The question of comparing an open source solution to a big expensive app like Open View came up not too long ago when GroundWork published their cost comparison of GW Monitor vs HP Open View. Over three years, GroundWork Monitor was 82% less expensive than Open View. GroundWork is about $54/node and Open View is about $295. You can download the PDF here: http://www.groundworkopensource.com/solutions/tco-gwme_vs_hp-openview.html
This study caught the attention of Matt Assay on cnet when HP had a fit about their pricing being exposed. http://news.cnet.com
You probably saw it on slashdot right after Thanksgiving. http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/28/0857213
Well, whether or not fraud is a sign of a healthy economy, it is certainly a flourishing tax on stupidity. Hey, if you would fax your credit card number to a company that wont provide a valid email address to receive discount prescription drugs -like Viagra, then you deserve whatever you (do or don't) get! (Let's see, I think I'll send access to my bank account to an organization that I've never heard of. The reason for doing this would be because I trust this person to send me pharmaceuticals that are safe!)
As the saying goes... "Yeah, and I have a bridge to sell you.." Spam has the ability to reach far more suckers than P.T. Barnum ever could.
Look, adultery needs to be defined by the individuals in the relationship. You may be perfectly comfortable with your S.O. having intercourse with your best friend, but giving her a foot massage infuriates you. If your S.O. has agreed to these terms, and he violates them, he has violated your trust and the terms of your relationship.
If you are looking for social norms to define for you what is or is not acceptable to do with or without your significant other(s), you are not communicating with your S.O. and harming your relationship even worse than "cheating". Each couple needs to discuss (often) the terms of their relationship based on their individual needs. Get specific. How far is too far? These are personal agreements, not social rules to be followed.
Porn will always exist in every media available. In fact, mediums that have excluded pornography have died (laser-discs). Pornography has been the single-most driving force behind the advancements of technogolies from home theatre, to the internet, to the printing press.
Porn will be available in e-book, paper book, paper magazine, video games, and will sell copies wherever it is. Sex sells. People buy it. Like it or not.
Aside from the practical reasons that paper books will endure (as described above by mblase), there are also more emotional reasons for them to remain strong.
Ever walk into a dusty used book shop and just inhale the scent of old paper? I know that I'm not the only one who finds this to be fantastic.
Next, books are very tactile. You touch them and turn the pages. This is a different feeling than hitting the "next page" button.
Books are more restful on the eyes than a backlit lcd or radioactive monitor. This is many people find them more relaxing. This is also why so many people read before bedtime. Conversely, study after study complains that monitors are straining on the eyes and cause headaches.
I love my computers and I love my PDA, but they have an entirely different appeal to me than my library. These are completely different media and while their functions can over-lap, they do not replace eachother.
Hmmm... I've had this happen to several of my sites. On one hand, I've taken it as flattery and on the other I've been pissed. Incidently, the people who do this generally do do a pretty sloppy job of it. (If they had the creative ability to produce a decent copy, they'd probably create original work.)
Last winter (probably December 99), we found some "Linux Company" back east somewhere who had completely copied the VA Linux site down to using the exact same graphics and background image. The logo was even the same with their name pasted over "VA". I was pretty outraged. (I was the webmaster at VA at the time and had created the layout.)
I guess if you're going to use someone else's work, you should ask permission, first. Web layout is artwork just like painting or sculpting. If you have permission, then go for it. But the creator owns the work and it is their perogative to decide who can use it. (Their choice as to the use may or may not be ethical but it's still their choice.)
Legally Speaking, I cannot imagine them being able to hold you to that if the training is *required* in order to keep the job.
Personally, I would weigh a couple factors:
1. Will this training improve your skills enough that it will be worth a significant pay raise in one year's time?
2. Will this training have gone obsolete in one year's time?
I don't know where you are geographically, but at least in California, there are so many tech/geek jobs, that it's just not worth working for someone who is going to do that. I can understand the company wanting to protect their investment but the job market is on the employee's side too much for them to be able to hold you to that and keep employees.
And since when is comercial software any better than Open Source Software? The open source model allows fluid and thorough development of applications. Developers aren't stuck with unattainable deadlines or marketing driven feature requirements. They have the time and resources to create well written code with features sets based on people's actual needs.
I am typing this from my trusty Debian box. Let me state that the comercial software I run on this box (Netscape, Star Office, Word Perfect, etc) crashes and tends to be poorly put together. The Open Source software I run (Debian, Gimp, Enlightenment, etc) runs fabulously & without a hitch!
What Linux needs is not more legacy comercial software. Linux does not need to become what it's fighting against. Linux is changing the way people think about software. What Linux need is to continue its high standards and the world will change around it. (And if you doubt that, just look at the amount of acceptance Linux has gained over the past 3 years.)
Um, ok, but that's not Open Source! At least the Gimp is Open Source.
I'll say this again. The biggest mistake the Gimp has mad is that their "stable" version is that it's like a year old and doesn't really compare to other graphics manipulation programs. Hello guys - FEATURE FREEZE PLEASE! The "developers version" is fabulous. I couldn't live without it. It's a beautifully written app and does everything I need from a graphics program (except CMYK).
And it's GPL. So don't pay $500 for Photoshop or even $50 for Pixel32.
Ok, I'm sorry, but this just irritates the crap out of me. So Jenni wants to put a camera in her room. Personally, it wouldn't be my choice, but I still don't see what that has to do with self esteem.
This is a matter of values. If your value system prioritizes privacy and modesty and you behave like Jenni, then you probably have a self esteem problem. However, if Jenni doesn't particularly care about these things, yet she values creativity, exhibitionism, and independence from social norms, then her behavior shows an incredible amount of courage and self esteem. She's had the ability to do whatever the hell she pleases regardless of social norms.
Being yourself does not show a lack of self esteem. Forcing your values on others *does* show a lack of self esteem because it means you need the agreement others to validate your lifestyle.
So please... you are welcome to your own lifestyle. But if someone (like Jenni) chooses a different lifestyle, it doesn't mean they are emotionally messed up or have self esteem problems. It just means that if they were you and had your experiences and your value system, that sort of behavior would be symptomatic of problems.
You can say that a certain behavior wouldn't be your choice... but it is not fair to make judgements about their psychological health unless you know them well and have some sort of background in psychology.
On a related note... I've been getting answering machine spam at home, lately. No, I don't mean telemarketers. I mean software that dials you up during the day (while you're presumably at work), waits for the beep, and plays a recording onto your machine for you to listen to when you play your messages at night. grrr....
You know, it's been very obvious to me for a while that LinuxCare was in a world of hurt... Everyone I know that worked there (but one person) has quit in the past six months. And some of these people have been the Linux elite.
To add insult to injury, I received no less than 3 at each of my email addresses, this morning from LinuxCare. Not only were they spamming, but they did such a bad job of it that they repeated themselves. I'm not sure if the repetition was intentional or accidental. Either way, it doesn't speak well for LinuxCare's understanding of the Linux Community. Spamming is a great way to sign your death warrant in the Linux world. Apparently, they've signed a marketing department who has failed to get to know their audience.
It's very disappointing. I had a lot of hope for LinuxCare a year ago. I still hope they'll manage to pull out of this rut. Unfortunately, there are only a few Linux companies. The behavior of one effects the reputations of all of them.
Do you have a great domain name? Before VA bought them, Linux.com's value was based entirely on the domain name.
Are you getting hits and more importantly, are you retaining these hits and for how long? Do they have a reason to come back regularly?
What kind of stats are you gathering? Are you tracking your visitors' paths through your site? Where are they coming from? Where/why are they leaving? Etoys.com tracks their users' paths through the site so they can see what people are interested in and feed them banners/links accordingly.
Do you have a way to gather information about your users? Do you have quality demographics? Demographics are worth money. Why do you think grocery stores give you membership cards?
What kinds of click-throughs can you offer your banner advertisers?
All the content in the world is only valuable if it gives your users a reason to come to your site, stay there and come back often. If you have a small audience whose average demographics are low income and short attention span, your site will be worth a lot less than a site who speaks to a large group of well-financed big spenders. Just my two cents!
Re:The only "shortage" is of **CHEAP** tech worker
on
The IT Labor Shortage
·
· Score: 1
Oh that's a bunch of bleeding heart bull pucky! There's no shortage of *jobs*, money, *or* employers willing to pay. The last time I decided to change jobs, I put a message out on my Linux Users Groups saying I was looking. By 3:30 the next afternoon, I had a better job with a 50% raise. In fact, every job I've had in the past 5 years has increased my salary by 50%. I have no degree, yet I get calls/spam from head hunters weekly offering me stellar salaries. Nobody is trying to enslave anyone. *sheesh*
The jobs are out there. The money is out there. All you need is a pulse and the willingness to move to Silicon Valley.
I'd have to comment that the presence or lack of a degree in C.S. seems rather irrelevent. Many of the most brilliant and talented geeks I know are completely self taught and if they do have a degree, it may be in an unrelated subject. Furthermore, many of the just-out-of-school graduates I've hired have no clue where to start.
The university system is not poised to effectively teach Computer Science. Respected schools like Cal Poly still teach Ada as a core language. The IT world changes much too fast for the university sytem to keep its curriculum current. Recent grads leave with a degree; training in obsolete areas; and a whole lot of theory with little practical relevence. Consequently, when new grads walk into the office, programmers with any real experience look at these kids like they're from Mars!
I wish people would support their facts when they make comments like this.
The truth is that the rest of the computing community *is* paying attention to software like the Gimp. See Advanced Imaging Magazine, January 2000, "Commercial Imaging: Going Linux, too - How graphics designers, digital photographers and video editors are plugging into a world only recently reserved for technicians," a two page article plus screen caps primarily about the Gimp. (They interviewed yours truely for this spread.) This is a highly respected trade publication in the graphics world. (But alas, they don't archive their articles online so I can't provide a url).
Second, people even in the Windows world are switching to Gimp quite rapidly and if you paid attention to the Gimp email lists, you'd know that. Adobe Photoshop costs $609. Gimp is free and has all the features plus some (except CMYK color which is a patent issue).
Sure, if you're using a Gimp v.1.0x, you don't get any features. So download the CVS versions (1.1.1x) and you'll find that it is an elegant and sophisticated graphics editor.
Just my two cents. And I figure I can speak with some authority. I use Gimp professionally all day long.
George W Bush's site crashed Netscape. Although it's not hard to do, he's obviously not too interested in votes from Linux users. We can't even look at his site!
Hah! Kids seem to understand this stuff easily. I can't tell you how many parents I know who've learned everything they know about computers from their grade-school aged children.
This seems like a major win to me. If you think about it, why do people use Windows? Because they are familiar with it. It's what they use at work. It's what their kids use at school, etc.
If kids grow up with Linux, it will be familiar to them and they'll be likely to stick with it. People hate change! (Just think of how people react if you introduce a new rev of the same software in your office -total panic!)
I have to wonder how many Mac users who are in their 20's are Mac users today because Apple donated a computer to every California classroom in the mid 80's.
Slashdot Mirror
The question of comparing an open source solution to a big expensive app like Open View came up not too long ago when GroundWork published their cost comparison of GW Monitor vs HP Open View. Over three years, GroundWork Monitor was 82% less expensive than Open View. GroundWork is about $54/node and Open View is about $295. You can download the PDF here: http://www.groundworkopensource.com/solutions/tco-gwme_vs_hp-openview.html
This study caught the attention of Matt Assay on cnet when HP had a fit about their pricing being exposed. http://news.cnet.com
You probably saw it on slashdot right after Thanksgiving. http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/28/0857213
I work at GroundWork. We did not sign an NDA to get this document.
The downloadable ISO is built on CentOS and is also a really great way to take it for a spin. Plus, it's a bootable CD.
h p?group_id=160654&sel_platform=1491
h p?group_id=160654&sel_platform=1493
You can get it here: http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.p
There are also some great WMI plugins for monitoring windows events:
http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.p
Well, whether or not fraud is a sign of a healthy economy, it is certainly a flourishing tax on stupidity. Hey, if you would fax your credit card number to a company that wont provide a valid email address to receive discount prescription drugs -like Viagra, then you deserve whatever you (do or don't) get! (Let's see, I think I'll send access to my bank account to an organization that I've never heard of. The reason for doing this would be because I trust this person to send me pharmaceuticals that are safe!)
As the saying goes... "Yeah, and I have a bridge to sell you.." Spam has the ability to reach far more suckers than P.T. Barnum ever could.
Look, adultery needs to be defined by the individuals in the relationship. You may be perfectly comfortable with your S.O. having intercourse with your best friend, but giving her a foot massage infuriates you. If your S.O. has agreed to these terms, and he violates them, he has violated your trust and the terms of your relationship.
If you are looking for social norms to define for you what is or is not acceptable to do with or without your significant other(s), you are not communicating with your S.O. and harming your relationship even worse than "cheating". Each couple needs to discuss (often) the terms of their relationship based on their individual needs. Get specific. How far is too far? These are personal agreements, not social rules to be followed.
Porn will always exist in every media available. In fact, mediums that have excluded pornography have died (laser-discs). Pornography has been the single-most driving force behind the advancements of technogolies from home theatre, to the internet, to the printing press.
Porn will be available in e-book, paper book, paper magazine, video games, and will sell copies wherever it is. Sex sells. People buy it. Like it or not.
Aside from the practical reasons that paper books will endure (as described above by mblase), there are also more emotional reasons for them to remain strong.
Ever walk into a dusty used book shop and just inhale the scent of old paper? I know that I'm not the only one who finds this to be fantastic.
Next, books are very tactile. You touch them and turn the pages. This is a different feeling than hitting the "next page" button.
Books are more restful on the eyes than a backlit lcd or radioactive monitor. This is many people find them more relaxing. This is also why so many people read before bedtime. Conversely, study after study complains that monitors are straining on the eyes and cause headaches.
I love my computers and I love my PDA, but they have an entirely different appeal to me than my library. These are completely different media and while their functions can over-lap, they do not replace eachother.
Just my two cents...
Hmmm... I've had this happen to several of my sites. On one hand, I've taken it as flattery and on the other I've been pissed. Incidently, the people who do this generally do do a pretty sloppy job of it. (If they had the creative ability to produce a decent copy, they'd probably create original work.)
Last winter (probably December 99), we found some "Linux Company" back east somewhere who had completely copied the VA Linux site down to using the exact same graphics and background image. The logo was even the same with their name pasted over "VA". I was pretty outraged. (I was the webmaster at VA at the time and had created the layout.)
I guess if you're going to use someone else's work, you should ask permission, first. Web layout is artwork just like painting or sculpting. If you have permission, then go for it. But the creator owns the work and it is their perogative to decide who can use it. (Their choice as to the use may or may not be ethical but it's still their choice.)
Just my two cents as a webdesigner.
Legally Speaking, I cannot imagine them being able to hold you to that if the training is *required* in order to keep the job.
Personally, I would weigh a couple factors:
1. Will this training improve your skills enough that it will be worth a significant pay raise in one year's time?
2. Will this training have gone obsolete in one year's time?
I don't know where you are geographically, but at least in California, there are so many tech/geek jobs, that it's just not worth working for someone who is going to do that. I can understand the company wanting to protect their investment but the job market is on the employee's side too much for them to be able to hold you to that and keep employees.
And since when is comercial software any better than Open Source Software? The open source model allows fluid and thorough development of applications. Developers aren't stuck with unattainable deadlines or marketing driven feature requirements. They have the time and resources to create well written code with features sets based on people's actual needs.
I am typing this from my trusty Debian box. Let me state that the comercial software I run on this box (Netscape, Star Office, Word Perfect, etc) crashes and tends to be poorly put together. The Open Source software I run (Debian, Gimp, Enlightenment, etc) runs fabulously & without a hitch!
What Linux needs is not more legacy comercial software. Linux does not need to become what it's fighting against. Linux is changing the way people think about software. What Linux need is to continue its high standards and the world will change around it. (And if you doubt that, just look at the amount of acceptance Linux has gained over the past 3 years.)
Um, ok, but that's not Open Source! At least the Gimp is Open Source.
I'll say this again. The biggest mistake the Gimp has mad is that their "stable" version is that it's like a year old and doesn't really compare to other graphics manipulation programs. Hello guys - FEATURE FREEZE PLEASE! The "developers version" is fabulous. I couldn't live without it. It's a beautifully written app and does everything I need from a graphics program (except CMYK).
And it's GPL. So don't pay $500 for Photoshop or even $50 for Pixel32.
Hmmmm.... Can photopaint do CMYK color? That's my only beef with Gimp. I didn't see any documentation stating one way or another.
Ok, I'm sorry, but this just irritates the crap out of me. So Jenni wants to put a camera in her room. Personally, it wouldn't be my choice, but I still don't see what that has to do with self esteem.
This is a matter of values. If your value system prioritizes privacy and modesty and you behave like Jenni, then you probably have a self esteem problem. However, if Jenni doesn't particularly care about these things, yet she values creativity, exhibitionism, and independence from social norms, then her behavior shows an incredible amount of courage and self esteem. She's had the ability to do whatever the hell she pleases regardless of social norms.
Being yourself does not show a lack of self esteem. Forcing your values on others *does* show a lack of self esteem because it means you need the agreement others to validate your lifestyle.
So please... you are welcome to your own lifestyle. But if someone (like Jenni) chooses a different lifestyle, it doesn't mean they are emotionally messed up or have self esteem problems. It just means that if they were you and had your experiences and your value system, that sort of behavior would be symptomatic of problems.
You can say that a certain behavior wouldn't be your choice... but it is not fair to make judgements about their psychological health unless you know them well and have some sort of background in psychology.
</rant>
On a related note... I've been getting answering machine spam at home, lately. No, I don't mean telemarketers. I mean software that dials you up during the day (while you're presumably at work), waits for the beep, and plays a recording onto your machine for you to listen to when you play your messages at night. grrr....
You know, it's been very obvious to me for a while that LinuxCare was in a world of hurt... Everyone I know that worked there (but one person) has quit in the past six months. And some of these people have been the Linux elite.
To add insult to injury, I received no less than 3 at each of my email addresses, this morning from LinuxCare. Not only were they spamming, but they did such a bad job of it that they repeated themselves. I'm not sure if the repetition was intentional or accidental. Either way, it doesn't speak well for LinuxCare's understanding of the Linux Community. Spamming is a great way to sign your death warrant in the Linux world. Apparently, they've signed a marketing department who has failed to get to know their audience.
It's very disappointing. I had a lot of hope for LinuxCare a year ago. I still hope they'll manage to pull out of this rut. Unfortunately, there are only a few Linux companies. The behavior of one effects the reputations of all of them.
- Do you have a great domain name? Before VA bought them, Linux.com's value was based entirely on the domain name.
- Are you getting hits and more importantly, are you retaining these hits and for how long? Do they have a reason to come back regularly?
- What kind of stats are you gathering? Are you tracking your visitors' paths through your site? Where are they coming from? Where/why are they leaving? Etoys.com tracks their users' paths through the site so they can see what people are interested in and feed them banners/links accordingly.
- Do you have a way to gather information about your users? Do you have quality demographics? Demographics are worth money. Why do you think grocery stores give you membership cards?
- What kinds of click-throughs can you offer your banner advertisers?
All the content in the world is only valuable if it gives your users a reason to come to your site, stay there and come back often. If you have a small audience whose average demographics are low income and short attention span, your site will be worth a lot less than a site who speaks to a large group of well-financed big spenders. Just my two cents!Oh that's a bunch of bleeding heart bull pucky! There's no shortage of *jobs*, money, *or* employers willing to pay. The last time I decided to change jobs, I put a message out on my Linux Users Groups saying I was looking. By 3:30 the next afternoon, I had a better job with a 50% raise. In fact, every job I've had in the past 5 years has increased my salary by 50%. I have no degree, yet I get calls/spam from head hunters weekly offering me stellar salaries. Nobody is trying to enslave anyone. *sheesh*
The jobs are out there. The money is out there. All you need is a pulse and the willingness to move to Silicon Valley.
I'd have to comment that the presence or lack of a degree in C.S. seems rather irrelevent. Many of the most brilliant and talented geeks I know are completely self taught and if they do have a degree, it may be in an unrelated subject. Furthermore, many of the just-out-of-school graduates I've hired have no clue where to start.
The university system is not poised to effectively teach Computer Science. Respected schools like Cal Poly still teach Ada as a core language. The IT world changes much too fast for the university sytem to keep its curriculum current. Recent grads leave with a degree; training in obsolete areas; and a whole lot of theory with little practical relevence. Consequently, when new grads walk into the office, programmers with any real experience look at these kids like they're from Mars!
I wish people would support their facts when they make comments like this.
The truth is that the rest of the computing community *is* paying attention to software like the Gimp. See Advanced Imaging Magazine, January 2000, "Commercial Imaging: Going Linux, too - How graphics designers, digital photographers and video editors are plugging into a world only recently reserved for technicians," a two page article plus screen caps primarily about the Gimp. (They interviewed yours truely for this spread.) This is a highly respected trade publication in the graphics world. (But alas, they don't archive their articles online so I can't provide a url).
Second, people even in the Windows world are switching to Gimp quite rapidly and if you paid attention to the Gimp email lists, you'd know that. Adobe Photoshop costs $609. Gimp is free and has all the features plus some (except CMYK color which is a patent issue).
Sure, if you're using a Gimp v.1.0x, you don't get any features. So download the CVS versions (1.1.1x) and you'll find that it is an elegant and sophisticated graphics editor.
Just my two cents. And I figure I can speak with some authority. I use Gimp professionally all day long.
Who cares about the source code? It doesn't look like they're having the party this year. Jamie, come back!!!!!!!!!
George W Bush's site crashed Netscape. Although it's not hard to do, he's obviously not too interested in votes from Linux users. We can't even look at his site!
Hah!
Kids seem to understand this stuff easily. I can't tell you how many parents I know who've learned everything they know about computers from their grade-school aged children.
This seems like a major win to me. If you think about it, why do people use Windows? Because they are familiar with it. It's what they use at work. It's what their kids use at school, etc.
If kids grow up with Linux, it will be familiar to them and they'll be likely to stick with it. People hate change! (Just think of how people react if you introduce a new rev of the same software in your office -total panic!)
I have to wonder how many Mac users who are in their 20's are Mac users today because Apple donated a computer to every California classroom in the mid 80's.
ESR = "Corporate Conscious"
Chris Dibona = Linux Evangelist
Joe Arruda = Linux Advocate
Larry Augustin = The Boss
How is that sexist? I totally agree.