I can't say that the same is true of MS where different versions of Office don't even like to talk to each other and they are constantly pushing for their customers to spend more money.
At some point, Office (at least Word anyhow) became both backwards and forward compatible. Meaning, a document saved in Word XP could be read and modified in Word 2000. I don't remember when this happened, but I would guess 2000, or possibly 97.
Advertisements are intrusive no matter what form they take. Just because they use less bits and/or are smaller on the page doesn't change the fact that they are unwanted.
Google's text ads aren't intrusive. Hell, I actually find them useful sometimes and actually click on them (since they are provided based on my search terms).
As for advertisements being intrusive in all forms.. Without advertising how would things sell? When you're looking for a product to buy, how do you find out about it? It has to be advertised somewhere, whether this advertisement is passive or active...
Well, of course, I meant excluding the management and the non-tech employees.. What I meant was amongst developers/engineers/admins/etc, admins are less likely to be outsourced when they need to be onsite to take care of problems. But even then admins can be outsourced depending on the scenario. And if all the work is being done somewhere else, what would you need an admin for anyways?
I think the best bet for many of us (in the U.S.) is to be the ones doing the outsourcing. I know of a lot of people doing just that.
..is that you're foolish to beleive that a job as a programmer or engineer is going to be really hard to find. If you are low skilled, say just a Java programmer or something like that...you know the type, then sure, it may be bleak. But think about all the devices that are out and even more coming out that need EE people to make, programmers to program etc. Perhaps being a network guy or sys-admin is going to be harder to come across
EE? devices? One word: outsourcing. You say that sys-admins will have harder time finding jobs, but the admin jobs are the least likely to be outsourced (though it certainly can be). All development is being outsourced, whether it is hardware or software.
However, I do think that what's going on in general is a "weeding out" of the tech industry. It'll take a while for everything to settle. And there's never going to be as much work, it'll just return to how it was before the boom. I remember when I was 10 years old (about 15 years ago) and told my dad I wanted to be a programmer, he said "no, don't do that, there's no money in it."
I don't accept any email that contains the word sex, espescially in the address
Wow.. I could never do that, as I have a lot of legitimate e-mail that contains the word "sex" in it. But that's because I have a lot of horny female friends...
hmm, yes I understand the irony of you plagiarizing my comment, when I was arguing against credit being visible in software.. But you could have at least provided source code or documentation countaining the credits. Of course, I didn't license my comment and just put it in the public domain, so I guess I was asking for it.
In any case, MY comment got modded up to 5, even though you posted it. Which does in fact boost my ego. Not what I was aiming for in writing it on Newsforge as an AC, but I'll accept it. More proof that you don't need credit for something you did in order for it to boost your ego, you just need to see it used and have people approve of it.
Have you seen Hans Reiser's "credits" in mkreiserfs that he wants forced upon users? This is it:
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the primary sponsor of Reiser4. DARPA does not endorse this project; it merely sponsors it.
Continuing core development of version 3 is mostly paid for by Hans Reiser from money made selling licenses in addition to the GPL to companies who don't want it known that they use ReiserFS as a foundation for their proprietary product. And my lawyer asked 'People pay you money for this?'. Yup. Hee Hee. Life is good. If you buy ReiserFS, you can focus on your value add rather than reinventing an entire FS. You should buy some free software too....
SuSE pays for continuing work on journaling for version 3, and paid for much of the previous version 3 work. Reiserfs integration in their distro is consistently solid.
MP3.com paid for initial journaling development.
Bigstorage.com contributes to our general fund every month, and has done so for quite a long time.
Thanks to all of those sponsors, including the secret ones. Without you, Hans would still have that day job, and the merry band of hackers would be missing quite a few....
Have fun.
I formatted a ReiserFS partition a little while ago and read this. Now my first thought after reading this (especially the 2nd paragraph), was what is this idiotic drivel and who is bombarding me with this crap? And he is wants to put a clause in his license that forces this to be displayed every time you run mkreiserfs. This almost makes me want to use another filesystem.
Now Donald Becker is alright, though, assuming he did one of two things: release his software under a proprietary license (nothing wrong with that, its not like its masquarading as free), released it as open source allowing for someone to hide the credits. However, if he were to use the license to force the credits on the screen, what if a Linux distro wanted to make the bootup hide all console messages, they can't do that as they are required to show this guys name.
The whole point is, nothing wrong with throwing your names or advertisements everywhere in GPLed software, but if someone, say Debian or Redhat or an end user, wants to come in and remove the names or ads, they should be able to. Otherwise the software isn't free as we've come to know free.
Note that the guy you responded to plagariazed my comment from Newsforge (ironic it is). Funny thing I am defending my own argument now:)
The only new part here is that the credit has visibility beyond those who care to look at the code.
This is a very big change. The idea of free that I was talking about was that you can make any change you want with the software. Reiser wants to force the credits to be displayed on the screen, like how mkreiserfs does so. Now what if you want to fork the code and use it in a project that doesn't output anything to the console? You can't because his licensing clause forces you to output all his advertisements to the console. This is where the software becomes non-free (as in speech), as it violates Stallman's freedom #1, you're unable to adapt it to your own needs. The credits belong in the source code and/or documentation where they will not affect the functionality.
I suppose this is a grey area, and basically comes down to opinion, but the way I see it is this makes software non-free. Do we really want free software to become ad-ware? If you want to write ad-ware, don't try to license it under the GPL.
I know Stallman is all about GNU getting credit, and calling the OS GNU/Linux, so I'd be interested in his take on this.
Speaking of giving credit, this comment was copied and pasted from MY comment on Newsforge. Are you that pathetic that you can't come up with your own ideas?
Ok, fine, that's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried about how this will affect the closed source that I develop. You know, the kind that I get paid to write? You mean a customer can now sue me or the company I work for, even though they insisted on having the software completed in an unreasonable amount of time without testing, and put it into production well before it was ready for that? Wonderful.
BTW, if you live smart, it pisses off the "gotta be better" crowd... as you will always have money to spend on vacations , $4000.00 camcorders, home theatre systems that make thiirs look stupid, etc..
ummm... what? You call that living smart? You argue not to waste money on an expensive suburbian home, but then you waste your money on overpriced toys that will lose their value after a few years? Sounds like you are the "gotta be better crowd"...
If that happens I'll just move to India. My savings will last much much longer there anyways. Hell, I could just move there and retire and be done with it all. Also, don't forget, that us in the U.S. can be the ones doing the outsourcing. I know a lot of people who do just that.
From what I read, Libranet created a Linux distro for their own purposes, decided it was good enough for public consumption, and decided to profit from it.
Re:Got a whole lotta hype
on
Brain Privacy
·
· Score: 1
I've never pissed in a cup for an employer. I've turned down job offers over it. I've still done ok.
Drug tests: just say no.
Hell yeah man.. I don't even use illegal drugs and I turn down job offers if they screen for substance abuse. For me, I simply cannot work for someone who would support this unethical practice.
Re:Got a whole lotta hype
on
Brain Privacy
·
· Score: 1
A drug screen is meant to pick up illegal activity which poses a tangible safety and liability issue to a potential employer.
No... these are generally "substance-abuse" screenings. That means having alcohol in your bloodstream will cause a positive, causing you to be denied the job. Nothing illegal about having alcohol in your bloodstream. Or eating a poppyseed bagel for that matter.
Actually, yes. The last time I used FreeBSD as a desktop OS (about 6 months ago). Windowmaker was broken. This was due to the FreeBSD ftp sites lacking the latest version of some of the necessary files. I waited a month for them to fix it (after submitting bug reports), it wasn't fixed in that time and I haven't messed with it again. It is obvious that they do not pay much attention to desktop/GUI functionality. KDE worked fine, but X was very slow, maybe something I had to tweak, but I don't have to tweak anything in Debian.
I really like *BSD, but only for server and CLI purposes.
Now you can choose when you want to view a Flash animation. But yeah, Mozilla should have some sort of built-in feature that does something similar. Though for me, this little hack does the trick and does it nicely.
Note: Slashdot seems to put a space in between the 5 and 4 up there, there should not be one.
My friend's 500 MHz iBook (G3) with half of my RAM can play MP3s, burn a CD, and browse the internet all at the same time without skipping at all.
I can do that on my Duron 1 GHz as well (and yeah I use an IDE controller).. Haven't burned a bad CD yet and MP3's never ever skip. Hell, on my old K6-2 450 I was able to multitask to that level (though maybe the MP3's skipped a bit). It was only on my P1-166 that I had to leave it alone when it was burning a CD.
Regardless, I've got 3 PCs for the price of 1 Mac, so when one is busy I can switch to another. I'm not saying I don't wish I had a Mac running OS X. I'd love one, but it's not worth it for me when I only spend about 1 or 2 hours a day at my home PC's. Though I remote access them frequently, so CLI is all that matters. One day when I can afford it, I'll get a Mac (probably a PowerBook) for doing all the multimedia-type stuff that I do.
Hey, no one types directory structures anymore. They click into them. Step into the 90s.
Bah.. keyboard is generally faster than the mouse.. Even when using a file manager. Even Windows Explorer and Windows in general is well-designed for keyboard use. Now I'm going to press TAB-TAB-TAB-SPACE.
Secondly, the difference might not be enough to notice on a conscious level.
Very true... You really have to smoke a joint or two before doing a listening test. It helps hear all the things your mind normally filters out. But then you have to do the comparison in the same block of time, otherwise you introduce a variable because the effects vary over time. But that applies to sober listening as well, since, for example, your ears respond differently after an hour of listening.
To do a true test, you need to encode the files, decode them to PCM wav format, then burn to an audio CD. Then, you have to do a blind test with all of them.
Or better yet, write a script that creates the PCM wav files in a random order and saves the order to a file. Then listen to the WAV's for the blind test.
I did "Resume Blaster" or something similar when I was looking for work (this was in early 2001). I payed $30. Didn't get a single interview out of it. It just signed me up to a good number of [useless] career web sites. I just got a bunch of e-mail that had career advice but no real leads. Don't waste your money on this kind of stuff. You could probably write a script that does the same thing.
I believe that the core group of open source developers have incentive, and that beating Microsoft.
If you think that open source developers are driven by the desire to "beat Microsoft," I believe you are mistaken. It is the fanboys that scream "open source must do this to beat Microsoft." These fanboys are rarely actual developers. The developers are writing software. Their reasons? For the creative and intellectual stimulation, for practice and improvement of their skills, and/or for work-related functionality. Granted there are a small amount of OSS developers who are raging fanboys determined to beat Microsoft, but they are a minority.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't say that the same is true of MS where different versions of Office don't even like to talk to each other and they are constantly pushing for their customers to spend more money.
At some point, Office (at least Word anyhow) became both backwards and forward compatible. Meaning, a document saved in Word XP could be read and modified in Word 2000. I don't remember when this happened, but I would guess 2000, or possibly 97.
Advertisements are intrusive no matter what form they take. Just because they use less bits and/or are smaller on the page doesn't change the fact that they are unwanted.
Google's text ads aren't intrusive. Hell, I actually find them useful sometimes and actually click on them (since they are provided based on my search terms).
As for advertisements being intrusive in all forms.. Without advertising how would things sell? When you're looking for a product to buy, how do you find out about it? It has to be advertised somewhere, whether this advertisement is passive or active...
+1, For me to poop on
Well, of course, I meant excluding the management and the non-tech employees.. What I meant was amongst developers/engineers/admins/etc, admins are less likely to be outsourced when they need to be onsite to take care of problems. But even then admins can be outsourced depending on the scenario. And if all the work is being done somewhere else, what would you need an admin for anyways?
I think the best bet for many of us (in the U.S.) is to be the ones doing the outsourcing. I know of a lot of people doing just that.
EE? devices? One word: outsourcing. You say that sys-admins will have harder time finding jobs, but the admin jobs are the least likely to be outsourced (though it certainly can be). All development is being outsourced, whether it is hardware or software.
However, I do think that what's going on in general is a "weeding out" of the tech industry. It'll take a while for everything to settle. And there's never going to be as much work, it'll just return to how it was before the boom. I remember when I was 10 years old (about 15 years ago) and told my dad I wanted to be a programmer, he said "no, don't do that, there's no money in it."
I don't accept any email that contains the word sex, espescially in the address
Wow.. I could never do that, as I have a lot of legitimate e-mail that contains the word "sex" in it. But that's because I have a lot of horny female friends...
hmm, yes I understand the irony of you plagiarizing my comment, when I was arguing against credit being visible in software.. But you could have at least provided source code or documentation countaining the credits. Of course, I didn't license my comment and just put it in the public domain, so I guess I was asking for it.
In any case, MY comment got modded up to 5, even though you posted it. Which does in fact boost my ego. Not what I was aiming for in writing it on Newsforge as an AC, but I'll accept it. More proof that you don't need credit for something you did in order for it to boost your ego, you just need to see it used and have people approve of it.
Have you seen Hans Reiser's "credits" in mkreiserfs that he wants forced upon users? This is it:
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the
primary sponsor of Reiser4. DARPA does not endorse this project;
it merely sponsors it.
Continuing core development of version 3 is mostly paid for by
Hans Reiser from money made selling licenses in addition to the
GPL to companies who don't want it known that they use ReiserFS
as a foundation for their proprietary product. And my lawyer
asked 'People pay you money for this?'. Yup. Hee Hee. Life is
good. If you buy ReiserFS, you can focus on your value add
rather than reinventing an entire FS. You should buy some free
software too....
SuSE pays for continuing work on journaling for version 3, and
paid for much of the previous version 3 work. Reiserfs
integration in their distro is consistently solid.
MP3.com paid for initial journaling development.
Bigstorage.com contributes to our general fund every month, and
has done so for quite a long time.
Thanks to all of those sponsors, including the secret ones.
Without you, Hans would still have that day job, and the merry
band of hackers would be missing quite a few....
Have fun.
I formatted a ReiserFS partition a little while ago and read this. Now my first thought after reading this (especially the 2nd paragraph), was what is this idiotic drivel and who is bombarding me with this crap? And he is wants to put a clause in his license that forces this to be displayed every time you run mkreiserfs. This almost makes me want to use another filesystem.
Now Donald Becker is alright, though, assuming he did one of two things: release his software under a proprietary license (nothing wrong with that, its not like its masquarading as free), released it as open source allowing for someone to hide the credits. However, if he were to use the license to force the credits on the screen, what if a Linux distro wanted to make the bootup hide all console messages, they can't do that as they are required to show this guys name.
The whole point is, nothing wrong with throwing your names or advertisements everywhere in GPLed software, but if someone, say Debian or Redhat or an end user, wants to come in and remove the names or ads, they should be able to. Otherwise the software isn't free as we've come to know free.
Note that the guy you responded to plagariazed my comment from Newsforge (ironic it is). Funny thing I am defending my own argument now :)
The only new part here is that the credit has visibility beyond those who care to look at the code.
This is a very big change. The idea of free that I was talking about was that you can make any change you want with the software. Reiser wants to force the credits to be displayed on the screen, like how mkreiserfs does so. Now what if you want to fork the code and use it in a project that doesn't output anything to the console? You can't because his licensing clause forces you to output all his advertisements to the console. This is where the software becomes non-free (as in speech), as it violates Stallman's freedom #1, you're unable to adapt it to your own needs. The credits belong in the source code and/or documentation where they will not affect the functionality.
I suppose this is a grey area, and basically comes down to opinion, but the way I see it is this makes software non-free. Do we really want free software to become ad-ware? If you want to write ad-ware, don't try to license it under the GPL.
I know Stallman is all about GNU getting credit, and calling the OS GNU/Linux, so I'd be interested in his take on this.
Speaking of giving credit, this comment was copied and pasted from MY comment on Newsforge. Are you that pathetic that you can't come up with your own ideas?
Ok, fine, that's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried about how this will affect the closed source that I develop. You know, the kind that I get paid to write? You mean a customer can now sue me or the company I work for, even though they insisted on having the software completed in an unreasonable amount of time without testing, and put it into production well before it was ready for that? Wonderful.
BTW, if you live smart, it pisses off the "gotta be better" crowd... as you will always have money to spend on vacations , $4000.00 camcorders, home theatre systems that make thiirs look stupid, etc..
ummm... what? You call that living smart? You argue not to waste money on an expensive suburbian home, but then you waste your money on overpriced toys that will lose their value after a few years? Sounds like you are the "gotta be better crowd"...
If that happens I'll just move to India. My savings will last much much longer there anyways. Hell, I could just move there and retire and be done with it all. Also, don't forget, that us in the U.S. can be the ones doing the outsourcing. I know a lot of people who do just that.
I repeat, it did not crash Lynx.
From what I read, Libranet created a Linux distro for their own purposes, decided it was good enough for public consumption, and decided to profit from it.
I've never pissed in a cup for an employer. I've turned down job offers over it. I've still done ok.
Drug tests: just say no.
Hell yeah man.. I don't even use illegal drugs and I turn down job offers if they screen for substance abuse. For me, I simply cannot work for someone who would support this unethical practice.
A drug screen is meant to pick up illegal activity which poses a tangible safety and liability issue to a potential employer.
No... these are generally "substance-abuse" screenings. That means having alcohol in your bloodstream will cause a positive, causing you to be denied the job. Nothing illegal about having alcohol in your bloodstream. Or eating a poppyseed bagel for that matter.
Actually, yes. The last time I used FreeBSD as a desktop OS (about 6 months ago). Windowmaker was broken. This was due to the FreeBSD ftp sites lacking the latest version of some of the necessary files. I waited a month for them to fix it (after submitting bug reports), it wasn't fixed in that time and I haven't messed with it again. It is obvious that they do not pay much attention to desktop/GUI functionality. KDE worked fine, but X was very slow, maybe something I had to tweak, but I don't have to tweak anything in Debian.
I really like *BSD, but only for server and CLI purposes.
Note: Slashdot seems to put a space in between the 5 and 4 up there, there should not be one.
My friend's 500 MHz iBook (G3) with half of my RAM can play MP3s, burn a CD, and browse the internet all at the same time without skipping at all.
I can do that on my Duron 1 GHz as well (and yeah I use an IDE controller).. Haven't burned a bad CD yet and MP3's never ever skip. Hell, on my old K6-2 450 I was able to multitask to that level (though maybe the MP3's skipped a bit). It was only on my P1-166 that I had to leave it alone when it was burning a CD.
Regardless, I've got 3 PCs for the price of 1 Mac, so when one is busy I can switch to another. I'm not saying I don't wish I had a Mac running OS X. I'd love one, but it's not worth it for me when I only spend about 1 or 2 hours a day at my home PC's. Though I remote access them frequently, so CLI is all that matters. One day when I can afford it, I'll get a Mac (probably a PowerBook) for doing all the multimedia-type stuff that I do.
Hey, no one types directory structures anymore. They click into them. Step into the 90s.
Bah.. keyboard is generally faster than the mouse.. Even when using a file manager. Even Windows Explorer and Windows in general is well-designed for keyboard use. Now I'm going to press TAB-TAB-TAB-SPACE.
Secondly, the difference might not be enough to notice on a conscious level.
Very true... You really have to smoke a joint or two before doing a listening test. It helps hear all the things your mind normally filters out. But then you have to do the comparison in the same block of time, otherwise you introduce a variable because the effects vary over time. But that applies to sober listening as well, since, for example, your ears respond differently after an hour of listening.
To do a true test, you need to encode the files, decode them to PCM wav format, then burn to an audio CD. Then, you have to do a blind test with all of them.
Or better yet, write a script that creates the PCM wav files in a random order and saves the order to a file. Then listen to the WAV's for the blind test.
I did "Resume Blaster" or something similar when I was looking for work (this was in early 2001). I payed $30. Didn't get a single interview out of it. It just signed me up to a good number of [useless] career web sites. I just got a bunch of e-mail that had career advice but no real leads. Don't waste your money on this kind of stuff. You could probably write a script that does the same thing.
I believe that the core group of open source developers have incentive, and that beating Microsoft.
If you think that open source developers are driven by the desire to "beat Microsoft," I believe you are mistaken. It is the fanboys that scream "open source must do this to beat Microsoft." These fanboys are rarely actual developers. The developers are writing software. Their reasons? For the creative and intellectual stimulation, for practice and improvement of their skills, and/or for work-related functionality. Granted there are a small amount of OSS developers who are raging fanboys determined to beat Microsoft, but they are a minority.