Microsoft's "interim releases" are just a way to get a revenue stream while everyone waits for the "real" next release. It's a con job. A friend of mine who works at Microsoft laughed at me when I called him about problems with an ME box -- he said "nobody here at Microsoft uses ME, it's crap" (I suspect they all use Linux...)...and are you sure nobody's talking about replacing the XP kernel??
I completed a contract at Lucent in April of 2001 and didn't land a full time job or contract until April 2002. After the first couple of months, when I realized that this "down" market was very, very different than previous ones, I decide to try using some job sites. I noticed right away that there were a lot fewer jobs posted than ever before by a factor of 10. Prior to 2001, if you posted your resume on a site, you would be inundated with phone calls and e-mails for weeks after you had already started a new job or contract. In fact, getting a job was so easy in the late 90's that posting your resume was a sign that you were naive, inexperienced, or had no friends in the industry. In 2001, however, with all the massive layoffs, suddenly the web was flooded with the resumes of very good people at the same time that jobs were being eliminated. Most of the callbacks I got during 2001 were from agents or headhunters who were getting desperate and were trying to grab the best people and try and shop them around. At that time, I found that Monster.com was somewhat different than most of the other sites (like CareerBuilder), in that more of the contacts were from the companies hiring (actual company recruiters) rather than independent agents or headhunters. Now, two years later, just out of curiosity I checked out some of these web sites, and I found that the jobs posted have declined by another factor of 10, and there are virtually no jobs of the quality that there were in 1999 - 2000. Search criteria that returned thousands of jobs in 1999 are coming back empty. I have agents who were very "fat" in the 90s now calling me for leads on jobs. So I think that these web sites, in this economy, are useless. They used to be very good at finding the right job to fit your particular skillset and "priorites" at a time when there were more jobs than "qualified" people to fill them; but nowadays, with downsizing and outsourcing, there's a not enough "supply" and way too much demand. One thing I did discover though, during 2001, was that it was possible to get freelance work on the web from sites like freeagent.com and guru.com. I managed to support my family (didn't miss a mortgage payment ) for a year with freelance work. I made only 2/3 of what I was used to making, but that was better than most in my situation. Alas, I'm not sure that these sites are as good as they used to be. Guru.com is no longer around (if you try to go to their site, you will be redirected to a site called emoonlighter.com) . I think we just have to come to grips with the reality that the "glory days" are over. The best way to find a job is through networking. Many employers these days realize that there's a lot of good people out there and rather than pay a headhunter or agent they give their employees bonuses for successful referrals. This is the policy at the company I work for.
When I first saw the photos from Mars I thought "well, we could have taken pictures of the Arizona desert through a red filter and saved 400 million dollars..." ; then I thought, "how do we know they didn't just taken pictures of the Arizona desert through a red filter and pocket the 400 million?". Then I thought "Bush is probably going to push for a moon base and the terra-forming of Mars and award the 4 trillion dollar non-bid contract to Halburton, as a grant, not a loan, saying we don't want to saddle those poor Martians with all of that debt..."
This article has the researchers at Berkeley claiming to be the "first ever" to report success in integrating nanotubes with integrated circuits. What about that company Nantero which claims a propriety nanotube memory chip design ( NRAM ), developed by Dr. Thomas Rueckes (who got his PhD in chemistry from Harvard).They have venture capital ( from Charles River Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Stata Venture Partners, and Harris & Harris group). Their web page (www.nantero.com) claims, " Dr. Rueckes' pioneering design takes advantage of these unique properties while cleverly integrating nanotubes with traditional semiconductor technologies for immediate manufacturability." This makes it sound like they may have a product "real soon now". Are the guys at Berkeley not aware of the work done by these "Harvard guys"? Is this an "East Coast" vs. "West Coast" rivalry? or is it just academics not being aware of what's going on commercially? or is Nantero trying to "pull a fast one" and really aren't as far along in developing "NRAM" as they imply?
It's strange to me that the SEC went after Martha Steward, but doesn't seem to notice Darl McBride. It seems to me that whether or not SCO gets bought, loses in court or goes out of business, Darl McBride and his cronies have already accumulated considerable wealth just from the activity on SCO stock generated by their litigious antics. People who are pushing the stock price up probably don't understand much about UNIX, Linux, the GPL etc... They just like getting rich. I remember when Red Hat had their IPO, I knew people who made money off the stock who didn't have a clue as to what Linux was ("what's an operating system??") but bought the stock because of hype and hearsay. The average daytraders who have been following the news ( in the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine or USA Today , but probably not slashdot -- [ "what's slashdot ??" ] ) probably think that SCO may have a chance to win, and are probably encouraged by the rise in the stock price ( can you say "self-fulfilling prophecy"? ). I tempted to advise my friends who ask about investing in SCO to buy the stock but sell right before the IBM case goes to trial. That's probably what Darl is planning to do. Of course, some SCO executives have already cashed in.
I had a severe caffeine addiction some years ago. I was drinking about 15 cups a day. Ironically, it seemed that I had built up a tolerance, because instead of feeling perky, I was feeling more and more run-down. Then I read in Earl Mindell's Vitamin bible that " a gallon of coffee will deplete all the B-1 in your body." Since the B-Complex is ineffective without all it's components, I was basically shutting down my metabolism. I immediately went out and bought a bottle of TwinLabs "StressMates" -- chewable B-complex/Vitamin C Wafers (B and C vitamins are water soluble, so you need to replenish them everyday). I was able to cut down to one or two cups of coffee a day without any side effects. Also, the coffee I did drink had the desired stimulant effect. Of course, one must also be aware of the othjer caffeine sources in one's diet, like CHocolate and Coke. Diet Coke or Pepsi may be doubly addictive because of the presence of Aspartame (Nutrasweet -- composed of phenylalanine, an amino acid) which has some neurological effects that may increase the addictiveness of the beverage. There's a whole host of other reasons why I would advise avoiding anything that has nutrasweet in it, but I want to stay "on-topic".
I think SCO employees will have as hard a time finding a job as anybody else. I don't think the stigma of the SCO litigation will hurt them as much as the lackluster UNIX and Linux products that were produced. Programmers can hardly be held accountable for the litigation decisions of the management. If I were interviewing an ex-SCO employee, the only pointed question I would have for him or her is:"Why didn't you send Darl a memo explaining what UNIX is, what Linux is, and what the GPL is..." etc... If that person says something like "Linux is stolen from UNIX" or "The GPL is unsound" , etc... they won't get the job. If they give me a reasonable explanation for Darl and company's behavior (i.e,"...It was just a securities scam -- they very well new that their litigation was ridiculous, but they wanted to get rich off of the temporarily inflated SCO stock price...), I'll probably consider hiring them.
The savings from outsourcing are astronomical. A programmer in the U.S. making $80,000.00 can be replaced by a programmer in India with the same skill set making $20,000.00. So an employer isn't going to be persuaded into paying a programmer 50-80% of his current salary and let him work from home. The employer would still be paying twice as much in salary than if the job were outsourced and this is not even taking into consideration the expense of "American-style" benefits. Employers may be persuaded to not outsource if their programers would work for 25-30% of their salary without benefits, but they won't find many programmers who would do that. If it would even be possible to support my family in NJ on 20000.00/yr, for that kind of money I can find less stressful work:)
I have extensive experience "programming Windows" and programming "UNIX" [ I live and work "without prejudice"], so I've moved between and am comfortable in both "cultures". Interestingly enough, I find that the cultural divide is much more pronounced now than 20 years ago (20 years ago, did anyone program exclusively for Windows? -- the platform was a joke...). I think that because the Windows SDK is controlled by Microsoft, it's more difficult to do really insightful programming for that platform. So much Unix and Linux stuff is "open", that programmers involved in that culture are exposed to more "inner workings", etc... Where programmers have ONLY used Microsoft's Visual Studio and have ONLY produced end-user, non-programmer apps, their skills I feel are limited. UNIX programmers can certainly produce apps for non-programmers (Open Office, Gimp, KDE etc...), but I think that "Windows Cultured" programmers cannot as easily develop "programmer's tools". I don't think it has as much to do with "culture" as much as "depth and varity of knowledge."
I've noticed that after installing Microsoft Products, "DoubleClick" spyware always seems to reappears. Perhaps spyware is installed with the installation of XP, and Microsoft has pressured Dell to help prevent it's detection and removal. I don't think that this is too farfetched -- Microsoft has been getting more and more "intrusive" with their software. I try not to use Microsoft Office products ever since I found out they embed your private information in every document you create (they also used to embed the MAC address of your network card in your documents -- may be they still do(?)). The EULA for MS Media Player gives Microsoft the right to modify your hard disk. We know that microsoft has a history of pressuring OEMs and VARs, so maybe this is the source of Dell's strange protectiveness of spyware. I've always reccommended dell to my clients, but lately, when I've installed systems, I've found I have to "clean them up" (i.e remove spyware, remove memory-resident programs that are loaded at startup, etc...) to get acceptable performance. These are new systems with XP home and XP Pro.
Everything you say about Gentoo is true! It's the distribution of choice for the "Linux Guru", "The Linux Hobbyist" and anyone who wants to really know Linux. Until Gentoo, Slackware probably filled that role. I think that MEPIS is targeted at a different audience, altogether. So comparing MEPIS with Gentoo is like comparing "Apples" and "Dogs". MEPIS can be fairly judged in comparison with Distro's like Knoppix (also Debian Based) or PCLinuxOS (Mandrake based[?]), that are Distros aimed at Linux newbies, and tailored for easy trial and easy installation. I wouldn't suggest Gentoo to someone who's only a computer user (doesn't care about platform or technology -- just wants to get work done -- word processing, e-mail, spreadsheets etc..).
One of the good things about Live-CD distros is that it allows one to test out Linux in a quick and easy manner with no hassle. I've used the Knoppix distro to convert dozens of my friends and colleagues to Linux. Knoppix was the reason I switched from RedHat to Debian. My experience with Mepis's Live-CD and installation has been bad; and it seems I'm not alone (check out their forum -- others have had a myriad set of problems with running the Live CD or with the installation). I would never try to convert somebody to Linux using Mepis's distro. Even though I'm sure that once it is running it's probably great (after all, it is a Debian distro), troubles with installation and the Live-Distro would immediately turn off a newbie. Bad first impressions can hurt Linux more than any FUD by Microsoft or SCO. There are so many live CDs that run smoothly and flawlessly, why would anyone chose MEPIS? Even though I don't begrudge the $9.95 I sent them ( I believe in supporting Linux projects), I am a little annoyed that I didn't get the Premium Download that I paid for (after waiting for hours for the e-mail that should have arrived in a few minutes, I just went ahead and downloaded from a mirror, which took 2 hours instead of the "less than 30 minutes" promised by the Premium Download ). As far as the new "everyman business desktop" -- I think Knoppix wins! I have people using it at work as an alternative to the Windows 2000 installed on their systems (which they are not allowed to remove). There's no problem with e-mail, sharing the network printers, exchanging documents with Windows users -- no problems at all!! People are astonished that all they have to do is boot up off the CD to get a great desktop environment that never crashes and is safe from the viruses that plague the Windows Users [ even with McCafee installed and a firewall, our system was crippled by a virus one week -- no one could work except us Knoppix people (talk about an advertisement for Linux!)]. MEPIS promises more(for instance, NTFS file compatibility), but I still haven't been able to get it up and running (granted, I haven't really worked hard at it -- but I shouldn't have to). If MEPIS wants to become a significant distro, it should work hard to fix it's live CD and installation flaws.
Well, the standard to be measured against has to be Knoppix. I download Mepis yesterday (from one of their mirrors -- even though I paid for their premium download they never sent me the e-mail). I've tried the CD on 3 different computers and none managed to work. Knoppix, Morphix, SUSE Live CD, Slackware Live CD, GnoppiX, and PCLinuxOS all work on these computers without a hitch. Mepis halts after "failure to load FileSystem" , no matter what boot options I try. I'll try to get it up and running on some other systems, but as far as their "advanced automatic hardware configuration" goes, it obviously is inferior compared to almost any other "Live CD" distro out there.
Much of the demise of the High Tech industry was the result of the outrageous optimism of the '90s embracing the over-hyped promise of the internet economy. "dot-coms" based on ridiculous business plans squandered billions of venture capital money. A lot of wealth was created by inflated stock values, and many high-flying dot-coms hired thousands of high-paid workers. When the bubble burst, not only did thousands of jobs dissapear when pie-in-the-sky companies dissapeared, but companies that had a lot of money tied up in accounts-receivables with those companies (like Cisco, Lucent etc...) lost billions, and had to cut costs drastically, which also involved the loss of thousands of jobs. Lucent, once the most widely held tech stock in the country is struggling to survive [ the Bell Labs building in Holmdel, NJ had nearly 9000 people working there in 1999 -- last I heard, there were 800 people left and there are rumours Lucent will abandon the building ]. Much of the budget surpluses of the Clinton years were based on the revenues from taxing these well-paid workers (the surpluses that Bush used to justify his tax cuts). Alas, these jobs are no more and they are not coming back -- companies are being "sensible", conservative and economical in outsourcing these jobs to India, China and Russia. Ironically, I think that many of the jobs may be the same guys who worked here with H1B visas who had to go home when they lost their jobs here and now are doing the same work "at home" for 0ne-fifth the salary.
The easiest solution to SPAM which also would solve the problems of the RIAA and MPAA would be for ISPs to charge for bandwidth and e-mail. It wouldn't have to be much. If each e-mail cost 2 cents, it wouldn't be that expensive for most of us, but it would make SPAM uneconomical. If ISPs charged according to how much volume you downloaded instead of flat fees, then it would make downloading albums and movies more expensive than buying them in a store. The only reason SPAM mkaes sense is because it costs the same to send out 100,000 e-mails as it does to send out 1. It's silly to SPAM using the Postal Service because of the cost of stamps... The Internet itself needs to change it's business model...
The problem here is that Apple's software "destroyed" their own hardware. To say "older iPods are not supported" implies to me that "the software won't work properly on older iPods" not "your hardware will be irretrievably damaged". If I try to install a Microsoft product on a platform that's "not supported", it just won't install, and will usually give me a message that will tell me why. What it won't do is render my computer unusable and "unfixable". A company that cares about its customer base will try to anticipate "bad" things that its customers will try to do and put in safeguards, -- especially if the potential harm will be great. Not only do I believe that Apple should have forseen that people would try to use their windows PCs with older iPods, they must have known that they would. One of the first things that occurred after the iPod was created, was that software appeared that would allow it to be used with Windows. If someone was used to using this third-party software, it's easy to see that, being used to using the iPod with their PC, they wouldn't expect Apple's own Windows software to damage their hardware. As to "Apple bashing", "Microsoft bashing" or "Linux bashing" -- this is all silly. I own Linux boxes, Macintoshes and Windows systems. I love them all. I have to say, though, that the Linux commmunity and the Microsoft people give much better support than Apple [ of course you have to pay for Microsoft and Apple support ]. Microsoft is very good at anticipating the "stupid things" people will do with their systems, which is one of the reasons their products are so widely used. The Linux community also responds well to "stupidity" (Linux experts will be harsh in telling you why you're stupid, but they'll fix your problem). The complaint with Apple is that their attitude is "you should've known that our software would destroy any of our hardware that we don't support, so f**k off." That attitude more than anything else is what has people annoyed. This is not the way to get people to buy Macs, and is a sure way to get people to dump their iPods for some other "player".
I don't think the matrix-in-a-matrix idea is stupid at all, but it's the logical conclusion to the triology. It was hinted at several times in reloaded, AND at the beginning of Revolutions. That Neo was able to exert powers in the "real" world, hints that he's become aware that they are trapped in a dream world within a dream world, and thus presents the possibility that he could become the "real" savior, actually finding a way to free humans from the "real dream world". The machine war is a dream of conflict to keep humans content. Remember in the first Matrix how it was explained that the first Matrix, a Utopia, was "too perfect". I think it would have been clever if it turned out that the actual "real world" was a Utopia, and the Matrix was actually created by humans to alleviate boredom (as in the "Total Recall" movie). I found Revolutions to be a poor movie, not only because it lacked the cleverness and originality of the first two movies, but it was also a poor script, poor editing, and abandoned any coherent attempt at logical resolution to the story. And doesn't everyone learn in Movie-making 101 that a long death scene with the dying person making a long, drawn-out speech only works in Opera or Comedy (and I'm not sure it works in Opera, but everyone does it...). Didn't they use test audiences on this movie??? People laughed during moments that were obviously meant to be tragic. Some people did applaud during the ending credits, but they probably thought it was a comedy. I was very dissapointed. The best thing that could happen now would be for the Wachowski brothers to somehow forget this travesty and make a Matrix 4 that is the real conclusion to the triology, ignoring that Revolutions was ever made.
It seems that technology keeps getting added to software that has little to do with the software's primary function. The mantra invoked is always "security" or "privacy". By catering to paranoia and the lowest common denominator in our societies we are creating bloated crippled software. The upshot is that we have wordprocessing software that creates documents that become unreadable, and music software that creates music that is unplayable. Software is hardly ever "bulletproof", so I can see that soon I'll get calls from friends using Office 2003 about documents that just "dissapeared" or became "corrupted" , just like I get calls now about CDs burned that won't play in their stereos (actually, I get calls now about documents dissapearing in WORD). What's next, WOM(Write-only memory)??
This situation once again illustrates why the DMCA is flawed legislation. The DMCA actually encourages litigation that borders on extortion, and comes very, very close to supporting the inhibition of Freedom of speech. Also, it seems to me that developing a product to combat casual copying doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't think casual copying is costing the industry a lot of money. And if someone really wants a copy of something, they can always find a geek friend in the neighborhood who can figure out "how to hold down the shift key". The fact is, the majority of consumers are honest customers who pay for product and support. It doesn't make sense to cripple products with DRM for everyone, to prevent supposed losses from people who probably hardly buy music at all. I can more sympathsize with the RIAA getting upset with P2P, where a person can distribute thousands of copies of a track throughout the world in a few minutes -- rather than SunComm trying to prevent a Mom from distributing 12 custom music CDs at her kid's birthday party. Another point -- from personal experience -- I hardly bought any music at all in the decade before Napster; since technology has been making it possible to rip tracks, play music on my PC, mix video and sound, create custom media , I've actually gotten to the point where I buy 4 to 10 CDs a month -- which is 4 to 10 times more music than I ever bought in the 80s or 90s. I think that there are more geeks like me, than those whose music collection consists entirely of "free" music.
$10.00/month for 40 tracks is an incredible deal!! If you bought the music in a store you'd spend $35 - $45 dollars. Why do you want to keep getting something for nothing? If you can't afford $10.00/month, you probably should stop listening to music so much and find a better source of income -- you really should be thinking about supporting your family better. Considering the legal pressure that the RIAA is exerting, and the financial pressures of trying to run a subscription business, we should be grateful that EMusic.com stilll distributes MP3s without restrictions at such a good deal. iTunes is much more expensive (.99 a song! -- just as expensive as buying it in a store) and you are limited to what you can do with the music (I've heard you can't play the tracks outside of the country). I think that anyone with any intelligence would continue their subscription to help support an organization that is doing it's best against challenging odds to distribute music in a manner that is fair to all parties involved.
Whereas I can support my family on 60000 instead of 90000, 20000 doesn't cut it... That's the magnitude of money we're talking about. So it is just the money. The thing that troubles me is that outsourcing is very short-sighted. The long-term fallout is that there won't be ANY IT jobs in the United States, kids won't major in engineering, and the U.S. will no longer be the technological leaders of the world, but we will be dependent on the Chinese, Indians and Russians... We have senators and corporate heads reassuring workers in India and China that they will have jobs at a time when the industry in the US is looking at record unemployment. We are doomed, because the C+ students who became Congressional republicans are too stupid and greedy to understand that they are destroying the economic and technological foundation of our country.
This isn't really much of a problem. The first thing I would do with any music I bought from Apple would be to convert everything to MP3 format, by playing the tunes and capturing the music directly from my sound card...
Considering the the Bush Administration's current environmental policies will render the planet uninhabitable within the next 2 decades, i think any disaster a few centuries from now shouls only cause concern for some sturdy strains of nematodes, viruses and prions...
Guess what. Bit Torrent is toast. Taken offline. The MPAA invoked the DMCA, and everything is shut down. It's this sort of thing that the DMCA was made more. Who can justify sharing or downloading a blockbuster movie?
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Actually, the government can ALWAYS screw things up worse than they are now.
Microsoft's "interim releases" are just a way to get a revenue stream while everyone waits for the "real" next release. It's a con job. A friend of mine who works at Microsoft laughed at me when I called him about problems with an ME box -- he said "nobody here at Microsoft uses ME, it's crap" (I suspect they all use Linux ...). ..and are you sure nobody's talking about replacing the XP kernel??
I completed a contract at Lucent in April of 2001 and didn't land a full time job or contract until April 2002. After the first couple of months, when I realized that this "down" market was very, very different than previous ones, I decide to try using some job sites. I noticed right away that there were a lot fewer jobs posted than ever before by a factor of 10. Prior to 2001, if you posted your resume on a site, you would be inundated with phone calls and e-mails for weeks after you had already started a new job or contract. In fact, getting a job was so easy in the late 90's that posting your resume was a sign that you were naive, inexperienced, or had no friends in the industry. In 2001, however, with all the massive layoffs, suddenly the web was flooded with the resumes of very good people at the same time that jobs were being eliminated. Most of the callbacks I got during 2001 were from agents or headhunters who were getting desperate and were trying to grab the best people and try and shop them around. At that time, I found that Monster.com was somewhat different than most of the other sites (like CareerBuilder), in that more of the contacts were from the companies hiring (actual company recruiters) rather than independent agents or headhunters. Now, two years later, just out of curiosity I checked out some of these web sites, and I found that the jobs posted have declined by another factor of 10, and there are virtually no jobs of the quality that there were in 1999 - 2000. Search criteria that returned thousands of jobs in 1999 are coming back empty. I have agents who were very "fat" in the 90s now calling me for leads on jobs. So I think that these web sites, in this economy, are useless. They used to be very good at finding the right job to fit your particular skillset and "priorites" at a time when there were more jobs than "qualified" people to fill them; but nowadays, with downsizing and outsourcing, there's a not enough "supply" and way too much demand.
One thing I did discover though, during 2001, was that it was possible to get freelance work on the web from sites like freeagent.com and guru.com. I managed to support my family (didn't miss a mortgage payment ) for a year with freelance work. I made only 2/3 of what I was used to making, but that was better than most in my situation. Alas, I'm not sure that these sites are as good as they used to be. Guru.com is no longer around (if you try to go to their site, you will be redirected to a site called emoonlighter.com) . I think we just have to come to grips with the reality that the "glory days" are over. The best way to find a job is through networking. Many employers these days realize that there's a lot of good people out there and rather than pay a headhunter or agent they give their employees bonuses for successful referrals. This is the policy at the company I work for.
When I first saw the photos from Mars I thought "well, we could have taken pictures of the Arizona desert through a red filter and saved 400 million dollars..." ; then I thought, "how do we know they didn't just taken pictures of the Arizona desert through a red filter and pocket the 400 million?". Then I thought "Bush is probably going to push for a moon base and the terra-forming of Mars and award the 4 trillion dollar non-bid contract to Halburton, as a grant, not a loan, saying we don't want to saddle those poor Martians with all of that debt..."
This article has the researchers at Berkeley claiming to be the "first ever" to report success in integrating nanotubes with integrated circuits. What about that company Nantero which claims a propriety nanotube memory chip design ( NRAM ), developed by Dr. Thomas Rueckes (who got his PhD in chemistry from Harvard).They have venture capital ( from Charles River Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Stata Venture Partners, and Harris & Harris group). Their web page (www.nantero.com) claims, " Dr. Rueckes' pioneering design takes advantage of these unique properties while cleverly integrating nanotubes with traditional semiconductor technologies for immediate manufacturability." This makes it sound like they may have a product "real soon now". Are the guys at Berkeley not aware of the work done by these "Harvard guys"? Is this an "East Coast" vs. "West Coast" rivalry? or is it just academics not being aware of what's going on commercially? or is Nantero trying to "pull a fast one" and really aren't as far along in developing "NRAM" as they imply?
It's strange to me that the SEC went after Martha Steward, but doesn't seem to notice Darl McBride. It seems to me that whether or not SCO gets bought, loses in court or goes out of business, Darl McBride and his cronies have already accumulated considerable wealth just from the activity on SCO stock generated by their litigious antics. People who are pushing the stock price up probably don't understand much about UNIX, Linux, the GPL etc... They just like getting rich. I remember when Red Hat had their IPO, I knew people who made money off the stock who didn't have a clue as to what Linux was ("what's an operating system??") but bought the stock because of hype and hearsay. The average daytraders who have been following the news ( in the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine or USA Today , but probably not slashdot -- [ "what's slashdot ??" ] ) probably think that SCO may have a chance to win, and are probably encouraged by the rise in the stock price ( can you say "self-fulfilling prophecy"? ). I tempted to advise my friends who ask about investing in SCO to buy the stock but sell right before the IBM case goes to trial. That's probably what Darl is planning to do. Of course, some SCO executives have already cashed in.
I had a severe caffeine addiction some years ago. I was drinking about 15 cups a day. Ironically, it seemed that I had built up a tolerance, because instead of feeling perky, I was feeling more and more run-down. Then I read in Earl Mindell's Vitamin bible that " a gallon of coffee will deplete all the B-1 in your body." Since the B-Complex is ineffective without all it's components, I was basically shutting down my metabolism. I immediately went out and bought a bottle of TwinLabs "StressMates" -- chewable B-complex/Vitamin C Wafers (B and C vitamins are water soluble, so you need to replenish them everyday). I was able to cut down to one or two cups of coffee a day without any side effects. Also, the coffee I did drink had the desired stimulant effect. Of course, one must also be aware of the othjer caffeine sources in one's diet, like CHocolate and Coke. Diet Coke or Pepsi may be doubly addictive because of the presence of Aspartame (Nutrasweet -- composed of phenylalanine, an amino acid) which has some neurological effects that may increase the addictiveness of the beverage. There's a whole host of other reasons why I would advise avoiding anything that has nutrasweet in it, but I want to stay "on-topic".
I think SCO employees will have as hard a time finding a job as anybody else. I don't think the stigma of the SCO litigation will hurt them as much as the lackluster UNIX and Linux products that were produced. Programmers can hardly be held accountable for the litigation decisions of the management. If I were interviewing an ex-SCO employee, the only pointed question I would have for him or her is:"Why didn't you send Darl a memo explaining what UNIX is, what Linux is, and what the GPL is..." etc... If that person says something like "Linux is stolen from UNIX" or "The GPL is unsound" , etc... they won't get the job. If they give me a reasonable explanation for Darl and company's behavior (i.e," ...It was just a securities scam -- they very well new that their litigation was ridiculous, but they wanted to get rich off of the temporarily inflated SCO stock price...), I'll probably consider hiring them.
The savings from outsourcing are astronomical. A programmer in the U.S. making $80,000.00 can be replaced by a programmer in India with the same skill set making $20,000.00. So an employer isn't going to be persuaded into paying a programmer 50-80% of his current salary and let him work from home. The employer would still be paying twice as much in salary than if the job were outsourced and this is not even taking into consideration the expense of "American-style" benefits. Employers may be persuaded to not outsource if their programers would work for 25-30% of their salary without benefits, but they won't find many programmers who would do that. If it would even be possible to support my family in NJ on 20000.00/yr, for that kind of money I can find less stressful work :)
I have extensive experience "programming Windows" and programming "UNIX" [ I live and work "without prejudice"], so I've moved between and am comfortable in both "cultures". Interestingly enough, I find that the cultural divide is much more pronounced now than 20 years ago (20 years ago, did anyone program exclusively for Windows? -- the platform was a joke...). I think that because the Windows SDK is controlled by Microsoft, it's more difficult to do really insightful programming for that platform. So much Unix and Linux stuff is "open", that programmers involved in that culture are exposed to more "inner workings", etc... Where programmers have ONLY used Microsoft's Visual Studio and have ONLY produced end-user, non-programmer apps, their skills I feel are limited. UNIX programmers can certainly produce apps for non-programmers (Open Office, Gimp, KDE etc...), but I think that "Windows Cultured" programmers cannot as easily develop "programmer's tools". I don't think it has as much to do with "culture" as much as "depth and varity of knowledge."
I've noticed that after installing Microsoft Products, "DoubleClick" spyware always seems to reappears. Perhaps spyware is installed with the installation of XP, and Microsoft has pressured Dell to help prevent it's detection and removal. I don't think that this is too farfetched -- Microsoft has been getting more and more "intrusive" with their software. I try not to use Microsoft Office products ever since I found out they embed your private information in every document you create (they also used to embed the MAC address of your network card in your documents -- may be they still do(?)). The EULA for MS Media Player gives Microsoft the right to modify your hard disk. We know that microsoft has a history of pressuring OEMs and VARs, so maybe this is the source of Dell's strange protectiveness of spyware. I've always reccommended dell to my clients, but lately, when I've installed systems, I've found I have to "clean them up" (i.e remove spyware, remove memory-resident programs that are loaded at startup, etc...) to get acceptable performance. These are new systems with XP home and XP Pro.
Everything you say about Gentoo is true! It's the distribution of choice for the "Linux Guru", "The Linux Hobbyist" and anyone who wants to really know Linux. Until Gentoo, Slackware probably filled that role. I think that MEPIS is targeted at a different audience, altogether. So comparing MEPIS with Gentoo is like comparing "Apples" and "Dogs". MEPIS can be fairly judged in comparison with Distro's like Knoppix (also Debian Based) or PCLinuxOS (Mandrake based[?]), that are Distros aimed at Linux newbies, and tailored for easy trial and easy installation. I wouldn't suggest Gentoo to someone who's only a computer user (doesn't care about platform or technology -- just wants to get work done -- word processing, e-mail, spreadsheets etc..).
One of the good things about Live-CD distros is that it allows one to test out Linux in a quick and easy manner with no hassle. I've used the Knoppix distro to convert dozens of my friends and colleagues to Linux. Knoppix was the reason I switched from RedHat to Debian. My experience with Mepis's Live-CD and installation has been bad; and it seems I'm not alone (check out their forum -- others have had a myriad set of problems with running the Live CD or with the installation). I would never try to convert somebody to Linux using Mepis's distro. Even though I'm sure that once it is running it's probably great (after all, it is a Debian distro), troubles with installation and the Live-Distro would immediately turn off a newbie. Bad first impressions can hurt Linux more than any FUD by Microsoft or SCO. There are so many live CDs that run smoothly and flawlessly, why would anyone chose MEPIS? Even though I don't begrudge the $9.95 I sent them ( I believe in supporting Linux projects), I am a little annoyed that I didn't get the Premium Download that I paid for (after waiting for hours for the e-mail that should have arrived in a few minutes, I just went ahead and downloaded from a mirror, which took 2 hours instead of the "less than 30 minutes" promised by the Premium Download ). As far as the new "everyman business desktop" -- I think Knoppix wins! I have people using it at work as an alternative to the Windows 2000 installed on their systems (which they are not allowed to remove). There's no problem with e-mail, sharing the network printers, exchanging documents with Windows users -- no problems at all!! People are astonished that all they have to do is boot up off the CD to get a great desktop environment that never crashes and is safe from the viruses that plague the Windows Users [ even with McCafee installed and a firewall, our system was crippled by a virus one week -- no one could work except us Knoppix people (talk about an advertisement for Linux!)]. MEPIS promises more(for instance, NTFS file compatibility), but I still haven't been able to get it up and running (granted, I haven't really worked hard at it -- but I shouldn't have to). If MEPIS wants to become a significant distro, it should work hard to fix it's live CD and installation flaws.
Well, the standard to be measured against has to be Knoppix. I download Mepis yesterday (from one of their mirrors -- even though I paid for their premium download they never sent me the e-mail). I've tried the CD on 3 different computers and none managed to work. Knoppix, Morphix, SUSE Live CD, Slackware Live CD, GnoppiX, and PCLinuxOS all work on these computers without a hitch. Mepis halts after "failure to load FileSystem" , no matter what boot options I try. I'll try to get it up and running on some other systems, but as far as their "advanced automatic hardware configuration" goes, it obviously is inferior compared to almost any other "Live CD" distro out there.
Much of the demise of the High Tech industry was the result of the outrageous optimism of the '90s embracing the over-hyped promise of the internet economy. "dot-coms" based on ridiculous business plans squandered billions of venture capital money. A lot of wealth was created by inflated stock values, and many high-flying dot-coms hired thousands of high-paid workers. When the bubble burst, not only did thousands of jobs dissapear when pie-in-the-sky companies dissapeared, but companies that had a lot of money tied up in accounts-receivables with those companies (like Cisco, Lucent etc...) lost billions, and had to cut costs drastically, which also involved the loss of thousands of jobs. Lucent, once the most widely held tech stock in the country is struggling to survive [ the Bell Labs building in Holmdel, NJ had nearly 9000 people working there in 1999 -- last I heard, there were 800 people left and there are rumours Lucent will abandon the building ]. Much of the budget surpluses of the Clinton years were based on the revenues from taxing these well-paid workers (the surpluses that Bush used to justify his tax cuts). Alas, these jobs are no more and they are not coming back -- companies are being "sensible", conservative and economical in outsourcing these jobs to India, China and Russia. Ironically, I think that many of the jobs may be the same guys who worked here with H1B visas who had to go home when they lost their jobs here and now are doing the same work "at home" for 0ne-fifth the salary.
The easiest solution to SPAM which also would solve the problems of the RIAA and MPAA would be for ISPs to charge for bandwidth and e-mail. It wouldn't have to be much. If each e-mail cost 2 cents, it wouldn't be that expensive for most of us, but it would make SPAM uneconomical. If ISPs charged according to how much volume you downloaded instead of flat fees, then it would make downloading albums and movies more expensive than buying them in a store. The only reason SPAM mkaes sense is because it costs the same to send out 100,000 e-mails as it does to send out 1. It's silly to SPAM using the Postal Service because of the cost of stamps... The Internet itself needs to change it's business model...
The problem here is that Apple's software "destroyed" their own hardware. To say "older iPods are not supported" implies to me that "the software won't work properly on older iPods" not "your hardware will be irretrievably damaged". If I try to install a Microsoft product on a platform that's "not supported", it just won't install, and will usually give me a message that will tell me why. What it won't do is render my computer unusable and "unfixable". A company that cares about its customer base will try to anticipate "bad" things that its customers will try to do and put in safeguards, -- especially if the potential harm will be great. Not only do I believe that Apple should have forseen that people would try to use their windows PCs with older iPods, they must have known that they would. One of the first things that occurred after the iPod was created, was that software appeared that would allow it to be used with Windows. If someone was used to using this third-party software, it's easy to see that, being used to using the iPod with their PC, they wouldn't expect Apple's own Windows software to damage their hardware. As to "Apple bashing", "Microsoft bashing" or "Linux bashing" -- this is all silly. I own Linux boxes, Macintoshes and Windows systems. I love them all. I have to say, though, that the Linux commmunity and the Microsoft people give much better support than Apple [ of course you have to pay for Microsoft and Apple support ]. Microsoft is very good at anticipating the "stupid things" people will do with their systems, which is one of the reasons their products are so widely used. The Linux community also responds well to "stupidity" (Linux experts will be harsh in telling you why you're stupid, but they'll fix your problem). The complaint with Apple is that their attitude is "you should've known that our software would destroy any of our hardware that we don't support, so f**k off." That attitude more than anything else is what has people annoyed. This is not the way to get people to buy Macs, and is a sure way to get people to dump their iPods for some other "player".
I don't think the matrix-in-a-matrix idea is stupid at all, but it's the logical conclusion to the triology. It was hinted at several times in reloaded, AND at the beginning of Revolutions. That Neo was able to exert powers in the "real" world, hints that he's become aware that they are trapped in a dream world within a dream world, and thus presents the possibility that he could become the "real" savior, actually finding a way to free humans from the "real dream world". The machine war is a dream of conflict to keep humans content. Remember in the first Matrix how it was explained that the first Matrix, a Utopia, was "too perfect". I think it would have been clever if it turned out that the actual "real world" was a Utopia, and the Matrix was actually created by humans to alleviate boredom (as in the "Total Recall" movie). I found Revolutions to be a poor movie, not only because it lacked the cleverness and originality of the first two movies, but it was also a poor script, poor editing, and abandoned any coherent attempt at logical resolution to the story. And doesn't everyone learn in Movie-making 101 that a long death scene with the dying person making a long, drawn-out speech only works in Opera or Comedy (and I'm not sure it works in Opera, but everyone does it...). Didn't they use test audiences on this movie??? People laughed during moments that were obviously meant to be tragic. Some people did applaud during the ending credits, but they probably thought it was a comedy. I was very dissapointed. The best thing that could happen now would be for the Wachowski brothers to somehow forget this travesty and make a Matrix 4 that is the real conclusion to the triology, ignoring that Revolutions was ever made.
It seems that technology keeps getting added to software that has little to do with the software's primary function. The mantra invoked is always "security" or "privacy". By catering to paranoia and the lowest common denominator in our societies we are creating bloated crippled software. The upshot is that we have wordprocessing software that creates documents that become unreadable, and music software that creates music that is unplayable. Software is hardly ever "bulletproof", so I can see that soon I'll get calls from friends using Office 2003 about documents that just "dissapeared" or became "corrupted" , just like I get calls now about CDs burned that won't play in their stereos (actually, I get calls now about documents dissapearing in WORD). What's next, WOM(Write-only memory)??
This situation once again illustrates why the DMCA is flawed legislation. The DMCA actually encourages litigation that borders on extortion, and comes very, very close to supporting the inhibition of Freedom of speech.
Also, it seems to me that developing a product to combat casual copying doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't think casual copying is costing the industry a lot of money. And if someone really wants a copy of something, they can always find a geek friend in the neighborhood who can figure out "how to hold down the shift key". The fact is, the majority of consumers are honest customers who pay for product and support. It doesn't make sense to cripple products with DRM for everyone, to prevent supposed losses from people who probably hardly buy music at all. I can more sympathsize with the RIAA getting upset with P2P, where a person can distribute thousands of copies of a track throughout the world in a few minutes -- rather than SunComm trying to prevent a Mom from distributing 12 custom music CDs at her kid's birthday party.
Another point -- from personal experience -- I hardly bought any music at all in the decade before Napster; since technology has been making it possible to rip tracks, play music on my PC, mix video and sound, create custom media , I've actually gotten to the point where I buy 4 to 10 CDs a month -- which is 4 to 10 times more music than I ever bought in the 80s or 90s. I think that there are more geeks like me, than those whose music collection consists entirely of "free" music.
$10.00/month for 40 tracks is an incredible deal!!
If you bought the music in a store you'd spend $35 - $45 dollars. Why do you want to keep getting something for nothing? If you can't afford $10.00/month, you probably should stop listening to music so much and find a better source of income -- you really should be thinking about supporting your family better. Considering the legal pressure that the RIAA is exerting, and the financial pressures of trying to run a subscription business, we should be grateful that EMusic.com stilll distributes MP3s without restrictions at such a good deal. iTunes is much more expensive (.99 a song! -- just as expensive as buying it in a store) and you are limited to what you can do with the music (I've heard you can't play the tracks outside of the country). I think that anyone with any intelligence would continue their subscription to help support an organization that is doing it's best against challenging odds to distribute music in a manner that is fair to all parties involved.
Whereas I can support my family on 60000 instead of 90000, 20000 doesn't cut it... That's the magnitude of money we're talking about. So it is just the money. The thing that troubles me is that outsourcing is very short-sighted. The long-term fallout is that there won't be ANY IT jobs in the United States, kids won't major in engineering, and the U.S. will no longer be the technological leaders of the world, but we will be dependent on the Chinese, Indians and Russians... We have senators and corporate heads reassuring workers in India and China that they will have jobs at a time when the industry in the US is looking at record unemployment. We are doomed, because the C+ students who became Congressional republicans are too stupid and greedy to understand that they are destroying the economic and technological foundation of our country.
This isn't really much of a problem. The first thing I would do with any music I bought from Apple would be to convert everything to MP3 format, by playing the tunes and capturing the music directly from my sound card...
Considering the the Bush Administration's current environmental policies will render the planet uninhabitable within the next 2 decades, i think any disaster a few centuries from now shouls only cause concern for some sturdy strains of nematodes, viruses and prions...
Guess what. Bit Torrent is toast. Taken offline. The MPAA invoked the DMCA, and everything is shut down. It's this sort of thing that the DMCA was made more. Who can justify sharing or downloading a blockbuster movie?