNNY AND MAKE US LAUGH WHEN YOU'RE IN INTERNATIONAL VENUES, BUT YOU'RE REALLY NICE PEOPLE REGARDLESS AND WE LOVE HAVING YOU ALONG FOR THE RIDE. ON TOP OF THAT, YOU'VE GOT SOME OF THE REALLY SMART PEOPLE IN THE WORLD LIVING IN YOUR COUNTRY. HOWEVER, WHAT CRAZY SYSTEM LETS YOU IGNORE THE REALLY GOOD PEOPLE AND SPIN OUT SUCH LEADERSHIP CANDIDATES AS YOU MANAGE TO COME UP WITH?
Ahem, sorry about that. Anyway, please understand that these changes take place immediately, no correspondence will be entered into, yada, yada, yada.
Yours truly,
God (no, NOT yours, and not yours either. In fact you were all wrong, and what the hell made you think I'd give a stuff about you tiny little humans anyway?)
I agree - "Glen or Glenda?" is a step beyond Plan 9 in just about any direction you care to name.
Plan 9 has a distinct plot - well, several, of sorts, that don't actually mesh that well - but "Glen or Glenda?" doesn't seem to. It's one of those films that genuinely defies description
As an earlier poster said, a lot of users at CentreLink *only* use a Web browser as their sole interface to the systems they work with. There's no conceivable reason why they couldn't do this with e.g. Firefox/Linux instead of IE/Win2k; there might be a bit of re-engineering required to get user authentication and such stuff covered, but that would be a relatively minor exercise given that they're already a large Novell shop and (from memory) use Novell's NDS for authentication now.
I can't see any conceivable reason why the govt wouldn't encourage them to pursue this. Even the most cynical person could rationalise that this would free up more loot to spend on defence, keeping out those evil boat people and financing GWB's re-election.
I think one of the key pieces missing for XUL adoption is the lack of a robust, powerful IDE. If there was something with a notionally similar user interface to Boa Constructur, but spitting out XUL instead of wxPython code, it would be a HUGE advance.
Creating GUIs is fundamentally a different mindset to writing straight code. As a coder, I tend to use more "primitive" tools such as vim that let me get my hands dirty in the code (although Eclipse has just about turned me around); on those admittedly rare occasions when I have to build a GUI, I'm just lost without a powerful IDE. One of the big reasons for the success of VB in the past has been the absolutely killer drag-and-drop style IDE.
If/when MS releases XAML, you can be very sure it'll have a terrific IDE behind it. If there's no moderately comparable IDE for XUL at that point, I think it'll be very tough for XUL to keep up.
Your points are valid, but I can see a potentially huge market for Firefox in intranet applications. Many browser vulnerabilities are simply irrelevant in an intranet context, where users' PCs are already locked down.
Most/all large customers have internal-only applications that have been client-server or n-tier with a custom front end. These apps tend to be brutal to deploy, particularly the front-end, as they are prone to DLL hell and various interdependency issues with other applications (it'd be nice if a customer's IT was mandated to only ever use version X of app Y to develop all apps, but that never is the case). In many cases, customers have resorted to deployment "hacks" such as deploying these front-ends to a small number of servers, then using e.g. Citrix terminal services to expose them to their users.
Enter Firefox and other Mozilla browsers. Now it's practical to build your front-end GUI using XUL and related stuff, and have it talk to the backend over sockets, XML-RPC, SOAP, etc. The only thing that gets deployed to the end user is the Firefox/Mozilla/etc. browser (plus possibly a few addons, typically JavaScript), which is self contained and very easy to deploy.
This is a potentially huge market, which is why MS is keen to grab it with Avalon. Unfortunately for MS, Mozilla is here now and Avalon is over a year away; Mozilla is easy to deploy, and Avalon will presumably be bundled with Longhorn and all the installation/testing issues that go with it.
Finally, I suspect that it will be relatively easy to develop an XUL-based app solution and later retrofit it to Avalon using XSLT and not a huge amount of extra effort - an investment in Mozilla app development now *won't* be lost if a later decision is made to jump to Avalon.
Ask yourself "Why do people buy bottled water in a shop, when they can just get a sports bottle and fill it with water out of the tap?". It's nothing to do with quality; the water out of my tap tastes every bit as good as the water you buy in a shop.
It's convenience, plus marketing. Hell, I know people who go to the supermarket to buy water to bring home to put in their own fridge and drink at home; that's how good the marketing is for bottled water.
In the case of the mooted "Google OS", you'd be paying for the following: - someone else to (re-)install your OS - someone else to maintain your OS, applying patches etc as required - someone else to deal with interoperability issues such as "When I apply this patch to fix the OS, MS Powerpoint stops working" - (maybe) someone else to store all your documents safely and securely where bad guys can't get at them
I imagine people on Slashdot would generally be less willing to pay someone to do all this. However, think of your mums, dads, doctors, solicitors, rich uncles, accountants,...; people who don't know computers in depth, are time-poor and can afford $25/month for someone else to take care of this stuff. They don't want to download and install patches, keep anti-virus progs updated and so on.
With the right marketing, they'll jump at this option.
If unwanted amputation is really a concern, there's nothing stopping you taking a big black pen and writing on each limb "DON'T CUT HERE!!!" in big black letters.
It's a less invasive than RFID tags, and potentially more enjoyable with the correct partner.
As someone else pointed out, SQL-Ledger is good for bookkeeping.
I think you may be missing one of the key advantages of open source for business software. If SQL-Ledger isn't exactly what you want, then you're free to pay the author (or anyone else, for that matter) to make it *exactly* what you want. If you need features X/Y/Z, then he can implement them in *exactly* the way you specify.
When you count the true costs you're currently paying for bookkeeping software, you might well come to the conclusion that paying either the author or some local IT guy to tweak SQL-Ledger to your exact specification would be a significantly better investment. Remember, there's always people out there willing to take your money;->
Note I'm not specifically singling out SQL-Ledger - it's just one piece of FOSS code that you could work with in this fashion.
In terms of their jobs, the users you highlight would probably spend 95%+ of their time in the following apps: - IE - Outlook - MS Word
The amount of training required to transition them to e.g. Firefox, Evolution and OO.o would be minimal. I suspect that the user-perceived difference between e.g. Outlook and Evolution is about the same as between two successive releases of Outlook, and nobody gets "software version upgrade" training. Hell, if it makes it any easier, rename Linux's "start menu" entries for these apps to "Microsoft Word", "Internet Explorer" and "Outlook"; I bet a lot of them wouldn't even notice the difference.
Consider also that many companies migrated their staff from WordPerfect to Word, or Word/DOS to WinWord, in the early to mid 90s without enormous expense or disruption.
I don't think this retraining pain is actually as severe as many people claim.
> Could law enforcement abuse it? Probably. But > those guys don't have a lot of free time, and what > free time they have won't be used scannning random > individuals.
You're assuming that the scanning and abuse will be performed by "those guys". Obviously, data would be captured and analysed by machines rather than people.
Once there's enough people with these devices implanted, there would be a compelling case to have a RFID reader set up at e.g. every train station, scanning individuals and monitoring our movements. While there's some degree of that going on already, RFID tags inside everybody make it possible to extract masses of information about any individual's movements over the course of their life.
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Talk to your accountant and solicitor. If you don't have them, hire some and talk to them. Oh, and don't use the same accountant/solicitor that your company or its key shareholders use; they should tell you if that's the case, but check yourself to be sure.
Business plans typically are full of best case scenarios - I've written a few of them myself, and have occasionally been told to "gild the lily" a bit in order to get the people putting up the money (in my case, banks; in your case, it's you!) excited and wanting to jump on board.
If you're keen on staying at the company for a long time, have a lot of belief in the people running it, your company has some competitive advantage that sets it apart (no, that doesn't include "the quality of our people" since all your competitors will say the same thing about themselves) and the market for what you produce seems to be set for long term growth, by all means think seriously about investing some of your loot.
If, as may be the case, you don't think you're in a position to judge these things, try to find someone who can.
Alternately, you can treat it like betting on the lottery - invest some small amount from each pay cheque and hope like hell.
Even if you're convinced your company is gonna make it big, talk to solicitor / accountant anyway. You don't want to make $5m in one big payday in 10 years' time, then have it all chewed up in taxes...
Good luck.
> I don't really see the great charm of stock
> options, specifically as part of your employment
> renumeration.
Actually, there is one case where I can see the big advantage of holding options - when you're actually running the show and therefore hold a high degree of control over when things happen.
If you're the person who can:
- hire true experts,
- fire the losers quickly
- are deeply involved in when things happen
- know when significant slabs of money are likely to become available,
then you're in a good place to decide when and how much of your total income to take as options.
I was called up for the umpteenth time by one particular startup. One of my ex-workmates is running R&D there, and he must've given them an amazingly glowing reference for me - he rang me out of the blue for a chat one day, invited me to lunch and I found myself at a sort of "reverse job interview" where various execs sat around the lunch table telling me what a great place it was to work, what incredible things they would be doing in the future, etc. and wanting to know how I could possibly refuse to work there.
Anyway, they've rung me up several times since - I suspect as new rounds of funding come through - and their last offer to me included good old stock options as an incentive. They're planning to go public in the next year or so, and wanted me to sign on now for the promise of wealth beyond my wildest dreams at some unspecified future date.
It was like being in a time warp, and gave me a bit of a chuckle; unfortunately these days I'm not really interested in working for a small salary while having the promise of a huge payday dangled over my head at some vague date that's somewhat out of my control.
I hear there's a former Iraqi Information Minister who's still looking for a job.
One of the funniest things I've witnessed is my kids watching "Video Hits" on Saturday morning here in Melbourne Australia.
They wake up and turn on the TV, generally before they're fully awake. The Video Hits producers have apparently decided that what teenage kids want to watch is (a) gangsta rap, and (b) Britney/Jessica/Delta/whoever, in strict rotation. Now I'm sure there's a small demographic out there that enjoys both gangsta rap *and* bimbo pop, but I'm also sure they're not awake at 9am on Saturday morning watching this strange heaven and hell combination of teenage angst.
My kids have the TV on with this stuff, but the sound turned down because they don't like the music! Instead, they're on the phone to their friends, laughing at the assorted gangsta d00ds and boofhead blonde hairstyles.
NOTE TO VIDEO HITS PRODUCERS: These kids are dead centre of your target demographic. They are impressionable, keen to distance themselves from their parents' tastes and have disposable income, but are laughing at what you think are their musical tastes. Instead, they spend their money on clothes and watching movies. Don't you think that, just maybe, putting on music that they enjoy might entice them to actually buy your product?
Absolutely the same experience here - my teenage kids like the music I bought in the 80s. Sure, they buy a bit of modern stuff as well, but probably less than 10% of what they listen to is from after 2000.
They're not fools - they know that marketing people are trying to sell as much "product" as possible, and like most teenagers they want to rebel against blatant consumerism as long as they don't get too offside with their friends... I honestly thought the advertising industry in general was starting to work this out for themselves, but no - apparently Britney et al are what they think teenagers want to listen to, when I've not yet met a teenager who likes that sort of music. Either my kids' teenage friends are a long way out of touch with modern music taste (which I find very hard to believe), or the record execs are.
Strangely enough, they watch Idol and all that sort of stuff on TV, but wouldn't be seen dead buying that type of music from a shop. I can only guess they watch it on TV for the comedy/sadism angle of watching people get voted off each week.
I think a nice way of putting it would be to say that Richard Stallman's charisma would appeal to a relatively small demographic.
And, no, I won't put it in a less nice way, because I admire a lot of what he's done.
You're right - maybe I should have reworded it to "The Labour Party has traditionally been a bottom-up party". The unions and left-leaning factions have been marginalised to a large extent over the past several years...
However, the point still stands; the two parties have been run on a totally separate basis, and maybe the incidents in the Labor Party that you've highlighted have been an attempt to change that model. I could see how a Labor politician could be driven crazy by having to ensure that they're covering the requirements of every element in the party that has a public face; maybe it's just become "too hard" or the way forward has become "too obvious" to require that consensus in some peoples' eyes.
I still say the Labour Party has more brawls in public than the Libs, regardless of who's in power. It's obvious that some high-ranking Liberal Party people have very different views on e.g. the republic than the boss does, but the whole issue is kept tightly under wraps and dissenting views are very rarely expressed in the open. Whether that's a good or bad thing is another matter, but the two parties operate very differently in this respect.
... the two major political parties work very differently. The Liberal Party (who are the more *right*-leaning) have a top-down model broadly similar to how both major US parties work - decisions are made by the man/men at the top, and filter down to the underlings whose job it is to make them happen.
The Labor Party have a bottom-up model, where various factions (e.g. trade unions) push ideas, solutions etc. upwards to the man at the top. Infighting within the Labor Party is very much out in the open as the various factions try to win out, whereas infighting in the Liberal Party is almost exclusively carried out behind closed doors.
One thing that has been a pattern is that, when the Labor Party has been running the country, their leaders have almost always been extremely charismatic people. Keating, Hawke, Whitlam (and now we're back 30 years) have had very strong public personas. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, has had "grey men" in charge whenever they've been in power - nobody ever accused Howard, Fraser, McMahon, Holt or Gorton of being particularly visionary in the way they went about doing things (OK, Gorton is a slight exception, but he was nowhere near as charismatic as any of the Labor guys).
Here's my point, at long last: if you equate the open-source (bottom up movement) with the Australian Labor Party (bottom up model), maybe the thing that's missing is a highly charismatic leader for the open-source movement. Maybe FOSS needs someone who can present the vision, paint the future as rosy, etc. etc., while managing to galvanise the hard-headed FOSS coders behind the scenes to buy into the same vision. Someone who can stand up and convince a room full of sceptical businessmen and politicians that he knows what their problems are and FOSS can address them, while being able to stand up in a room full of C++ and Java coders and convince them his coding and design skills are on a par with theirs.
From what I've read, Miguel de Icaza would possible be the foremost candidate for that type of role at this particular instant, but I've got no idea if that's a role he sees himself filling at any point in the future.
> That said, I fail to see how choosing Linux
.NET, ASP.NET and SQL Server. Let's even make things hard and assume you're well into your design for your app using these tools, and maybe you've even begun coding.
.NET app and put it on the Linux server .NET providers as recommended by MS, and have stuck to using views and stored procedures for most/all "non-admin" database access, it shouldn't be particularly tough to migrate from SQL Server to Postgres (or SAP DB or ...). Stick with SQL Server if you're time-bound or squeamish about a possible lack of support for FOSS databases
> doesn't result into 'lock in'
OK, here's one way.
Current Windows platform of choice, as put forward by MS, is C#,
At some point in your design/development, you decide to move to Linux, so you do the following:
- build a Linux server running Mono
- take your
- either move from SQL Server to e.g. Postgres, or just keep one Windows box to run SQL Server. Provided you're not too far down the track in terms of writing code, have used
- start testing (unit, functional, load, user-acceptance, etc.)
It's quite reasonable to think that your app could run just fine on Linux. No, there's no Windows.Forms support in Mono yet (or if there is it's gonna be risky), but as long as your app is browser-based you're probably going to wind up with the following scenario:
- server-side app runs OK on Windows, and you can pay $X to MS for licences and get your vendor support. Clients (Web browser) can run fine on IE
- server-side app runs OK on Linux/Mono, and you pay nothing in licence costs. For vendor support, you may be able to find someone to support you on an as-needed basis, or you may decide to do it yourself. Clients (Web browser) can run fine on IE
Moving to Linux in this manner doesn't lock you in at all; if you want/need to, you can simply move your app back to Windows, re-test and deploy. Sure, you could argue that Postgres doesn't have a clear migration path from Linux back to Windows, but if that's going to be an issue then use SAP DB or another database tool.
FOSS doesn't "lock you in" by its very nature; you always have the option of extracting your data in a friendly format, even if you have to pay someone to change the source code in order to do so.
> Excuse the bluntness, but jesus christ. People's
> lives have been ruined by this sort of shit and
> you're dancing around like you're some sort of
> special exception?
No, people's lives have been "ruined" because they shared movies, which violates existing law in many countries, and they got caught doing it. Their lives would not have been "ruined" if they hadn't done so.
Yes, it really is that simple.
There's many ways of changing these laws if you feel they're wrong; unfortunately, many of the traditional ways (e.g. challenge in court) are impractical due to the sheer size and financial holdings of those companies you'd be taking on.
The grandparent poster is using another well-proven method, known as "civil disobedience". The theory is, if enough people disobey a law, it becomes unenforceable and is eventually nuked out of existence.
I admire his bravery for taking a stance on what he believes; maybe sooner or later he or someone else will organize a large scale "Copy a CD or movie today" day, get it well-publicised and that'll take things to the next level.
I think you've got a bigger problem than you're making out.
... confirm this with other non-US people if you must ... take a deep breath ... continue.
As others have pointed out, your left wing (Democrat) party would be regarded as right wing in many/most other democracies.
Pause
Your Republican party has progressively moved itself further and further to the right, and as a result you could reasonably expect it should be appealing to less and less people in the process. Obviously this isn't the case, so you have to ask why.
Reasons that occur to me:
- fear; GWB promoted a fear of terrorist attacks extremely well, and Osama bin Laden's latest video helped him hugely
- ageing population; it's well documented that people tend to move to the right politically as they age, and there's a huge grey vote that's going to grow in proportion to the rest of the voters for at least the next 10-20 years
- simple vision that is easy to understand; GWB very clearly said "Follow me and I'll lead you to the promised land, free of terrorism". Kerry's vision was a lot muddier
- positive message; GWB was all about "I'll lead you out of the darkness, as I've already done for Afghanistan and Iraq by bringing them democracy", while Kerry was all about undoing the bad things that Bush had done
- single-mindedness; GWB consistently said the same thing over and over, whereas Kerry tried to present himself as rounded and across all the issues. I doubt many people think Bush is across all the issues that would normally confront a world leader, but apparently voters don't see that as important at present
- war; countries tend not to change leaders during wartime
- religion; the Republican party clearly positions itself as a Christian party, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are perceived by many as "good vs. bad" as well as "Christian vs. Muslim". It's not a big jump from there to "Christian=good; Muslim/other=bad" for many people
I'm betting study of how Bush/Cheney managed to win this election, against the very clear expectations of the rest of the world and after a pretty bad 4-year track record in those areas that most people thought were critical (i.e. economy, health, foreign policy, education), will become a very popular target in political courses over many years.
Parent is absolutely right - MRTG's capabilities are top notch, and adding RRDTool enhances it even further.
I've been an HP Openview consultant in a previous life, and MRTG+RRDTool is at least as good in terms of reporting and data management as anything HP has to offer. On top of that, it's free, simple to set up and doesn't require a lot of grunt to drive it.
Dear USA,
We've decided to step in to fix a problem you seem to be having.
Unfortunately, the election of your President impacts many of us greatly. While it has been a source of considerable amusement to us in the past, recently we have become less tolerant of the outcomes it has produced.
Starting today, here is the amended process whereby a US president gets elected:
- US citizens get together to elect a US Presidential *candidate*. Your current options: Bush, Kerry, various others nobody cares about. Method: Toss a coin, spin a bottle, use the results of a sporting event nobody cares about. We don't care, so knock yourselves out
- candidate is put forward to the rest of the world to decide whether he/she/it is suitable. Their current options: winner of Bush/Kerry, "go find someone else". Method: secured regulated ballot process, as used in nearly all Western countries for many years without problems. Feel free to read up on it some time if you're interested
- results announced: "go find someone else"
- repeat approx 300 million times, or until point is made...
WE REALLY LIKE YOU AMERICANS, BOTH INDIVIDUALLY AND COLLECTIVELY. SURE, YOU DRESS FUNNY AND MAKE US LAUGH WHEN YOU'RE IN INTERNATIONAL VENUES, BUT YOU'RE REALLY NICE PEOPLE REGARDLESS AND WE LOVE HAVING YOU ALONG FOR THE RIDE. ON TOP OF THAT, YOU'VE GOT SOME OF THE REALLY SMART PEOPLE IN THE WORLD LIVING IN YOUR COUNTRY. HOWEVER, WHAT CRAZY SYSTEM LETS YOU IGNORE THE REALLY GOOD PEOPLE AND SPIN OUT SUCH LEADERSHIP CANDIDATES AS YOU MANAGE TO COME UP WITH?
Ahem, sorry about that. Anyway, please understand that these changes take place immediately, no correspondence will be entered into, yada, yada, yada.
Yours truly,
God (no, NOT yours, and not yours either. In fact you were all wrong, and what the hell made you think I'd give a stuff about you tiny little humans anyway?)
I agree - "Glen or Glenda?" is a step beyond Plan 9 in just about any direction you care to name.
Plan 9 has a distinct plot - well, several, of sorts, that don't actually mesh that well - but "Glen or Glenda?" doesn't seem to. It's one of those films that genuinely defies description
As an earlier poster said, a lot of users at CentreLink *only* use a Web browser as their sole interface to the systems they work with. There's no conceivable reason why they couldn't do this with e.g. Firefox/Linux instead of IE/Win2k; there might be a bit of re-engineering required to get user authentication and such stuff covered, but that would be a relatively minor exercise given that they're already a large Novell shop and (from memory) use Novell's NDS for authentication now.
I can't see any conceivable reason why the govt wouldn't encourage them to pursue this. Even the most cynical person could rationalise that this would free up more loot to spend on defence, keeping out those evil boat people and financing GWB's re-election.
Make that "a one-shot ad in a paper THAT MOST OF THE WORLD CANNOT READ BECAUSE IT'S A REGIONAL NEWSPAPER".
Put that same ad in a paper or magazine with global distribution and you may get a different response.
I think one of the key pieces missing for XUL adoption is the lack of a robust, powerful IDE. If there was something with a notionally similar user interface to Boa Constructur, but spitting out XUL instead of wxPython code, it would be a HUGE advance.
Creating GUIs is fundamentally a different mindset to writing straight code. As a coder, I tend to use more "primitive" tools such as vim that let me get my hands dirty in the code (although Eclipse has just about turned me around); on those admittedly rare occasions when I have to build a GUI, I'm just lost without a powerful IDE. One of the big reasons for the success of VB in the past has been the absolutely killer drag-and-drop style IDE.
If/when MS releases XAML, you can be very sure it'll have a terrific IDE behind it. If there's no moderately comparable IDE for XUL at that point, I think it'll be very tough for XUL to keep up.
Your points are valid, but I can see a potentially huge market for Firefox in intranet applications. Many browser vulnerabilities are simply irrelevant in an intranet context, where users' PCs are already locked down.
Most/all large customers have internal-only applications that have been client-server or n-tier with a custom front end. These apps tend to be brutal to deploy, particularly the front-end, as they are prone to DLL hell and various interdependency issues with other applications (it'd be nice if a customer's IT was mandated to only ever use version X of app Y to develop all apps, but that never is the case). In many cases, customers have resorted to deployment "hacks" such as deploying these front-ends to a small number of servers, then using e.g. Citrix terminal services to expose them to their users.
Enter Firefox and other Mozilla browsers. Now it's practical to build your front-end GUI using XUL and related stuff, and have it talk to the backend over sockets, XML-RPC, SOAP, etc. The only thing that gets deployed to the end user is the Firefox/Mozilla/etc. browser (plus possibly a few addons, typically JavaScript), which is self contained and very easy to deploy.
This is a potentially huge market, which is why MS is keen to grab it with Avalon. Unfortunately for MS, Mozilla is here now and Avalon is over a year away; Mozilla is easy to deploy, and Avalon will presumably be bundled with Longhorn and all the installation/testing issues that go with it.
Finally, I suspect that it will be relatively easy to develop an XUL-based app solution and later retrofit it to Avalon using XSLT and not a huge amount of extra effort - an investment in Mozilla app development now *won't* be lost if a later decision is made to jump to Avalon.
> And paying for something that's free now?
...; people who don't know computers in depth, are time-poor and can afford $25/month for someone else to take care of this stuff. They don't want to download and install patches, keep anti-virus progs updated and so on.
You mean like bottled water?
Ask yourself "Why do people buy bottled water in a shop, when they can just get a sports bottle and fill it with water out of the tap?". It's nothing to do with quality; the water out of my tap tastes every bit as good as the water you buy in a shop.
It's convenience, plus marketing. Hell, I know people who go to the supermarket to buy water to bring home to put in their own fridge and drink at home; that's how good the marketing is for bottled water.
In the case of the mooted "Google OS", you'd be paying for the following:
- someone else to (re-)install your OS
- someone else to maintain your OS, applying patches etc as required
- someone else to deal with interoperability issues such as "When I apply this patch to fix the OS, MS Powerpoint stops working"
- (maybe) someone else to store all your documents safely and securely where bad guys can't get at them
I imagine people on Slashdot would generally be less willing to pay someone to do all this. However, think of your mums, dads, doctors, solicitors, rich uncles, accountants,
With the right marketing, they'll jump at this option.
> The more he reminds me of my ex girlfriend ...
;->
> Although he is much uglier and....male.
and not just a figment of your imagination
If unwanted amputation is really a concern, there's nothing stopping you taking a big black pen and writing on each limb "DON'T CUT HERE!!!" in big black letters.
It's a less invasive than RFID tags, and potentially more enjoyable with the correct partner.
As someone else pointed out, SQL-Ledger is good for bookkeeping.
;->
I think you may be missing one of the key advantages of open source for business software. If SQL-Ledger isn't exactly what you want, then you're free to pay the author (or anyone else, for that matter) to make it *exactly* what you want. If you need features X/Y/Z, then he can implement them in *exactly* the way you specify.
When you count the true costs you're currently paying for bookkeeping software, you might well come to the conclusion that paying either the author or some local IT guy to tweak SQL-Ledger to your exact specification would be a significantly better investment. Remember, there's always people out there willing to take your money
Note I'm not specifically singling out SQL-Ledger - it's just one piece of FOSS code that you could work with in this fashion.
In terms of their jobs, the users you highlight would probably spend 95%+ of their time in the following apps:
- IE
- Outlook
- MS Word
The amount of training required to transition them to e.g. Firefox, Evolution and OO.o would be minimal. I suspect that the user-perceived difference between e.g. Outlook and Evolution is about the same as between two successive releases of Outlook, and nobody gets "software version upgrade" training. Hell, if it makes it any easier, rename Linux's "start menu" entries for these apps to "Microsoft Word", "Internet Explorer" and "Outlook"; I bet a lot of them wouldn't even notice the difference.
Consider also that many companies migrated their staff from WordPerfect to Word, or Word/DOS to WinWord, in the early to mid 90s without enormous expense or disruption.
I don't think this retraining pain is actually as severe as many people claim.
> Could law enforcement abuse it? Probably. But
> those guys don't have a lot of free time, and what
> free time they have won't be used scannning random
> individuals.
You're assuming that the scanning and abuse will be performed by "those guys". Obviously, data would be captured and analysed by machines rather than people.
Once there's enough people with these devices implanted, there would be a compelling case to have a RFID reader set up at e.g. every train station, scanning individuals and monitoring our movements. While there's some degree of that going on already, RFID tags inside everybody make it possible to extract masses of information about any individual's movements over the course of their life.