This is kinda discouraging. I'm all in favor of manned spaceflight, but...
Until we're willing to fund not only the station but its support structure, and fund it enough to insure that there's some redundancy in systems, I think it might be time to start thinking about abandoning it in orbit for a while. What spaceflight does NOT need right now is the two sitting ducks..er, I meant crew, dying because we can't keep the structure/support up to snuff.
I think the "South Beach" author has some sort of agenda that has nothing to do with dieting, period.
My take on it is that, while flying the banner of health and weight loss, a lot of these books and diets are nothing more than thinly veiled attempts at promoting prohibition and, for want of a better term, puritanism. Lord knows most of the diets themselves are certainly not healthy (Atkins).
Well, I was a working musician for the last twenty years or so, and one thing I learned from the experience is that no matter the nature of your intellectual output, in the end you can really only charge whatever the market will bear. In the case of recorded music, that frequently does mean "free", because the market model of people paying exhorbitant prices for recorded music is largely over. I know that you wrote your remarks with hyperbole, trying to make a point, but I couldn't agree with you more:
"a better place for them is similar to the folks who play on street corners -- if you're good, you'll get paid" Lord, if only most musicians making recorded music today were good enough to play live on street corners. In most cases they are not.
"and if you don't, fighting for your so-called "rights" is simply wrong-headed, you "just don't get it," and P2P is some long-awaited relief for consumers at large to take what's theirs, settle the score from decades of overcharging by musicians and record companies" - Once again, although I know this is hyperbole designed to make a point, I couldn't agree more. Consumers WERE overcharged. The rules are now altered, and p2p/file sharing IS here to stay. There are plenty of ways to make money as a musician, and waiting for your measly royalty check isn't one of them. Live concerts and merchandising being the main two methods of generating income, and certainly the live concert is largely immune to any kind of piracy.
So, for the coders who want to make money and stay in the game, I'll give you the same advice I gave fellow musicians throughout the years:
1. Be flexible. Today's income stream could dry up tomorrow. What will your next move be, when it's forced on you? 2. Polish ALL your skills and learn useful ones. So, you can write code? Great. Can you adminster a network? No? Why the fuck not? You want to WORK, don't you? You can code in C, right? How about Java? How about HTML? How about ADA? People with manifold skills stay employed. One-trick ponies starve. 3. What's next? Just as musicians must follow trends, even ones they don't like, so too must coders. Do you know what is happening in your industry? You had better, or your job will belong to someone else. 4. You aren't entitled to anything. Just because you can (write an application, write a song, put on a good stage show, write a good contract) doesn't entitle you to any recompense. It's how you DEAL with your business that makes your money, not the nature of your business.
As to your final point, I'll say this...writing good code is far easier than writing good music. Does this mean musicians deserve more money? Of course not. Right now, society values the product of the coder more than the product of the musician, so the coder gets more respect and money than the musician. It probably won't always be that way, but it's the way things are now.
BTW, not being a total idiot, I'm now writing code rather than playing music. It's nice not being poor:)
You're joking, right? The RIAA couldn't be more pissed about people downloading indie music, not bacause it violates their rights or their ill-gotten revenue stream, but because both downloading and indie music are the greatest long-term threat to their business model they've ever faced.
And I'll give them this: they should be terrified. They've milked a monopoly for decades and have forgotten how to compete, and now that they have competition they have no idea how to respond to it in an effective way.
Hint to the RIAA: suing your customers and bribing Congress to pass legislation aimed at peotecting your monopoly status is not an effective response...it tends to piss people off and then they tend not to buy your products.
Ahh. Well, now at least I see where you're coming from...it's not job suicide month, at least.
Looking at it from management's point of view, I'd still be very skeptical. A promise that you'd be personally responsible for maintenance, fixes, patches and "surprises" might do the trick, although I know (from personal experience) that I would not be allowed to do it in spite of those reassurances. For good reason...I have responsibilities other than patching an experimental system, and could find myself in over my head very quickly.
The end result would be...mission not accomplished. And that's an unacceptable outcome to management. Plus, those developers...you give them a bad environment and you'll never hear the end of it.
You have a working system. What is your rationale for wanting to change ANYTHING, much less your OS?
You've paid (if my own workplace is any indicator) at least tens of thousands of dollars just for the IBM support (which is superb, if you're running approved software).
You probably are using other software, all of which you've paid support contracts on.
All these contracts will become null and void if you should do something completely insane, like switching your DE to a distro that is not supported.
Well, go for it, it's your career. I'll say this, however. If you were employed at my workplace, and suggested such an insane course of action, you wouldn't be working here for long.
Well, I stand corrected. There IS such a thing as criminal violation of copyirght law. Thanks for letting me know. (In a very informative way, too! Mod this guy up!)
And extra thanks for not being a total fucking prick about it, like Moridineas, below.
This is an extremely disturbing development, seeing as these folks are not guilty of a crime, merely a civil offense. An egregious and large-scale civil offense, to be sure, but a civil offense nonetheless. Which is why there were no arrests. So why is the Justice Department involved?
Oh that's right...I forgot. Herr Reichsmarshall Ashcroft IS the law.
Without this vital source of information into my life, what will I do?
Seriously, I didn't notice. There's so many ads (and I use pop-up blockers and hosts) that they're all just lost in the noise. Which is a really sad commentary on the state of the Internet when you think about it.
Oh yes, the economists. Yeah, the ones who work in concert with the rich to help them get richer. Those guys, right? Surely their interests are nothing but altruistic. Surely they care about all people, and not just the rich folks who PAY for their research. Yes, I'm sure those economists are working for the benefit of the middle class, if not all mankind.
When are you people going to figure it out? Economists have no reason whasoever to publish the truth. LOOK AT WHO THEY WORK FOR.
I left the Bay Area in January of 2000 and never looked back. Got out just before the roof fell in.
Here in San Diego, there's plenty of jobs and dignity to go along with them. Anyone at my company who would suggest such morale-busting measures as the article poster would be shitcanned by our CEO and board for gross incompetence.
Plus, all the homeless junkies in San Francisco really got to me after six years. That city REALLY needs to do something about that.
So, if you value your dignity and your paycheck, get the hell out of the Bay Area!
And, one last thing. Guys, quit being willing to grab your ankles and bend over just to keep a job. You fuck it up for the rest of us who are trying to earn a living with some dignity and respect.
Under California law, any job which requires a uniform, be it tradesman or "McDonald's" employee, must provide that uniform to the employee without charge and maintain that uniform. Period.
It may work differently elsewhere.
Also, per your example, plumbers, carpenters, etc. are not salaried. Frankly, if they don't feel like working any more that day, they can just leave. The IT professional, being salaried, does not have that option.
Obligations must work both ways. If I'm on call, you will provide the means for me to be called and means for me to do the work in a convenient and timely way.
Otherwise, I'll just go work for someone else. Plenty of IT jobs out there. Plenty of good employers. Why reward the bad ones with your talent and money?
Regarding Ian's comment: bullshit. The software is alive and present on the US release. I can't speak for the UK, because I didn't buy a copy there. But it's on mine.
The California prisoners in jail for stealing, as you say, "pizza and cookies" were given life sentences as part of the "three strikes" program, which mandates that a person previously convicted of two VIOLENT felonies can be imprisoned for life if they commit a third, non-violent felony.
We're not talking stealing some videotapes or shoplifing some CD's. We're talking murders, rapes, assaults, the gamut of violent crimes that leave a lifetime of trauma for the human being on the receiving end.
Ask a rape victim if it ever gets better. I think you'll find that they, too, are serving a life sentence.
I'm a liberal, but my heart doesn't bleed for these pieces of shit. They knew what they were doing and they knew what would happen if they got caught. And they would do it over and over again until society removes them from their own private hunting grounds for good.
Slashdot Mirror
This is kinda discouraging. I'm all in favor of manned spaceflight, but...
Until we're willing to fund not only the station but its support structure, and fund it enough to insure that there's some redundancy in systems, I think it might be time to start thinking about abandoning it in orbit for a while. What spaceflight does NOT need right now is the two sitting ducks..er, I meant crew, dying because we can't keep the structure/support up to snuff.
I think the "South Beach" author has some sort of agenda that has nothing to do with dieting, period.
My take on it is that, while flying the banner of health and weight loss, a lot of these books and diets are nothing more than thinly veiled attempts at promoting prohibition and, for want of a better term, puritanism. Lord knows most of the diets themselves are certainly not healthy (Atkins).
</tinfoil hat>
"defrag ext2" "lack of Token Ring support" Brilliant AND hilarious. Nice troll. I applaud you, sir.
Well, I was a working musician for the last twenty years or so, and one thing I learned from the experience is that no matter the nature of your intellectual output, in the end you can really only charge whatever the market will bear. In the case of recorded music, that frequently does mean "free", because the market model of people paying exhorbitant prices for recorded music is largely over. I know that you wrote your remarks with hyperbole, trying to make a point, but I couldn't agree with you more:
:)
"a better place for them is similar to the folks who play on street corners -- if you're good, you'll get paid" Lord, if only most musicians making recorded music today were good enough to play live on street corners. In most cases they are not.
"and if you don't, fighting for your so-called "rights" is simply wrong-headed, you "just don't get it," and P2P is some long-awaited relief for consumers at large to take what's theirs, settle the score from decades of overcharging by musicians and record companies" - Once again, although I know this is hyperbole designed to make a point, I couldn't agree more. Consumers WERE overcharged. The rules are now altered, and p2p/file sharing IS here to stay. There are plenty of ways to make money as a musician, and waiting for your measly royalty check isn't one of them. Live concerts and merchandising being the main two methods of generating income, and certainly the live concert is largely immune to any kind of piracy.
So, for the coders who want to make money and stay in the game, I'll give you the same advice I gave fellow musicians throughout the years:
1. Be flexible. Today's income stream could dry up tomorrow. What will your next move be, when it's forced on you?
2. Polish ALL your skills and learn useful ones. So, you can write code? Great. Can you adminster a network? No? Why the fuck not? You want to WORK, don't you? You can code in C, right? How about Java? How about HTML? How about ADA? People with manifold skills stay employed. One-trick ponies starve.
3. What's next? Just as musicians must follow trends, even ones they don't like, so too must coders. Do you know what is happening in your industry? You had better, or your job will belong to someone else.
4. You aren't entitled to anything. Just because you can (write an application, write a song, put on a good stage show, write a good contract) doesn't entitle you to any recompense. It's how you DEAL with your business that makes your money, not the nature of your business.
As to your final point, I'll say this...writing good code is far easier than writing good music. Does this mean musicians deserve more money? Of course not. Right now, society values the product of the coder more than the product of the musician, so the coder gets more respect and money than the musician. It probably won't always be that way, but it's the way things are now.
BTW, not being a total idiot, I'm now writing code rather than playing music. It's nice not being poor
You're joking, right? The RIAA couldn't be more pissed about people downloading indie music, not bacause it violates their rights or their ill-gotten revenue stream, but because both downloading and indie music are the greatest long-term threat to their business model they've ever faced.
And I'll give them this: they should be terrified. They've milked a monopoly for decades and have forgotten how to compete, and now that they have competition they have no idea how to respond to it in an effective way.
Hint to the RIAA: suing your customers and bribing Congress to pass legislation aimed at peotecting your monopoly status is not an effective response...it tends to piss people off and then they tend not to buy your products.
Ahh. Well, now at least I see where you're coming from...it's not job suicide month, at least.
Looking at it from management's point of view, I'd still be very skeptical. A promise that you'd be personally responsible for maintenance, fixes, patches and "surprises" might do the trick, although I know (from personal experience) that I would not be allowed to do it in spite of those reassurances. For good reason...I have responsibilities other than patching an experimental system, and could find myself in over my head very quickly.
The end result would be...mission not accomplished. And that's an unacceptable outcome to management. Plus, those developers...you give them a bad environment and you'll never hear the end of it.
Good luck.
"sydb". What are you thinking? Seriously?
You have a working system. What is your rationale for wanting to change ANYTHING, much less your OS?
You've paid (if my own workplace is any indicator) at least tens of thousands of dollars just for the IBM support (which is superb, if you're running approved software).
You probably are using other software, all of which you've paid support contracts on.
All these contracts will become null and void if you should do something completely insane, like switching your DE to a distro that is not supported.
Well, go for it, it's your career. I'll say this, however. If you were employed at my workplace, and suggested such an insane course of action, you wouldn't be working here for long.
Well, I stand corrected. There IS such a thing as criminal violation of copyirght law. Thanks for letting me know. (In a very informative way, too! Mod this guy up!)
And extra thanks for not being a total fucking prick about it, like Moridineas, below.
This is an extremely disturbing development, seeing as these folks are not guilty of a crime, merely a civil offense. An egregious and large-scale civil offense, to be sure, but a civil offense nonetheless. Which is why there were no arrests. So why is the Justice Department involved?
Oh that's right...I forgot. Herr Reichsmarshall Ashcroft IS the law.
Weird fucked up movie? It's like that nowadays every time I read the news. Or turn on the TV.
I don't know how things are supposed to be, but I do know that they're not supposed to be like this.
Without this vital source of information into my life, what will I do?
Seriously, I didn't notice. There's so many ads (and I use pop-up blockers and hosts) that they're all just lost in the noise. Which is a really sad commentary on the state of the Internet when you think about it.
Oh yes, the economists. Yeah, the ones who work in concert with the rich to help them get richer. Those guys, right? Surely their interests are nothing but altruistic. Surely they care about all people, and not just the rich folks who PAY for their research. Yes, I'm sure those economists are working for the benefit of the middle class, if not all mankind.
When are you people going to figure it out?
Economists have no reason whasoever to publish the truth. LOOK AT WHO THEY WORK FOR.
Sheesh.
If these allegations are true, then these future versions of Windows cannot be used in sensitive/secure/classified installations. End of story.
The sales they'll lose will far outweigh what they save on the labor. Better think about that, Mr. Gates.
Competition is Un-American, and helps the terrorists make baby Jesus cry. Haven't you been reading the news these days?
Being an employee of one of the competitors to the "pet contractors", I couldn't agree with the parent more.
I'm a geek! What am I to do until Slashdot returns?
Well, I guess I'll just have to go outside, or talk to a girl, or something...
Poor Starbucks. They've delivered growth at the expense of profitability for sooooo long, and now the bills are coming due.
They'll learn the lesson that no one seems capable of learning from history: you can't rely on expansion to keep up your cash flow forever.
Just ask that other famous Seattle company about how that's working out for 'em.
Well, good luck there, Starbucks. Nice having known you. Good luck with that "branching out" thing.
Amen to that.
I left the Bay Area in January of 2000 and never looked back. Got out just before the roof fell in.
Here in San Diego, there's plenty of jobs and dignity to go along with them. Anyone at my company who would suggest such morale-busting measures as the article poster would be shitcanned by our CEO and board for gross incompetence.
Plus, all the homeless junkies in San Francisco really got to me after six years. That city REALLY needs to do something about that.
So, if you value your dignity and your paycheck, get the hell out of the Bay Area!
And, one last thing. Guys, quit being willing to grab your ankles and bend over just to keep a job. You fuck it up for the rest of us who are trying to earn a living with some dignity and respect.
Under California law, any job which requires a uniform, be it tradesman or "McDonald's" employee, must provide that uniform to the employee without charge and maintain that uniform. Period.
It may work differently elsewhere.
Also, per your example, plumbers, carpenters, etc. are not salaried. Frankly, if they don't feel like working any more that day, they can just leave. The IT professional, being salaried, does not have that option.
Obligations must work both ways. If I'm on call, you will provide the means for me to be called and means for me to do the work in a convenient and timely way.
Otherwise, I'll just go work for someone else. Plenty of IT jobs out there. Plenty of good employers. Why reward the bad ones with your talent and money?
Regarding Ian's comment: bullshit. The software is alive and present on the US release. I can't speak for the UK, because I didn't buy a copy there. But it's on mine.
The disc sucks too. I'm doubly unhappy.
You're only telling half the story.
The California prisoners in jail for stealing, as you say, "pizza and cookies" were given life sentences as part of the "three strikes" program, which mandates that a person previously convicted of two VIOLENT felonies can be imprisoned for life if they commit a third, non-violent felony.
We're not talking stealing some videotapes or shoplifing some CD's. We're talking murders, rapes, assaults, the gamut of violent crimes that leave a lifetime of trauma for the human being on the receiving end.
Ask a rape victim if it ever gets better. I think you'll find that they, too, are serving a life sentence.
I'm a liberal, but my heart doesn't bleed for these pieces of shit. They knew what they were doing and they knew what would happen if they got caught. And they would do it over and over again until society removes them from their own private hunting grounds for good.
This is awesome! Fuck! (seriously, words fail me, that's all I can say) Fuck!!!
I WANT TO GO!!!
Can't agree more with a previous poster. This should be on the front page of every paper in the U.S., if not the world.
Jesus! I just read the cited press release. Is this some kind of joke?
If not, this is a testbook example of FUD. Should go in the damn FUD manual. Assholes.
I've been using nothing but AMD since 1998 and am an extremely satisfied customer.
If AMD has truly learned how to make a cool, low-voltage/low-wattage processor, well...all I can say is you might want to sell your Intel stock.
Go AMD!!!
The benefits are twofold, and the same as they are for computers:
1. It's gonna bring the price down, no question. Lots of proprietary software in those little handheld phones.
2. Better security. No better way to iron all the bugs out than opening up the source.
And maybe some cheaper ringtones while we're at it. I'd love to be able to do my own, rather than buying them at $1 each.