No. But any assembly coder worht his salt would have been able to learn C or COBOL back in the day. He still has his local job available to him.
Right. Just like any GOOD programmer today, whose job is in danger of being outsourced, can learn SOME skill that hasn't been filled by millions of people from third world nations. It will always be that way, and it's why only the more underskilled have to worry about job loss on a protracted basis.
This isn't meant to be a personal attack, but could you please, in your wisdom, tell us what a guy is supposed to do when his whole industry moves to India or China?
And please don't just say retrain.
Hey, no offense taken, and I don't mean the following as an attack either, but...sorry, retrain or become better at what you (by which I mean a general audience 'you') actually do. And the whole industry isn't moving. Companies are hiring skilled college grads, and nearly every job I'm looking at requires programming experience. And they're not based in Bangalore, either. Much of the problem is that a lot of programmers here only know how to program, and more and more this level of programming is being outsourced.
I would say your problem is NOT Indians - it's skilled Americans in other fields who can program just as well. People similar to me who program better - I'm an adequate, not great, coder, but I will soon have a Ph.D. in chemistry. These days, programming is good for accenting a skill set, but isn't sufficient alone. In other words, the people in demand are scientists who program well, finance people who program well, etc. But it's not people who are expert at standard CS group theory algorithms and the like, because it's expected that a programmer can pick that up if they need it. My advice to people majoring in CS is this: double major in finance or a phyisical/life science. You will have to beat companies, American companies, away with a stick.
Oh yeah, did the 'retrain and get a better job' theory work for all those poor souls who lost their manufacturing jobs in the 70's 80's and 90's? Using this as an example, personally I'm afraid for my future.
I'm glad you bring that up. And are all those "poor souls" currently unemployed? No. They're not. Because they, for the most part, successfully retrained. And certainly our economy is better for it.
Also, don't be afraid for your future if you're competent. For what it's worth, the times during which a person would enter the work force and perform a single job for 40 years are long dead. Technical fields change so fast that, if you don't keep up, you're an irrelevant dinosaur. And I mean that inclusively - if *I* don't keep up with my field, I will likewise become a relic. That's the way it is these days, and that excitement and novelty is why we choose the fields we do, I expect.
Let's put it this way. Lots of people bitch and moan about outsourcing, but what's the alternative? Make sure that menial labor is done in the US? Make sure that we can't compete with other countries? I mean, when you put this in historical context, it's ridiculous. Labor markets evolve. We have to deal with it, or become unemployed. Hate to be harsh, but that's the way it is.
Not many, I would imagine, considering the sacred position of cows there.
Nice.;) You know, when you're 16, drunk, and bored, an affected Indian accent and a call to the Burger King customer service line can provide hours of entertainment.
Sure he can buy something a bit cheaper today, but if the trend continues*, his own job will be going to India (or wherever) and he won't be able to buy anything tommorow (for lack of income), regardless on how cheap it is.
Doubtful. You do realize that people have been making this shortsighted, Luddite argument for hundreds of years? Ever since the original Luddites broke mechanical looms when they feared that those looms would take their jobs?
Well, they were part right, as are you: those looms DID take their jobs. However, they got BETTER jobs that were then available because less of the country's labor was busy making things that could be done by machine. And if they were too dense to get the better jobs, their kids certainly did.
The point is this: offshoring jobs, or replacing humans with machines, is a natural part of the labor cycle. At some point, many jobs become commodity, either because they are unnecessary, become too easy, or because too many people can do them. As the world economy changes, certain jobs go from being expert work to non-expert work, ultimately to machine work. You don't complain because a compiler stole the job of an assembly coder, do you?
Note that the US has maintained its status as an economic powerhouse over the last 60+ years by constantly evolving its labor market. People argued your same argument 40 years ago that manufacturing jobs shouldn't have been mechanized or offshored. They were, and no permanant unemployment resulted. But what if we hadn't offshored those industries? America would be nothing, economically, today.
Bottom line, you can't fight economic trends. You can postpone them and make things worse through an isolationist economy, but you can't change them.
The American economy may be expanding, but it's not expanding nearly as fast as India's or China's. The American economy is not creating jobs nearly as fast as it's loosing them.
As to the first part,it's guaranteed, because China and India are not developed economies. As such, pretty much every Asian economy (other than Japan) has grown faster than America in the last decade. As to the second part, care to substantiate? Outside of the recent recession, that's blatantly false, to which employment statistics will testify. Net American jobs have increased in the last 10 years.
manufacturing is all but gone from this country
Yes, just as it's gone from all of the first world, nearly. Manufacturing jobs don't pay much. Americans don't want them. Americans have better jobs.
and services are also leaving
And new ones are generated every day. So what?
From IT (programming jobs and tech support) to accounting no job is safe from an Indian worker earning a 10th of what his american counterpart makes.
Sure there is. Learn to do something that an uneducated Indian worker CAN'T DO! Look, with all the advantages we have from growing up in America, if there is nothing you can do better than someone from a third world country, you don't deserve a job.
There is only a need for so many doctor (even that they can do remotely these days) or burger flippers.
Really? How many people go to India for burgers or to see their doctor? Because if that's your argument, it's not about offshoring, because those jobs can't be offshored. That's about racism. You know what I call an Indian with US citizenship living in America? An American. And you should too.
Yeah... welcome to the club. Ahh the powers of an NMR magnet - erased my credit cards on my last day of work before going on vacation. Found myself in italy the next day with a fried card. Yay.
You too huh? Damned NMR's. At least I didn't have a pacemaker.
The analogy is what's stupid. A server at a restaurant with no public transporation who serves someone 10 scotches and who came alone is like a hardware store selling a piece of pipe, a handful of nails and a stick of dynamite to someone.
Shocking as it may seem, most people at restaurants who consume any alcohol do NOT become intoxicated! I don't want to forgo my right to have a glass of wine with my dinner because some moron has 10.
His analogy is fine, and the point is that most hardware stores and most restaurants will not engage in such behavior. And if they do, punish them. But don't punish me, because I didn't do anything.
Indeed, I think there is a lot of room to increase the penalties for drunk driving in the US, as they're moronically low. Perhaps we can start there before we start Prohibition again, or requiring idiotic, intrusive, and potentially dangerous systems in cars (imagine if they fail and your car starts doing that all the time?)
People like ESR and Linus are praised and recognized as the fathers of OSS, heros among their kind, but as soon as they say something offensive you disown them.
So...instead of deifying these people we reserve judgement to consider what they say on a case-by-case basis? How is this a bad thing? No one's disowning anyone, but saying people shouldn't agree with prominent people...well, I'd hate to live in that regime.
In life, whether personal, corporate, OSS, whatever, when you associate yourself with an organization, your actions reflect that organization to some degree. If ESR had said "these comments are solely my own and do not represent any organization I take part in", I could agree.
That is complete horseshit. So now I associate myself with linux...exactly to what degree do my actions and words represent anything? When anyone says something, unless they are truly an official of an organization, which ESR is not, they are speaking for THEMSELVES.
In other words, while I loosely consider myself a linux fan and member of some "community," ESR does NOT speak for me, nor does Linus, nor do you.
Sun FUDs linux routinely - remember Schwartz's FUD? "We do not believe that Linux plays a role on the server. Period. Solaris is a better alternative, that is safer, more robust, higher quality and dramatically less expensive in purchase price..."
Sure, there they're a direct competitor. But competing with linux hasn't stopped them from supporting a lot of other OSS projects, has it? And they're still dabbling in linux. And when did he say that - because as of 2.2, it was probably true.
They coordinated the imdemmnification FUD with SCO and funded SCO's licensing initiatives and lawsuits. Just look into their weak excuses for why they needed to send money to those guys.
I'm giving benefit of the doubt there for now - I don't know whether they were trying to "fund" SCO, or whether their beancounters and lawyers convinced them giving in was better than a protracted battle and risk of a massive loss.
They label stuff (Java Desktop) in such a way as to claim way more credit then they deserve
Yes, OpenOffice and the help they give Gnome is nice. I don't know of anything else of any significance that they do.
That in itself is pretty damned good, and more than comes from most big (or small) companies.
You're kidding, right? IBM probably spends more on mass media Linux ads than Sun spends in total on OSS initiatives. Not to mention fighting SCO in such a way (they have other choices) as to protect Linux long-term. Not to mention contributing top-notch, hard-core technologies such as RCU, JFS, Eclipse (another Sun FUD target), etc.
How many codes are written by that kid in the linux commercials? None that I know of. IBM is fighting SCO because they were sued, and I don't know how else they would have fought it. They're protecting their Linux investment because they made it the core of their business, as they have no equivalent to Solaris. Certainly IBM contributes a lot, don't get me wrong - but of the stuff *I* use on a daily basis - it's Sun (OO and java). And Java's close enough to OSS for me.
Bottom line is, Sun has done enough for OSS so as to deserve better than the shit they got from ESR.
Slightly concerned that we'll look back and say "Well, 2004 would've been the year Linux arrived in a big way . . . EXCEPT THAT WE TORE OURSELVES APART AT THE SEAMS." I don't mean to panic-monger or scream that the sky is falling without due cause - but this is all starting to get a bit worrying. Open Source has enough problems right now without actively helping its opponents.
Sounds like chicken little to me. Heck, even the FSF doesn't have a problem with this. From the article:
" This is a free software license but it is incompatible with the GPL. The Apache Software License is incompatible with the GPL because it has a specific requirement that is not in the GPL: it has certain patent termination cases that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent termination cases are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)"
Does anyone think this will keep Apache from being distributed with Linux? I doubt it. Does the presence of the BSD license somehow harm the GPL? No. Will this license bring doom upon all linux users? No.
Seriously, RTFA next time instead of gunning for FP, the articles are frequently quite enlightening.
If you only looked at the cost of the machine and the cost of the software you would be right - except usually the larger "cost" you need to be looking at is - how well is that machine going to serve you after you have it - or as some of you buzzword cowboys like to say your ROI - If you sit around trouble shooting your Winbox all day making sure whatever cool new virus isnt messing up your machines that kinda takes away from you getting any work done - or lets say you sit around all day or just simply take longer to do the same task - if you have more time to use your creativity - you could have more time to get more work done.
I realize that, and I wasn't addressing that point, which is granted. I was simply pointing out that buying a mac over a PC *simply* to avoid buying a new copy of Photoshop is brain damaged. As for the buzzword cowboys and playing with a winbox, I'll speak real slow since you missed it in my last post. I..don't...use...windows. My...post...didn't...mention...ROI. I...own..a...powerbook. See? Calm down, and stop with the furious run-ons.
You just can't say the cost of the software and machine is all that matters - but it goes the same way - you wouldnt buy a powermac to do VB work in VPC because that would take to long and just be stupid.
And I addressed that, though I suppose analogies aren't working for you. In my previous analogy, the situation you describe is one in which your shop uses all "Phillips screws," at which point of course you buy a Phillips screwdriver. Liekwise, if you do VB work, you buy a beige box. However, most people aren't doing VB work, and can use a mac OR a PC for what they do. At that point, you can compare them on specific tasks fairly esaily.
Don't put words in my mouth, and knock it off with the straw-man arguments.
"But the casual equation between "open source" and "zero revenue" suggests that on another level you don't really know what you're talking about. Open source is hardly a zero-revenue model; ask Red Hat, which had a share price over triple Sun's when I just checked."
This suggests to me that Eric Raymonds doesn't really know what he's talking about. Oh yes, let's look at Red Hat! For the most recent annual period (taken from globeinvestor.com), Red Hat had revenues of just over 90 million, and net income of -6.3 million. Open Source does seem to be working for them, doesn't it, Eric?
No kidding. Even if one granted the incorrect assumption that income==profit, we're still left with the following conclusion: ESR doesn't know the difference between a share price and a market capitalization. I mean, from his analysis, Red Hat could do a 3:1 stock split, and then they'd be tied with Sun. Right? No! Gotta multiply that stock price by shares outstanding, ESR.
Another conclusion: don't go to ESR for financial advice. That comment shows he shouldn't be trusted to consider any kind of financial system, ever, and that includes his own checkbook.
Notice how Phillips takes the cheap shot ("rant") in order to play to ESR's current unpopularity with the slashdot crowd? He doesn't try to refute the issues ESR raises.
He did in the non-excerpted version. He mainly says that making a full OSS version of Java would be expensive, and doing this for free isn't a workable business model. He also says that ESR is wrong about Java being closed, citing the community development aspect of it. He also mentioned a lot of other OSS friendly things they've done, and pointed out that ESR's attacks were very narrowly focused and ignored things that didn't jive with the conclusions he wanted to draw.
I think Sun didn't need to take those cheap shots, but he did mention a number of other things as well. Basically what it comes down to, I think, is that they need to make money because they're a company and they haven't figured out how to reconcile that with dreams of a free Java. And it's hard to find fault with that.
I guess it's hard to be coherent when your company doesn't really know where it stands wrt open source.
I'd like to see that substantiated. First, they're a company, not a non-profit OSS charity like GNU. They have to make money, first and foremost. Second, other than turning over their code to the general public, what do they do that's not OSS friendly? Hell, turning over OpenOffice and developing a linux desktop sound like pretty good support to me.
It's hard to think of any big company who is more OSS-friendly than Sun. I think that's why he was so pissed - they've bent over backwards for the OSS community, and they got blindsided by someone who supposedly is one of the community's pillars.
Seriously, why is everyone so up in arms about spam, when our brains are saturated in advertising everywhere we look?
Because I don't try to communicate by billboard, TV commercial, or radio commercial. As such, these ads do not pollute my personal communication methods by resulting in a 50:1 ratio between crap and actual communication.
Your natural response to this is of course mail and phone, which are communication means, so I'll address these. First, it is now legal to opt out of phone-spam as of yesterday (thanks FCC and appellate court!), so that actually becomes a precedent now for getting rid of spam. That leaves actual mail, which is costly enough that I have at least a 1:1 ratio between ham and spam.
Bottom line is that people hate spam for two reasons: the spam:ham ratio and the fact that it should be a communication means.
I've started an online business or two in my time, and carefully-target unsolicited email (aka spam) was an essential part of our business plan, and it brought real benefit to most recipients.
That's a great troll. In case you're not a troll, on behalf of all the rest of us, go away. We don't care about your business plan, and you didn't hear from the 99+% of recipients who didn't get a benefit from your spam outside of a shit-filled inbox. Incidentally, what exactly did you do to give such benefit to millions of recipients? Also, did you use your own server to send that stuff, did you use a spam-friendly ISP, or did you illegally hijack a server?
see a lot of ideas floating out of various government agencies around the world based on making spam more expensive. Personally I don't think this is a good approach. We shouldn't be removing the ability to mass-communicate from the common man, we need to be reining in advertising and other forms of brainwashing in a much more general sense.
I would agree if every person had a means of keeping you out, as just referenced by the court decision on the FTC's DNC list. You have the right to mass communicate. However, that's trumped by my right NOT to be mass-communicated to BY YOU. If you can set up a method by which all people have the right not to be emailed by spammers, and this is enforced by something real, then I'll agree to let people spam, but not before.
In other words, I don't want your email. None of us do except for the world's truly stupidest people. Take your "business model" elsewhere.
I think what Sally Shipman really means is "We want our large US software firms to continue to reap Huge profits: Open Source threatens that."
She does, and what I can't understand is this: IBM supports open source, and they aren't poor. Also, why didn't IBM get involved in this fight? I realize they have their hands full with SCO, but they have a lot of hands.
Nothing else seem to have spurred bandwidth demand otherwise. I mean, isn't that the only intensive stuff people run on DSL/Cable even now?
Nope. If you count cable, it's definitely TV, which runs on the same pipe as your broadband. I don't mean that to be a smartass comment, because on the proposed network, they plan to carry a lot of HDTV. Read uphill a bit from your comment, and there's a guy wondering if gigabit would be enough to carry all that.
I don't know which of the two of you is right, though.;)
There might be an artist who already has a copy of photoshop for mac, but not for windows. A G5 might be cheaper for that guy. TOS can only be determined on a case by case basis.
Right, because that $300 copy of photoshop makes the difference between a $1200 and $2500 machine. Nice math.
Also, the problem with your analogy, is that all these tools perform the SAME JOB, largely. So it's basically asking which screwdriver is better. Certainly, in some cases, you'll have to buy a Phillips head, because your shop deals only with Philips screws. But if you have the choice of platforms, you can still compare them - screwdrivers or computers. So these stories are fine.
So, novel writers shouldn't read work done by authors in the same field, movies makers shoudln't watch other movies, musicians shouldn't listen to music, and so on ?
It's a little bit different, and if you plan on releasing something damn near the same, you shouldn't. But code tends to get reused whereas books don't. I'm never going to write a book and include a chapter from someone else's. But there are times where I might need to do that in a program - I need a routine that does exactly what yours did. It's probably a good idea if I stay away from your code, then, if I'm going to do the same thing.
A true rewrite of the same global ideas isn't plagiarism.
Of course it's not. But part of this is avoiding ever getting sued and/or getting the case overwith quickly if you are. There are a lot of things that one would rather have to defend against - going back to my original post, being sued for copyright violations by MS is certainly one of them.
So the MS TCP/IP stack was developed totally independent of established protocols? It wasn't? Doesn't that make Windows public domain????????// WTF??!!!!!1 LOL!!!!!1111
That's a protocol, not an implementation. If you did things just like they did, that would be a violation. However, the TCP/IP protocol itself is not copyrightable.
So what, you thought plagiarism was OK? LOL back at you.
Copyright is _NOT_ patent. You can read copyrighted work and then write something similar by yourself. Copyright does not protect ideas, structures, algorithms or data formats. Copyright protectes the actual code - copy/pasting or recopying Windows code into Free Software would be disastrous. Reading Windows source code to understand protocols or formats and then writing your own Free implementation is not.
To the letter of the law, that's true. However, there's also something called plagiarism which DOES NOT have to be a "cut-n-paste," but can be a situation in which I looked at your work and implemented my version in much the same way. That is a potentially illegal breach of copyright in software just as it is in school with papers.
As such, the best way to protect oneself from copyright violations is complete ignorance of anything one might potentially infringe. As you say, an implementation is not copyrightable, so if you have never seen someone eles's implementation, you're clean. Basically, proving you've seen someone else's code can be damaging if you get sued for violation. You don't want that. And there's no reason to make the first critical part of their case for them.
Of course, this is what makes copyright different than patent, as you say. Ignorance does not protect one from patent violations (although it can with regard to penalties, which can be trebled given intent, I believe). Ignorance aka "cleanroom implementation" DOES give complete immunity with regard to potential copyright violations.
I think you misunderstood me. I did not claim that roaches were humans. I gave roaches as an example of a living creature with brain activity that we have no qualms about killing as a means of explaining my theory that we really decide whether something should live or die based on its similarity to us rather than on whether it is alive(which brain activity is usually a measure of)
I understood you, and I think you're needlessly obfuscating the point with shades of gray. One need not initiate any sort of "similarity" consideration. It's black and white - does the thing have 46 chromosomes, look like a human, and have brainwaves? Yes? Then don't kill it.
As for your point two posts ago, while it's true that people don't like to kill "cute" things...it's still legal. One can euthanise an old dog...but not a human. One can kill, eat, and wear a cow...but not a human. As for your guide dog bit, I believe it was the cruelty that was found illegal. Clearly, if one held dogs to the level of murder, he wouldn't have gotten 23.5 months.
So I think the law and such is pretty clear cut on this.
Roaches have brain activity, and yet most of us have no qualms about killing them. We like to think we are being rational about the issue of life, but we are really just following our instincts for the most part. It seems to mostly boil down to similarity.
Roaches aren't human. Killing anything NOT human is pretty much legal (assuming the thing is your property). Killing humans is illegal. As such, the metric of determining brainwave activity probably works for a fetus, which we can all assume is probably human unless the mom screwed an alien or something.
People keep missing this point. The decision is already made!!! They already decided to switch to Linux, now they are just trying to get people on board. They put the horse before the cart and now are in damage mode. Had this not been the case... hey, having a celebration to make something more popular, im all for that! But no, this is a case where the company did exactly what you just described... "made unilateral, completely unpopular decsions with no effort to win people over". This is after the fact, and they are trying to make the adoption go smoothly by bribing people or playing on their ego.
You're playing extremes here. I never said a workplace was a democracy - sometimes, management must make decisions that employees wouldn't make on their own. That's OK. But that doesn't mean it's bright to ram it down their throats without any attempt to bridge the transition. And the linux team did it beautifully. Who cares how they do it. Yes, they bribe and play off egos. If it gets the job done, so what?
First off, yes, you will always have certain people that maintain whatever stereotypes their little minds can dream up. However, what you are talking about is quantity not quality. Im not saying that their arent many girls in IT, im just saying there is no or little sterotype saying girls cant be good at IT. Big difference.
And what do you think causes that disparity? There's either a perceptive or actual difference in ability, and it is very much widely believed. If you don't agree with the stereotype, good for you. But you're giving the average male far too much credit if you disbelieve the notion that many of them think they're better at most things, especially electronics, than women.
Now, apply that to an office setting, and anything I think you will get a reverse stereotype. Who do you assume is better with a word processor a guy or girl?
A word processor is a typewriter on a screen, and not many people would agree with its position as a metric of computer aptitude.
Years of women as receptionists type mindsets, should actually lead people to the conclusion that women are better at using a computer in an office setting then men are.
Yet strangely enough it hasn't. I believe your base assumptions are flawed, as I've outlined above.
Slashdot Mirror
Right. Just like any GOOD programmer today, whose job is in danger of being outsourced, can learn SOME skill that hasn't been filled by millions of people from third world nations. It will always be that way, and it's why only the more underskilled have to worry about job loss on a protracted basis.
This isn't meant to be a personal attack, but could you please, in your wisdom, tell us what a guy is supposed to do when his whole industry moves to India or China?
And please don't just say retrain.
Hey, no offense taken, and I don't mean the following as an attack either, but...sorry, retrain or become better at what you (by which I mean a general audience 'you') actually do. And the whole industry isn't moving. Companies are hiring skilled college grads, and nearly every job I'm looking at requires programming experience. And they're not based in Bangalore, either. Much of the problem is that a lot of programmers here only know how to program, and more and more this level of programming is being outsourced.
I would say your problem is NOT Indians - it's skilled Americans in other fields who can program just as well. People similar to me who program better - I'm an adequate, not great, coder, but I will soon have a Ph.D. in chemistry. These days, programming is good for accenting a skill set, but isn't sufficient alone. In other words, the people in demand are scientists who program well, finance people who program well, etc. But it's not people who are expert at standard CS group theory algorithms and the like, because it's expected that a programmer can pick that up if they need it. My advice to people majoring in CS is this: double major in finance or a phyisical/life science. You will have to beat companies, American companies, away with a stick.
Oh yeah, did the 'retrain and get a better job' theory work for all those poor souls who lost their manufacturing jobs in the 70's 80's and 90's? Using this as an example, personally I'm afraid for my future.
I'm glad you bring that up. And are all those "poor souls" currently unemployed? No. They're not. Because they, for the most part, successfully retrained. And certainly our economy is better for it.
Also, don't be afraid for your future if you're competent. For what it's worth, the times during which a person would enter the work force and perform a single job for 40 years are long dead. Technical fields change so fast that, if you don't keep up, you're an irrelevant dinosaur. And I mean that inclusively - if *I* don't keep up with my field, I will likewise become a relic. That's the way it is these days, and that excitement and novelty is why we choose the fields we do, I expect.
Let's put it this way. Lots of people bitch and moan about outsourcing, but what's the alternative? Make sure that menial labor is done in the US? Make sure that we can't compete with other countries? I mean, when you put this in historical context, it's ridiculous. Labor markets evolve. We have to deal with it, or become unemployed. Hate to be harsh, but that's the way it is.
Nice. ;) You know, when you're 16, drunk, and bored, an affected Indian accent and a call to the Burger King customer service line can provide hours of entertainment.
Doubtful. You do realize that people have been making this shortsighted, Luddite argument for hundreds of years? Ever since the original Luddites broke mechanical looms when they feared that those looms would take their jobs?
Well, they were part right, as are you: those looms DID take their jobs. However, they got BETTER jobs that were then available because less of the country's labor was busy making things that could be done by machine. And if they were too dense to get the better jobs, their kids certainly did.
The point is this: offshoring jobs, or replacing humans with machines, is a natural part of the labor cycle. At some point, many jobs become commodity, either because they are unnecessary, become too easy, or because too many people can do them. As the world economy changes, certain jobs go from being expert work to non-expert work, ultimately to machine work. You don't complain because a compiler stole the job of an assembly coder, do you?
Note that the US has maintained its status as an economic powerhouse over the last 60+ years by constantly evolving its labor market. People argued your same argument 40 years ago that manufacturing jobs shouldn't have been mechanized or offshored. They were, and no permanant unemployment resulted. But what if we hadn't offshored those industries? America would be nothing, economically, today.
Bottom line, you can't fight economic trends. You can postpone them and make things worse through an isolationist economy, but you can't change them.
The American economy may be expanding, but it's not expanding nearly as fast as India's or China's. The American economy is not creating jobs nearly as fast as it's loosing them.
As to the first part,it's guaranteed, because China and India are not developed economies. As such, pretty much every Asian economy (other than Japan) has grown faster than America in the last decade. As to the second part, care to substantiate? Outside of the recent recession, that's blatantly false, to which employment statistics will testify. Net American jobs have increased in the last 10 years.
manufacturing is all but gone from this country
Yes, just as it's gone from all of the first world, nearly. Manufacturing jobs don't pay much. Americans don't want them. Americans have better jobs.
and services are also leaving
And new ones are generated every day. So what?
From IT (programming jobs and tech support) to accounting no job is safe from an Indian worker earning a 10th of what his american counterpart makes.
Sure there is. Learn to do something that an uneducated Indian worker CAN'T DO! Look, with all the advantages we have from growing up in America, if there is nothing you can do better than someone from a third world country, you don't deserve a job.
There is only a need for so many doctor (even that they can do remotely these days) or burger flippers.
Really? How many people go to India for burgers or to see their doctor? Because if that's your argument, it's not about offshoring, because those jobs can't be offshored. That's about racism. You know what I call an Indian with US citizenship living in America? An American. And you should too.
You too huh? Damned NMR's. At least I didn't have a pacemaker.
Not if it's 10 Tesla. Found that out the hard way. ;)
Then post it elsewhere, and don't click that "reply" button to my posts, because that generally implies a "response."
Yep, the same way OJ looked for the "real killer": a mirror. Yeah, Bill, I'm talking to you!
Shocking as it may seem, most people at restaurants who consume any alcohol do NOT become intoxicated! I don't want to forgo my right to have a glass of wine with my dinner because some moron has 10.
His analogy is fine, and the point is that most hardware stores and most restaurants will not engage in such behavior. And if they do, punish them. But don't punish me, because I didn't do anything.
Indeed, I think there is a lot of room to increase the penalties for drunk driving in the US, as they're moronically low. Perhaps we can start there before we start Prohibition again, or requiring idiotic, intrusive, and potentially dangerous systems in cars (imagine if they fail and your car starts doing that all the time?)
So...instead of deifying these people we reserve judgement to consider what they say on a case-by-case basis? How is this a bad thing? No one's disowning anyone, but saying people shouldn't agree with prominent people...well, I'd hate to live in that regime.
In life, whether personal, corporate, OSS, whatever, when you associate yourself with an organization, your actions reflect that organization to some degree. If ESR had said "these comments are solely my own and do not represent any organization I take part in", I could agree.
That is complete horseshit. So now I associate myself with linux...exactly to what degree do my actions and words represent anything? When anyone says something, unless they are truly an official of an organization, which ESR is not, they are speaking for THEMSELVES.
In other words, while I loosely consider myself a linux fan and member of some "community," ESR does NOT speak for me, nor does Linus, nor do you.
STFU
Charming.
Sure, there they're a direct competitor. But competing with linux hasn't stopped them from supporting a lot of other OSS projects, has it? And they're still dabbling in linux. And when did he say that - because as of 2.2, it was probably true.
They coordinated the imdemmnification FUD with SCO and funded SCO's licensing initiatives and lawsuits. Just look into their weak excuses for why they needed to send money to those guys.
I'm giving benefit of the doubt there for now - I don't know whether they were trying to "fund" SCO, or whether their beancounters and lawyers convinced them giving in was better than a protracted battle and risk of a massive loss.
They label stuff (Java Desktop) in such a way as to claim way more credit then they deserve
Yes, OpenOffice and the help they give Gnome is nice. I don't know of anything else of any significance that they do.
That in itself is pretty damned good, and more than comes from most big (or small) companies.
You're kidding, right? IBM probably spends more on mass media Linux ads than Sun spends in total on OSS initiatives. Not to mention fighting SCO in such a way (they have other choices) as to protect Linux long-term. Not to mention contributing top-notch, hard-core technologies such as RCU, JFS, Eclipse (another Sun FUD target), etc.
How many codes are written by that kid in the linux commercials? None that I know of. IBM is fighting SCO because they were sued, and I don't know how else they would have fought it. They're protecting their Linux investment because they made it the core of their business, as they have no equivalent to Solaris. Certainly IBM contributes a lot, don't get me wrong - but of the stuff *I* use on a daily basis - it's Sun (OO and java). And Java's close enough to OSS for me.
Bottom line is, Sun has done enough for OSS so as to deserve better than the shit they got from ESR.
Sounds like chicken little to me. Heck, even the FSF doesn't have a problem with this. From the article:
Does anyone think this will keep Apache from being distributed with Linux? I doubt it. Does the presence of the BSD license somehow harm the GPL? No. Will this license bring doom upon all linux users? No.
Seriously, RTFA next time instead of gunning for FP, the articles are frequently quite enlightening.
I realize that, and I wasn't addressing that point, which is granted. I was simply pointing out that buying a mac over a PC *simply* to avoid buying a new copy of Photoshop is brain damaged. As for the buzzword cowboys and playing with a winbox, I'll speak real slow since you missed it in my last post. I..don't...use...windows. My...post...didn't...mention...ROI. I...own..a...powerbook. See? Calm down, and stop with the furious run-ons.
You just can't say the cost of the software and machine is all that matters - but it goes the same way - you wouldnt buy a powermac to do VB work in VPC because that would take to long and just be stupid.
And I addressed that, though I suppose analogies aren't working for you. In my previous analogy, the situation you describe is one in which your shop uses all "Phillips screws," at which point of course you buy a Phillips screwdriver. Liekwise, if you do VB work, you buy a beige box. However, most people aren't doing VB work, and can use a mac OR a PC for what they do. At that point, you can compare them on specific tasks fairly esaily.
Don't put words in my mouth, and knock it off with the straw-man arguments.
This suggests to me that Eric Raymonds doesn't really know what he's talking about. Oh yes, let's look at Red Hat! For the most recent annual period (taken from globeinvestor.com), Red Hat had revenues of just over 90 million, and net income of -6.3 million. Open Source does seem to be working for them, doesn't it, Eric?
No kidding. Even if one granted the incorrect assumption that income==profit, we're still left with the following conclusion: ESR doesn't know the difference between a share price and a market capitalization. I mean, from his analysis, Red Hat could do a 3:1 stock split, and then they'd be tied with Sun. Right? No! Gotta multiply that stock price by shares outstanding, ESR.
Another conclusion: don't go to ESR for financial advice. That comment shows he shouldn't be trusted to consider any kind of financial system, ever, and that includes his own checkbook.
He did in the non-excerpted version. He mainly says that making a full OSS version of Java would be expensive, and doing this for free isn't a workable business model. He also says that ESR is wrong about Java being closed, citing the community development aspect of it. He also mentioned a lot of other OSS friendly things they've done, and pointed out that ESR's attacks were very narrowly focused and ignored things that didn't jive with the conclusions he wanted to draw.
I think Sun didn't need to take those cheap shots, but he did mention a number of other things as well. Basically what it comes down to, I think, is that they need to make money because they're a company and they haven't figured out how to reconcile that with dreams of a free Java. And it's hard to find fault with that.
I guess it's hard to be coherent when your company doesn't really know where it stands wrt open source.
I'd like to see that substantiated. First, they're a company, not a non-profit OSS charity like GNU. They have to make money, first and foremost. Second, other than turning over their code to the general public, what do they do that's not OSS friendly? Hell, turning over OpenOffice and developing a linux desktop sound like pretty good support to me.
It's hard to think of any big company who is more OSS-friendly than Sun. I think that's why he was so pissed - they've bent over backwards for the OSS community, and they got blindsided by someone who supposedly is one of the community's pillars.
Because I don't try to communicate by billboard, TV commercial, or radio commercial. As such, these ads do not pollute my personal communication methods by resulting in a 50:1 ratio between crap and actual communication.
Your natural response to this is of course mail and phone, which are communication means, so I'll address these. First, it is now legal to opt out of phone-spam as of yesterday (thanks FCC and appellate court!), so that actually becomes a precedent now for getting rid of spam. That leaves actual mail, which is costly enough that I have at least a 1:1 ratio between ham and spam.
Bottom line is that people hate spam for two reasons: the spam:ham ratio and the fact that it should be a communication means.
I've started an online business or two in my time, and carefully-target unsolicited email (aka spam) was an essential part of our business plan, and it brought real benefit to most recipients.
That's a great troll. In case you're not a troll, on behalf of all the rest of us, go away. We don't care about your business plan, and you didn't hear from the 99+% of recipients who didn't get a benefit from your spam outside of a shit-filled inbox. Incidentally, what exactly did you do to give such benefit to millions of recipients? Also, did you use your own server to send that stuff, did you use a spam-friendly ISP, or did you illegally hijack a server?
see a lot of ideas floating out of various government agencies around the world based on making spam more expensive. Personally I don't think this is a good approach. We shouldn't be removing the ability to mass-communicate from the common man, we need to be reining in advertising and other forms of brainwashing in a much more general sense.
I would agree if every person had a means of keeping you out, as just referenced by the court decision on the FTC's DNC list. You have the right to mass communicate. However, that's trumped by my right NOT to be mass-communicated to BY YOU. If you can set up a method by which all people have the right not to be emailed by spammers, and this is enforced by something real, then I'll agree to let people spam, but not before.
In other words, I don't want your email. None of us do except for the world's truly stupidest people. Take your "business model" elsewhere.
She does, and what I can't understand is this: IBM supports open source, and they aren't poor. Also, why didn't IBM get involved in this fight? I realize they have their hands full with SCO, but they have a lot of hands.
Nope. If you count cable, it's definitely TV, which runs on the same pipe as your broadband. I don't mean that to be a smartass comment, because on the proposed network, they plan to carry a lot of HDTV. Read uphill a bit from your comment, and there's a guy wondering if gigabit would be enough to carry all that.
I don't know which of the two of you is right, though. ;)
Right, because that $300 copy of photoshop makes the difference between a $1200 and $2500 machine. Nice math.
Also, the problem with your analogy, is that all these tools perform the SAME JOB, largely. So it's basically asking which screwdriver is better. Certainly, in some cases, you'll have to buy a Phillips head, because your shop deals only with Philips screws. But if you have the choice of platforms, you can still compare them - screwdrivers or computers. So these stories are fine.
And yes, I own a powerbook.
It's a little bit different, and if you plan on releasing something damn near the same, you shouldn't. But code tends to get reused whereas books don't. I'm never going to write a book and include a chapter from someone else's. But there are times where I might need to do that in a program - I need a routine that does exactly what yours did. It's probably a good idea if I stay away from your code, then, if I'm going to do the same thing.
A true rewrite of the same global ideas isn't plagiarism.
Of course it's not. But part of this is avoiding ever getting sued and/or getting the case overwith quickly if you are. There are a lot of things that one would rather have to defend against - going back to my original post, being sued for copyright violations by MS is certainly one of them.
That's a protocol, not an implementation. If you did things just like they did, that would be a violation. However, the TCP/IP protocol itself is not copyrightable.
So what, you thought plagiarism was OK? LOL back at you.
To the letter of the law, that's true. However, there's also something called plagiarism which DOES NOT have to be a "cut-n-paste," but can be a situation in which I looked at your work and implemented my version in much the same way. That is a potentially illegal breach of copyright in software just as it is in school with papers.
As such, the best way to protect oneself from copyright violations is complete ignorance of anything one might potentially infringe. As you say, an implementation is not copyrightable, so if you have never seen someone eles's implementation, you're clean. Basically, proving you've seen someone else's code can be damaging if you get sued for violation. You don't want that. And there's no reason to make the first critical part of their case for them.
Of course, this is what makes copyright different than patent, as you say. Ignorance does not protect one from patent violations (although it can with regard to penalties, which can be trebled given intent, I believe). Ignorance aka "cleanroom implementation" DOES give complete immunity with regard to potential copyright violations.
I understood you, and I think you're needlessly obfuscating the point with shades of gray. One need not initiate any sort of "similarity" consideration. It's black and white - does the thing have 46 chromosomes, look like a human, and have brainwaves? Yes? Then don't kill it.
As for your point two posts ago, while it's true that people don't like to kill "cute" things...it's still legal. One can euthanise an old dog...but not a human. One can kill, eat, and wear a cow...but not a human. As for your guide dog bit, I believe it was the cruelty that was found illegal. Clearly, if one held dogs to the level of murder, he wouldn't have gotten 23.5 months.
So I think the law and such is pretty clear cut on this.
Roaches aren't human. Killing anything NOT human is pretty much legal (assuming the thing is your property). Killing humans is illegal. As such, the metric of determining brainwave activity probably works for a fetus, which we can all assume is probably human unless the mom screwed an alien or something.
See, it's not hard.
Care to explain? I wasn't aware of anything that allowed a company to hit customers of products that infringe patents.
You're playing extremes here. I never said a workplace was a democracy - sometimes, management must make decisions that employees wouldn't make on their own. That's OK. But that doesn't mean it's bright to ram it down their throats without any attempt to bridge the transition. And the linux team did it beautifully. Who cares how they do it. Yes, they bribe and play off egos. If it gets the job done, so what?
First off, yes, you will always have certain people that maintain whatever stereotypes their little minds can dream up. However, what you are talking about is quantity not quality. Im not saying that their arent many girls in IT, im just saying there is no or little sterotype saying girls cant be good at IT. Big difference.
And what do you think causes that disparity? There's either a perceptive or actual difference in ability, and it is very much widely believed. If you don't agree with the stereotype, good for you. But you're giving the average male far too much credit if you disbelieve the notion that many of them think they're better at most things, especially electronics, than women.
Now, apply that to an office setting, and anything I think you will get a reverse stereotype. Who do you assume is better with a word processor a guy or girl?
A word processor is a typewriter on a screen, and not many people would agree with its position as a metric of computer aptitude.
Years of women as receptionists type mindsets, should actually lead people to the conclusion that women are better at using a computer in an office setting then men are.
Yet strangely enough it hasn't. I believe your base assumptions are flawed, as I've outlined above.